Author: Jason Zahariades

Over the last several months, our community has been exploring the large Story of God that spans from creation to new creation. I feel this time of immersion into God’s narrative has drawn a large and detailed map for our understanding of God’s creative purposes – something I have been disconnected from throughout most of my Christian life and ministry.

But extended immersion in God’s Story has allowed me to emerge not only with a map for our journey, but with the essential “You Are Here” marker that allows me to live my life in greater alignment with God’s movement. Perhaps this is what Paul meant when he wrote:

“Be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.”

In an effort to understand what the Lord’s will is, I have become gripped by one particular aspect of God’s lengthy and complex Story — Christ is the climax of both human history and Israel’s history. By his life, Jesus embodies, demonstrates and announces God’s intentions for humanity, made in God’s image, to be the cooperative and creative care-givers of creation, dynamically nurturing further goodness from a his creation. And by his life, Jesus embodies, demonstrates and announces God’s intention for Israel as God’s chosen people, those called to incarnate the fullness of God’s transforming presence among the nations so as to move original creation, now broken and disjointed, to the new creation by dealing with the sin and evil introduced by Adam.

This climax finds its fullest expression in Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. By his crucifixion, Jesus lets evil take its best shot. All of the shame and evil in the world concentrate upon the true Adam and the true Israel. And it works its fullest consequence on him – death. But the crucifixion is not God’s final statement. Jesus presses through the “Red Sea” of death to the other side – emerging into a new kind of life that death can no longer touch. By his resurrection, Jesus emerges as the full expression of God’s new creation. N.T. Wright states that the resurrected Christ is the “full flowering of God’s new creation.” The resurrection doesn’t simply redefine death as “life after death.” Rather, the resurrection destroys death. It is life after “life after death.” It is the life of the new heaven and new earth that neither sin nor death can ever touch again. As such, Jesus’ resurrection is the first day of God’s new creation!

As a follower of Christ, this puts me on God’s map — You Are Here.

First, of all, my understanding of God’s Story is completely rewritten. I now understand that God’s new creation has already dawned. And although I live between its inauguration at Jesus’ resurrection and its full consummation at his return, I am living in God’s new creation now! Not only that, but Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17 that anyone who is living immersed in Christ has become a “new creation.” In other words, our lives have become part of God’s new creation as well. So by following Christ, I am also in Christ, participating in his crucifixion (Gal 2:20) and his resurrection (Col 3:1-4) today.

With this lens, I am now blown away by how much of Paul’s practical instructions to God’s people are anchored in Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. I’m discovering that Christian ethics differs completely from other ethics. Why? Because Christian ethics is not about following a code or a set of rules. Nor is it the goal of following Christ. Instead, Christian ethics is learning to live our future lives in God’s new creation right now. It is about learning to become incarnational — to live a life of divine love as displayed fully by the crucifixion (Eph 5:1-2) and a life of divine power as displayed by the resurrection (Eph 1:19-21). Incarnational life as God’s new creation is easily and naturally ethical as a byproduct.

So let’s revisit Paul’s exhortation in Ephesians 5:15-17:

“Be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.”

This statement, along with many others in the New Testament, is the “You Are Here” on God’s map. My life matters because of who I am and who I am becoming as I live immersed in the crucified and resurrected Christ – the climax of humanity’s and Israel’s history and the flowering of God’s new creation.

But living “in Christ” requires effort on my part. As Paul states in Ephesians 4:22-24:

“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

My old self is corrupted by deceitful desires. My new self is created to be like God in righteousness and holiness. I must put off one and put on the other. And the bridge between the two is being renewed in the pneuma – the attitude or spirit – of my mind. And this occurs by “making the most of every opportunity.”

The Greek word used in the NIV for “opportunity” in Ephesians 5:15 is kairos – God’s special time. But it’s not just special time, it’s the consummation of time, again, God’s new creation. In other words, in each moment of my life I must make the most of living in God’s new creation. I have to intentionally live my real daily life as God’s new creation and in God’s new creation – living interactively in God’s grace, which “teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age” (Titus 2:12).

I began reading Walter Brueggemann’s book, Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation. I’m still in the introduction and he’s laying out his argument in fairly large concepts. However, he says a few things that have drawn me in so far:

“The gospel is thus a truth widely held, but a truth greatly reduced. It is a truth that has been flattened, trivialized, and rendered inane. Partly, the gospel is simply an old habit among us, neither valued nor questioned. But more than that, our technical way of thinking reduces mystery to problem, transforms assurance into certitude, revises quality into quantity, and so takes the categories of biblical faith and represents them in manageable shapes” (pp. 1-2).

“To address the issue of a truth greatly reduced requires us to be poets that speak against a prose world. The terms of that phrase are readily misunderstood. By prose I refer to a world that is organized in settled formulae, so that even pastoral prayers and love letters sound like memos. By poetry, I do not mean rhyme, rhythm, or meter, but language that moves like Bob Gibson’s fast ball, that jumps at the right moment, that breaks open old worlds with surprise, abrasion and pace. Poetic speech is the only proclamation worth doing in a situation of reductionism, the only proclamation, I submit, that is worthy of the name preaching. Such preaching is not moral instruction or problem solving or doctrinal clarification. It is not good advice, nor is it romantic caressing, nor is it a soothing good humor. It is, rather, the ready, steady, surprising proposal that the real world in which God invites us to live is not the one made available by the rulers of this age. The preacher has an awesome opportunity to offer an evangelical world: an existence shaped by the news of the gospel. This offer requires special care for words, because the baptized community awaits speech in order to be a faithful people” (pp. 3-4).

This sounds good. I would exchange the the words “preaching” with “communication” and “preacher” with “follower of Christ” because I think every disciple is called to communicate God’s kingdom in winsome and wondrous ways. It’s definitely not the task of just the professional few.

I’m definitely not looking for a technique — four easy steps to communicate God’s kingdom. Nor am I abandoning technical language as I’ve discussed in the previous blogs. What I am looking for is something that recaptures the imagination and then puts some wind in the sails as it were.

Eugene Peterson, author of The Message and many other well-known books, tells a story of when his grandson jumped into his lap and said, “Grandpa, tell me a story and put me in it.” In essence, that’s what Christians are supposed to be – people who know and live their place in God’s story so they can retell the story and put other people in it as well.

The challenge of telling God’s Story is two-fold: first everyone thinks they already know the story. The Christian message is part of our western culture, albeit in a distorted form. Telling God’s Story is like trying to tell the original story of Pinocchio when the only version the audience knows is the Disney version. The audience is shocked by the original, responding, “That’s not how it goes!” (Think about all the Disney remakes of classics. Although entertaining, they are complete distortions of the original tales. Yet, for the average person, the Disney version is the one that comes to mind.)

In many ways, the average Christian in North America has grown up with a “Disney version” of God’s Story – reduced to “Four Spiritual Laws” or “How To” sermons or a myriad of other stylized presentations. Please understand, I’m not questioning the good intentions behind these presentations. I’m simply observing the challenge we face when we discover that our current Christian culture’s understanding of God’s Story is very different from how the Story has been told by God’s people for generations upon generations. And how we understand the Story – either the original version or our culture’s version – determines how we live our lives.

What ends up happening is as the Story is retold, the audience reacts to the original version with “That’s not how it goes!” And not with just the overall plot, but the layers of sub-plots and symbols as well. So words like “Gospel” or “Church” or “Salvation” or “Heaven” have different meanings depending on which version of the Story one embraces.

That’s where the real challenge occurs. Ultimately when one retells the Story, one has to choose whether or not to use the loaded words and symbols or attempt to find different language altogether. For example, do we use the word “Salvation” although the current understanding is flawed (ask forgiveness from God and have a personal relationship with God so I can go to heaven when I die)? Or do we choose a term from another tradition that is more accurate (“theosis” from the Eastern Orthodox understanding of participating in the divine nature – 2 Peter 1:4)? Or do we find altogether new language to communicate this part of the story?

As Mark pointed out in his comment in the last post, whichever way we choose, deconstruction of faulty storylines, sub-plots and symbols must take place. And because the current version has so defined who we are, this deconstruction is not without sometimes intense emotional response. Mind you, that’s not necessarily bad or wrong. When worldviews clash, there is always internal turmoil.

I also want to be very clear: I’m not saying that the North American version of God’s Story is completely wrong, just flawed by the way we have retold the story over and over in our context. Bottom-line, the flawed story causes most Christians (myself included) to live their lives in wrong ways. That’s why the Story must be retold in new ways to recapture our imagination and ultimately lead us toward proper life as Jesus’ people.

The second challenge is that God’s Story is just so dang HUGE! It’s hard to tell such a large story. Think about Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. It’s an awesome version of Tolkien’s work. But Tolkien’s work is so large that a retelling cannot capture its fullness and grandeur.

God’s Story began ages ago. And although centralized for a good portion of time in Israel, it remains a huge task to retell it. Each layer of story-line is tightly woven with generations of developing ideas, sub-stories, and symbols. And being so removed from that time and culture, we completely miss most of the nuanced imagery and read it or hear it from a 21st century perspective. That’s why scholars like N.T. Wright, Gordon Fee, Stanley Grenz and a list of others are necessary to help put on the necessary “glasses” to read the story clearly.

Gordon Fee also makes an interesting remark. He states the usually narrative or story-telling is used by us on a micro level and not the macro-level. In other words, we use stories illustrations for a specific point or to tell a very small sub-plot of the larger Story. Yet, we rarely use narrative to actually tell the Story. Yet, most of the Bible is narrative.

So what does all of this mean? Like I said in the last post, I’m not really sure. I think technical language has a necessary place in retelling and explaining the Story because it helps us to think more accurately and concisely about aspects of the Story. The average person — Christian or non-Christian — exerts more effort thinking about his or her job, finances, relationships, school, and other areas of life than they do about God and his Story. For some reason, we seem to want to simplify spirituality. But Jesus, Paul and the New Testament community were thoughtful theologians. It would do all of us well to follow their lead and think more clearly and concisely about God.

But as I have learned the hard way, technical language is not the best way to actually tell the Story. Something more is needed, something that I lack but am willing to explore and search for as I try to know and live my place in God’s spectacular Story.

A man, newly convicted of a crime, arrives at the prison that will be his home for a large portion of his life. An older inmate soon befriends him and begins to acquaint him with prison life. One day the two inmates join a group of others sitting around the courtyard laughing. The new inmate was intrigued by what he saw.

As they sat in a group, an inmate would call out a number, followed by laughter from the other inmates. “Seven,” one would say, evoking hearty laughter from the others. “Twelve.” Again, laughter. Over and over, for about a half of an hour, seemingly random numbers would be called out punctuated by bursts laughter.

After it was over, the new inmate asked his friend, “What in the world was going on?” The older inmate responded, “Oh that. Many of us have been here so long that we’ve told each other the same jokes over and over. So we eventually numbered the jokes and instead of telling the joke, we just say its number.”

This baffled the newcomer, but he figured if he was to fit in this new environment, he needed to learn the ropes pretty quickly. The next day, he and his older friend joined the same group in the courtyard. And like yesterday, the group was engaged in “joke-telling.”

“Seventy-five.” Laughter.
“Thirteen.” Laughter.
“Twenty-one.” Laughter.

Finally, the new inmate worked up his courage and called out, “Ten.” He was mortified by the silence that followed. All the inmates stared at him. After further awkward silence, another inmate called out “Ten,” evoking more laughter. And the inmates carried on like before.

The younger inmate leaned over to his friend, “What did I do wrong?” who responded, “Oh, you just told it wrong.”

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That story reminds me of most of western Christianity and especially of myself. We are guilty of reducing a beautiful and incredible Story to overly-simplified and virtually irrelevant doctrinal bullet points. Rather than telling and re-telling God’s Story in fresh ways that capture the imagination of our hearers, we use catch-words like the inmates used numbers. “Gospel.” “The Fall.” “Salvation.” “Covenant.” Or if we feel really impressive, we’ll use “Eschatology” or “Pneumatology” or other words that end with “-ology.”

