The First Sunday in Lent
In my post “Beginning Lent” I pointed to the very ordinariness of our daily lives as the place to look for Lenten treasures. For this first Sunday in Lent I want us to consider what is at stake in embracing this season as a season of repentance and suffering for the sake of growth in knowing and following our Lord Jesus Christ. We North Americans do not easily embrace suffering. Rather we run from it as fast as we can. A call to embrace suffering, then, will need a compelling rationale. I suggest that a conversation in Graham Greene’s "Dr. Fischer of Geneva or the Comb Party" offers such a rationale. Here it is for your reflection:
One character addresses another:
“Do you have a soul?”
“I think so,” the other answers.
“Well I’m sure you have a soul!”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’ve suffered.”
God bless!!
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
A New Christianity - Ch.3
McLaren writes ch.3 in a confessional mode. Drawing on Puritan pastor John Robinson's certainty that we await more light from God's Word, McLaren finds freedom to confess ecclesiastical missteps.
-"We acknowledge that we have made a mess of what Jesus started."
-"We affirm that we are wrong and Jesus is right."
-"We choose not to defend what we have done and what we have become.
-"We understand that many good Christians will not want to participate in our quest, and we welcome their charitable critique."
-"We acknowledge that we have created many Christianities up to this point, and they call for reassessement and, in many cacses, repentance."
-"We choose to seek a better path into the future than the one we have been on!"
-"We desirre to be born again as disciples of Jesus Christ."
-"We pray that God will create something new and beautiful in and among us for the good of all creation and to the glory of the living God."
These "confessions" and "hopes" for the future of the Christian movement are salutary.I hope we would all embrace them. They seem especially pertinent as we now enter Lent.
I find it interesting that in my own reworking of evangelism appropriate for the 21st century I concluded that a credible witness in our time must also begin with a confession. This seems to me a part of reading accurately the context in which we live. In short, I find ch.3 a quite helpful and genuine beginning on the "quest" Brian sees us needing to take.
My one reservation is the same one I noted in the first post on this book. I do not think the image of a "quest" is bears the "gravitas" needed to galvanize a "new kind of Christianity." Nor do I think it best captures the nature of the movement JEsus started, what I have come to call God's Counter-Revolutionary movement to re-establish God's reign over the world. More on this in later posts.
-"We acknowledge that we have made a mess of what Jesus started."
-"We affirm that we are wrong and Jesus is right."
-"We choose not to defend what we have done and what we have become.
-"We understand that many good Christians will not want to participate in our quest, and we welcome their charitable critique."
-"We acknowledge that we have created many Christianities up to this point, and they call for reassessement and, in many cacses, repentance."
-"We choose to seek a better path into the future than the one we have been on!"
-"We desirre to be born again as disciples of Jesus Christ."
-"We pray that God will create something new and beautiful in and among us for the good of all creation and to the glory of the living God."
These "confessions" and "hopes" for the future of the Christian movement are salutary.I hope we would all embrace them. They seem especially pertinent as we now enter Lent.
I find it interesting that in my own reworking of evangelism appropriate for the 21st century I concluded that a credible witness in our time must also begin with a confession. This seems to me a part of reading accurately the context in which we live. In short, I find ch.3 a quite helpful and genuine beginning on the "quest" Brian sees us needing to take.
My one reservation is the same one I noted in the first post on this book. I do not think the image of a "quest" is bears the "gravitas" needed to galvanize a "new kind of Christianity." Nor do I think it best captures the nature of the movement JEsus started, what I have come to call God's Counter-Revolutionary movement to re-establish God's reign over the world. More on this in later posts.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Beginning Lent
Beginning Lent
“Blessed are the poor in S/spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Lent is the season when the church says “Stop!” We are all so addicted to hurry in our 24/7 wired and connected world that it might better be said, “Unplug!” And once unplugged, Lent advises us to “count the cost” of our participation, willed or not, in a world that moves at such a pace seeking an ever elusive “Holy Grail” of we know not quite what. Among the costs, we might well discover, the emptiness of which Jesus’ Beatitude speaks. And in such discovery, Lent truly begins for us.
In our hurried quest for whatever it is we think (or are told) we seek, we grow blind to the pace and grace of the ordinary. We forget God’s expressed desire to be “Immanuel,” God with us, God in human flesh, Jesus of Nazareth. We buy the illusion that the important, the significant, the meaningful are never where we are, rather, they exist, if at all, somewhere else and are accessed by something other than our ordinary, day-in-and-day-out lives. Thus we seek, especially in Lent, to find some new means to hurry to the end of the rainbow. There, so we believe, an intrepid seeker can find a pot full of spiritual benefits.
