Enchanted Community

BLOG 1/6/16. WHAT ON EARTH IS THE CHURCH?

I have sympathy for those curious observers out there who look at all the confusing entities on the scene that designate themselves as ‘the church’. I often get asked the question myself in casual conversations in my favorite coffee shop. There is that admixture of representatives ranging all the way from counterfeit and unconvincing … over to the wonderful expressions of love and witness to the life and teachings of Jesus. So let me seek to give you my Bob Henderson algorithm to help you evaluate among all of these often confusing entities. My algorithm has four components that seem unimpeachably true to the founding documents of the Christian faith. These four are inter-animating and mutually authenticating characteristics.

First of all, the church is a people called-out into communities or colonies (which is what the word means) by and for Jesus Christ to embody his own life and teachings in their daily human lives. This means that the church, first of all is about Jesus Christ. He is always to be its reason, its center, and the object of its devotion and love. It is the communities (or colonies) of those who demonstrate to this present world who Jesus was and what he taught by their knowledge and behavior of his mission to inaugurate God’s New Creation/New Humanity. God calls men and women to be conformed to the image of Jesus his Son, and calls them to live-out that image in the here and now. The church, then, is to always to be a “sweet aroma of Christ” everywhere.

So, whenever an ostensible ‘church’ becomes primarily focused on its own institutional life and forms, its clergy, its communal activities, … and in so doing inadvertently marginalizes its focus on and passion for Christ and his calling … to that extent it becomes questionable as an authentic church. Jesus is the church’s true foundation. Those who are called to be the colonies of his New Humanity/New Creation are self-consciously being created into (what is elsewhere designated) a beautiful Bride for the Lamb of God. So first of all: the church in incorrigibly Christ-centered.

Secondly, then, the church is the community or colony that demonstrates God’s New Creation/New Humanity in Christ demonstrates that relationship by its lifestyle, by its praxis, by its works which are visible to the world around it. As men and women respond to Jesus, and as he comes to wonderfully invade/indwell their lives with his own New Creation life, they then become what humanity is intended to be by the God who is recreating them. Again, they become the body of Christ right in the midst of the larger human community. What does that mean? Well, New Testament documents tell us that even in the most hostile and negative contexts, when we live out Christ’s teachings we create a curiosity in those observing.

Third, the church is the community/colony of God’s New Creation/New Humanity people who demonstrate that New Humanity by their relationships. “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples in that you love one another. Not only do they love one another but they love their enemies and do good to those who despitefully use them and persecute them.  They live in a “one another” relationship of accountability and caring with each other.

And, Fourth, the church is a community that is contagious with this incredible thing that God has done in Christ. As some Latin American folk have described it: the church is the missionary arm of the Holy Trinity. All those who are called to be Christ’s church are thereby called to be agents of the heralding of his mission to the whole world. All believers are to part of that mission in the realities, modest or influential, wherever they are.

These four essential and inter-animating dimensions together are useful to me in evaluating whatever expression presents itself as a church. I hope they are helpful to my readers. And, by the way, I have a book somewhere in process, due out in a month or two from Wipf and Stock, in which I deal more in depth with this question of: What on earth is the church? Stand by.

BLOG 1/3/16. THE WISE MEN: SEEKERS AFTER GOD AND TRUTH

What with all of the outrageous taking captive of the celebration of Christmas by the commercial principalities and powers, the actual celebration the entry of God into human flesh in Jesus of Nazareth gets lost in sentiment, and too often in a sort of ‘Thomas Kincaid sentimentalism,’ i.e., candlelight and unreality. But there are some familiar pieces of this story that need to be retrieved and explored, among which is the episode of the wise men, … who at some point subsequent to the birth of Jesus, had somehow come seeking him. The observance of their quest is the source of the church’s celebration of Epiphany in some segments of the church, especially the Eastern Orthodox tradition. It is also what is behind the song The Twelve Days of Christmas. Christmas day was followed by the twelve days that were then consummated in the twelfth day, which was Epiphany, or ‘the appearance of the star’ and the episode of the wise men from the East