However, the answer isn’t to simply abandon these concepts for a more “practical” style of communication. Many corners of Christendom have attempted to make Christianity relevant to their modern audience. For a while, it seemed like every church marquee advertised a “How To” sermon. The problem is that although it may be relevant to the felt-needs of one’s audience, this solution extracts us from the Story that has been told and retold for ages and generations. The result is a new generation of Christians who know how to have a good marriage, how to raise good kids, how to be a good employee, how to be a good steward, etc., but have no idea of where or how their lives fit into God’s Story other than “Jesus died for me so I can go to heaven when I die.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m guilty on all points. For awhile I had adopted the same techniques and could preach “How To” messages as good as the next guy. But as I’ve shifted from that style in an attempt to understand and communicate God’s Story, a realization has come crashing down around me – I haven’t developed the necessary abilities to tell the Story. This was especially driven home over the last couple of months as our community has been exploring the sweeping movements of God’s Story from creation to renewed creation.

It’s kind of sad. I’ve paid thousands of dollars to get a degree to simply throw words around like the inmates threw numbers around. I have found myself cast in the role of a Story-teller, yet I’m unable to craft the right words to stir the imagination.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful for my education. I’m glad I have been trained to think technically and critically about theology. There is a necessary place for it. But it’s not the primary place.

I’m not even sure what I’m grasping at. All I know is that concepts must be coupled with imagination and vision. Not in cute little stories, but in ones that open windows into a mysterious and majestic realm where an eternal God cooperates with animated dust to usher in a new creation unlike anything we know; where eternal fullness is displayed through human hands, eyes and mouth; where the baton of incarnation is passed from perfection to imperfection, from one person to a community that struggles through the ages.

I just finished listening to one of my favorite novels, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I’ve read it a couple of times, but this was my first time listening to it on CD. There’s something captivating when a great story is told by a skilled narrator.

I’m also amazed at how a story can speak in different ways depending on the reader’s place in his or her life journey. Being where I am today, I found Lee’s story confronting me with issues about the cultural influences on Christianity.

Set in the 1930s, Lee explores southern culture in a small Depression-racked Alabama town from the perspective of an eight year old girl named Scout. Throughout the story, you feel like you’re always “looking up” as a small child would in an adult world.

What gripped me during this reading was the embedded critique of the Church. You cannot help but shake your head in dismay as you read about “Christ-fearing” people who are more often drunk than sober, filled with hatred, driven by gossip or motivated by racism.

There is a powerful scene when Scout attends a meeting of the women’s missionary society and listens to Christian women discussing over coffee and pastries how the pagan natives in Africa need to be civilized and how the “blackies” in their town need to learn their place. Being two generations removed from the story’s context, the reader is easily appalled at how cultural evils of the time could infiltrate the Church’s life.

But then it made me think, in seventy years what will my grandchildren be appalled with when they read about the church of my generation? What evils and abuses spawned by our contemporary culture and embraced by the Church will they shake their heads at and ask, “How could they have done that?”

I’m sure we can all come up with a list. As a friend reminded me last week, critiquing the church is easy. Just close your eyes and heave a rock and you’re bound to hear the shattering of stained glass. So I won’t indulge in making a list of the ways our society has found entrance into the Church’s life.

The question I’m asking myself and anyone who reads this is what can we do to escape the cultural entanglements that plague the church in every generation and actually become the eschatological people who live God’s future kingdom in the present?

Although I think I have suspicions of an answer, I know I don’t have the complete answer. But there’s a couple of things I do know. First, we need to avoid restorationist theories. Throughout the ages, parts of the Church in any given generation sought reform by longing to return to an earlier manifestation of the Church. If we could only go back to pre-Industrialization or pre-Reformation or pre-Constantinian times. Or the elusive, if we could only become like the first-century Church. My question is, “Which one?” Do we want to be like the church in Galatia, on the verge of embracing a false gospel? Or the church in Colossae or Philippi, battling Judaizers? Or the church in Corinth with all of its issues? Or how about the seven churches in Revelation? None of them heeded the prophetic warnings and so none of those churches exist today. As Gordon Fee has stated numerous times – too much water has gone under the bridge to go backwards.

Another thing I know is that structural models are not the answer. Whether we belong to a denomination with a lengthy history or are part of an emerging “organic” movement, structure by itself is not the answer. That’s because structures are the institutional expressions of people. And it’s within people that the problem lies. For example, in To Kill A Mockingbird, racism is built into the Church because the people are racist. In our contemporary times, consumerism is built into the Church because people are consumerist. Structures reflect and enforce what already exists in people. And even if a different structure is developed to avoid or even combat institutional evils, the structure will inevitably fail if the problem isn’t addressed in people. People are notoriously adept at working their agendas into any system or structure, be it simple or complex.

No matter how I approach this issue in my head, it always seems to come back to my personal responsibility to authentically follow Christ in my life and in my Christian community with my brothers and sisters. In To Kill A Mockingbird, Atticus Finch stands out because he chooses to lead by example. He is a lone figure who is at home in his small town, but also lives courteously, graciously and boldly by a standard much different than his surrounding culture. It is a beautiful picture of being culturally relevant and simultaneously counter-cultural. It wins him respect, yet gets him in trouble and ultimately endangers the ones he loves most. But it is so ingrained into who he is that he cannot help but live in such a noble manner. And in subtle and subversive ways, it changes people. I think Atticus Finch has many valuable lessons to teach us.

What makes the “good news” good? I’ve been reading a really cool book called StormFront: The Good News of God. One of the things the authors argue is that our North American consumerist context has distorted our understanding of God’s gospel or good news. We tend to view the good news of God as a message directed to our needs, describing the gospel in terms of its impact on human life – forgiveness of sins, relationship with God, personal fulfillment, happiness, freedom, comfort, healing, peace, and heaven when we die. All of these things and more make the good news good.

But here’s the authors’ point, one I’m willing to accept: “The Bible doesn’t speak about the gospel primarily in terms of its impact upon human life” (p. 36). Read that again and let it sink in. The good news of God isn’t about me and my needs! Instead, it’s about God and what he’s doing – the kingdom or reign of God.

They continue by stating:

“Now this is a tricky distinction, and we need to be precise here. Certainly, the New Testament proclaims the gospel as something that has profound significance for human life. Yet it does not speak about the gospel primarily in those terms. If you survey the data in the New Testament, a very clear pattern emerges. The focus falls not so much on what we experience, but on what God has done and is doing in the world” (p. 36).

I think this distinction is a hefty one, because ultimately the good news of God that we live and proclaim should be “God is reigning and will reign over the cosmos eternally and you and I get to join in what he’s doing in the world.” Or to quote the authors of StormFront again, “The gospel sees our humanity not in terms of needs to be met, but in terms of capacities and gifts to be offered in God’s gracious service. We are created not to consume but to know God, not merely to meet our own needs but to participate in God’s life and mission” (p. 34).

This thinking seems much more in line with Jesus and Paul than our modern forms of Christianity. For example, Jesus’ entire ministry can be summarized in Mark 1:14-15:

“After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!’”

Paul also provides a definition of the gospel in Romans 1:1-4:

“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God – the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.”

In other words, the good news of God is “Jesus is the Jewish Messiah as foretold for ages AND he is the Lord of the cosmos!”

Wow! There’s nothing in either Jesus’ or Paul’s statements about my personal happiness, contentment and fulfillment. Again, God’s good news is about God and what he’s done and doing.

My interaction with the gospel is faithful and obedient allegiance to the king — Jesus Christ. Notice that in the Romans 1 passage, the gospel results in Paul’s calling to be a servant of Christ — his entire life set apart by and in service to the gospel. Likewise, my response to God’s good news then, is to follow Jesus as his student or apprentice. And according to him, that requires learning to die to my self-will:

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple… In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.”
Luke 14:26-27, 33

This is such a different good news than what is usually communicated today – “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life…”

Now I know some of you reading this might be thinking, “But that is the gospel!” I admit, there is truth to the statement, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” However, such an individualized and egocentric version of the gospel is much different than what Jesus, Paul and the New Testament people of God embodied, demonstrated and proclaimed.

And the discrepancy between the good news in the New Testament and our modern Christian culture’s version is more than mere attempts at relevancy for a modern audience. Rather, it exposes how much our culture has actually infiltrated and distorted the Church’s life and message. And if the dismal statistics are correct, the North American church is beginning to reap the fruit of such sickened seed.

The heavens declare the glory of God, the vault of heaven proclaims his handiwork, day discourses of it to day, night to night hands on the knowledge. No utterance at all, no speech, not a sound to be heard, but from the entire earth the design stands out, this message reaches the whole world.

I came across this site in another person’s blog. The panoramic shot of Mt. Everest is breath-taking. So is the one of Mars from the Spirit rover. God is an amazing artist!

Be warned: You’ll probably need a high speed connection to really enjoy these pictures.

Here are some more thoughts about God’s Spirit.

God’s Spirit (ruach in the Hebrew and pneuma in the Greek) is the “breath” of God. As God breathes out, he breathes his very “essence.” Since God is love, his Spirit – his breath, his essence – is personified love.

Stanley Grenz states in Theology for the Community of God, “God is love within himself: The Father loves the Son; the Son reciprocates that love, and this love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit.”

The Spirit is also the creative Spirit. He hovers over the waters in the opening verses of creation. And in each moment of divine declaration, “God said,” is the implied reality that God’s word is accompanied by God’s breath. So creation is not only formed by the Word of God, but given life and movement by the Breath of God, who is love. The personal, dynamic love between the Father and Son, who is the Spirit, is the personal power behind the entire act of creation and the means by which all things exist. In other words, creation is a living expression of God’s love and goodness. That’s why at each phase of creation, God can proclaim, “It is good.”

But the Spirit is also the consummating Spirit. The cosmos was created good, but not complete. It is dynamic, created with a divine design to go somewhere. The Spirit’s task is to bring about the Father’s designs for creation, moving and drawing it toward its finale as the new creation.

What does the new creation look like? It will be the complete renewal of the cosmos into the fullness of true community, with the divine community of the Trinity at is center. Creation will become community in its complete and truest form, participating and reflecting the Trinitarian community.

Stanley Grenz offers three characteristic about the renewed creation. First, the renewed creation will be a place where God is fully present. Second, it will be a place of complete fellowship in peace, harmony, love and righteousness – not only between humans, but every living being in the cosmos. Third, it will be a place of glory. God will fully reign and his glory unleashed upon the earth. And all aspects of life will in turn, glorify God.

So the Spirit, who is God’s love personified, forms creation, fills creation and moves creation toward its finale. In the midst of this sweeping ministry, the Spirit establishes a beachhead of the future new creation/fullness of community through God’s people, as embodied in the life of Jesus.

Jesus is the climax and model of humanity living fully in God’s kingdom according to the Spirit. To borrow language from Colossians, he is the “firstborn” or the prototype of God’s renewed creation, the fullness of community.

We must remember Jesus’ place in God’s Story. He wasn’t just empowered to live his individual life in God’s future kingdom. That’s a contradiction in terms since life in God’s future kingdom is the fullness of community. Jesus lived in God’s coming age while embedded in the present age to inaugurate the renewed creation in the present. God’s future fullness of community climaxed in Jesus in the present age. Therefore, his entire life was transformative to everything it touched. Healings, confrontations, teaching, friendships, compassion, etc. were the establishing of God’s coming age in the present – the formation of God’s full and future community in the here and now.

Jesus sends the same Spirit to his followers so they may continue in what he established. In Matthew 18:20, Jesus is present when two or more gather in his name or nature. In other words, Jesus is continually incarnated in the communal life of his people when they gather to live in the order of God’s future renewed creation now.

Much more can be said, but I want to emphasize one crucial point regarding the Spirit. We are blessed with the Spirit not just to have a guarantee of our own ticket to heaven. That’s the same heresy we’ve possessed about salvation in Christ. Salvation in Christ and the presence of the Spirit are more about life on earth than admittance to heaven. Both are parts of a larger plan – the journey of the entire creation toward God’s renewed creation.

Nor are we blessed with the Spirit just to have great church meetings, either in a sanctuary or in a home. Nor are we blessed with the Spirit just to have power to live our individual “Christian lives.” Nor are we blessed with the Spirit just to assist in evangelism or other “functions” of the church. The bigger Story is that the Spirit enables the people of God to be the eschatological people of God — people who live in the order of God’s future renewed creation now, and by doing so, lead the rest of creation in the same direction.

