Enchanted Community

BLOG 12/24/16. AN AWESOME MODEL OF TRUE FAITH: MARY

On this Christmas Eve, let me pass on to you, my readers,…  that I can never come to this Christmas story without being totally blown-away by the example of Mary the mother of Jesus. One has only to stop and think about it for a moment. We are presented with a young girl (perhaps 14 years old, or so?). She appears on the opening page of the gospel of Luke with no introduction, and immediately is confronted by the angelic messenger Gabriel, who greets her by name. That’s enough to jolt anyone—being confronted with a real angel from wherever! But then imagine being this young lady, and having that angel greet you by name, and tell you that you are favored by God to have a son, to whom God will give the throne of his father David, who shall be called the Son of the Most High, and whose kingdom there would be no end. Face it! That’s unbelievable, and that was exactly Mary’s response. “How can this be?” After all she wasn’t even married (and certainly not promiscuous).

I love it, … the innocent candor: “But I am a virgin, how can I have a child?” So, the angel explains that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and overshadow her, and she would conceive a child. Humanly impossible, even outrageous. Whoever heard of such a thing? Ah! but the faith of this young lady becomes a model for me: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord: let it be unto me according to your word.” (The most of our own acts of obedience to which our Lord Jesus calls us to do in the gospel enterprise are humanly impossible, like: opening eyes blind to the gospel, and unstopping ears deaf to the gospel, … or delivering persons out of the dominion of darkness and into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, … or dealing with impossible personalities, all humanly impossible.) So, my own response to the humanly impossible mission mandate of Jesus given to his church: First: “How can this even be possible?” and secondly: “I am you servant. Be it unto me according to your word.”

I began my life as a card-carrying Protestant kid who was suspicious of my Roman Catholic buddies who venerated Mary, and I acquired something of a resistance to all of their Mariolatry. But the longer I became a New Testament student, the more it grew on me what a quiet, but incredible figure she is. Her faith became a model for me whenever the Lord provoked me into some overwhelming act of obedience to himself.

First of all, … did you ever stop and ponder that Mary had to be one of the major sources of information for the writing of the four gospels. Only she could have known so many of the details. So, yes, it was a patriarchal society, but you can’t hide the evidence—like: the nativity accounts. Only she could have known all of that. Jesus lived with her until he began his public ministry at about thirty years of age. She was his mother. When my Roman Catholic colleagues designate her as the ‘mother of God’ I am forced to acknowledge that there is a very real sense in which that is a true designation.

Or consider that when Joseph and Mary took Jesus to the temple when he was twelve years old, that he amazed the priests and teachers with his questions, and his knowledge. Who do you think imparted that knowledge of scripture to him? Who processed his life, and shared with him his miraculous birth, and related to him the promises given at that time? Only Mary could have done that. The young lady must have been wonderfully informed on the writings of the Jewish scriptures, and the prophecies concerning the coming Messiah.

From the very beginning of Jesus’ life, right down to the foot of the cross, who was there? Mary! Faithful presence, loving mother, true believer from beginning to end.

I need her example of faith. She was so gentle and steadfast and enduring as a mother, and as a follower of her Son. “I am thy servant. Be it unto me according to your word.” I have incorporated her faith and response and love for Jesus into my own prayer disciplines, and I commend her to my readers on this Christmas Eve 2016 as a model.

BLOG 12/20/16. (CONTINUED) THE SAGA OF CANAL STREET CHURCH

I was, frankly, quite amazed at the very large response of my recent Blog on the re-birth of Canal Street Church in New Orleans after the devastation of hurricane Katrina. It is interesting that it took such a nightmare-ish disaster to bring it to this awakening. The fact is, that if one looks at the purpose of the church in the mission of God, that forgetfulness sets in rather quickly—usually after the second generation. One has only to look at the letters to the seven churches in the book of Revelation at the end of the Bible to see this—drift, pre-occupation and distractions, subtle erosions, Satanic attacks and persecutions, … It is so subtle: the preoccupation with place, or with clergy, or with church disputes … and the Kingdom community loses its clear focus on being the missionary arm of the Holy Trinity.

