Enchanted Community

BLOG 1/14/15. THE CHURCH WHERE YOU’RE NOT LOOKING

Let me pursue the question I asked in my 1/11/15 blog about: where would some seeking “motherless child” look to find what his/her heart was looking for? I offered up one episode of a small informal set of folk who demonstrated an authentic community of folk who had found their heart’s true home in Jesus, and were committed to be of support to each other in an informal but genuinely healthy way. Their organization was minimal but their relationship was profound.

Having said that, to use a cliché: “All that glitters is not gold.” There are is a vast array of communities and institutions out there pass themselves off as churches which may/or may not have anything at all to do with what Jesus intends for those whom he calls to himself, and to his New Creation. But an even more intriguing reality is that there is a whole host of God’s New Humanity colonies out there that exist under radar, but who understand how much Christ’s disciples need each other, and so take on all kinds of quiet forms, and are constantly re-inventing themselves to accomplish God’s mission in their social, cultural, geographical contexts.

This reality became almost humorously real to me what with a spate of articles on a couple of subjects: One set of articles that came across the media was how ‘Millennials’ were leaving the church, or maybe how the church was losing the Millennial generation. The other set, spearheaded by the Wall Street Journal, was speculating on all of the vacant church sanctuaries and what, in Europe and around the world, was to become of those, often elegant, old sanctuaries that no longer had congregations to support them. The two themes are intimately related.

An article from the Olin School of Business makes the point that in the next decade 40% of today’s Fortune 500 companies will not longer exist. One has to ask why this is so? just as one has to ask why expensive old church buildings are being abandoned (not just in Europe), and why the huge ‘under 25 years of age’ generation doesn’t find such traditional churches speaking to their needs? A former generation of youth were ‘mall rats’ that loved to hang out at malls. Now malls are an endangered species, as are J. C. Penney, Sears-Roebuck, Macy’s, Gap, and a host of other companies, but that doesn’t mean that this Millennial Generation is not shopping, or doesn’t still need clothes and the stuff that have been marketed in malls. It’s just that it so much easier to use Amazon or to shop on line. The older church institutions are slow to ‘get it.’

Wake up! The Millennial Generation is spiritually hungry, but it is also a bunch of pragmatist. They are innovative. They are willing to explore risky territory, and to invent new venues that meet their needs. So that if they identify themselves spiritually as something akin to “motherless children” (as per my previous blogs), and if they find that older traditional church institutions are something of a dry well, or a rudderless ship, where the light of the gospel burns dimly, … that doesn’t mean that they are leaving the church, it only means that they will seek or create those authentic communities where there is reality, and passion, and demonstration of that which Jesus did and taught.

And this is exactly what is happening, not only with the Millennial Generation, but across the world. Actually, the gospel of Jesus Christ is out of control, and the church is growing exponentially in the most unexpected places—but under radar, yet creating New Humanity communities everywhere. I regularly find small clusters of Millennials at my favorite coffee shop, quite unselfconsciously gathered around a patio table with the open Bibles, studying, discussing, praying, and laughing being the church in a different form—flying under radar.

There are vital and vibrant and innovative colonies of God’s new creation in Christ springing up everywhere, and free to meet these motherless children where they are in their brokenness, and hungerings, and need, and to engage with them with the One who is their heart’s true home. This emerging generation gives me enormous hope. And this is taking place globally and in thrilling episodes (even among Hindus and Muslims!). Out of control!

LOG 1/11/15. TO ‘MOTHERLESS CHILDREN’: WHERE DO YOU LOOK?

I was, frankly, quite surprised at the much larger than normal response to my Blog about motherless children last week, and it prompts me to pass along a necessary follow-up to my visitors who identify with them. The question comes: How do you find your heart’s true home? Where do you look for whatever it is that your deep sub-consciousness (or meta-consciousness?) longs for? Let me pass along a story that may be a beginning clue.

Jeannie was a friend of mine some years ago, and a very quiet and gentle person, which belied the fact that she had grown up under very abusive and rigid fundamentalist missionary parents. She had somehow found her way out of the pain of that, and to Jesus, who set her free and began the healing of all of the scars that left. She had become a medical nutritionist in a local hospital, and was a participant with a gang of us, who were followers of Jesus (plus a couple of sojourning inquirers), and provided an incredible support group for one another. All that by way of background.