When you have lived in New Orleans, as I have, you are aware that it loses all of its Christian context, and become the revelry of the annual carnival that begins on the twelfth night and continues through the Epiphany season until ‘Fat Tuesday’ right before folk resume their piety on Ash Wednesday and begin the celebration of Lent. All that by way of some background. But the wise men? What are we to make of them? They came from the east seeking something? What? They were a set of people who interpreted dreams, were astrologers, and in many ways were seekers after whatever it was that could explain the meaning of our existence. They would have had contact with the Jews who had been exiled in their part of the middle east, and would have known of some of their traditions and expectations. And so, by their own explanation, they came with rather extravagant gifts because they had discerned in the heavens a sign of a most significant person born in Palestine. They found Jesus—probably many months after his birth—gave him their gifts, worshiped him, and disappeared. What did they report when they got home? How did they interpret what they had found? What difference did it make?

Why am I raising this question? I am raising it because there have always been and are those seekers after meaning and hope in the most unlikely places. This is true in the darkest contexts intellectually, politically, philosophically, socially, culturally—in the most unlikely settings and persons.

Skip down a couple of millennia to our present place of incarnation, and into the emerging of a totally post-Christian culture in which the skeptics and cynics delight in seeking to further discredit the whole reality of Christian faith, … and you will find those seekers. Often it it those who are the most most acerbic and strident in their assaults on the Christian faith who are those harboring the most insistent quests deep in their meta-consciousness. I have certainly found that to be true. Those persons who thought themselves to be the most skilled in skewering the faith of Jesus Christ, become the most devout of his followers once they get honest in their quest. God uses dreams, visions, messages on the internet, incidental encounters, and an incredible set of influences to begin to open eyes and unlock the minds of men and women globally.

The first century apostle-missionary, Paul, wrote a statement that fascinates me along this line. He said that he rejoiced even in his sufferings because he had been called to make the word of God fully known: “… to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed …” to make known among those still outside the household of faith how the glory and purpose of God has been made known in and through Jesus Christ. (Colossians 1:24 ff.). In every nation, among those of every religion or anti-religion, are those hungering to know Jesus the meaning, and the mystery is burning in them. Our role is to be the living demonstrations to them of the mystery of how Christ opens the door to meaning, love, and hope. Count on it.

BLOG 12/30/15. A REMINDER: CHRIST IS CONTROVERSIAL

At the threshold of 2016, let me remind those of you who read these blogs that Jesus Christ is controversial, unquestionably. It was he who gave us the enigmatic statement that he did not come to bring peace, but a sword. But Christ is also a reconciler, and the Prince of Peace. So how do you reconcile such apparently contradictory statements?

Before I pursue that, let me take an excursus and report that I just today got the annual report from WordPress, upon whose program these blogs are posted. It reports that in 2015 there were over 2000 of you who visited this site, and those from numerous countries around the world: Algeria, China, Romania, Pakistan, and many others. Thank you for visiting. But I do not post these blogs casually. It is no minor thing to be engaged as a follower of Jesus Christ, and engaged in his mission. And that is where we come back to the reminder that Jesus is controversial, even counter-cultural. How could he not be? Jesus came with the explicit announcement that in himself God’s New Creation was being inaugurated in the here and now, … that the Age to Come was, in him, invading the present age, that the dominion of Light was come to dispel and destroy the dominion of Satan and of darkness. There would be an inevitable clash of kingdoms.

Yet, the New Creation, the salvation, into which he calls men and women is patterned at all after the patterns of the resident power structures, or dominions. His would be one in which righteousness was a hallmark, and peacemaking would be at its heart. It would be a dominion which would focus on the poor and helpless, the hungry and the naked and the stranger. “The rich would be sent away hungry, and the hungry filled with good things.” The one major competitor to faith in God-in-Christ would be mammon, or the worship of wealth. That doesn’t sound too much like the agendas of most earthly dominions, or political leaders (with some wonderful exceptions).