Like Abraham and the nation of Israel, we are blessed to be a blessing. We are blessed with the Spirit so that the very nature of God, who is love, can transform us personally and corporately into the likeness of Jesus so we in turn can lead the entire creation into the same reality. That’s the message of Romans 8.

But the Spirit’s task of leading creation toward renewed creation focuses on the followers of Christ. That’s because Christlikeness is God’s future age, the new creation, in human form. Since humans were created to govern creation, as we mature toward Christlikeness we can increasing govern creation properly. This will naturally be in synchronization and cooperation with the Spirit, who is leading humanity and creation toward the new creation.

When you look at Jesus, you see the truest human expression of the future age, the fullness of community in a human life. He is God, who is love, incarnate. He is life in the kingdom of God in human form. He is the human expression of the renewed creation. He is the prototype for humanity’s existence in that renewed creation, which is full community.

Jesus is all of this through the Spirit in order that we too may live according to the Spirit and participate with him in his life. Jesus, in the Spirit, transforms alienated human life into redeemed communal life. Every conversion is by the consummating Spirit, bringing one more alienated human into redeemed community. Every healing is by the consummating Spirit, transforming brokenness into true community, whether it is physically, emotionally, socially, structurally, etc. Every step in spiritual formation is by the consummating Spirit, transforming the human person into one who can adequately and properly live in God’s renewed creation and community. To be in Christ is to live according to the Spirit, who is love. And every aspect of life according to the Spirit in God’s people is the further re-creation of that specific aspect of the cosmos toward the new heavens and the new earth, the fullness of community.

Just read a good blog by Beth Keck called Little Red. Give it a read.

I’ve been thinking and praying a lot about the Holy Spirit lately. Having been in the Vineyard for a number of years, I have seen the good, bad and the ugly regarding how the Church understands and experiences the Spirit. (And I too have been guilty of all three.)

I’m becoming more and more convinced that it is essential for the Church to explore and recover the Spirit’s role within the context of God’s Story. Just as the contemporary Church needs to be re-evangelized into God’s Story regarding salvation, being the God’s people, Christ, and end-times, we must also be re-evangelized regarding the Spirit.

When we drift from the story, we experience what Gordon Fee describes:

“Historically, Spirit movements have a poor track record within the boundaries of more traditional ecclesiastical structures. From my perspective, the fault lies on both sides: reformers tend to burn structures and try to start over (and when they do they only create a new set of structures for the next Spirit movement to burn down); those with vested interests in the structures consequently tend to push Spirit movements to the fringe – or outside altogether. Thus there is a hardening of ‘orthodoxy,’ on the one hand, that tends to keep the Spirit safely domesticated within creeds and office; and on the other hand, when Spirit movements are forced (or choose) to exist outside the proven tradition(s) of the historic church, there is a frequent tendency to throw theological caution to the wind. The result all too often is a great deal of finger-pointing and name-calling, without an adequate attempt to embrace both the movement of the Spirit and existing tradition(s) simultaneously.”

In this state, our understanding and experience of the Spirit is disconnected from what the Spirit is all about within God’s Story. We can then become guilty of attributing something to the Spirit that may not be the Spirit, while completely missing the Spirit at other times.

I believe key to the renewed discussion of the Holy Spirit is a renewed discussion of God’s Story, especially as understood by Paul. He’s the one who provides us with the bulk of the New Testament witness about the Spirit’s life and power in God’s people. Again, Gordon Fee is helpful by providing the necessary starting point for this exploration:

“We [must] try to enter into the Pauline world at the one crucial place where his presuppositions tend to be radically different from those of the later church, but are the absolutely basic ‘theological’ or experiential framework for everything he experienced or thought. For Paul, through the resurrection of Christ and the subsequent gift of the Spirit, God himself had set the future inexorably in motion, so that everything in the ‘present’ is determined by the appearance of the ‘future.’ It is necessary for us to start here, not with ‘theology’ proper (the doctrine of God as such), because this is the experiential starting point for Paul and the early church.”

In other words, understanding the Spirit today requires us to understand the sweep of God’s Story, especially the final chapter. Before Christ, the Story seemed to be pushed from the creation story. But as we enter the chapter about Christ, the Story has gained momentum and climaxes. Now it is not being pushed from the past, but by being pulled from the future that God has set in motion. The future forms a kind of “tractor beam” upon creation, humanity and the Church, drawing us further toward the finale of God’s Story. It is within this momentum that we live our lives and in which the Spirit is at work.

The heart is…

Scene One

“OKAY, I’M TIRED OF THE SCREWING AROUND! YOU KIDS HAVE FIFTEEN MINUTES TO GET THIS VAN CLEAN! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

(Five minutes later and after hearing giggling.)

“I SAID STOP MESSING AROUND AND GET THIS VAN CLEAN! I WANT IT SPOTLESS!”

“Okay, Dad.”

(Two minutes later, after more giggling.)

“ALRIGHT, THAT’S IT! I SAID GET THIS VAN CLEAN!” “YOU GUYS ARE LEAVING IN AN HOUR FOR THE WEEKEND AND I WANT ALL OF YOUR JUNK OUT OF THIS VAN!”

“Okay, Daddy.” (Through tears.)

The heart is more…

Scene Two

“It’s alright this stuff happens… No I’m not that upset… They didn’t take too much – just a couple of briefcases with some school papers and some worship CDs… They only busted out the locks on both front doors. I’ll just take it to the mechanic on Monday… I’m not really that angry for some reason… Nah, I figure this kind of stuff just happens and I’m trying to seek God in it.”

The heart is more devious than any other thing, and is depraved; who can pierce its secrets…

Okay, what the heck just happened? Two moments of my weekend, separated by a day and completely disconnected from each other. The first moment is trying to get my two oldest children to clean out the family van before they leave for Grandma and Grandpa’s house for the weekend. The second moment is discovering that my car is broken into in broad daylight at our apartment complex.

Two distinct events. Yet, somehow God formed them into a frightening window into my soul. How depraved is my heart that I can unleash monstrous anger upon my kids over a cluttered van and not feel a thing when unknown perpetrators violate my boundaries and cause hundreds of dollars of damage and hours of inconvenience.

It’s utterly stupid on so many levels! A dirty van isn’t worth that kind of anger. Also, my kids were about to leave for the weekend and the last memory they have of me is now seared into their minds by my rage. The entire scenario is ass-backwards. While my attempt to forgive those who broke into my car may have been commendable, it’s wasted on someone who is unseen and unrepentant. It’s not that they don’t deserve forgiveness. It’s just that all the while, two little children who adore me get to receive the raw end of my anger for something insignificant. If anyone deserved mercy and forgiveness, it was my kids. Especially over something as trivial as a dirty van.

So, what is wrong with my heart? It’s devious and depraved. And now it makes me suspect that my attempts at forgiveness may not be forgiveness at all. What if both events were just my sinful and corrupted attempts to maintain control. I can control my kids through anger. Let’s face it. I got a clean van because of my rage. And since I can’t control unseen thieves, I simply detach myself emotionally and convince myself to think I’m actually forgiving them. That way, they can’t rock my world.

Control. Someone who is dying to self-will has no control. So if these events reveal that my spirituality is just a disguise for emotional gymnastics in an attempt to maintain control, then Jeremiah the Prophet was right – my heart is more devious than any other thing. Even my pursuit of Christlikeness can become corrupted without my conscious knowledge. Even my quest to see God can become easily deluded. Oh what a wretched man I am!

The heart is more devious than any other thing, and is depraved; who can pierce its secrets. I, Yahweh, search the heart, test the motives, to give each person what his conduct and his actions deserve.

Father, thank you for searching my heart. Thank you for breaking through my delusions with a painful revelation of reality. And in the midst of my delusions and corruption, please forgive me. Forgive me for my desire for control. Forgive me for blasting my children. Forgive me for not forgiving them even though they forgave me. Forgive me for being deluded even in my pursuit of Christ. And through these events and your grace, teach me to forgive as you do. Amen.

“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

So we pray in the Lord’s prayer. But let’s be honest. Do we really want that? Do I really want it in my life? The immediate answer is “Yes, of course.” But my inner thoughts and feelings, and even my prayers, betray my apparent spirituality.

Alexander Schmemann comments on this passage in his book, Our Father:

“I would have to say that precisely this petition, “Thy will be done” is the ultimate yardstick of faith, the measure by which one can discern, in oneself first of all, profound from superficial faith, profound religiosity from a false one. Why? Well, because even the most ardent believer all too regularly, if not always, desires, expects, and asks from the God he claims to believe in that God would fulfill precisely his own will and not the will of God. The best proof of this is the Gospel itself, the account of Christ’s life.

“Isn’t Christ from the outset followed by nameless crowds of people? And aren’t they following him because he is accomplishing their will? He is healing, helping, comforting… However, as soon as he starts speaking about the essential, about the fact that a person has to deny himself if he wants to follow him, about the need to love one’s enemies and to lay down one’s life for one’s brothers, as soon as his teaching becomes difficult, exalted, a call to sacrifice, a demand of the impossible – in other words, as soon as Christ starts to teach about what is the will of God, people immediately abandon him and, moreover, turn against him with anger and hatred. This eerie shouting of the mob at the Cross, ‘Crucify him, crucify him!’ (Lk 23:21) – is it not because Christ did not fulfill the will of the people?

“They only wanted help and healing, while he spoke of love and forgiveness. They wanted him to liberate them from their enemies and grant victory over them, while he spoke of the kingdom of God…

“This is all described in the Gospels. And subsequently, over the next two millennia of Christianity, do we not witness the same drama? What do we together and individually really desire from Christ? Let’s admit it – the fulfillment of our will. We desire that God would assure our happiness. We want him to defeat our enemies. We want him to realize our dreams and that he would consider us kind and good. And when God fails to do our will we are frustrated and upset and are ready over and over to forsake and deny him.”

You know, you can always discern a person’s relationship with God through his or her prayers. I’m listening to a series of talks by Father Thomas Hopko. He states that every prayer we pray must either be a summary of the Lord’s Prayer or an extrapolation of the Lord’s Prayer. In other words, our prayer life must be the embodiment of the Lord’s Prayer and every prayer we pray must be under the shadow of the Lord’s Prayer. It is that prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray.

Hopko also says, that since we are told not to be anxious about food or drink or clothes or comfort or any other material thing, we are not to pray for those things. Our prayers should always be expressions of “Father, may your name be hallowed, your kingdom come and your will be done.”

Now whether his teaching is a little extreme or not is up for debate. However, it forces us evaluate our prayer life. I find I prayer more about health, finances, comfort, safety, job position and other things for myself, family and friends than I do for God’s will to be done. Now some would say those things are God’s will, but I’m not so sure anymore.

Ephesians 1:4 and other New Testament passages make it very clear that God’s ultimate will for his people is to be holy and blameless, to enter into his divine life and nature. First Thessalonians says God’s will is that we are to be joyful always, praying continually and giving thanks in every circumstance. These passages form the definition of God’s salvation for our lives. If that’s so, then isn’t it God’s prerogative to give and take away as he save us? And our responsibility in prayer is to pray contrary to our fallen emotions and desires that long for safety, comfort and security and to pray for God’s will to be formed in me at any cost.

Thomas a’ Kempis, speaking prophetically for Christ, adds to this discussion:

“And do not consider yourself forsaken if I send some temporary hardship, or withdraw the consolation you desire. For this is the way to the kingdom of heaven, and without doubt it is better for you and the rest of My servants to be tried in adversities than to have all things as you wish. I know your secret thoughts, and I know that it is profitable for your salvation to be left sometimes in despondency lest perhaps you be puffed up by success and fancy yourself to be what you are not. What I have given, I can take away and restore when it pleases Me. What I give remains Mine, and thus when I take it away I take nothing that is yours, for every good gift and every perfect gift is Mine.”

Father, may your name be hallowed in my life as in heaven. May your kingdom come in my life as in heaven. May your will be done in my life as in heaven. Amen.