One morning at the hospital, at the coffee break, another colleague plopped down at her table and began to pour out her despair on Jeannie. It seems she was a Jewish young lady, by the name of Miriam, who had screwed up her life badly, had become somewhat promiscuous, violated all of her Jewish ethics and heritage, and told Jeannie flat-out that she thought she would just commit suicide and end it all. Jeannie quietly asked: “Have you ever considered Jesus?” (How’s that for a non-complicated response?) Her friend replied: “What are you talking about?” To which Jeannie responded: “You aren’t the only person who ever messed up your life, and had no way of escape. There are a lot of us out there, and we have found healing and hope and meaning in Jesus Christ, his life and teachings. Jesus has put it all together for us. Would you like to meet with a gang of us who get together frequently, and as a matter of fact are having supper together tonight?

So at one of our homes that night, around a pot-luck supper, Bibles on hand, we met Miriam and welcomed her, and she was understandably bewildered because we didn’t fit her image of what she knew of Christian folk. There was a lot of obvious affection, honest sharing of the crazy stuff that happened, laughter, mutual challenges and rebukes, discussion, and then some prayer time. These were all formerly motherless children who had found their ‘mother’ (if I can use this designation for God) in Jesus. Then somehow they had found one another and bonded.

Let me stop right here and say: That group was a colony of Christ’s disciples, and a true expression of the church that Jesus calls out to demonstrate his life and teachings to those around. It was the kind of context that a fractured person such as Miriam could look, and find real people who had discovered their center, their hope, their meaning, their heart’s true home, their life’s goal—in Jesus. “Have you ever considered Jesus?” It all begins with Jesus. Ultimately, Miriam found Jesus, embraced him, and was made new because she saw something in us.

Remember, Jesus didn’t come onto the scene hustling a new religion. Rather he came from the margins as a real human being from the neighborhood saying and doing things that spoke to the deep longings of folk who weren’t religious at all. But what Jesus was saying and doing certainly did. So when some guys got curious, when their ‘motherlessness’ was tweaked by Jesus’ words and actions, they listened and looked. And when they asked: “Who are you?” His response was: Come and see. Come, follow me. Come be with me. Check me out.” He gave them a place to look, to ask questions, and to ultimately become his transformed followers. Those folk found Jesus, then they found one another, and they spent time with him until they became those formed and set free by him, …and passionate about him. This is what the church! It is where the motherless around us should be able to look and see Jesus’ teachings in flesh and blood.

BLOG. 1/7/15. OCCASIONALLY … A BRIEF BIT OF SELF-PROMOTION

We get a weekly update in the NYT about their ‘Best Seller Book List’ and I am totally out of that league—nowhere even close. But if they published a counterpart, something like their ‘Worst/Least Seller List’ I would be a pretty good candidate. I have five books in print and I’m quite certain that my wonderful publishers at Wipf and Stock would be happy if my books sold a few more copies, and even Amazon might make an infinitesimal bit of profit. But, alas! I remain remote to that genre of sought-after authors.

Of course, maybe I’m better off than the great Old Testament prophet Jeremiah who wrote his manuscript by hand on papyrus (or whatever) only to have the king read it and snip the read pieces off of the scroll and throw them into the fire on the brazier in his throne room. At least my books remain in print and carefully available from their digital archives at Wipf and Stock.

The reason for these small sales is that I write to a very small niche market, primarily of those struggling with the enigma of the church, and especially the emerging generation who find the whole church-thing a bit confusing, if, indeed, they even give church any passing thought. Remember that over half of the world’s population is now under 25 years of age. This means that the potential for those looking for my insights is very limited, so I should not be too surprised at the small number of purchasers. Plus, I’m an octogenarian and pedaling furiously to keep up my understanding of the digital culture of my grandchildren.

Add to that the comment by my cherished friend Bill Pannell at Fuller Seminary, who comforted me with the evaluation that I thought twenty years ahead of the times, so that I would only be discovered years after I was dead, and then they would build a monument to me. Thanks, Bill. My response? Whatever.

It is interesting being such an obscure author. One almost never hears from anyone who has read your books, and even close friends whom you know have read them seldom comment. But, … every once in a while you will get an encouraging comment. I had written a book many years ago, entitled: Beating the Church-going Blahs (title cooked up by my editors at Inter-Varsity Press). I knew it had sold a considerable number of copies, but never heard much. Then, at a graduate-faculty conference years later, I was lollygagging in the corridor of the hotel with some friends, when one of the seminar leaders, and a noted author himself, walked up and we were introduced. He got this thoughtful look on his face, and said: “Are you the Bob Henderson who wrote Church-going Blahs? When I acknowledged that I was the same guy, his comment: “Thank you. That book changed my life.”