So those who have responded to Jesus as the sovereign Lord, as God’s anointed, as the Rescuer from the devastation of the human rebellion against God, … live daily in a world that is too much governed by an entirely different agenda, or by injustice, or ethnic discrimination, or indifference to human need. That is what makes the Christian faith controversial to a fault, and counter-cultural inevitably. But it also is what makes Christ’s people, his New Creation community to be a “sweet aroma of Christ unto God.” It is what makes them to be the “dwelling place of God by the Holy Spirit,” … and that in the midst of the darkness, the indifference, the hostility and contempt of the dominions and power structures of this age. It is also what makes them to be a people of hope, a people who have found their true center, and their true authority, and their true creative source, and their true guiding line, and yes, their true and final hope–and their number grows quietly like leaven and brings life.

At the threshold of the year 2016 we, all of us from so many nations, live in a global scene that is full of what appear to be unsolvable social and political and ethnic and traditional conflicts and dilemmas. But those of us who have responded to Christ are, in the midst of all of that chaos, called to walk as the children of Light, as the citizens of God’s New Creation, and formed by his Spirit to produce springs in the desert, to love mercy, to do justly, and to walk humbly with our God.

May 2016 make of us those instruments of God’s peace in the midst of the chaos—military conflicts, political campaigns, hosts of refugees—and all the contexts of this present darkness. And, in the midst of the grim stuff, to be instruments of God’s “mirth and gladness.”

BLOG 12/27/15. LET’S TALK ABOUT SAINTS

On this Sunday after Christmas, let’s talk about the church’s saints (not the New Orleans Saints, please!). The English word that come’s to us as saint is from a Greek word that has to do with someone set apart to a unique life dedicated to God’s purpose. When the apostle is addressing his letter to the Christian folk at Corinth, he addresses them as ‘saints’ (as it comes to us in our English translation). That ultimately means that all those who have embraced Jesus Christ as God’s Son and Savior are thereby ‘saints’.

But along the way, in the Catholic tradition, the church made a saint to be a person who was somehow exceptional, … maybe had performed miracles or in some way become a model for the church. In recent days we have read in the news of Pope Francis promoting Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, and Mother Teresa of Calcutta, to sainthood, and both are, to be sure, remarkable models of Christian witness in risky political and humanitarian contexts. Over the centuries there have been hundreds of faithful Christian persons who have been ‘beatified’ or made to be saints by the church. The church has, then, made the day of their beatification a special day to observe their role and to celebrate their witness.

What brings this to my mind on this Sunday after Christmas is that in the listing of the dates of special feast days, or days of observing such models, the day after Christmas is the Feast of St. Stephen the Martyr—which is interesting because it reminds us that one can get killed by being faithful to Jesus and his gospel. Then on December 27 come the Feast of St. John the Apostle, to acknowledge this giant figure among the apostles. But then on December 28^th comes one that I have never heard anyone spend much time on because it is too painful: The Feast of the Massacre of the Innocents (or, a bit less grotesque sounding: The Feast of the Holy Innocents). This reminds us also, as I noted in an earlier blog, that we live in a world full of horrible injustices and atavistic vengeances. In our current world this massacre is duplicated somewhere almost every day, even among the racial and ethnic prejudices and indifferences of our own North American society.

I became alerted to this Catholic tradition of saints because of my administrative secretary in my former residence. She was a devout Catholic with New England (Radcliffe College) roots, and went most days, on her lunch hour, to Mass at the local Catholic church down the street, and would bring me back the (I think they were called) missalettes, which usually contained a note about the saint who was being honored on that day in their calendar. This fascinated me. There were all of these obscure names that I had never come across, but who had done remarkable things in remote times and places. Amazing. Most of them undoubtedly lived and died never knowing their influence, and probably trudging through difficult circumstances out of sheer faith in the God whom they had not seen but loved.