I was going to post about the American Church’s propensity to live in a story foreign to God’s Story as communicated throughout the Bible. Disconnected from the true Story, we have fabricated a new story that sounds similar, but is vastly different from God’s Story. We tell and retell this alternative story until it finally makes the true Story sound wrong.

Rather than boring you with my post, I came across a great post by Leonard Hjalmarson that makes my point. Len’s a great thinker and writer and a couple of his articles influenced Mark’s and my thinking. Check out his December 17th post at nextreformation.com.

In his post, Len nails one of the main manifestations of the American Church’s wrong story on the head. The problem is that for most American Christians, the wrong story doesn’t sound wrong.

Here’s a bit of it, starting with a great quote by Richard Halverson:

“Christianity started out in Palestine as a fellowship. Then it moved to Greece and became a philosophy, then it went to Rome and became an institution, and then it went to Europe and became a government. Finally it came to America where we made it an enterprise.”
Quote by Richard Halverson, while he was US Senate Chaplain

“Money increasingly drives everything in the western church. Those with money can hire the best speakers, and bring in the latest ‘personality.’ Those with money can build the largest buildings so that they can bring in more money and hire more staff to impact the community.

“The problem is.. communities don’t seem to be impacted. And as Winston Churchill pointed out, ‘We create our buildings, then our buildings create us.’ We create institutions.. and lose any real sense of community. We build large theaters that create passive audiences while a few gain celebrity. But the question before the church in our age is, ‘will we be congregations, or communities?'”

Thanks, Len.

I just got my diploma in the mail today. I am officially done with my Master’s degree from Fuller Theological Seminary! Yeaaaa!

“Daddy, come quick! Look at this!” The excitement in my oldest daughter’s voice calling from downstairs drew my attention from the computer screen. I quickly walked downstairs and found my two daughters looking into a plastic jar. I had walked into a miracle.

A couple of weeks earlier, Catherine and Danielle brought two fuzzy caterpillars home from a friend’s house. The first few days were exciting. With help from Debbie, they created a tiny terrarium out of a plastic jar. Soon, the caterpillars had each formed a chrysalis. Then for the next two weeks, nothing happened.

Now as I peered into the jar, I discovered that a butterfly had quietly emerged from its chrysalis. Poised upon a twig, it softly beat its new wings.

The exhilaration my daughter was feeling swept through our family. Right in our home, one creature had transformed into an entirely new creature! After being our houseguest for a couple of days, we released the first butterfly. About a day later, the second butterfly emerged and was released, evoking the same enthusiasm from our family.

As with many moments of our lives, this miracle in a plastic jar is layered with meaning. It reminds me of my daughters. The other day I was looking at their school pictures taken over the last couple of years. How they have changed! Even though they are only six and nine years old, they are transforming from little girls into beautiful young women right before my eyes. Needless to say, this is both thrilling and frightening for Debbie and me.

This miracle in a plastic jar also reminds me of the Christian’s life in Christ. The Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17 that if anyone is “in Christ,” that person is a “new creation.” Paul’s choice of words means much more than simply “brand new.” The new creation we have become is a foretaste of the new heaven and new earth of Revelation 21. We have become the very thing that the glorious story of God anticipates as its climax. Anyone living in Christ’s life has become something that the rest of creation is eagerly waiting for – God’s new creation. We have been transformed from one creature into an entirely new creature – into something more than just being human. We are people of the future living in the present. We are bits and pieces of heaven living on earth.

That’s why Paul spends so much energy exhorting us to live our present daily lives within God’s future order. In Ephesians 4:22-24, he writes, “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Look at that again. We are to put on our new selves, (this is where it gets good!) which are created to “be like God in true righteousness and holiness!!!” Not only are we the first wave of God’s new creation, but as such, we are to be like God in his character and power.

Finally, this miracle in a plastic jar reminds me that as Jesus’ apprentices and God’s new creation we must, like my daughters, nurture the goodness that God formed into this present creation in anticipation of its ultimate renewal. In Christ, we have become God’s new creation living in this present creation. We are like seeds planted in rich soil. As we spend our lives putting on our new selves that are created to be like God, we will naturally touch the cosmos around us as we wait for the final transformation that is promised when Christ arrives.

Note: The following are thoughts that have percolated in me after thinking about some of N.T. Wright’s material.

One of the amazing and wondrous aspects of God’s grand story is that human beings are created to be co-rulers with God over creation as we grow increasingly more into God’s character and fullness. And although humankind’s initial failure in Genesis 3 brought tragic consequences to the cosmos, God’s plan has stayed its course. In Jesus, God’s plan has found its fulfillment. A human being who is completely in the likeness of God is finally at the helm of the cosmos and his name is Jesus. And everything in creation is being reconciled to him (Col 1:20).

But wait! There’s much more!

Jesus is the firstborn of a new race of human beings, God’s new covenant people. We are Christ’s body, his fullness (Eph 1:23). We are children of God and co-heirs with Christ (Rom 8:17). Christ reveals our future in God’s eternal kingdom. We are growing into his fullness so we may stand at the helm of the cosmos with him.

This means creation is directly linked to the Church’s present and future. Paul states in Romans 8:19-23, 26:

“The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies… In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.”

Paul uses a violent word picture of childbirth to describe the connection between God’s people and creation. Something astonishing is being birthed! And as it’s being born, creation is laboring and groaning. And within creation, God’s people are laboring and groaning. And within God’s people, God’s Spirit is laboring and groaning. In other words, something cosmic is being birthed, but the seeds of it reside deep in God’s people through God’s Spirit.

What is being birthed? John describes it in Revelation 21:1-4. A renewed creation is being birthed! Ultimately this birth will be complete when Christ returns and fully strips corruption and sin from creation so it can be filled with the glory and presence of God. One day Jesus’ prayer, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” will be fulfilled.

So what’s our part in all of this right now? How do we participate in the birth of this new creation in which we will ultimately be co-heirs and co-rulers with Christ? By how we live our daily lives in Christ.

Our present lives in Christ anticipate our existence in God’s future. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” This is startling! In Christ, our present lives have become bits of God’s new creation. In this way, God has given us a little bit of his new creation to practice on. So we practice for living and ruling fully in God’s new creation by training on the little bit of his new creation we possess – our lives in Christ.

Becoming a person who naturally obeys God from the inside-out is my part in bringing about God’s new creation as well as training me for my role in that new creation. How I live my life today is the beginning of my taking responsibility for God’s world. Learning to live my life in the fullness of Christ is my part of God’s world that I have been given responsibility for. And properly exercising my responsibility by cooperating with God’s Spirit to form Christ fully in me is my role in God’s cosmic story.

Over the last few days I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to lose sight of the big picture of God’s kingdom in the milieu of our daily lives. I really believe the big picture, the divine story that we’re immersed in, is about God’s love.

God is love and he’s on a mission to recreate the world in his divine love and goodness. The divine project of the renewed heaven and renewed earth of Revelation 21 is currently underway. It’s the mission that Jesus embodied and modeled and then commissioned his followers to continue. Jesus’ vocation was to inaugurate what Dallas Willard describes in Renovation of the Heart as:

“A perpetual world revolution… a revolution of character, which proceeds by changing people from the inside through ongoing personal relationship to God in Christ and one another. It is one that changes their ideas, beliefs, feelings, and habits of choice, as well as their bodily tendencies and social relations. It penetrates to the deepest layers of their soul.”

Jesus accomplished this revolution by living richly in God’s kingdom so that everything he touched and encountered was naturally transformed by the divine love that is the essence of his inner life.

As Jesus’ body, the “fullness of him who fills everything” (Eph 1:21), our vocation is the same as his. So when I look at my life, I have to ask myself, “Okay, so when am I actually going to get around to actually doing just that?” I don’t mean just little snatches here and there of love, but a life that fully and easily embodies God’s transforming love within the world I live.

Dallas defines love as the “genuine inner readiness and longing to secure the good of others.” I love that definition! Can you imagine daily life lived from that perspective? No wonder Paul says that love is patient and kind, doesn’t envy or boast, isn’t proud, rude, self-seeking, or easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs, and doesn’t delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. If I lived from that kind of inner life, I would rarely get frustrated, angry, impatient, proud, arrogant, or mean. I would be dead to my self-will and living for the betterment of others for the glory of God.

The problem occurs when I try to act patient or kind without any substantial inner life of love. I lose sight of the big picture whenever I put my attention on loving behavior rather than actually progressing inwardly in love itself. At that point, Dallas’ words come back to haunt me, “Merely trying to act lovingly will lead to despair and to the defeat of love. It will make us angry and hopeless.” Gulp!

It’s only by taking God’s divine love into my inner being through cooperative spiritual formation in God’s grace that I actually have any chance. Right now, that’s my small part in this grand divine story. It’s my responsibility to grow in a rule of life that takes God’s love deep within me so that it becomes the very source and refreshment of my life.

Father, help me to walk in the Spirit of Christ, who ultimately bears the fruit of your love in my life. Help me to experience and move in the power of the Spirit, knowing that every gift he brings is meant to build his body up in love. Amen.

In the Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard uses the phrase “community of prayerful love” to describe the Church, the people of God who live in the reality of God’s kingdom. This afternoon, I was meditating on Colossians 1:9-12, where Paul says:

“For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.”

Paul provides a great example of a community of prayerful love. Here is a group of Christ-followers in Colosse, a group that Paul has never met. Yet, when Paul and his comrades hear reports of this new community, they begin to pray unceasingly for them. And what great prayers:

To be filled with the knowledge of God’s will…
To live a life worthy of Jesus…
To please God in every way…
To bear fruit in every good work…
To grow in the knowledge of God…
To be strengthened with power to possess endurance and patience…
To joyfully give thanks to God…

Father, may I contribute to a community of prayerful love through my prayers for my brothers and sisters – for those I know and those I haven’t met yet. And together, may we become the fullness of Christ in and to the world. Amen.

There are some books that are so good, I go back to them over and over. Pretty much anything authored by Dallas Willard and N.T. Wright fall into this category. I read with a highlighter, so these kind of books look like coloring books when I�m done with them. The ideas formulated by these people have constructed the foundation of who I am and how I see life.

I’m re-reading The Challenge of Jesus by N.T. Wright. I’m not exaggerating when I say every Christian needs to read this book.

Here’s a quote I read from it today that is rattling around in my head:

“When we speak of ‘following Christ,’ it is the crucified Messiah we are talking about. His death was not simply the messy bit that enables our sins to be forgiven but that can then be forgotten. The cross is the surest, truest and deepest window on the very heart and character of the living and loving God; the more we learn about the cross in all its historical and theological dimensions, the more we discover about the One in whose image we are made and hence our own vocation to be the cross-bearing people, the people in whose lives and service the living God is made known. And when therefore we speak of shaping our world, we do not — we dare not — simply treat the cross as the thing that saves us ‘personally,’ but which can be left behind when we get on with the job. The task of shaping our world is best understood as the redemptive task of bringing the achievement of the cross to bear on the world, and in that task the methods, as well as the message, must be cross-shaped through and through.”

I don’t usually “do” the evening prayers. I’m a morning kind of guy. But once in a while, when I remember, I like to pray the Compline Hour. This week’s Compline prayer that Mark put on our website is wonderful:

“Lord may we sense you even in our sleeping as your presence surrounds us like the night; light in the darkness, illumine our souls and draw us ever closer to you and to those with whom we live and journey. Amen.”

It reminds me that even in sleep, God is awake and active. His grace and purposes in our lives continue even through we lay helpless on our beds. I fall asleep in his grace and by his grace I will awake and be able to pray the Morning Hour:

“Lord God, almighty and everlasting Father, you have brought me in safety to this new day: Preserve me with your mighty power, that I might not fall into sin, nor be overcome by adversity; and in all I do direct me the fulfilling of your purpose; through Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen.”

What a way to live — from grace to grace! I hope I become more and more natural at this.

I felt “led” to share a very familiar passage that God has been using to encourage me over the last few weeks. I hope it encourages you as well.

“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights.”
Habakkuk 3:17-20

God’s been reminding me that my responsibility is to humble myself and be obedient. All of the outcomes are completely in his hands. As 1 Peter 5:6 says, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.”