If you go all the way back to the beginning of Israel’s occupation of the Holy Land, after forty years in the wilderness, there was the provision that every seven years Israel should declare a year of rest and go back to the boundary, to the place where they entered the land, and to remember from whence they had come, and what was the clear purpose of their calling as a nation, which was given to them in their founding covenant at the foot of Mt. Sinai. They were to be a holy nation, living under God’s design, and to be a nation of priests, a light to the nations,  to communicate the design of God to all the nations of the earth. Then every fifty years was a Jubilee year, when all of the land reverted to its original ownership, etc. “Go back to the boundary and remember why you were called, and what God’s purpose for you is, and how you are fulfilling that calling.”

The problem was that Israel soon forgot their calling, and essentially forgot the Sabbatical years, and never seemed to have practiced the Jubilee year with much conviction. So, that within a few generations the nation drifted and took on many of the practices of the pagan nations around them. They were intended to always be a pilgrim people with a mission to the other nations of the earth. They forgot. They were not willing to stop periodically and evaluate who they were and why they were unique, so by the 8^th-7^th centuries before the advent of Christ, the prophets came with a single message: “Remember the Torah, the covenant by which you were formed. Remember that you are Yahweh’s unique people. Remember mercy and justice, and your guidelines for living among those of other religions. Go back to the boundary and remember.”

In more recent times the Marynoll Father, Gerald Arbuckle (a cultural anthropologist) was asked by his Roman Catholic order to diagnose why the order was diminishing so alarmingly. His conclusion was the whenever an order dilutes, displaces, or forgets its (what he designates as) founding myth, i.e. its raison d’etre, then the Order reverts to chaos. That, he concluded, was what had happened to the Marynolls. He also noted that ‘renewal’ is quite too weak a remedy—what the order needs is to radically refound itself upon its founding myth.

Very few Christian institutions take this seriously. They displace their founding myth, their true essence as communities under the Lordship of Christ, with religious institutional forms, forget their mission, or dilute their message to make it more acceptable to ‘religious’ folk, … then wonder why they are diminishing. Canal Street Church had been in something of a chaotic and unfocused state for decades and it took the hurricane Katrina to bring it to its moment of refounding. Congregations need to “go back to the boundary” at least every decade or so, and reclaim their integrity, their founding myth. … But few are willing. After the second generation the drift to chaos.

[I have sought to process this in a book: Refounding the Church from the Underside.]

BLOG 12/17/16. IT’S CHRISTMAS, … BUT I’M OBSESSED WITH REFUGEES

It is an almost surreal experience to live in this present moment. To read the morning newspaper here in Atlanta is to be informed of all the hedonistic experiences one can enjoy in this ostensible holiday season: places to eat gourmet meals, places to be entertained, football games to watch, places to shop—how to be happy and spends tons of money, with the birth of Jesus somehow in the background as the rationale for it all.

Then to read of the chaotic political realities of this country is (as someone commented) like reading the satirical journal: The Onion. It is all so confusing and depressing, and leaves one with the sense of bewilderment and despair. What’s happening?

In the midst of it all are all the immediate realities of making a living, going through our professional routines. I sit several mornings a week in my favorite coffee shop, and with me are a couple of score of mostly young professionals with their iPhones and laptops engaging in their businesses, or scholarly pursuits, or creative writing, etc. They seem consumed with living the normal life of urban professionals, and one wonders what they all make of the world outside of their digital culture and their exceptionally good coffee.

Then, I read of four million Syrian refugees, … or of the thousands of evacuees from Aleppo, who are good, ordinary people such as you and I know here, and Aleppo has been their ancestral home, and the place of their professions as medical personnel, merchants, educators, artisans … all the normal occupations which we also engage in here in Atlanta. And suddenly they are assaulted by opposing government and rebel forces, their city is bombarded, the children are frightened, … and then a cease-fire is declared and they are ordered to be evacuated. So, with the clothes on their back and what they can carry they are herded onto busses and evacuated to some unknown destination and future, and even their evacuation is assaulted by ISIS forces.