So I took the next step and found on Amazon a book that listed the Roman Catholic saints. It actually heartened me. Here were these dear people in settings of darkness and pain and persecution, and yet living faithfully as agents of faith and hope and love among their peers. Then, take the next step, and realize that such is what each of us is called to be and do, who express our faith and love for Jesus as the daily incarnation of his New Creation, who accept our role as the flesh and blood human expressions of God’s glory, the radiant display of his image, or his divine excellence (cf. II Peter 1:2-4). What an awesome calling. “O may Thy soldiers, faithful, true and bold, Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old, and win with them the victor’s crown of gold. O blest communion, fellowship divine! We feebly struggle, they in glory shine; Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine. Alleluia.”  

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BLOG 12/23/15. I STAND IN AWE OF MARY, MOTHER OF JESUS

I am compelled, before Christmas, to confess my total awe and amazement which takes place the longer I study the gospel accounts of Jesus’ mother Mary. When one grows up in the tradition of Scottish Presbyterianism what with its venerable Westminster Confession of Faith, one begins with a very jaded, if not negative view of all things that are identified with the Roman Catholic Church and its traditions—including the role of Mary and the omnipresent icons of mother and child that populate every Roman Catholic institution.

But I have mellowed, and hopefully matured over my long life. In mid-life, and at a crisis point in my own life as a teaching-pastor, I was pastored and encouraged by a dear Jesuit priest, who became a most cherished friend. No, I still don’t conceive of praying to Mother Mary as my Jesuit friend did, but I can appreciate his devotion. We protestants sing: “Yet she [the church] on earth hath union with God the three in one, and mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won,” which somehow connects us with the spirits of saints now made perfect, which has some implications about our prayers and those of such as Mary—which leaves me less than dogmatic about praying to Mother Mary. Also in mid-career I was with a group of evangelical Protestant leaders who where guests of members of the Roman curia in Vatican for two weeks, and so many of my prejudices and misunderstandings collapsed in the warmth of the fellowship we shared, and the honesty of our conversations, and the mutual evangelical faith and edification.

So then at this Christmas observance, I stand in total awe of a very young virgin woman who is encountered by a heavenly messenger with the unexpected words: “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” And when she was puzzled by what this was all about, he continued: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you will call his name Jesus.” . . . and you know the rest of the story. But Mary’s response has to be—at least for me—one of the greatest expressions of faith in all of the Biblical accounts: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” What an incredible expression of true faith, transcending reason and not even stopping to realize what pain and heartbreak might be included. Nowhere else in the New Testament is there anything close. Jesus disciples stumbled and denied and doubted before they were persuaded, … but Mary saw with eyes of faith and never seemed to doubt. She was there from the very beginning to the very last.

“Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” God give me, and all of us, the grace to pray that every morning. At one point when Jesus was being summoned by his mother and brothers, he responded that all those who do the will of his Father were his brother and sister and mother. My Roman Catholic colleagues pray to Mary as the “mother of God” which is not an appellation used of her in scriptures, but then again, if God is Jesus’ Father, then in a real sense Mary is the mother of God also, … so I’ll not quarrel there either.

And remember: she was Jesus’ Mom! In those formative year of his youth, she (and Joseph) so instilled in him the scriptures, and undoubtedly told him of his birth, that when he was twelve and in the temple with the priests, they were amazed at his knowledge. All this provokes me to join my voice with the angel and say: “’Hail Mary, O favored one, the Lord is with you.’ You, Mary, are one of my most cherished examples of true faith. I am in awe of you.” From the cross, Jesus assigned Mary to the care of John. She was with him from first to last, watching the unfolding of that which the angel told her, and the unfolding of Simeon’s prophecy (Luke 2:35). Amazing, amazing faith. Always in the shadows, but always present for her Son, first ‘til last.