Just some more thoughts on Sabbath…

“There are six days when you may work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, a day of sacred assembly. You are not to do any work; wherever you live, it is a Sabbath to the LORD.”
Leviticus 23:3

Marva Dawn states, “Sabbath is not a day off, it is a day for.” In other words, Sabbath is not just time off for relaxation. It’s time away from obligatory work that is time away unto God. It’s avoiding the “should-have’s” and “need-to’s” so we can engage in activities of Sabbath-delight, those things that fuel us before God. Sabbath is a “stopping” for the Lord. It’s a “ceasing” that honors the Lord in obedience.

Also, observing the Sabbath every seventh day creates a God-given rhythm that our bodies need. It is not escape. Rather, Sabbath is a reorientation of our lives to provide what our physiology requires.

I have a problem. It’s one that I struggle with daily. What is it? I easily get confused and think that my life is actually about me. But it’s not. My life is about God. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20:

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price.”

So how do I overcome this problem? God keeps bringing me back to the same passage of Scripture. It rattles around in my head over and over. It’s Philippians 2:5-11:

“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

“He humbled himself and became obedient.” It sounds so simple. And in many ways it is. Lower myself and obey. This the core of the life of spiritual disciplines and mortification – to get my focus off of myself, to simply obey and allow God to determine the outcomes of my life.

Ironically, humility is the highest way to live. By lowering myself, I live above petty misunderstandings, false expectations, hurt feelings, cruddy circumstances and everything else that would strike at my soul. That’s because those things are no longer my business. When I learn to humble myself, I live for God and others and not myself.

My life is to be simply about incarnating God’s life; being a fragrance of heaven; being a light in the dark. Whatever the metaphor, the meaning is still the same. It’s not about me anymore. My vocation is to follow Christ. My life is about Christ. My relationships are about Christ. My gifts are Christ’s. My daily life is for Christ.

Father, in all I do, direct me to the fulfilling of your purpose; through Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen.

Time is money. Our modern capitalist culture has etched this commandment into tablets of stone. As Michael Ventura has stated, “People wake up every morning with a price on their heads.” They are defined by how much they produce every hour or by how much they earn every hour.

But the Bible defines time much differently. Time is sacred. Time is love. Speaking to the philosophers of his day, the Apostle Paul provides a heavenly perspective to time and space. He states, “And [God] determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:26-27). In other words, time and space are God-ordained mediums, created primarily for relationship.

I love what N.T. Wright states in The Way of the Lord, regarding this view of time and space:

“The God we know in Jesus claims the entire world, and all its nations, as his own; and wherever this God is worshipped, in an igloo in the Arctic wastes or a mud hut on the equator, in a mighty cathedral or a slum hospital, in that spot another part of God’s created space, as well as another moment of God’s created time, is quietly claimed as his own.”

God is active in time and space as creation mediates his Presence, or as Paul states, “he is not far from each one of us.” Time and space are the practical, moment-by-moment medium in which people actually seek, reach out and find God. In this way, time and space can be essential instruments of human and societal transformation.

Later in Ephesians 5:15-17, Paul explains how to live sacredly and relationally in time and space. He writes, “Be very careful, then, how you live — not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.”

Paul chooses the Greek word kairos for time, rather than chronos. In this light, “making the most of every opportunity” loses its modern time-management perspective and takes on something much deeper. A better translation would be “Buy back or fully appropriate for yourself the fulfilled time,” where the fulfilled time is the new reality and order of God’s kingdom. In other words, we should be experiencing a new kind of daily experience in space and time – one in the order of being that was inaugurated in Jesus’ incarnation and finally consummated in his return.

Robert Mulholland Jr., in Shaped by the Word, describes this life as “kairotic existence” – the state of being harmoniously in relationship with God as our lives are shaped by the will of God, empowered by the indwelling presence of God, lived out in community, and founded upon the rhythms of spiritual disciplines. He states that it is a life where:

“We are to immerse ourselves completely in, totally consecrate ourselves to, and unconditionally yield ourselves to this new order of being in Christ that God offers. We are to allow our daily life to be shaped by the dynamics of that new order of being – by its values and structure, by its pervading reality of the presence, purpose, and power of God.”

The purpose of a missional community is to raise up a “kairotic people” or a “kairotic community” – those immersed in and living together in the reality of the kairotic existence so as to embody and incarnate Christ in and to the world. Incarnating Christ requires those who live a kairotic existence and this kairotic existence begins inwardly.

In Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard defines Christian formation as “the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self in such a way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself.” In this way, to the degree inward spiritual formation into Christlikeness is accomplished, the outward life becomes the natural expression of the now embodied character and teaching of Jesus. Therefore, the missional community’s central task is aiding each member in developing a personal “rule of life” – a pattern or rhythm of spiritual exercises that provides the structure and direction for spiritual growth. This rule of life transforms daily moments and routines into interactive engagements with God or into kairotic existence. And it is from this central task that all of the other purposes of the missional community flow.

One of the things I’ve regretted most over the last several years as a professional pastor is not practicing the Sabbath. Let’s face it, for a professional pastor, Sundays are the busiest day of the week. Preparing the church property for Sunday worship usually required the staff to be the first people to arrive and the last people to leave. In addition, Sundays were usually filled with meetings, impromptu counseling and administration. It was a rare Sunday when I could enjoy the day with my family.

I know other pastors who took a day off on a day other than Sunday. But for me that would mean taking a day off when my kids were in school. And on top of that, I’ve never been taught how to practice a Sabbath. The Evangelical circles I’ve been raised in deemphasized the Sabbath with verses like Colossians 2:16, “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day.”

But lately, I’ve been rediscovering the biblical sacredness of time and space. Ephesians 5:15-16 states, “Be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” This isn’t a time management principle. In the Greek, Paul is literally telling us to live God’s future kingdom right smack in the present. We are to re-create time and space by living a new way of being human as modeled by Jesus.

I’m discovering that one of the essential disciplines that trains us into this reality is the Sabbath. Dallas Willard writes:

“We strongly need to see the manifest hand of God in what we are and what we do. We need to be sure He is pulling the load, bearing the burden – which we are all too ready to assume is up to us alone. We must understand that he is in charge of the outcome of our efforts, and that the outcome will be good, right. And all of this is encompassed in one biblical term, “Sabbath.’ The Sabbath, Jesus said, was made for man. (Mark 2:27) That is, it serves human life in essential ways. Without it, life cannot be what it should be. That is why it is given in the Ten Commandments, at the heart of the moral law. It is not something we have to do because God has arbitrarily required it of us, a pointless hoop He would have us jump through. It is His gift to us. At the same time it makes clear that our life and our ministry is also His gift to us. Sabbath is a way of life. (Heb. 4:3 & 9-11) It sets us free from bondage to our own efforts. Only in this way can we come to the power and joy of a radiant life in ministry, a blessing to all we touch.”

Dorothy Bass writes, Sabbath “means joining in the song of creation which renews our love for the earth and our gratitude for the blessings God grants through it. Receiving this day means joining in a worldwide song of liberation… No other days can be the same after this one.”

Not being part of the organizational church any more has allowed my family and I to begin experimenting with the Sabbath. We’re learning how to fill our Sabbath with the three “R’s” – rest, remembrance, and relationships.

Here are some of the things we try to practice: We have one or two meals with others in our community. We intentionally turn off the TV and video games so we can read, write, play or rest. We slow down the frantic pace of the day without being legalistic. In other words, some chores and errands get done, but not at the expense of resting, remembrance or relationships.

Also, today, I led my four kids through a time of worship and the Divine Hours. It was a mixture of worship songs, fun dancing and reciting prayers together. And while I’m writing this, my kids are outside playing together, something they don’t get to do very often during the week. We’re also hoping to go for a walk at a park or botanical garden later to enjoy creation.

Sundays are now shifting from “church day” to a more whole-life practice of the Sabbath. We’re still new at this discipline. And it doesn’t mean that conflicts, arguments or discipline issues don’t arise. But I think the rest, remembrance and relationships we’re building into our weekly rhythm will yield some cool fruit.

Here are a couple of photos of our flannel board worship. Again, thanks Kerri for doing a wonderful job.

I know it’s already Wednesday, but I’ve been thinking a lot about worship from this past Sunday night. Our community got together like we do every other Sunday evening for dinner, worship and discussion. (Big “THANK YOU” to Jim and Elaine for hosting us and feeding us way beyond any descent levels of human consumption!)

Any way, I don’t know how to describe the worship time. It was great, but that word doesn’t capture it. On Thursday, we’ve been discussing the Story of God and we spent time looking at Creation as the first chapter of that story. So for Sunday’s worship, Kerri wrote out the creation story from Genesis and broke it into parts so everyone — including all of the kids — could read the story. As the story was read, she re-enacted creation on a flannel board. Yeah a flannel board.

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t grow up in the local church. So my only reference to flannel board stories are historical, kind of like record players and typewriters. I’ve never experienced one before.

Sunday’s worship was great because it captured several important aspects of biblical worship. First, we worshipped with a story. The first story. I’ve been lingering on the whole idea of “In the beginning God created the heavens and earth.” It’s a story we all live in, but take for granted. Watching that story unfold before my eyes was awesome. I was reminded how connected and responsible I am to God’s creation around me.

Second, everyone got to worship together. It was neat sitting with my kids, the Feliciano kids and all of the adults, waiting for our parts to join in the story. At that moment, we were all on equal ground. We were all waiting our turn to join in worship with the community through our contribution to the story. My kids weren’t simply observers or sitting in another room. They participated with everyone.

Third, this moment of worship was possible because Kerri offered her talents and gifts to the community. She is such a creative person. And although speaking in public makes her nervous, she offered herself and her arts to the community as a vehicle for worship. It was neat watching the story unfold on flannel board — night and day being formed, vegetation, animals, birds, fish, humanity. And as the flannel board moved from a dark blank slate to a symphony of vibrant colors, shapes and life, I was reconnected to the incredible creativity of God.

As I’ve been thinking about Sunday’s worship, I’ve realized this is what worship is supposed to be like. It’s being swept up in the current of God’s story. It’s not ahistorical. It’s embedded in the BIG story that we’re all supposed to be living in. It’s also experienced as a community where every person is an equal participant and stands on equal ground regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, education or any other contrived categories. And it’s also a gift of our talents and life offered back to God for his glory.

As Paul says in Romans 12:1, “I urge you, then, brothers (and sisters), remembering the mercies of God [God’s story], to offer your bodies [individual talents and lives] as a living sacrifice [singular act of community], dedicated and acceptable to God; that is the kind of worship for you, as sensible people.”

Deb and I watched Bend It Like Beckham last night. Pretty good movie. It’s another in an ever-growing list of movies that portray the hybridization of cultures. It’s a formula that seems to work – the angst of a young person (usually a young woman) trying to come to terms with living in two different cultures, one being a culture with very traditional roles for men and women and the other being a more progressive, modern culture promising the freedom to pursue one’s dreams. Usually the movie ends with the blending of cultures for all involved. The main character, shaped by her traditional culture, engages modern culture aware and appreciative of how the traditional culture has formed her identity. The other characters within the traditional culture are in turn shaped by the main character’s journey, becoming more exploratory of the progressive culture that surrounds them.

Any way, the movie started me thinking about the relationship between the good news of God’s kingdom, the missional community that embodies that good news and the surrounding culture the community lives within. It’s an issue that every missional community claiming to follow our missional God must continually engage. I think these movies provide insight for us, reminding us that our missional community and the surrounding culture we live in shape each other.

The authors of Missional Church offer some thoughts regarding this dynamic:

“The church [God’s sent people] bears a marked resemblance to the incarnation of Jesus, who, being like God, was equally real human flesh and life. It is no accident that the church is called the “body of Christ.” It continues as an incarnate expression of the life of God. But no less than for Jesus, this expression means that the church always takes particular form, shaped according to the cultural and historical context in which it lives.

“This shaping always moves in two directions. On the one hand, the church understands that under the power of God, the gospel shapes the culture of a society – its assumptions, its perspectives, its choices. The church knows this because the gospel is always doing that to the very culture that is its own. This gives an indication of God’s vision for the church’s transforming impact on its context. On the other hand, because the church is incarnational, it also knows that it will always be called to express the gospel within the terms, styles, and perspectives of its social context. It will be shaped by that context, just as it will constantly challenge and shape that context. The church lives in the confidence that this ought to be so, and that it is the nature of its calling for this to be so.