It is surreal. Two worlds. The security of my own warm home, and my ability to function normally, and to celebrate the Word made flesh in the birth of Jesus, … and the other huge human tragedy of over sixty-three million refugees in the world. Spending money on Christmas presents seems almost obscene when there are such enormous human needs for basics among these throngs of desperate victims of circumstances beyond their control.

How do I resolve this? I have been provoked to much more generous giving to those agencies that are seeking to bring relief rather than indulge myself in fun, but un-necessary, Christmas entertainment. Jesus taught me that feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, bringing healing to the sick, and taking strangers into one’s home are those ministries by which he is honored. I look for the agencies that are engaging in such ministries among the millions of refugees. I do not care whether they are ‘Christian’ agencies or not, … only if they are effective. My readers may have their own chosen agencies, but I will commend several (which you can access on line), and which make it simple to make a single donation, or choose monthly donations. Here are my Bob Henderson suggestions:

• The United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), which is the most immediate on-the-ground agency responsible, and well administered.
• The International Rescue Committee (IRC) founded by Albert Einstein to assist with rescuing German Jews decades ago, and very well placed and administered.
• The American Red Cross, which like the Islamic Red Crescent are always ‘Johnny on the spot’ in humanitarian concerns, but always need financial assistance.

Lord have mercy on those despairing uprooted fellow humans across the world. May I implore my readers to be both generous and compassionate, and celebrate Christmas aware of the world in which we live, what with so much that is heart-rending. Lord, have mercy!

BLOG 12/13/16. THE CENTRALITY OF HOSPITALITY IN THE NATIVITY STORY

Maybe we need to do a bit of de-mythologizing of the Nativity story given all the ostensible nativity scenes gracing the yards of numerous church buildings this time of year. I am indebted to New Testament scholar Kenneth Bailey for doing this for me. Ken, an American, grew up in Lebanon with missionary parents, and then spent his life there teaching New Testament and so is intimately familiar with that culture. One of the first cultural realities you confront in this story is that of hospitality as normative in middle-eastern culture, i.e., you open your home to those in need of a place to stay. They didn’t have motels, and only a few inns. This concept is all to alien to our own culture. We make homes our fortress, a place to escape, a place that is our private preserve … all too much of the time. We’ll come back to this, because in New Testament teachings, being given to hospitality is even a qualifier for becoming a church leader, and taking the homeless poor into your home is deep in Jesus’ injunctions to his followers. This sounds much stranger to those of us who are western than it would have to those first century middle-eastern Christian folk.

So, Joseph had to go to Bethlehem to register for taxation because he was, note, of the house and lineage of David. We read over that year by year routinely and it doesn’t register to us that Joseph was of royal lineage. He was not some poor, non-credentialed guy—he was royal family. And then there was no room in the (probably small) inn, for this royal heir and his pregnant wife. Now note: that when Mary’s time of delivery had come she bore the child and laid him in the manger. But this was no cow shed in the back yard. People didn’t keep their livestock out in some back pasture, but the animals were kept in (according to Ken Bailey’s explanation) in the house in what would have been something like an attached garage in our experience, separated only from the rest of the house by a low wall, and it was by that low wall that they kept the hay to feed the animals, i.e. the manger. The animals provided some warmth for the homes, which also were basically one great room where all their living took place.

It would have been considered an honor to provide hospitality, especially to one such as Joseph and his wife. Here again we need to do a bit of de-mythologizing. Often our Christmas scenes have shepherds, angels, wise men and all gathered around some feed trough in the shed. But the shepherds got the message first, and came and worshiped. But they had their sheep to care for so couldn’t have lingered for long. But the wise men arrived seeking Jesus, whose star they had seen, and who had already been born. Later, Herod would have all the boy babies born in the recent two years to be killed. Which means that it could have been weeks, or months after the birth of Jesus that the wise men turned up in Bethlehem. All the while, Joseph and Mary and the infant Jesus were recipients of the hospitality of some un-named givers of that hospitality. There are undoubtedly many details that we do not know, obviously, but the hospitality of those unknown folk in Bethlehem is the backdrop of the story.