BLOG 12/20/15. THE HOLY FAMILY: REFUGEES INDEED

At the beginning of this Christmas week, it might be worthwhile to try to untangle some of the common misunderstandings/myths that have become so much a part of our traditions. Right off the bat, the birth of Jesus didn’t take place in the middle of December since the shepherds were in the fields with the sheep, which would have made it bit more like, maybe, spring. Plus, the Eastern Church and others celebrate Christmas on December 6^th (“Old Christmas”), which also it the celebration of Epiphany in the Western Church (the appearing of the star, the wise men, and all of that). The important fact is that God was made flesh in Jesus, son of Mary.

Of course that whole part of the world was incorrigibly under the rather strict rule of the Roman Empire and its ‘divine’ Caesar Augustus. You didn’t argue with the empire. So, in a sense what was taking place with Mary and Joseph was like a mandatory trip up to the county-seat to register for taxation.  Bethlehem was Joseph’s ancestral home, so that is where he had to go. But note: Joseph was no anonymous artisan from a dink town called Nazareth—not at all. He was of the lineage of David, which meant that he would have been acknowledged as having royal blood.

So the city was crowded, and the inns were maxed. But given the protocols of middle eastern hospitality, the Bethlehem folk would have felt an obligation to provide housing for strangers, especially such as Joseph with royal blood. Middle eastern hospitality is well-known among those who are at all familiar with that culture to this day (such as New Testament scholar Kenneth Bailey, who spent most of his life in that part of the world, and upon whom I depend for these cultural insights). City folk did, in fact, keep livestock, cows and such, as part of their daily sustenance—but they did not have big back yards, or cow stalls out back. Rather, their houses were primarily very simple, consisting of a large room for living, and then another adjoining room at a lower level on the back of the house where they kept their animals. These two rooms were ordinarily divided only with a low wall between the two levels so that the owners could keep feed for the livestock accessible without going outdoors. Part of this low wall would have been, then, ‘the manger’ or a bin full of some sort of edible feed like hay. There was another very practical purpose for this adjoining lower room, and that would have been that the body heat of the animals would have been part of the heating system in colder weather.

It is also difficult to know the time line here. There is the episode of the shepherds, which evidently took place immediately after Jesus’ birth. But the coming of the magi from the East was probably some months later. When those magi didn’t report back to Herod, he plotted the massacre of all the boys under two years of age (a clue about the time involved), and it was about that impending terror that an angel warned Joseph and Mary to flee to Egypt. What was Joseph doing meanwhile? Mary undoubtedly needed time to recover from child-birth. Joseph had a skill and could have been employed by some kinfolk—we’ll never know. But sometime, probably months after Jesus’ birth, he and his parent became political refugees. (Have those of you who practice the church’s liturgical celebrations, noted how the church downplays the observance of Holy Innocents, or the Massacre of the Innocents on December 28^th? In the world of terrorism and violence in which we live, it would be worth remembering the huge number of innocent victims in the world.) So then, for the next months or maybe years, the Holy Family were refugees escaping violence, and surviving in Egypt until Herod died. Jesus could have been a lad of several years old when they finally were able to return to Nazareth. They were quietly kept in communication with God, and only Mary’s eyewitness accounts to the gospel writers explains why we even know about this refugee chapter of their sojourn. Hopefully, this story will make God’s people very sensitive to the huge number of refugees present today, and looking for ways to minister to them.

BLOG 12/16/15. MINISTERING TO THE ‘LITTLE ONES,’ THE CONFUSED, AND THE ‘NOBODIES’ IN THE CHURCH

In my weird and eclectic reading, I have been reading Work Rules by Laszlo Bock, who is the Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google. It is his very readable account of how Google chooses, interviews, evaluates, oversees, motivates, and keeps the tens of thousands of its employed focused, happy and feeling ownership. I was interested in that because of how easy it is for those who are in the leadership of the church to be content with a functioning congregation, even if we haven’t got much of a clue as to how clearly so many of the individuals who are ‘members’ understand the church or are functioning as those who are the owners of the mission of God in their daily lives.