Another friend and very gifted urban missiologist, Craig Wong (who has just launched his own blog-site: www.onbeingthechurch.com) also gives an early book of mine for being formative in his life. It is such affirmations that re-charge my batteries, and give me the vision of those few who will be helped of encouraged by my insights from sixty years in the trenches of the church’s mission to the world, that keep me writing these blogs, and books.

So, just peradventure you are curious, I write under my full name (Robert Thornton Henderson, or Robert T. Henderson) since the world is full of Bob Hendersons. My books in print are available either from Wipf and Stock in Eugene, OR, or Amazon. Some are in Kindle form. And, … hey! I’d love to hear from you. Peace!

BLOG 1/4/15. THE “MOTHERLESS CHILD” SYNDROME

I was having supper recently at a favorite restaurant in the village of Oak Grove when I encountered a fascinating younger guy, who is a very gifted journalist by profession. He related how he had experienced a very moving moment recently when he and his wife were visiting a famous monastery in Spain, and decided to observe evening prayers by the monks. His apparent lament was that, as he put it, he had abandoned the dogmatic Christian teachings of his youth, and had settled into an agnostic view in the intervening years—but somehow listening to those monks chant the liturgy stirred up in him something of a longing for a more fulfilling spirituality than was met by his agnostic and intellectual explanation for anything transcendent. There was a void there that he didn’t quite understand. The encounter and discussion were very revealing of what is true for so many.

Driving home after my supper and that encounter, out of archives of my memory came the words of the plaintive old negro spiritual: “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child a long way from home,” with its haunting sense of some incompleteness in one’s life, something absent, something that is not as it should be—an ‘aching void’ that all of the distractions of their culture cannot fill. So many of these remarkably gifted younger adults, with whom I have conversations frequently, astound me with their access to so much information, and such abilities in their work, and yet they seem to escape thinking about ultimate things by engaging in endless sports, entertainment, and socializing with other motherless children.

When the entertainment has come to an end, and the lights are out, and it is quiet, there is still that aching void, those lingering questions: What does my life mean? Does anyone know who I am, and care? Is there something beyond this human life? Is there some center around which life should be formed? Is there some creative source that I have not tapped into? Is there an ultimate authority to which should respond, or some guiding line I should be aware of? Is there a final goal to life? How would I know? Where would I find out?

Justice? Spirituality? Relationships? Things of beauty? Why do I have these desires?

It is no secret to the readers of these Blogs that I am an incorrigible follower of the life and teachings of Jesus, and this is because as I reflect on his life and teachings, I find that he speaks over and over to these very questions and longings, and for his design for the real persons whom he came to rescue from their darkness. He came to adopt again all of those “motherless children” into the embrace of their Creator. So many are so lonely of heart, such “motherless children.” I long for them.

And just, peradventure, you would like to pursue this, I might recommend: Simply Jesus, by N. T. Wright, or Briarpatch Gospel, by Shayne Wheeler. They might be good starting places. What you need to know is that Jesus came to set us free, not to beat-up on us with dogmatic religion. He came as the expression of the re-creative and reconciling and infinite love of God for folk such as we—empty, uncertain, screwed-up. Just look at who he hung-out with!

No wonder that in spite of all of the ‘crazies’ who have called themselves his followers, and all of the embarrassing episodes that have taken place under his name, … the great host of those who have been set free and recreated through their relationship to him continues to grow irresistibly to this day in the most unlikely scenes on earth.

It’s worth looking into. Peace! And may the 2015 be a good year for you.

BLOG 12/28/14. THE POST-CHRISTMAS EVENT WE WISH TO OVERLOOK

It is interesting that when the church developed it liturgical calendar, those many centuries ago, that the third day after Christmas: The Birth of Jesus, was designated to observe that horrible event, which was King Herod’s slaughter of great numbers of innocent children. The day is called either Holy Innocents, or The Massacre of the Innocents.