“The church knows to expect a life full of ambiguities because it is shaped by its context as the gospel reshapes the context. Such a calling never leaves the church in a finished, settled, or permanent incarnation. Its vocation to live faithfully to the gospel in a fully contextual manner means that it can sometimes find itself either unfaithful or uncontextual. In addition, the human context that shapes it continues to change. Therefore, the questions of its faithfulness are always fresh ones. The gospel of God is never fully and finally discerned so that no further transformation can be expected. The interaction between the gospel and all human cultures is a dynamic one, and it always lies at the heart of what it means to be the church.”

The point: The missional church will be shaped by its social context just as it will constantly challenge and shape that context. In other words, the worst thing we can do as God’s missional people is to form a static Christian culture that becomes like the traditional cultures depicted in these movies – a subculture that is self-isolated from the culture around it. At that point, we are no longer faithful to the missional nature of God’s gospel. At the same time, we must not uncritically embrace the surrounding culture as well. At that point, we are no longer influential at embodying God’s kingdom counter-culturally.

Jesus and Paul provide perfect examples. Jesus was a 1st century Jew speaking specifically to his fellow Jews. He was shaped by the language, history and contemporary experiences of the people he was born into. He lived among them, attended synagogue with them, faced the same oppression they faced, taught using metaphors from the story they lived in. Yet, he also called people into God’s different kind of life, using the terms, styles and perspectives of 1st century Judaism.

Paul was equally incarnational and strategic. He was proclaiming a Jewish story and Messiah to a pagan world. So he borrowed heavily from the pagan philosophers and ideologies, affirming that which was in line with God’s kingdom and confronting that which wasn’t. He enjoyed the full advantages of his Roman citizenship while proclaiming an anti-Emperor theology. He virtually ignored oppressive aspects of Roman culture, such as slavery, while encouraging followers of Christ to embody and live God’s kingdom, knowing full well that as they did so, those aspects of culture would be transformed.

As we seek to incarnate God’s life in our midst, we do so as 21st century southern California urban/suburbanites. We don’t withdraw from society. Nor do we completely embrace it. We are not America-bashers, capitalist-bashers, or even culture-bashers. We affirm what is aligned with God’s values and embody a viable alternative in confrontation to that which is not. We are not Republicans, Democrats, Independents or anything else. We are followers of Christ, incarnating God’s life on and to the world. We are showing those in our culture what it looks like for a community of people to fully live in our culture under the full reign of God in every aspect of daily life.

Several months ago, my family got to vacation a few days in San Diego. We had a blast just visiting the not-so-touristy places. We stopped off for a while at a secluded reserve center where we let the kids buy something in the gift shop. Michael got some rubber frogs, Dani and Chris got stuffies, and Catherine bought a beautiful stone egg. With everyone content with their newly acquired gifts, we continued our time in San Diego.

The next morning at breakfast in the hotel, the kids brought their gifts to the dining area with them. You can probably guess what happened. Catherine’s egg rolled off the table and dropped onto the cement floor. The impact split the stone in half. Just a moment earlier, she was the happy owner of a beautiful stone. Now she walked over to me holding the shattered remains in her cupped hands. I was crushed for her.

That image came back to me this weekend in Vista (near San Diego). Mark, Barb, Deb and I had a chance to join several other missional community leaders for an informal gathering. You can see Charlie Wear’s summary here.

Why did the image of Catherine’s shattered egg come to mind? Because God met me during a gentle, yet powerful ministry time. In the quietness of prayer and through a couple of “prophetic” phrases whispered in my ear, God answered a question surging in my heart, “God, are you still there?”

Okay, I know the theological answer to that question. But over the years as a pastor, I’ve learned that question usually emerges from an person’s woundedness. Now, as the words formed in my mind, I realized they were flowing from my woundedness. I was the shattered egg in God’s cupped hands.

And then God came.

As I stood in silence wrestling with my brokenness, two men came over to me and prayed for me. Through them, God’s Spirit whispered, encouraged and healed a little bit more of me. In only a matter of minutes, God answered my question with his presence. He spoke two phrases that bore to the depths of who I am.

That moment reminded me of a passage that God has been using to soothe the anxiety and brokenness in me:

“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights.”
Habakkuk 3:17-19

I’m learning that I don’t have to be ashamed of my hurt. It’s not something I wallow in, but I’m aware it’s there. And I’m aware that God is healing me as well.

Jason and Brooke, thanks for making the weekend possible. You guys were the hands and heart of the Lord. Also, thank you to the guys who prayed for me and lifted me to our Father when I needed it. And for everyone who joined in, thanks for being real, authentic, and loving. It’s wonderful serving in the kingdom with you.

I got a chance to hear Dallas Willard teach at his home church last night. It was definitely a treat in many ways. I got to hang with Ryan, whom I haven’t seen in months. I also got to go into a “real live church building,” something I haven’t done in months. Felt weird, even uncomfortable, but I’ll leave it at that. It was also cool to watch Dallas interact with people in his community that he’s obviously close with.

He taught on a bunch of stuff, but something he taught struck me and has occupied my mind all day. He taught on Psalm 23 and how this world is a perfectly safe place for us to be in God’s kingdom. Sure I will suffer. Sure I will endure difficult times. I will even encounter devastating tragedy. But since the Lord is my Shepherd, I won’t miss out on anything important. I won’t be in want.

He then walked through the rest of the Psalm to show that it’s the Shepherd that satisfies our needs, not our circumstances. The Shepherd makes the sheep lie down in green pastures. Dallas used to raise sheep. He says the only time a sheep would lie down is when its full and satisfied. In other words, in Psalm 23, the sheep is already full and doesn’t need to eat in the green pasture.

Dallas then comments on “He leads me beside quiet water.” He says sheep only drink from quiet water. Yet, the picture is the Shepherd leading the sheep beside and beyond quiet water. Again, the sheep is already so full and satisfied by the Shepherd that it doesn’t need to drink from the quiet water.

The Psalm then turns toward darker circumstances — through the valley of the shadow of death. Again, the sheep fears no evil because its joy, peace and safety are in the Shepherd, not the circumstances.

Finally, even in the midst of enemies, a rich banquet table is set. Dallas comments that we rarely want to eat in front of our enemies since our stomachs are churning. Yet, the picture is that we are so at peace in our Shepherd that we can eat in the midst of our enemies and even with our enemies.

Still thinking about it. I’d love to hear what you guys think.

I was listening to Gordon Fee this morning. He was talking about Philippians 3:20 that says, ” But our citizenship is in heaven.” Understanding this statement requires a little understanding of the city of Philippi.

Philippi was a colony of Rome. That means citizens of Philippi were first and foremost citizens of Rome, even though it was over 600 miles away. So, if you or I lived in the Macedonia area and wanted to know what distant Rome looked like, we could look at Philippi. Philippi was a representation of Rome in Macedonia.

In Philippians 3:20, Paul is saying that the Church is a colony of heaven on earth. Our home and true citizenship is in heaven even though we are currently living on earth. Fee states that if people want to ultimately know what heaven looks like, they need to be able to look at us and watch the way we live the life of God now — not as individual Christians, but in how we live in community with each other. Watching us embody the Good News of God’s life and love in intimate community is how people are convinced to abandon their current self-centered and selfish lives and embrace the new life of God, which is a communal life.

Now couple this with the Compline Prayer that’s posted this week on our website. It says, “O Lord, draw us ever nearer to your heart and so close that we might ever hear the hearts of all those who we journey with. Ever feeling their joy as our own; their peace as our own, their pains as our own; their struggles as our own.”

This is one of the keys to being a missional community. We’re missional as we embody the love and life of God as a community with one another, not just as individuals. As we do this we embody the Good News of God as a sign and foretaste of what “distant” heaven is going to be like. We live heaven on earth now.

I’m done, I’m done, I’m done! Stick a fork in me a call me “Done!” I just turned in my last assignment for my Master’s degree program today!

And now to find that elusive thing called (duh, duh, DUUUUH) a JOB!

I did something that I haven’t done in a looooong time. I read a kid’s novel. It’s called Treasure in an Oatmeal Box and it’s written by one of my favorite authors, Ken Gire. This is one of the authors God brought into my life when I was rebounding from severe burnout years ago. His gentle writings and ability to see the beauty of God in Scripture and life helped forge the new foundation my life now rests upon. I find it very interesting that a spiritual writer also writes children’s stories. Perhaps there is a lot of similarity between the two.

“Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.”
Mark 9:37

I read this book because after eighteen months of finishing my Master’s degree, I wanted to escape the realm of theory, to remind myself there are other aspects to life in God’s kingdom than discussions of globalization, or parsing words in a foreign language, or navigating through the minute nuances of Pauline theology.

This book allowed me to view life once again from the eyes of a ten year old. It reminded me that joys and disappointments, beauty and ugliness, life and death all form the fabric of our lives. It reminded me that if I can’t see life as a child, I really have no right to attempt understanding life from an adult perspective.

I’ll be honest, as I read this sad story of Kevin, a young developmentally disabled boy, I cried. I cried because of the beautiful way he saw God and life. I cried because of his compassion despite the unfairness dealt to him. I cried because of the way he touched the hearts of people around him. I cried because it reminded me of real suffering and unfairness and loss in the people around me. Then I realized that I never cried while reading a textbook.

Life from a child’s eyes keeps us rooted in reality. And the questions they ask are profound. I so often hear people say, “When I get to heaven, I’m going to ask God about…” I suspect when we get to heaven, the kids get first dibs with God. And I think as we listen to their heartfelt questions, ours will melt away and we will cry and we will worship.

A phase of my life is coming to an end. And like many endings, it’s bittersweet. Today, I handed in the second-to-last research paper of my Master’s degree. What a joy it was to drop that one off! Now only one more to go and by Friday, September 19th, I will be done with this phase of my academic career.

After studying for my final paper, I came home. And like I usually do, I checked the mail. You never know what to expect in the mail. I’m sure you know the routine. Flyers in the trash. Bills set aside to pay later. Magazines on the table to peruse leisurely. And then the letters. With the advent of email in my family, letters are rare. So when they come, they’re special. Someone took time to write, address, stamp and mail something that could have been shot off electronically in mere seconds.

Today, we received “the letter.” Knowing what it was, I tore it open before I even walked from the mailbox to the house. I’m not sure what I was expecting to feel. In fact writing this is an exercise of understanding my feelings. The only thing I can compare it to is perhaps receiving a wedding invitation from your ex-spouse who divorced you less than a year ago.

Imagine beginning a relationship with mutual commitment, promising to stand alongside each other, to grow alongside each other, to serve alongside each other, to pour out your life for each other, to grow old together. Imagine the excitement, the sense of purpose, the willingness to give everything for the other.

Now imagine your complete horror as you watch the relationship implode. The dreams, values and commitments changing beyond your control until finally you’re told that it’s for your own good that you leave. Promises broken. Dreams shattered. Calling questioned.

Yet, what do you do when so much has changed? So much pain has been inflicted? So many words have been spoken? What do you do when reconciliation is not an option?

And, my God, the questions can kill you. Was this God’s will? Or was that God’s will? Either way you answer the question, you find yourself on a trajectory that can drive you mad with “what if’s.”

So you move on. Through the hurt, you try to hope. Through the disappointment, you dare to dream again. You move on… You trust…

When “the letter” finally came, it was like finishing the last page of a good gripping story. You smile with moistened eyes. You know you can’t go back. And you know you shouldn’t go back. In fact, despite everything you miss, you don’t want to go back. The story has shaped you and you’re a different person. So you thank God for having been a part of the story and prepare for the new life-shaping story that lies ahead.

You pray for the best for everyone. Rejoice for those still in your life. Set your eyes on the horizon. And live.