So some of us give up something for Lent; others add some kind of spiritual discipline. Some take on a “Forty Day” program of renewal and enrichment for Lent. Others attend regular and special worship services more often. Many go on some kind of retreat or conference. What is common is all these responses to Lent is that all involve doing something or going somewhere different than we do in the normal course of life.
Consider this Hasidic tale (as told by John Westerhoff in A Pilgrim People, 74):
“A poor Jew named Isaac lived in a hovel far from the city. One night Isaac dreamed that if he made a long difficult journey to a far-off place he would find a bag of gold underneath a bridge leading to the main gate. It seemed foolish, but he made his way painfully and slowly to that place. He arrived weary, hungry, tired and sore, and found the bridge heavily guarded. Forlorn, he told the guard of his dream, but the guard only laughed. “You old fool! Only last night I had a dream that if I were to journey to a small village, I would find a treasure behind the fireplace in the miserable home of an old Jew named Isaac. Be off, old man!” Isaac made his way home and so at last found the treasure.”
Where will your Lenten “treasure” be found this year?
“Blessed are the poor in S/spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Lent is the season when the church says “Stop!” We are all so addicted to hurry in our 24/7 wired and connected world that it might better be said, “Unplug!” And once unplugged, Lent advises us to “count the cost” of our participation, willed or not, in a world that moves at such a pace seeking an ever elusive “Holy Grail” of we know not quite what. Among the costs, we might well discover, the emptiness of which Jesus’ Beatitude speaks. And in such discovery, Lent truly begins for us.
In our hurried quest for whatever it is we think (or are told) we seek, we grow blind to the pace and grace of the ordinary. We forget God’s expressed desire to be “Immanuel,” God with us, God in human flesh, Jesus of Nazareth. We buy the illusion that the important, the significant, the meaningful are never where we are, rather, they exist, if at all, somewhere else and are accessed by something other than our ordinary, day-in-and-day-out lives. Thus we seek, especially in Lent, to find some new means to hurry to the end of the rainbow. There, so we believe, an intrepid seeker can find a pot full of spiritual benefits.
So some of us give up something for Lent; others add some kind of spiritual discipline. Some take on a “Forty Day” program of renewal and enrichment for Lent. Others attend regular and special worship services more often. Many go on some kind of retreat or conference. What is common is all these responses to Lent is that all involve doing something or going somewhere different than we do in the normal course of life.
Consider this Hasidic tale (as told by John Westerhoff in A Pilgrim People, 74):
“A poor Jew named Isaac lived in a hovel far from the city. One night Isaac dreamed that if he made a long difficult journey to a far-off place he would find a bag of gold underneath a bridge leading to the main gate. It seemed foolish, but he made his way painfully and slowly to that place. He arrived weary, hungry, tired and sore, and found the bridge heavily guarded. Forlorn, he told the guard of his dream, but the guard only laughed. “You old fool! Only last night I had a dream that if I were to journey to a small village, I would find a treasure behind the fireplace in the miserable home of an old Jew named Isaac. Be off, old man!” Isaac made his way home and so at last found the treasure.”
Where will your Lenten “treasure” be found this year?
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Review of McLaren's A N EW KIND OF CHRISTIANITY
Brian McLaren’s new book A New Kind of Christianity is now out. McLaren is now a veteran of what is called the “emerging church movement” (whatever exactly that is!). This book is a kind of consolidation of his questions, insights, and experiences of moving among many groups of people around the world who are disaffected with the church as they/we have experienced it. McLaren distills this wealth of “data” into ten questions he believes captures the spirit that’s “blowin’ in the wind” among these folk. Assured of a wide readership, A New Kind of Christianity is worth spending some time on in the next few days.
In the first chapter McLaren sets the table by recounting some of his own journey from evangelical certainty to awareness of “appearanccs” (a Medieval term for anomalies [discrepancies] in observing the movement of stars and planets to a deconstruction and reconstruction of his faith. Or, as he prefers to put it, “a new way of believing.”
If you are reading this book you probably do not need to be persuaded of the sins and follies of the church through the centuries and millennia. McLaren invokes the Woody Allen line that if Jesus were ever to see what his church has done in his name, he’d “never stop throwing up.” (12) And he’s right! The message of the risen Christ to the church in Laodicea in Revelation 3:14-22 suggests biblical precedent for such an image!