Or consider that when Jesus and his followers were journeying around Palestine in his earthly ministry, they had to stay somewhere, and eat somewhere. We know that there was the Martha and May home, and that Jesus asked to stay in Zacchaeus’ home, but in the background, they experienced middle-eastern hospitality. The home was a key place of ministry. Now to take the leap to the 21^st century. Where does hospitality take place in our experience? Yes, we have multiple hotels of all sorts. It may be that the Airbnb phenomenon is one of the closest approximations we have. We modern westerners to not ordinarily plan our homes for taking in homeless folk and strangers. We may send money to the local homeless shelter, but this is a bit impersonal. Somehow we who are followers of Jesus need to reclaim the role of hospitality for those physically or spiritually homeless, and how our homes fit into this ministry. Got any ideas?

BLOG 12/10/16. A REMARKABLE CHURCH REBIRTH, BUT THE HARD WAY

Let me tell you a true and remarkable story about a church of my acquaintance that has undergone a dramatic and remarkable rebirth, … but not the way any would have chosen. It is the story of Canal Street Church in New Orleans. New Orleans, of course, is a very unique city, and a culture unto itself. It is small and confined by waterways, founded several centuries ago as a seaport, not at all a southern city, its roots being Spanish and French, and then many minority ethnic groups such as African-American, German, and Chinese. Religiously, it is dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. So, it was unique that a Presbyterian mission was founded in the French Quarter early in the 19^th century, which mission became a church and moved just out of the French Quarter a few years later. Then as the city grew away from the river, the church moved out into a new developing neighborhood in mid-city. For several decades, it was decidedly a neighborhood church, but its history would indicate that it was a less-than-missional and traditional church institution, holding services, weathering some crises, but un-exciting.

Then, after World War II it became more and more of a commuter church as its membership moved out into the fringes of the city. It ceased to be a neighborhood church, and became pretty static, conservative, and with no clear focus on its mission—except to survive. I became pastor of that church in the early 1970s. A decade before my arrival the church had for a brief period a very entrepreneurial pastor, who swept in a wave of rambunctious new members, but didn’t do much about their formation in discipleship. They had become quite troublesome by the time I arrived. With me arrived, also, the social disruptions caused by the civil rights movement, the Viet Nam war and the restless youth culture of the late 1960s and early 1970s. For me it was challenging and formative, as we attracted a fairly large participation by spiritually hungry university students from Tulane and the University of New Orleans. I rather fell in love with New Orleans.

But the lack of clear missional focus, the lack of any vital contact with the neighborhood, the presence of disruptive interest groups vying for power within the congregation, and an on-going restlessness with denominational interference made it an uneasy period. I was called away (against my better desires) to accept a denominational post in evangelism, and there followed decades of ups-and-downs, with a few bright spots, but a certain internal division that diminished its witness. (Are you still with me? Here’s where it gets interesting.)

In August of 2005, one of the most devastating hurricanes ever to hit this country moved in on New Orleans with unbelievable damage. The city lives behind levees because parts of it are below sea-level anyhow, but when the levees broke, and the wind damage escalated it was sheer chaos. For all of the years since my tenure there, I followed Canal Street Church, did a retreat once for its members a few years before Katrina, and maintained a strong affection for it. So, I followed the satellite pictures on the web and was blown away by what I saw. Canal Street Church lost 65% of its members’ homes, the church building had two feet of water in the sanctuary, there was roof damage, the church went into dispersion, … but then: what no one could have predicted or planned. The small core of those remaining came together with a very strong sense of mission. With their first insurance monies, they created the semi-attached fellowship hall of the church into a community center to coordinate restoration efforts in the neighborhood. They resumed worship services. All ties to the Presbyterian church ceased to exist. Committed and gifted Christian leadership emerged with particular gifts. Ergo! Canal Street Church had emerged as a dynamic and neighborhood-focused community once again, advertising on its web-site that Canal Street Church is a mosaic community. It is alive, dynamic, missionally focused, Christ-exalting, bearing fruit. Its past was all washed away by the disaster, and it was dramatically reborn. But not the way anyone would have chosen. God works in mysterious ways.