But reading Bock, it also becomes apparent that his task at Google, and ours as leaders in the church aren’t really comparable—excepting that we both should be focused on how our participants are functioning, on their clear focus, and on their fruitful engagement with the organization’s purpose. The reason they aren’t comparable is because Google screens its applicants, and engages in a rigorous selection procedure. The church, on the other hand, responds to those who present themselves as ostensible followers of Christ, but so frequently receives those who come with all kinds of confused understandings and motives. One only has to read the New Testament to see this illustrated in spades. Google selects gifted and enthusiastic (usually young and gifted), while the church is a community of grace, and receives (upon their profession of faith in Christ) the nobodies, the ragamuffins, the little ones, the broken, the weak, the “weak and heavy laden,” the “… sinners, poor and wretched,” along with the victims of all kinds of emotional and cultural scarring.

When his disciples came to him and asked who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, … he took a child and set him in the midst of them and let them know that one only comes into his kingdom when the become like little children. Elsewhere he reminds them that among the unbelievers (Gentiles) those who are great are those who lord it over others, but in his kingdom the great are those who are servants of all. So all of us who have served in church leadership find out early how many questionable and immature and insincere folk present themselves to the church for all kind of reasons. The question I am raising is: how does a Christian community equip, oversee, motivate, hold accountable all of the diverse individuals who inhabit our particular church family? Who understands when a person is really functioning in the mission of God? Or is irresponsible and passive in his/her life of obedience to Christ? Who comes alongside the weak, or the wandering, and becomes their encourager and guide? Who becomes the disciple-maker for new believers? Who looks for the lonely (or loners) in the congregation? And the larger the Christian community becomes, how does it maintain the focus on the individual that disallows anyone being anonymous? Google could be doing a better job of oversight than the family of God! In the New Testament letters there are those overseeing individual called elders or overseers/bishops to whom each member is to be submissive. But this easily becomes an organizational leader who is not really the model and teacher to whom individuals look for wisdom and guidance in their Christian lives. Plus, it is quite too easy for the aggressive personalities to dominate the scene and take the focus off of the ‘little ones’ and the struggling, and the immature. It happens all too commonly in traditional church institutions that the elders (by whatever designation they are called) become something like a board of directors, but not the shepherds and oversees and models to God’s individual sheep–and knows their name. As one forthright and outspoken young believer assaulted me with the telling question (at a very inconvenient moment): “How can I submit myself to elders who don’t even know my name?” Good question. (to be continued)

BLOG 12/13/15. ARROGANT WEALTH, OR STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE

On this third Sunday of Advent I am struck by an easily overlooked contradiction in so much of our celebration. The dominant public media focus of the moment is on loud, wealthy, powerful, prejudiced, personalities and influences in determining our cultural and political agendas.  It is easy to overlook one of the basic presuppositions of the whole advent of Jesus as God’s anointed as we celebrate Advent. From the 7^th century BC prophets comes the note that this One who was to come would not judge by what everyone else sees, but will judge the poor and needy with righteousness. And what does that say about the proud and self-satisfied and prosperous? It’s worth reflecting upon. More than that, it’s enormously sobering.

When Jesus began his public ministry in his home synagogue, he read from the prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the (probably economic-financial) captives, the opening of the prison to those who are bound (again, probably those who are in debtors prisons); to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (the Jubilee year when all debts are forgiven and land returned to its original owners); to comfort all who mourn …” (Isaiah 61:1-2; Luke 4:18-19).

And we should not lightly skip over Mary’s Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord and rejoices in God my Savior, … He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their heart; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones (maybe the 1% who control the wealth, and too often the decisions that have to do with the welfare of the majority of the citizenry?) and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away. …” (Luke 1:46 ff.).