You probably remember the story. King Herod was a power-hungry, totally ruthless and immoral half-breed king, who broached no opposition. He killed his own family members who were a threat to him. So, when the astrologers / wise men showed up at Herod’s place to ask where they might find him who was born king of the Jews … that all of Herod’s alarm signals went off. He called his own advisors and asked them where such might happen and they found in the scriptures that it would be Bethlehem. Herod was smooth. He directed them, and then asked that they report back to him if they found him. But after they had found Jesus, and given to him their rich gifts, they were warned in a dream (according to the Matthew text) not to go back to Herod, and so went home another way. Joseph and Mary were also recipients of a dream that they were to escape Herod’s attempt to destroy Jesus by fleeing to Egypt. So the holy family became political refugees.

When Herod found out that he had been thus tricked, he became furious and ordered the extermination of all of the male children who were under two years of age. This is no ‘sweetness and light’ Christmas story, and gets by-passed by most even inside the church. This story is another dimension of my last (12/21/14) blog about this whole incarnation story not being exactly safe. There are hostile political and social principalities and powers, which are threatened by those agents of God’s gospel of peace, those instruments of justice and truth and human welfare.

But then, my friends, it is quite too facile to dismiss this tragic and heartbreaking event and consign it to history, because the victimization of children is very present among us at this moment. Children and women are the primary victims of terrorism, of famine, and of parental neglect because they are the most vulnerable. The Taliban wreaks death on a school in Pakistan, or ISIS destroys the children of the Shia Muslims, and enslaves the children of those who oppose them. This pattern is also true in places like Nigeria, and wherever terrorist forces seek to impose their will. Infant mortality is huge in this world. All relief organizations can footnote this reality.

Let’s get closer to home, however. What of the frightening phenomenon of children in our own country, who have been birthed and then essentially abandoned by parents who seem clueless about parenting—absentee parents, busy on their own self-centered agendas, so that their children become de-facto orphans—the flotsam and jetsam of our society, finding their own families on the streets all too often. Children long for real parents, for love and order in their lives, for security and for family and hope and meaning—but they wind up with almost nothing but homes that are little more than places to camp. Young urban professionals can provide all of the material stuff that kids want, but can also produce an emotionally handicapped and confused generation, even with their designer clothes and iPhones.

Or take governmental budgets that can place the supplements for hunger programs for the poor way down the list of their priorities, … or procrastinate on spending the money to create functioning and excellent schools. All of this may not seem nearly so grotesque and bloody as Herod’s massacre of the innocents, but it portends all kinds of nightmarish results down the road, if not already obvious. (One could almost wish for the church’s reclaiming its provision of excellent children’s homes in order to rescue these little ones from the pathologies of our culture.) It’s contradictory to dump on Herod if we are callous to the emotional and spiritual destruction of this generation of little ones among us today. [If you find these Blogs provocative, invite your friends to subscribe.]

BLOG 12/21/14: THERE’S SOMETHING ‘NOT SAFE’ ABOUT MARY AND JESUS

Amidst all of the ‘schmaltz’ (maudlin sentimentality) that has come to interpret/misinterpret the Advent celebration of our contemporary scene, a text that seems to get skipped-over so often is Mary’s Magnificat. As a resident of a politically ‘red state’ I often wonder if a conscientious preacher could come out unscathed if he/she unpacked this remarkable passage (Luke 1:46 ff.)? In that Mary would have undoubtedly been one of Luke’s primary eyewitnesses, he probably heard this Magnificat from her very lips.

Look at it! It hardly looks spiritual or religious at all. It looks more like something that might be the product of some kind of a socialist manifesto. “He has shown strength with his arm … he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; … he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.”

This all smacks of some of the teachings of Isaiah about the social agenda of God and his Messiah. “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him he will bring forth justice to the nations (Isaiah 42:1).

Then there is the passage that Jesus quoted at the inauguration of his public ministry: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives (political prisoners?), and the opening of the prison to those who are bound (economic prisoners?); to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (the Jubilee Year) and the day of vengeance of our God (when he sets everything to rights?); to comfort all who mourn … ” (Isaiah 61:1-2). All of to which Jesus finally responded: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:18-21).

Oppression, economic disparity and the dominance of the wealthy and powerful, folk helplessly in prison, many folk desperately hungry seeking to eke-out a living, folk victims of oppressive regimes, folk suffering the loss of life at the hands of forces they can’t control … all are in the news day by day … from the Occupy Wall Street protest, to the immigration realities of real human beings, to the massacre of school children in a far off land … and so much more.