LOG 12/6/16. WHERE DOES THE CHURCH EFFECTIVELY ENCOUNTER THE DARKNESS?

Ah, yes! The New Testament writers remind us in many ways that God calls us to be the children of light, … that we followers of Jesus are, in fact, called to be the light of the world, … that we are to shine in the dark places of the earth. So, where does that happen? Let me answer that with two principles for your consideration:

• The church is probably most truly the light of the world when it is scattered into the life, neighborhoods, workplaces, homes, and social-cultural-political-ethical challenges which we all face inevitably in our 24/7 lives, … but only if …
• … only if our time spent as the church gathered equips us for that calling to be lights shining in the darkness. The purpose of the church being gathered is to equip God’s people for their works of ministry as those called by Jesus, and as those sent by Jesus back into that very world which he came to seek and to save. We gather for worship and for preaching to equip us for our conduct as his people as those sent. “As the Father as sent me into the world, even so do I send you.” As one of my favorite mentor-writers (Jacques Ellul) has said: “… there cannot be any separation between preaching and conduct, … to participate truly in this preservation of the world, the Christian ought to place himself/herself at the point of contact between the two currents: the will of the Lord, and the will of the world.”

But to be faithful and effective in that point of contact means that our time spent gathered must not be reduced to spiritual entertainment, and our preaching much not be reduced to very listenable oratory—quite the contrary, our time should be, to be sure, encouraging, but it must be what the scriptures refer to as edifying, i.e. building up, and equipping. This means serious engagement with the Word of Christ, and this is the purpose of our ministering to one another with songs and psalms and spiritual songs. We desperately need the encouragement of one another, and the times to refocus on the glory of God in worship, … but we should never be allowed to leave those gathered times with a shrug and a response of: “So what?”

The ‘world’ has a way of consuming us, and taking from us our empowerment. Our times together must, therefore, be empowering and equipping us for our primary role as God’s people scattered as the light of the world in the midst of the cultural darkness, as salt and light in the realities of the week.

Week by week I sit with our gathered community and see around me the parents of handicapped children, medical professionals, educators, librarians, lawyers, truck-drivers, workers with refugees, day laborers, entrepreneurs, information technology wizards, homemakers, physical therapists … and on and on. People from every walk of life. But we are together for only a couple of hours, and then we are scattered for the next 160+ hours in our calling to be those engaged in the preservation of the real world in which we live, … which could be very discouraging if we were not being equipped and empowered by our times together.

But that is our calling: “As the Father has sent me, even so am I sending you” …to be scattered among those whom Jesus came to seek and to save, to bring hope and meaning and to be the radiant display of the divine nature among our neighbors by the empowering of God’s Spirit. Our times together should keep that calling as our compelling and motivating vision: children of the Light. But one more note: This puts an enormous responsibility on the shoulders of the church leaders and the preachers-teaching pastors. Pray for them! Thanks. … and shine!

BLOG 12/3/16. HELPLESS? ONLY IF WE TRUST IN THE PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS

The current cultural and political chaos here, and around the world, can be utterly intimidating. It easily gives to us ordinary folks a sense of helplessness, … but this is because we tend to embrace an understanding of our present world scene that is quite unreal and un-Biblical. It is interesting that we, who are followers of Jesus Christ, regularly pray a prayer that begins with the petition that the Kingdom of the Holy God will come on earth, and that God’s will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. Less often do we ask: “Exactly into what earthly context does this Kingdom/New Creation come?” That same prayer concludes with a petition that God will deliver us from the evil one. So, what is going on here? Answer: What is going on here and now is that, in Christ, God’s Kingdom is coming (has invaded) into the kingdoms of this world, and into this present dominion of darkness, … and our naïveté is shattered. This world scene, in whatever nation or ethnic group one resides, is never neutral.