One of my contemporary “heros” of the faith is Eugene Peterson. First, the guy really walks with God! Although I have never met him personally, it is so evident in his writings that his life is completely given over to becoming like the Savior who loves him. Second, the guy’s a genius. He is a brilliant Greek and Hebrew scholar. Having swam in the shallows of those biblical languages, I know how much time and energy has to be given to master them. Third, the guy is a pastor’s pastor. He has pastored the same church for over thirty years, resisting the contemporary fads of church growth, marketing, seeker-sensitivity, programming and all the other crap that John Drane calls the “McDonaldization of the Church.” (More on that another time.)

So when I read his preface in The Message this morning, I was deeply moved. Here is a man who has walked with God, God’s Word and God’s people with incredible integrity. And the result is this rich and beautiful text. And like anything, there’s always a story. I’ve included the entire preface below so you too can read the story behind this man, the God he loves, and the Message his life revolves around:

“If there is anything distinctive about The Message, perhaps it is because the text is shaped by the hand of a working pastor. For most of my adult life I have been given a primary responsibility for getting the message of the Bible into the lives of men and women with whom I worked. I did it from pulpit and lectern, in home Bible studies and at mountain retreats, through conversations in hospitals and nursing homes, over coffee in kitchens and while strolling on an ocean beach. The Message grew from the soil of forty years of pastoral work.

“As I worked at this task, this Word of God, which forms and transforms human lives, did form and transform human lives. Planted in the soil of my congregation and community the seed words of the Bible germinated and grew and matured. When it came time to do the work which is now The Message, I often felt that I was walking through an orchard at harvest time, plucking fully formed apples and peaches and plums from laden branches. There’s hardly a page in the Bible I did not see lived in some way or other by the men and women, saints and sinners, to whom I was a pastor—and then verified in my nation and culture.

“I didn’t start out as a pastor. I began my vocational life as a teacher and for several years taught the biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek in a theological seminary. I expected to live the rest of my life as a professor and scholar, teaching and writing and studying. But then my life took a sudden vocational turn to pastoring in a congregation.

“I was now plunged into quite a different world. The first noticeable difference was that nobody seemed to care much about the Bible, which so recently people had been paying me to teach them. Many of the people I worked with now knew virtually nothing about it, had never read it, and weren’t interested in learning. Many others had spent years reading it but for them it had gone flat through familiarity, reduced to clichés. Bored, they dropped it. And there weren’t many people in between. Very few were interested in what I considered my primary work, getting the words of the Bible into their heads and hearts, getting the message lived. They found newspapers and magazines, videos and pulp fiction more to their taste.

“Meanwhile I had taken on as my life work the responsibility of getting these very people to listen, really listen, to the message in this book. I knew I had my work cut out for me.

“I lived in two language worlds, the world of the Bible and the world of Today. I had always assumed they were the same world. But these people didn’t see it that way. So out of necessity I became a “translator” (although I wouldn’t have called it that then), daily standing on the border between two worlds, getting the language of the Bible that God used to create and save us, heal and bless us, judge and rule over us, into the language of Today that we use to gossip and tell stories, give directions and do business, sing songs and talk to our children.

“And all the time those old biblical languages, those powerful and vivid Hebrew and Greek originals, kept working their way underground in my speech, giving energy and sharpness to words and phrases, expanding the imagination of the people with whom I was working to hear the language of the Bible in the language of Today and the language of Today in the language of the Bible.

“I did that for thirty years in one congregation. And then one day (it was April 30, 1990) I got a letter from an editor asking me to work on a new version of the Bible along the lines of what I had been doing as a pastor. I agreed. The next ten years were harvest time. The Message is the result.

The Message is a reading Bible. It is not intended to replace the excellent study Bibles that are available. My intent here (as it was earlier in my congregation and community) is simply to get people reading it who don’t know that the Bible is read–able at all, at least by them, and to get people who long ago lost interest in the Bible to read it again. I leave out verse numbers to encourage unimpeded reading (no Bibles had verse numbers for the first 1,500 years). But I haven’t tried to make it easy—there is much in the Bible that is hard to understand. So at some point along the way, soon or late, it will be important to get a standard study Bible to facilitate further study. Meanwhile, read in order to live, praying as you read, ‘God, let it be with me just as you say.'”

I’ve been slowly reading The Orthodox Way by Bishop Kallistos Ware.

I wish I could read the book faster, but I’ve got way too much other reading and writing for school right now.

Any way, I came across this great passage:

“God’s motive in creation is his love. Rather than say that he created the universe out of nothing, we should say that he created it out of his own self, which is love. We should think, not of God the Manufacturer or God the Craftsman, but of God the Lover. Creation is an act not so much of his free will as of his free love… God’s love is in the literal sense of the word, ‘esctatic’ — a love that causes God to go out from himself and to create things other than himself. By voluntary choice God created the world in ‘esctatic’ love, so that there might be besides himself other beings to participate in the life and the love that are his.”

My modernistic mind sometimes forgets that the earth and universe around me aren’t simply the environment for our lives. The world and all it holds flows out of God’s love. No wonder John says that God loves the world so much that he gave his son. Paul unpacks it a bit more when he says in Colossians 1:19-20, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

All of this brings such new dimension to Romans 8:19 when Paul says, “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.” God created the world in love. He reconciles the world through his son in love. And creation waits for the heirs [sons/daughters] of God to be revealed, fully participating “in the life and love that are his.”

God of Creation, continue to teach me to drink from the spring that is your life and love. And as I’m transformed, may the world around me be transformed as well. Such was the way of Christ in his life. May it be so in mine. Amen.

I was pondering John 15 this morning.

In John 15:1-2, Jesus states, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” Two things stand out for me in these verses. First, God is the gardener. He knows exactly what to do in order to cultivate my life to bear fruit. Second, he’s intent on finding the right kind of fruit.

In this familiar statement, Jesus is using imagery from Isaiah 5:1-8, where Israel is called God’s vineyard. Yet, in Isaiah, God’s people failed to produce the appropriate fruit. What was God looking for? Verse 7 states, ” And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.” Ironically, God’s people were gathered to be a blessing to the nations (Gen 12:2) by embodying God’s justice, righteousness and love. Yet they have become like the surrounding nations, destroying one another and creation in destructive selfishness and sin.

By stating he is the true vine in John 15, Jesus is calling himself the true “Israel.” He is God’s people refocused and embodied in a single person. He is the fulfillment of God’s will for humanity and creation. He is the fulfillment of Abraham’s and Israel’s covenant to be a blessing to the nations. Those who are “in Christ” are now part of God’s people not by nationality, but by faith.

As the gardener in John 15, the Father still does not put up with fruitlessness. He is still looking for justice, righteousness and love in his people. And those who do not bear this fruit are cut off while those who do bear this fruit are cut back (pruned) in order to bear greater fruit.

This pruning process allows us to remain or abide deeper in Christ, which in turn bears greater fruit of justice, righteousness and love (John 15:5). Ultimately this fruit is the litmus test of whether we are truly Jesus’ disciples or not. He states in John 15:8, “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” Notice two things. First, God finally finds the fruit he has been anticipating from his vineyard for ages. He finds it not just in his son, but in those who claim to be his son’s students.

And second, by bearing this fruit, we are in sync with Jesus, who is the true Israel. Thus, we truly are members of God’s people by faith. This is what John meant later in 1 John 2:5-6 when he wrote, “This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.” Jesus’ students demonstrate they are truly “in him” and therefore God’s people by bearing fruit of justice, righteousness and love.

Father, may the circumstances of my life result in the pruning of my life. I trust you as my gardener, the one who truly knows how to cultivate my life to bear the greatest fruit and to bring you the greatest glory. Continue to cut me back so that I may learn how to remain in Jesus as his student and friend. And as I abide in Christ, may I truly become by grace what he is by nature — part of your true people who glorify you and bless the nations through justice, righteousness and love. Amen.

Wow! I feel like a new person with this really cool blog site. Thanks, Mark, for doing all the work to move us to the new service. It looks great.

We were reading the Good Samaritan parable (Luke 10:25-37) in class the other night. I find it very interesting that Jesus never answered the laywer’s question. The lawyer asked, “Who is my neighbor?” (vs. 29). But Jesus answered by telling him “This is how to be a neighbor” (vs. 36-37). In other words, he seems to shift the emphasis from “Who is there for me?” to “How can I be there for others?”

I think this speaks volumes to developing community and mission. What do you think?

Here’s a cool Wendell Berry poem.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

I read this piece on Len Hjalmarson’s website called http://www.nextreformation.com. It really spoke to me regarding the recent leg of my life journey. He writes:

“Wednesday night I sat with Nick and Andre to chat about our journeys and our dreams. It struck me as we chatted together that this town has been a place of birth and death for many dreams and many dreamers…

“We concluded that the Lord uses our dreams to wound us. Many dreams have to die, because at some point we become the center of our own dreams. How strange that it is our dreams that lead us to brokenness.

“And that process in turn moves us beyond ourselves; our pain leads us first to run from community, and finally to embrace it, if we don’t remain stuck in bitterness or cynicism.

“The rebuilding process is hard, however. Almost as hard as death, rebirth comes slowly and the transition is long and painful. We dare not hope again, dare not dream again, for fear of another and greater death. Yet if we cease dreaming, we cease to live. ‘A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, else what’s a heaven for?’ We sense this at a deep level, and so remain caught between the need to dream again, and the fear of further pain.”

These words remind me of Jesus, who’s dream of a new people of God ultimately led to his death. These words remind me of our community of faith, as we dream of becoming like Jesus, we too must die to ourselves. Yet, what is life without the dream. And what is the dream without the pain. It’s all part of a necessary process of stepping out of ourselves and into something grander and greater than us.

I’m so glad I get to dream with others.

In my devotional time in Thomas a’ Kempis’ Imitation of Christ, I came across these simple, yet profound words from the Voice of Christ:

“MY CHILD, I will teach you now the way of peace and true liberty.
Seek, child, to do the will of others rather than your own.
Always choose to have less rather than more.
Look always for the last place and seek to be beneath all others.
Always wish and pray that the will of God be fully carried out in you.
Behold, such will enter into the realm of peace and rest.”

I think if we Christians simply became people who naturally lived this out in our daily lives, the entire world would be a better place.

Tonight was a great night of Christian community. Our community of faith met over at Mark and Barb’s home for dinner, worship and some good discussion. Deb led a wonderful time of worship from Psalm 29. You just want to join in with the climactic verse in Psalm 29:9, “And in his temple all cry, ‘Glory!’” God is so awesome! As Viv said, “God’s like a purring lion.” He lets us come close, but his roar can be earth-shattering.

Mark also shared a great quote from Timothy Ware’s book, The Orthodox Way. He says, “God is in all things yet also beyond and above all things. He is both ‘greater than the great’ and ‘smaller than the small.’ In the words of St. Gregory Palamas, ‘He is everywhere and nowhere, his is everything and nothing.'” What a great reminder that God permeates his creation and is still greater than his creation. As C.S. Lewis has said, there isn’t a square inch of space or a split-second of time that hasn’t been claimed by God through Christ. He’s made it. He fills it. He is Lord over all of it. And we get to commune with him in all of it! That rocks!

We also had a great time of discussion from chapter 3 in Living on Purpose. One of the exercises was to pretend we were 70 years old and we were writing a letter to a loved one describing our life of faith over the years. Wow! What an amazing time of laughter and tears as people shared the deepest dreams of their hearts. It was more than just “What do I want to do with my life.” It was “What kind of person do I want to become for God.” My words can’t begin to describe what I felt during that time of deep and honest disclosure. These are my friends, the people I love with all my heart. As they read their eloquent dreams for their lives, I fell in love with them even more. I couldn’t help but be moved as they revealed such genuine aspirations to live their whole lives for Jesus.

I also love the “Pace” (Peace) flag that Jennifer shared. That flag is flown all over Italy. Sometimes, we Americans are so myopic in our focus. There is a world beyond our borders and even beyond our vision that is crying out for peace. As apprentices to the Prince of Peace, may our lives look beyond our own little space and time and toward a day where God’s Shalom will cover the earth. And may we contribute to its coming now. As NT Wright states, may we stand in prayer within the places of suffering. May the groaning of our heart match the groaning of this planet and the groaning of the Spirit who intercedes in us (Romans 8:22-26). “The LORD gives strength to his people; the LORD blesses his people with peace” (Psalm 29:11). Lord, may the Sons and Daughters of God be finally revealed and may our lives bring your peace to this world!