Chapter 2 provides an introduction to the “ten questions” Mclaren intends to raise for consideration and conversation. He prefaces these questions with a general statement:
“It’s time for a new quest, launched by new questions, a quest across denomin ations around the world, a quest for new ways to believe and new ways to live and serve faithfully in the way of Jesus, a quest for a new kind of Christian faith.” (18)
The ten questions follow:
1. What is the overarching story line of the Bible?
2. How should the Bible be understood?
3. Is God violent?
4. Who is Jesus and why is he important?
5. What is the gospel?
6. What do we do about the church?
7. Can we find a way to address human sexuality without fighting about it?
8. Can we find a better way of viewing the future?
9. How should followers of Jesus relate to people of other religions?
10. How can we translate our great quest into action?
Without having read more than these first two chapters, a couple of things struck me. First, there a basically two questions McLaren raises, questions 5 and 10. Questions 1-4 are sub-questions of question 5 while questions 6-9 are sub-questions of 10. I hope McLaren will work toward some integration around these central issues rather than simply treat each as discrete questions. Second, I dooubt if “quest” is the best image or metaphor for what we need?
I have just completed a manuscript entitled “The Incredible Shrinking Gospel: The Crisis of Evangelism in the 21st Century.” In it I have been occupied with many of the concerns and issues McLaren addresses. However, I am persuaded that it is not our quest for “a new kind of Christianity “which finally matters as it is our enlisting in God’s purposes and following God’s intentions. As I worked my way through what I believe is the central question for evangelism, “What is the Gospel?” (Brian’s question 5), I was led to the image of the church as God’s “Counter-Revolutionary” movement to re-establish God’s rule over his world. I find this dynamic and urgent imagery raises in an acute fashion issues of gospel and mission that need to be re-thought anew in North America. This image also suggests that the current structuring of the church in our land is not hospitable to this kind of gospel and self-understanding of the church. Thus, much needs to be re-imagined and configured differently for us to act faithfully on what the Bible calls the “good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1).
I look forward, then, to reading McLaren’s work in tandem with my own and see what new insights or understandings emerge. I’ll be back in couple of days with some reflections on ch.3:”A Prayer on the Beach.”
In the first chapter McLaren sets the table by recounting some of his own journey from evangelical certainty to awareness of “appearanccs” (a Medieval term for anomalies [discrepancies] in observing the movement of stars and planets to a deconstruction and reconstruction of his faith. Or, as he prefers to put it, “a new way of believing.”
If you are reading this book you probably do not need to be persuaded of the sins and follies of the church through the centuries and millennia. McLaren invokes the Woody Allen line that if Jesus were ever to see what his church has done in his name, he’d “never stop throwing up.” (12) And he’s right! The message of the risen Christ to the church in Laodicea in Revelation 3:14-22 suggests biblical precedent for such an image!
Chapter 2 provides an introduction to the “ten questions” Mclaren intends to raise for consideration and conversation. He prefaces these questions with a general statement:
“It’s time for a new quest, launched by new questions, a quest across denomin ations around the world, a quest for new ways to believe and new ways to live and serve faithfully in the way of Jesus, a quest for a new kind of Christian faith.” (18)
The ten questions follow:
1. What is the overarching story line of the Bible?
2. How should the Bible be understood?
3. Is God violent?
4. Who is Jesus and why is he important?
5. What is the gospel?
6. What do we do about the church?
7. Can we find a way to address human sexuality without fighting about it?
8. Can we find a better way of viewing the future?
9. How should followers of Jesus relate to people of other religions?
10. How can we translate our great quest into action?
Without having read more than these first two chapters, a couple of things struck me. First, there a basically two questions McLaren raises, questions 5 and 10. Questions 1-4 are sub-questions of question 5 while questions 6-9 are sub-questions of 10. I hope McLaren will work toward some integration around these central issues rather than simply treat each as discrete questions. Second, I dooubt if “quest” is the best image or metaphor for what we need?
I have just completed a manuscript entitled “The Incredible Shrinking Gospel: The Crisis of Evangelism in the 21st Century.” In it I have been occupied with many of the concerns and issues McLaren addresses. However, I am persuaded that it is not our quest for “a new kind of Christianity “which finally matters as it is our enlisting in God’s purposes and following God’s intentions. As I worked my way through what I believe is the central question for evangelism, “What is the Gospel?” (Brian’s question 5), I was led to the image of the church as God’s “Counter-Revolutionary” movement to re-establish God’s rule over his world. I find this dynamic and urgent imagery raises in an acute fashion issues of gospel and mission that need to be re-thought anew in North America. This image also suggests that the current structuring of the church in our land is not hospitable to this kind of gospel and self-understanding of the church. Thus, much needs to be re-imagined and configured differently for us to act faithfully on what the Bible calls the “good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1).
I look forward, then, to reading McLaren’s work in tandem with my own and see what new insights or understandings emerge. I’ll be back in couple of days with some reflections on ch.3:”A Prayer on the Beach.”
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