We need to be reminded often that Jesus came out of the waters of baptism to spend forty days in the wilderness being tempted, during which time Satan, the god of this world, sought to seduce him to accomplish fame and popularity through human principalities and powers: through economic popularity, through political power, and through religious popularity. Jesus’ response to Satan was to reject all of these and to remind Satan that his own purpose in coming was to destroy Satan himself, and all of his works. Satan wanted to seduce Jesus away from his Messianic role which would be accomplished by a global reconciliation on the cross. The apostle John would later explain that: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” The apostle Paul gives us a graphic description of our own calling and its consequences: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the authorities, against cosmic powers, over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places”.

Paul concludes that passage describing the whole armor of God, which is to be the Christian’s daily dress, by saying that he/she is to be “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.” Now this may be a bit much for my readers to ingest, … but there are a couple of realities that are seldom accepted easily in the secular context (and which infiltrate the Christian community) in which we operate, and they are: 1) the reality of Satan, and 2) the enormous effectiveness of prayer. Out tendency is to depend for our daily interpretation of events on the news journals. In those journals we are consumed by the vast power of the political, economic, and religious principalities and powers – political campaigns and majorities, the vast influence of the 1% of the wealthy, and by religious power-brokers. These have produced chaos globally.

In this chaos too few of us take seriously the reality of the great destroyer-Apollyon-Satan–the god of this world, … and too few of us believe in the awesome power of prayer. And yet it is these pieces of our awareness that Paul reminds us of: “For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (II Corinthians 10:4). And, if you are so motivated to know what those weapons are, you might check-in to the description of the whole armor of God in Ephesians 6. (I might as well refer you here to my own explication of this armor in a book of mine: The Church and the Relentless Darkness, p. 67 ff.) http://wipfandstock.com/the-church-and-the-relentless-darkness.html.In the final book of the Bible, that dramatic overview (what with all of its apocalyptic images) of the history of the church’s conflict with the forces of hell, it is interesting to note that it is the prayers of the persecuted saints under the altar (Revelation 6-8) that arise like incense to heaven and determine the true course of history. What are we to do in this present political chaos? Exercise the trustiest weapon of all: Prayer. Got it?

BLOG 11/29/16. THE PREDICAMENT OF OUR PRIMARY CITIZENSHIP

It may be that in this present political chaos into which we, in this country, are called as Christ’s people, we take moment and revisit a historical document: Letter to Diognetus 2^nd Century BC. After all, we are told quite plainly by the Apostle Peter that we, who are followers of Christ, are always aliens and exiles. We can never give our primary allegiance to any other than to that of our Lord Jesus, as impractical as that may sound to the secular mind. We live as those people, who are the light of the world, the salt of the earth, in other words, our praxis is right in the midst of all the evidences of the dominion of darkness. It is in this very chaos, and as pilgrims/migrants, that we are to shine as lights in the world.  That’s our calling. So read this historic document … and gain a new sense of our purpose in the design of God in this land of our sojourn. It was written  by an amazed Roman official to his overseer about the emerging prominence of the ‘sect’ of the followers of Jesus of Nazareth.

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“For Christians are not differentiated from other people by country, language or customs; you see, they do not live in cities of their own, or speak some strange dialect, or have some peculiar lifestyle.

This teaching of theirs has not been contrived by the invention and speculation of inquisitive men; nor are they propagating mere human teaching as some people do.  They live in both Greek and foreign cities, wherever chance has put them.  They follow local customs in clothing, food and other aspects of life.  But at the same time, they demonstrate to us the wonderful and certainly unusual form of their citizenship. 

They live in their own native land, but as aliens; as citizens, they share all things with others; but like aliens, suffer all things.  Every foreign country is to them as their native country, and every native land as a foreign country. 