I also want to thank God for bringing two new friends from England — Viv and Helen — into our community’s life. Even though we only get to visit with them for a night and a morning on their holiday from England, we were blessed with their company and new friendship in the Lord.

Father, thank you. You enrich our lives with friendship and love, with laughter and tears, with dreams and hopes. And intermingled in all of this life is your presence. Thank you for initiating the journey we’re on. Thank you for setting our course. And thank you for traveling with us. Amen.

Paul Kaak taught at my Fuller class tonight. He shared some thoughts from Wendell Berry. Wendell Berry is the author of thirty-two books of essays, poetry and novels. He’s a farmer’s farmer, working a farm in Henry County, Kentucky since 1965. He is a former professor of English at the University of Kentucky and a past fellow of both the Guggenheim Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

In addition, Eugene Peterson, author of The Message says everyone should read all of Berry’s material.

The following is from his “Prayers and Sayings of the Mad Farmer.” I think these thoughts speak at multiple levels of where we live — our lives, relationships, mission, ecology, social issues, etc. Read and muse.

“Don’t worry and fret about the crops. After you have done all you can for them, let them stand in the weather on their own.

“If the crop of any one year was all, a man would have to cut his throat every time it hailed.

“But the real products of any year’s work are the farmer’s mind and the cropland itself.

“If he raises a good crop at the cost of belittling himself and diminishing the ground, then he has gained nothing. He will have to begin all over the next spring, worse off than before.

“Let him receive the season’s increment into his mind. Let him work it into the soil.

“The finest growth that farmland can produce is a careful farmer.

“Make the human race a better head. Make the earth a better piece of ground.”

I love those last two lines. The goal of mission is to improve the “land” so that in the following generations, the land will be better and better. It’s about continual transformation, the participation of Jesus’ prayer, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

A week or so ago, I came across some notes that Eric Keck provided from a meeting he had with Richard Foster. Two things stood out as extremely relevant to our community of faith.

First, is Foster’s definition of a pastor. Our American Christian culture has redefined the pastor as a CEO of an organization, a dynamic public speaker, a therapist, or a combination of the three. Yet, I think Foster hits the nail on the head when he states that a pastor is someone who “discerns what each person’s spiritual need is and helps them achieve it or capture it.” In this light, a pastor is a spiritual director who is both sensitive to the person’s needs and God’s activity in that person’s life. He or she is not the dispenser of knowledge, but a coach who helps each person discover Christ in a fresh way, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2:3).

Second, Foster gives his guidelines for relationships. I think this is an essential and practical aspect of embodying God’s fullness and kingdom. Relationships are the key infrastructure of God’s kingdom, since that is where divine love is embodied and experienced. Foster states that in dealing with others:

Encourage – always
Advise – once in a great while
Rebuke- only when absolutely necessary
Condemn – never

All I can say is “Brilliant!”

One of the most important aspects of embodying, demonstrating and announcing God’s kingdom in our lives is understanding God’s kingdom within creation. There is an unbiblical dualism that resides in the minds of many Christians — i.e, spiritual vs. material, sacred vs. secular, supernatural vs. natural. This false dichotomy hinders our representation and participation in God’s full kingdom, relegating it to the spiritual, sacred, supernatural category and making it almost irrelevant to real life. This also makes the physical creation, where we spend all of our time both here and in God’s future, seem unimportant. Ultimately, we end up with unbiblical views of God’s future as depicted in the Left Behind series.

God is not throwing away or destroying his creation in a ball of fire. He’s renewing heaven and earth. Immediately following Paul’s discussion about Christians being the children and co-heirs of God, he states in Romans 8:19, 21, “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed… creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”

All of this is to say that God’s kingdom encompasses all of life. I heard N.T. Wright state that there isn’t a place in the cosmos or a split second in time that hasn’t already been claimed by the Lordship of Jesus. Therefore, our dualistic worldview is unbiblical and prevents us from adequately embodying God’s kingdom in our lives. We need to reconstruct a more appropriate and biblical worldview.

Eastern Orthodox theologian, Alexander Schmemann, has written a great book called For the Life of the World that addresses this issue. I’m going to end with some quotes from his book:

“But the Bible, we have seen, also begins with man as a hungry being, with the man who is that which he eats. The perspective, however, is wholly different, for nowhere in the Bible do we find the dichotomies which for us are the self-evident framework of all approaches to religion. In the Bible the food that man eats, the world of which he must partake in order to live, is given to him by God, and it is given as communion with God. The world as man’s food is not something ‘material’ and limited to material functions, thus different from, and opposed to, the specifically ‘spiritual’ functions by which man is related to God. All that exists is God’s gift to man, and it all exists to make God known to man, to make man’s life communion with God. It is divine love made food, made life for man. God blesses everything He creates, and, in biblical language, this means that He makes all creation the sign and means of His presence and wisdom, love and revelation: ‘O taste and see that the Lord is good.’ Man is a hungry being. But he is hungry for God. Behind all the hunger of our life is God. All desire is finally a desire for Him. To be sure, man is not the only hungry being. All that exists lives by ‘eating.’ The whole creation depends on food. But the unique position of man in the universe is that he alone is to bless God for the food and the life he receives from Him. He alone is to respond to God’s blessing with his blessing.”

“The world is a fallen world because it has fallen away from the awareness that God is all in all.”

“In our perspective, however, the ‘original’ sin is not primarily that man has ‘disobeyed’ God; the sin is that he ceased to be hungry for Him and for Him alone, ceased to see his whole life depending on the whole world as a sacrament of communion with God. The sin was not that man neglected his religious duties. The sin was that he thought of God in terms of religion, i.e., opposing him to life. The only real fall of man is his non-eucharistic life in a non-eucharistic world. The fall is not that he preferred world to God, distorted the balance between the spiritual and material, but that he made the world material, whereas he was to have transformed it into ‘life in God,’ filled with meaning and spirit.”

“In Christ, life — life in all its totality — was returned to man, given again as a sacrament and communion, made Eucharist.”

When our vision for God’s kingdom expands to include all of creation, then a door opens for the apprentices and ambassadors of Christ to bring his kingdom into the totality of life and creation. As Paul states in Colossians 1:18-19, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

Q: So what makes God’s people unique from any other group?
A: God’s kingdom.

As God’s people, we are sent as Jesus was sent (John 20:21). As such, we are invited to receive, enter, inherit and therefore, become completely defined by God’s divine reign — his presence, his character, his power, his purposes. We live daily in the present, experiencing the inbreakings of a future kingdom that anticipates a redeemed and empowered humanity living in harmonious love with God and each other on a renewed earth that is permeated with God’s glory (Isaiah 65:17-25; Rev. 21:1-4 ff).

That present reality and future hope, according to George Hunsberger, allows the Church to uniquely represent God’s divine reign in three ways. First, we embody the reign of God as a community of Jesus’ apprentices who live under God’s authority as he did. He states, “Before the church is called to do or say anything, it is called and sent to be the unique community of those who live under the reign of God.”

Second, we demonstrate the reign of God as its servants, exercising its authority over brokenness, domination, and alienation through compassionate response to human need.

Third, and as a natural byproduct of the other two, we announce the reign of God as its messengers, authentically proclaiming a divine life available in Jesus.

God’s people are unique in that we are a community of people who are to be living from the unending artesian well of God’s divine life so as to embody, demonstate and announce God’s fullness and reign. Kingdom life is to live in the reality Paul expressed, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God.”

Our daily energy comes from the unseen kingdom of God, not our physical bodies. Our daily vision comes from the richness of God’s kingdom as defined by Jesus, not our jobs, relationships, economics, politics or other agenda. Our daily values emerge from the grand story of God’s kingdom on earth launched in Genesis 1 and propelling human history to its climax in Revelation 22. My entire life is to be energized, envisioned and propelled by a divine life that isn’t mine, but dwells deep within me through Christ (John 7:38).

And as we live this divine life in our daily lives, we become a kind of continuation of Christ’s incarnation. We become the unique presence of God in human flesh walking on Planet Earth. We represent the unseen kingdom in real and tangible ways like Jesus did.

A few of weeks ago, I met with my friend Mike McNichols, who is leading a missional church in Fullerton. You can check it out at Soulfarers.org.

He asked a question that’s been banging around in my head: What does the church offer that makes it unique from any other organization or group? What a great question! It’s so easy to get muddled in all of the “stuff” that makes up being the church that we can lose sight of the forest because of the trees.

So what makes us unique as God’s sent people?

Is it spiritual formation? If we’re primarily about becoming better people, then we become just another form of self-actualization or self-help like Oprah or Dr. Phil.

Is it community? If we’re primarily about becoming a family or a close group of friends, then we’re just another form of social club.

Is it mission? If we’re primarily about doing good to others like building houses or benevolence, then we’re just another form of the Rotary club or other humanitarian organization.

So what makes us unique? What are we primarily about? As I keep reading through the New Testament, I’m struck with its message — God loves us so much that he has made his life and kingdom available through his Son.

It was Jesus’ message, “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!”

It was Paul’s message, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.”

It was Peter’s message, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”

It was John’s message, “And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.”

Let’s talk more about the kingdom next time…

Last time I talked a bit about being chosen for community. Todd Hunter sparked some thinking in me when he said we need to re-examine the idea of spiritual gifts, especially in light of Ephesians 4. In that passage, Paul says Jesus “gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers.” In this context, the gift given to the church is not spiritual gifts, but people. The gifts reside in people who live in and serve the community.

Unfortunately, the American Church has distorted the concept of spiritual gifts. Through our theology and programming, we train people to view spiritual gifts as commodities that they bring to community. And in this light, those who have more gifts or greater gifts or more developed gifts are more valuable than those who don’t.

And in some instances, the gifts become more valuable than the person. For example we use phrases such as “We need people with the gift of intercession” or “we recognize these people as having the gift of leadership.” This prioritizes gifts above people, both defining people by what they can do and determining their value in the community by what they do. This, in turn, de-emphasizes character and spiritual formation, oftentimes lifting up people with little Christlikeness as the leaders and models for the congregation. And in some cases, it creates spiritual pathologies of identity crisis within the congregation members.

However, I believe the biblical view is that the individual Christian is the spiritual gift. In that person dwells the Holy Spirit who graces us with manifestations (or “gracelets”) of God’s reign as he chooses. These “gracelets” are embodied in the person. They are the manifestations of the love and power of the indwelling Holy Spirit through the unique personality, experience and life of each person in community. In other words, you cannot extract spiritual gifts from a person and send them to the community. They are completely meaningless outside of the person.

This is key: the individual in whom the Spirit of God dwells IS the spiritual gift and therefore, the individual is necessary for the community above and beyond the “gracelets.”

What that means on one level is that I don’t have to leave my community to search for the person with the “anointing” or gift for prophecy or healing or whatever else I need in my life. That is downright consumerism and has no place in the Body of Christ. Leaving the community for personal reasons is in a sense rejecting God’s gift of the community members — a common travesty in the American Church. Most “gracelets” are situational anyways. In other words, they manifest themselves through the community members in the situation as the Spirit dictates.

Christ-followers in the community, then, don’t need to be taught how to develop their “spiritual gifts.” That’s a commodities-orientation that screws everything up. Rather, they need to be taught how to BE spiritual gifts. They need to be trained how to live selfless and obedient lives that are sensitive to the Spirit’s activity and desires all the time. They need to be trained to become the kind of people who are easily able to respond humbly, selflessly and obediently to the Spirit all the time. They need to be trained to live in the Spirit so they can produce the character of the Spirit (i.e. fruit of the Spirit) so their lives can bear the weight of the Spirit’s power and manifestation. This is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus anyways.

As disciples live in community, my brothers, sisters and I are God’s gift to each other. As disciples, we have learned how to naturally and humbly consider others better than ourselves. The Holy Spirit, who dwells in each of us, will then manifest himself, as he chooses, as the community easily loves, cares, and serves each other.

In this way, the community members — who are themselves the spiritual gifts of God to the community — “prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” Then the Body of Christ “grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”