How do we, then, interpret all of this as we celebrate the incarnation of this one whom Mary birthed, and who was demonstrated to be the Messiah prophesied in Isaiah? That’s part of the question, but then there is the reality of the apostolic teachings that the same Spirit that anointed Jesus, and who raised him from the dead, is the Spirit who indwells all those who embrace Jesus by repentance and faith. This means that in the most difficult places of this human community, where ever God’s sons and daughters dwell, and in the face of whatever opposition and hostility, we are called to be the witnesses and practitioners of the agenda of Jesus, and we are not to fear the consequences, even death (cf. Revelation 12:11).

This reality gives substance to G. K. Chesterton’s remark that God gives his people three promises: they will be “completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble.” Whenever we, or God’s church seek to create an aesthetically safe, spiritual, successful community, we are in all likelihood doing an unconscionable compromise of the faith of Jesus Christ, which is transformational, controversial, but brimming with hope and meaning and humanitarian works, because we are reconciled to God by Jesus’ blood, and we possess his life in us.

But Mary and her Son are not safe! May the blessings of the incarnation be yours as we celebrate this week.

BLOG 1217/14. CAN WE DEMYTHOLOGIZE CLERGY?

This Blog is something of a confession, and may get me in trouble (so what’s new?), but I have been “ordained” now for sixty years, but so help me, I cannot find any reference to anything called: clergy in any of the New Testament documents that have to do with the church! What’s even worse is being called: reverend. What healthy human being would ever want to be called such? And when someone, in a gathering of folk who don’t know me, addresses me as ‘reverend’ there is something of an invisible shield descends between us—I am suddenly someone from a different planet. O, to be sure, there is to be order in the colonies of God’s new humanity, but there is no sacralized class of persons—all are called to be priests, all are to be animated by the Spirit of God, all are to be agents in Christ’s mission in the world to “make all things new.” Jacques Ellul designates the clergification of the church as one of the major subversions of Christianity (the other being sacralized buildings: sanctuaries).

But ‘clergy’ is so widely and almost universally accepted that it is somehow audacious to question it. Leadership within the Christian community, basically, emerges from within. There are those who have a healthy grasp of the apostolic teachings, or the content of Jesus’ life and teachings. They become the teachers of others. There are models, overseers and wisdom figures/presbyters to see that no one gets lost, and that all are being formed into maturity. Alien to this is the notion that someone who attains one or more academic degrees is qualified to be ‘the’ leader (the reverend) of a community, which has all kinds of complications. I, for one, am enormously thankful for those godly scholars and teachers who are gifted to resource those of us of lesser capabilities, but the most effective of even those are the ones who are practitioners of what they teach, i.e., they are ‘people persons’ who are in communication with those who make up the rank and file of the community.

In my own quest to “get it right” I have been in process now all of these years. This clergy-thing began to dawn on me in my early career in a small church with many problems, and a dubious reputation. But in my innocence I wanted to meet the folk I had inherited, and I found that my relationship to most of them was quite un-real. I was ‘the reverend’ and they expected me to carry out the functions that were expected of church professionals. I couldn’t tune-in to that kind of arms length formal relationship. But I desperately wanted them to be formed by the word of Christ.

There was one guy, however, who kept a low profile but was from one of the older families in the church. He and I connected, and he asked me one day if I would like to go on his sales route with him and spend the day seeing what he did. I accepted. Being in the car for several hours together we covered a lot of topics, and I got to meet his customers—but then on the way home he turned and said (surprisingly): “You really believe in God, don’t you?” When I pushed him on what provoked that question, it turned out that most of the church members didn’t honestly have a very high regard for the authenticity of the pastors they had encountered. That began a relationship that saw him become a quiet and positive influence in refounding that congregation through some fascinating decisions (Blacknall Memorial Presbyterian Church).

It also raised the question with me: Who does the Christian community take seriously as a follower of Jesus? Who do they look to as teachers and models and encouragers in their pilgrimage as Christ’s disciples? Who do they have who can say with Paul: “Be imitators of me even as I also am of Christ?” I began to pray from that point that God would make me that kind of a disciple-making pastor: to coach, model, and teach the meaning of discipleship. It is in this quest that I have a desire to redefine the church’s leadership in terms of its function in the mission of God—hence to demythologize the whole concept which we call: clergy.