They marry and have children just like everyone else; but they do not kill unwanted babies.  They offer a shared table, but not a shared bed.  They are at present ‘in the flesh’ but they do not live ‘according to the flesh’.  They are passing their days on earth, but are citizens of heaven.  They obey the appointed laws, and go beyond the laws in their own lives.

They love everyone, but are persecuted by all.  They are put to death and gain life.  They are poor and yet make many rich.  They are short of everything and yet have plenty of all things.  They are dishonored and yet gain glory through dishonor.

Their names are blackened and yet cleared.  They are mocked and bless in return.  They are treated outrageously and behave respectfully to others.  When they do good, they are punished as evildoers; when punished, they rejoice as if being given new life.  They are attacked by Jews as aliens, and are persecuted by Greeks; yet those who hate them cannot give any reason for their hostility.

To put it simply – the soul is to the body as Christians are to the world.  The soul is spread through all parts of the body and Christians through all the cities of the world.  The soul is in the body but not of the body; Christians are in the world but not of the world.” (Letter to Diognetus, 2^nd Century AD.)

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In other words, we are Christ’s disciples, are to be those who are the incarnation of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), those who build our houses upon the rock of who he is and what he taught, and this is never in predictable or ideal circumstances. Christ’s people overcome the darkness and the works of darkness: “… by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death” (Revelation 12:11). Take heart.

BLOG 11/26/16. NON-COMMUNICATION: FROM EDEN TO SMARTPHONES

It is interesting to contemplate some of the implications that we get from that primordial story of the rebellion of the first man and woman against God, their Creator. The seductive temptation was that if they did exactly what they wanted to do, no matter what God had provided them. … that they would be as ‘gods’ to themselves. Sounded good. They succumbed. But it didn’t turn out that way. Whereas in the innocence they had been in intimate communication with God, walked with him in the Garden of Eden, … suddenly they were afraid of God and sought to hide from him.  But that’s not all. They also had existed previously in a blissful intimacy with each other and were not at all aware of their nakedness. But after their rebellion, they also sought to hide their nakedness from each other. It went downhill from there.

So, let’s take a look at the role of communication. Adam and Eve suddenly entered a whole new human experience of the fear of each other, of hiding from each other, … yet being forced to live in immediate proximity with each other, … but with the necessity of ‘hiding’ from each other.  As the human story unfolds, it was when the human community sought to be somehow masters of their own destiny at Babel that their tongues were confused and they could not even communicate with each other. Communication, intimacy, truthfulness all became the victims of their estrangement from God and his original design for them to be formed into his likeness.

The human community became The Lonely Crowd, as the author David Riesman entitled his study a generation ago—we can live in a crowd and be lonely. Why? Because we are afraid to come out of hiding. One-on-one conversation has become a rare commodity for so many, even in the information age. We communicate only on the level of topics that are safe, i.e., the weather, sports, entertainment, politics (?), etc. But the willingness to have other intimates with whom we can share the more hidden realities, such as our doubts and fears, meaning of life, hopes and aspirations, become more and more rare.

This becomes so obvious in the era of Smartphones / iPhones. On the one hand is the positive blessing of having more information at our finger-tips than is available in the Library of Congress or the British Museum, … and at the same time these same instruments become places of hiding. One watches folk walking their dogs with their ear-buds in, and their eyes on the iPhone, and oblivious to others around them. Or one sees a family in a restaurant around the same table but all engaged in their iPhones and not with each other. Wholesome conversation becomes the victim of the information age.

I’m not one to condemn others. I don’t even own an iPhone, but I can still hide. Having been a public speaker for much of my career, I am a ‘talker’ and can hide behind my loquacious-ness. My late-wife was a classic listener, and was on to me. When I would get back from an appointment, or a lunch date with a friend, she would periodically ask: “Did you listen?” Her influence on others was incredible because she listened so well. She was not in hiding.