It is also, perhaps a bit subtle but also significant, that the angelic announcement of this huge cosmically transforming moment of Advent should be announced to a bunch of what we would call faithful minimum wage workers: shepherds keeping smelly sheep and having to spend nights in the fields with them.

And note that the whole of the earthly ministry of Jesus was a demonstration of his priority on the underside of society. He didn’t court the rich and powerful, he fed the hungry, taught economic justice and peacemaking, healed the helplessly infirm, and brought hope to those surviving by just barely hanging-on.

It is easy to forget this context while observing Advent in prosperous church institutions populated by so many who can be so indifferent to the marginalized all around them. More than that, it is quite too easy to be blind to them. It is easy for me to be blind to them, alas! I live right next to the community of Clarkston Georgia, which is probably the most international city in North America, and where a majority of the young people in the school system speak English as a second language, and where their parents came at great cost to this country seeking to have some economic hope. We have public figures denouncing the huge tide of refugees seeking to survive the violence and persecution and destroyed economies of their native communities, and who propose building all kinds of barriers to escape our human responsibility to this tragic tide. Christ’s people, if they understand the teachings of Christ, can never accept this.

And its Advent when the Eternal God gave us the gift of gifts, his own Son. And with that gift comes a New Creation that calls its citizenry to justice and generosity and love, … to sacrificial hospitality and peacemaking, to ministry to those unjustly imprisoned, or reduced to hopelessness by the prejudices of too many of the ‘mighty.’

The Prince of Peace is also the Righteous Judge. Welcome to Advent and the consequences thereof.

BLOG 12/9/15. GOD’S COUNTER-TERRORISM STRATEGY

Hey, given all of the hysterical and destructive political rhetoric polluting the media in the aftermath of the Paris and San Bernardino violence, it is worth taking a moment to remember that God’s people are the people of a New Creation that is (as I often remind my readers in these blogs) radically counter-cultural. The gospel of the Kingdom that Jesus heralded in his earthly ministry was inaugurated in a hostile political and religious context. It was not easy or safe. So it is worth noting that his primary Kingdom mandate includes these word to us:

“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. … As you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.” (Luke 6:27-31)

God’s strategy for his people dwelling in dangerous and hostile contexts could not be stated any more clearly. If that sounds a bit much for some ears, then one needs to remember that Jesus placed sobering warnings at the threshold of our faith in him, having to do with willingness to lose our lives for his sake and the gospel’s; or our willingness to take up our own instrument of execution (his cross) and to follow him; or to suffer for his sake and the gospel’s.

So, yes, there is anti-Christian hostility abroad in the world. There always has been. To think that by faith in Christ we will “be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease” is a mistaken fantasy embraced by all too many.

I would like to lift out of the passage quoted above an awesome strategic weapon given to us: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” In other places in the apostolic teachings there is the word that we are to be anxious for nothing, but in everything with prayer and thanksgiving to make our requests known to God (Philippians 4:6), or the reminder that the true and effective weapons of our warfare are not weak though being merely human instruments, but are mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds (II Corinthians 10:4).

Am I naïve, or foolish? Not at all. God has always worked in mysterious ways, and has caused his gospel to spread into humanly impossible contexts that defy human rationale. The weapon of prayer is awesome. So here’s some strategic hints for all of us who bear the name of Christ with integrity. Terrorism is real. ISIL is frightening. There is no neat political or military solution even close to dealing with it. Plus, God’s design for the jihadists and the participants in violence that has cause such huge human suffering (consider the huge wave of refugees, many of whom are Christian), is not more violence, but prayer that right in the bowels of the Islamic aberrations of violence and brutality, right in the ‘guts’ of ISIL, there will be that working of God to awaken men and women to the grace and love of God in Jesus Christ. Consider that the Quran has very affirmative things to say about the Prophet Isa (Jesus). There are already those cells of Christian faith dwelling clandestinely in rigid Islamic cultures.