[If these Blogs are provocative to you, suggest to your friends that they subscribe.]

BLOG 12/14/14. A PROTESTANT: “HAIL, MARY?”

I started my pilgrimage as a follower of Christ in that part of the Protestant tradition where the Roman Catholic Church, and everything to do with it, was regarded with dire suspicion as some sort of a deviation from our understanding of Christ and his church. So for me to, at this juncture in my life, to be affirming my own: “Greetings/Hail, O favored one of the Lord, the Lord is with you!” may seem to be a little odd, and yet it grows on me. Let me tell you some of the pieces of my journey here.

First of all, the unbelievable act of faith, for this very young woman to be told that she will conceive a child by the Holy Spirit, … who will be called Son of the Most High, and for her to respond: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word,” makes her, in my book, the giant epitome of faith in the New Testament.

Secondly, who else could have been the eyewitness who could have filled the gospel writers in on the details of Jesus life from start to finish? She was the only one who was there from the events surrounding his birth, through his life, to the cross, and to the resurrection. There is no one else who was eyewitness to it all. She was one of the witnesses at the foot of the cross as he died. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John depend upon her knowledge of the details.

Thirdly, it doesn’t take much to realize that she (and Joseph though he disappears from the scene quite early, but was a quiet giant of faith in my book) was the one who so faithfully formed Jesus, and fulfilled the instruction given to parents in Deuteronomy: “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, … You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when walking by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 11:18-19). Mary and Joseph did this so faithfully and effectively that when Jesus was presented to the priests in Jerusalem when he was twelve years old, he was found sitting with the teachers in the temple, asking them questions, and amazing them with his understanding and his own answers.

For those first decades of Jesus’ life, Mary would have been the primary formative figure in his life. It doesn’t take much to figure this out. When all of the other followers were sometimes trying to interpret Jesus and his ministry, and his preaching through all kinds of traditional interpretations, it was Mary who remembered what the angel Gabriel had promised. She also remembered that the godly Simeon had prophesied that: “a sword will pierce through you soul also,” (Luke 2:35) as the first suggestion that there would be acute pain somehow involved with Jesus and his work.

So then, I am one who believes that we Protestants have given Mary short shrift, and that she deserves a huge place in our understanding of Jesus and his great mission to make all things new. I am always ready to join in affirming: “Hail Mary, the Lord is with you!” I am also quite willing to affirm with my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, that she is, in a very real sense, the “mother of God” since it was her son who would later be affirmed as God made flesh.

This is not to mention the more mundane and earthy parts of being the mother of Jesus, of giving birth away from home, of being driven into exile at a very delicate time, and of living Jesus’ early years in Egypt—all this before any modern laundry conveniences or Huggies or sanitized necessities. Then, there was the day-in-and-day-out faithfulness of teaching and modeling authentic faith to this one who was so obviously a miracle child, as she was God’s instrument to form him for his Messianic role.

Hail, Mary! Who cannot love you?

BLOG 12/10/14. THE CHURCH BEHIND THE CHURCH: BENEATH THE RADAR

From its very beginning the church has been called to: “Examine yourselves, to see whether you in in the faith. Test yourselves” (II Cor. 13:5). Or, maybe: “I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up …” (Rev. 31-2). These words of caution being so, my desire in the Blogs is also to remind myself and my readers that we can never become complacent, nor content with things as they may appear, but to look behind what it is, to what God in Christ has intended his church to be.

The liturgical season of Advent is an annual reminder that things are not always as they seem to appear. God has always had a unique way of revealing himself from the margins, of ‘flying beneath the radar.’ First of all, the dominant and inescapable reality in that first century world was the mighty Roman Empire, in which Caesar was God, and to question that was an act of sedition. In the off-on-the-margins nation of Palestine, the dominant reality was the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem with its elaborate priesthood and rituals, and all of the politics involved in that establishment, not to mention that this nation was also occupied by the Roman government and had a compromised and questionable king by the name of Herod.

No one was looking at the small city of Nazareth and at a godly peasant artisan by the name of Joseph who was the betrothed husband of a peasant girl by the name of Mary. It was then, and to their surprise, that God revealed himself with the startling word that Mary would become pregnant by an act of God and would bring forth as son who would sit on the throne of his father David, and of whose kingdom there would be no end. The two of them had to be convinced themselves at such an outrageous proposition. From the margins …

This should not have been too surprising to those conversant with the history of the Jewish people, because, centuries before, it was to a wandering Aramaen by the name of Abram, a sheik out there in the middle east, that God came and made the promise that in his offspring, all the nations of the earth would be blessed.