We, who are God’s people, will do well in this society of ‘hiders’ to learn to both come out of our own hiding, and to help others to come out of theirs. iPhones can become a great hindrance to this as folk seek to use them as hiding devices. When Jesus initiated his public ministry, there were several guys hanging around after he had spoken, and he asked a great question: “What are you seeking?” And when they sort of bumbled over that, they awkwardly responded: “Where are you staying?” That was the beginning of what would become the church. Jesus engaged those followers in a context of intimacy-discipleship, of being set free to know who they were and what they were seeking. It could be that one of the first steps in disciple-making and our Christian presence day by day, is to refuse to allow our smartphones, or apps, etc. to become places of hiding, … and to engage in redemptive conversation, to reclaim communication with our neighbors—and God?

BLOG 11/22/16. THE CHURCH AS A JUBILEE COMMUNITY?

It is fascinating to observe that the earthly ministry of Jesus and his message of the in-breaking Kingdom of God … is bracketed, in the gospel accounts, between references that make quite clear that this reality was a fulfillment of the Jubilee year provision of the Jewish Torah, … by which land and freedom and wealth were periodically redistributed, and that the inhabitants of the land who were imprisoned for debts were set free, and debts forgiven. It was a reality which would cause the poor of the land to rejoice. Jesus initiates his public ministry by reading the Isaiah 61 passage on this reality in his home synagogue, … and declaring that the Jubilee was fulfilled in himself. Then at the other end of his public ministry he makes those very same Jubilee goals the criteria for the final judgement, when he names his own passion for the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the inhabitants of the debtors prisons. Somehow God’s design in inaugurating his New Creation / Kingdom has Jubilee goals written all over it.

There is always that proclivity in this fallen world for the obsession with economic power, political power, and religious power, and to create social institutions to foster that obsession. That indifference to those at the margins becomes, pretty much, the dominant social order time and again – and the institutional church falls into that trap. It is so easy to hide ourselves from the hopelessness, poverty, marginal living, and our resistance to the strangers and the needy … those who make us uncomfortable. We create church institutions that are focused on becoming comfort zone religious institutions for the empowered who need to meet weekly to’ tip our hats’ to God … and then ignore the Jubilee message of its founder.

When I was a young student in Davidson College (in the ancient of days) that college existed in a small semi-rural town (this was long before Duke Power Co. created Lake Norman and made the town of Davidson a fashionable resort community). The town consisted primarily of this proud old liberal arts college, but it also was inhabited by three small marginal industries: a pitiful textile plant, an asbestos plant (before asbestos was outlawed), and a cottonseed processing plant. But these industries, with their minimum wage workers, along with the black community which supplied the underpaid housekeeping and cooking staff for the town and college, were hidden behind pleasant Main Street with its stores, and was across the railroad track, and so was hidden from the inhabitants of what was, ostensibly, a strong and moral Presbyterian academic community. Until … One Sunday morning during the pleasant worship service at the college church, the village fire alarm sounded, and since it was a volunteer fire department, immediately many in the congregation hastily departed, and the service was terminated so the worshipers could satisfy their curiosity. What they saw (many for the first time) were the deplorable living conditions and the sheer wretchedness to which they had never given a thought because they were hidden from them. But it awakened the social consciousness of college and community. The pastor of the church was eloquent on the next Sunday in explaining the contradiction of such conditions existing almost in the shadow of their very place of worship. These seventy years later, there is a very keen and creative social consciousness in that village and college. But that is rare.

Church institutions too easily become obsessed with their own prestige, and become only the religious dimension of the dominant social order that refuses to see its Jubilee calling to bring good news to the poor, to look for where the darkness is greatest, to move into the areas of need, to create-initiate ministries of reconciliation and humanitarian concern, to expend its resources of skills and wealth to enable the poor, the sick, the strangers, those trapped by debts, etc. to have hope, and meaningful lives—to see behind  those walls we build to hide ourselves from the weak, the poor, the lowly born, and to create Jubilee communities. Is this too utopian? Or is it the Biblical pattern for the church? Its Founder’s intent?