It is also widely acknowledged by those who study the missionary strategy for the church, that the Islamic world is a priority. But that missionary strategy is only hindered and violated by hysterical anti-Islamic rhetoric from those who profess to be Christian. The true missioners to Islam are probably going to be those dwelling inside of Islam (yes, and ISIL) whose eyes and ears will be opened by the Spirit in answer to our prayers, so that the love and grace of God in Jesus Christ quietly recreates them and makes them his Kingdom people

This also will be enhanced by our love and hospitality expressed for the Islamic people who live among us here. … And it certainly will help if those loud negative voices who pertain to be Christian will remember that while we ourselves were still ‘enemies’ … Christ died for us.

Is this only my Bob Henderson naïveté? my illusion? I think not. I think it is God’s revealed strategy. Check it out. Be anxious for nothing … but pray for the leaven of the gospel in Islam.

BLOG 12/6/15. “COME AND WORSHIP CHRIST” … WHEN? … AND HOW?

Okay, here’s a question: We’re bombarded in this period of the year with all of the images of the birth of Christ, and piped music everywhere extolling us to come and adore the Christ child, etc. There are those drive-thru manger scenes at the local church on the boulevard, and on and on … One of the hymns so familiar speaks of the angels from the realms of glory proclaiming the birth of the Messiah, and calling upon us to: “Come and worship Christ the newborn king.”

My questions are quite basic:  Where do we really worship Christ? and, how do we worship Christ? The word worship has to do with giving honor to worth. It’s a big word that has to do with some kind of a life response to awesome reality. So, to worship Christ the king has to do with more than some passing rite, some singing of familiar Christmas songs, or attending the Christmas Eve service at a church. True worship has got to be transformational, i.e., has got to be a holistic response that cannot be contained in some aesthetic service with candlelight and carols.

No, the true worship of Christ the king, if it is to have any believability, has got to be expressed in the totality of our 24/7 lives. It has to be to expressed in all of the pleasant and unpleasant, the harmonious and conflicted, the enigmatic and the simple, the pleasant and the really crappy involvements of our lives—otherwise it is not true worship.

True worship would be something like the ancient Isaiah being in the temple and having an awesome vision of the holy God, high and lifted up (Isaiah 6). It so overwhelmed and humbled him that he fell on his face in contrition and confessed how unclean he was.  God then lifted him up and performed an act of absolution on Isaiah, and then asked if he was ready to respond. When Isaiah’s response to to the vision of God was positive, then God sent him on a mission to communicate God’s message to a stubborn Jewish people. Lesson: true worship results in a transformed life, and a life of obedience to the will of God as an instrument of truth and justice.

Or take another clue: After Paul has spelled out that God has raised Jesus from the dead and declared him to be the Son of God with power, … then then spelled out (in his letter to the Roman Christians) what this meant in their calling to be conformed to the image of that same Son, i.e., to be by the dynamic working of the Spirit the veritable incarnations of that which Jesus came to inaugurate in this present rebellious world. Where? Right where in the midst of the daily stuff which was their daily context. Note: not in church meetings—though it should and could be intensified and informed there—but in the associations, choices, engagements, conflicts, disciplines, and responsibilities of daily life.

To that end, Paul will say: “I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God …” (Romans 12: 1-2). This give us clues as to the where and how of true worship. If what I experienced today in our worship service does not transform how I operate tomorrow (Monday) then it serves no purpose in the mission of God.

Our calling to be conformed to the image of God’s Son is not simply a theological maxim, it is our calling and is to be visible and demonstrable in our daily lives. Each week as I operate I will encounter neighbors, or the public sanitation workers, or medical personnel, or special education administrators, or lawyers, or store clerks—some very gifted and stylish, some of more modest gifts and abilities. I live in a community with all the political and social demands. I live in a world full of uncertainties and insecurities. But it is in such a context that my Christmas faith is to lived out, that I incarnate true worship. Merry Christmas!