Leap over several millennia to our incarnation here in the twenty-first century, and we still have the task, the discipline, of understanding the difference between counterfeit and authentic churches, of those facades of ‘religious Christianity’ and the reality of God in Christ building his church—and again it is more likely to be happening beneath radar, and from the margins.

One sees, in our culture and in our media, the vast religious enterprises and the colorful television preachers. We are surrounded during these pre-Christmas days with music and carols carrying a message so profound that we have become immunized to it. The news carries many stories of what is taking place in the Vatican with the unusual Pope Francis, who doesn’t fit the mold. We also see religious fanatics, many who profess to be followers of Christ, doing things that actually contradict what they profess to believe. And so much more … but this is all on radar.

What is not seen is the daily faithfulness and obedience of a huge multitude of modest men and women, often in oppressive contexts, who live out their faith and are quietly contagious with their love of Jesus Christ, and who in their own way are bold to give answer to the hope that is in them with gentleness and sensitivity: hard-working parents, immigrant farmers, school teachers, … those engaged in industry, in the arts, in commerce, in government, in environmental stewardship, in home-making, in service. This is where God dwells among his people, and calls them to be true colonies of his New Humanity—to be the authentic demonstration of his purpose to make all things new. It took Mary and Joseph a while to comprehend what they had been called to, but quietly they taught this son, Jesus, so well that when he was twelve, he could debate scripture with the priests. From the margins, and beneath radar: the Lord of all.

BLOG 12/7/14. THE CHURCH BEHIND THE CHURCH: THE LOVE OF MUSIC

Those regular readers of these blogs know all too well by now that I, Bob Henderson, have something of a lover’s quarrel with the church as we have inherited it. But, then, I am also a product of institutional Christianity, and am formed more than I know by its traditions. On the one hand I have this ongoing quest to know that is God’s design for the church in his great salvific plan to reconcile all things to himself through Christ? There must be some essential mission that the church plays for Jesus to tell us that upon his own personal calling and mission to inaugurate God’s New Creation by his own life, death, and resurrection—his role as God’s Messiah—he would build his church. Yet somehow the church drifts and forgets its essence, and become focused on itself and its local survival. How to see behind the church we have inherited to the church as it is designed to be by God?

Then, there begins to sound in my mind that note that the church is also inhabited by the resurrection power of Christ, by the Spirit of God. It is not a merely human entity, but it is created supernaturally by the God who created all things for his glory. Are you with me?

Now it is Advent 2014, and last evening I was watching and listening to a program of Christmas music on PBS of an absolutely awesome British boys choir singing Christmas music in an equally beautiful cathedral in Dublin. Those beautiful voices of pre-pubescent boys, so clear and innocent, singing the great Christmas music of the church—and the question came to my mind: Where does the church’s love for music come from? Why has the Christian church always sung its faith? What is it that has produced so many great musicians, such as J. S. Bach, whose music was the vehicle for the communication of the infinite love of God in Christ?

It all flows out of the nature and being of God. Did you know that God sings? “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing” (Zephaniah 3:17). The psalmist says that the morning stars sang together at creation. We are to come into God’s presence with singing. Why? Because music is in the very nature of God. It is the audible expression of his perfections.

Knowing that reality doesn’t answer so many of my questions about how the church has so often gotten distracted from its essence and mission, but it does point me to the God whose creation the church is, and of one of the components with which he has endowed his New Humanity communities. Somehow, the Advent and Christmas celebrations are given such beauty as the church sings it faith in the Incarnation of God in Christ. This reality is not missed, even by those who don’t profess Christian faith. John Rutter, the composer and conductor of such brilliant giftedness, yet who doesn’t profess to be a believer in Christ, has said often that Christmas is made for music.

N.T. Wright has said that among the several common quests of the human heart, is its delight in beauty, … and I would add that this is true because even though we are so defiled by our sinfulness, still we are created in God’s image and therefore beauty and music are those components that are set free in us when we are made new in Christ. God puts a new song in our hearts, and we minister to one another “with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Colossians 3:16).

The reality behind the reality, the church behind the church, is the very life and nature of God expressing itself in a totally new human community created in his image and likeness—and it sings!