Week 4 brings new perspective.
Sunday's preach was on the topic of immigration. Speaking into a very real issue, at a very real time for a very real reason - the Gospel.
The Gospel is about real life, not really about heaven in the future.
The Gospel is about transformation and God's rule and reign now.
His rule and reign in a world that rejects it.
The Gospel is all about real issues in real time.
So, the Scripture's teach that Christ followers are "strangers in a strange land" (1 Peter 1 & 2).
To understand this brings new perspective on how Christians engage with the issue of immigration - both documented and undocumented.
Scripture is teaching that because of the distinct and different lifestyles of Christ followers, a lifestyle that is different that the majority of people - the society in which they live will view them as strangers.
Now here's the twist. In our country, if Christians lived as Christ expects us to we would be living at the margins of our society .......and who would we meet there - the immigrant!!
This is the charge, or should I say the opportunity.
If Christians lived as Christ expects us to live, a mass of people who politicians have turned to to help win the past three elections and bring them to the White House, would have to engage justly and fairly with the immigration issue.
As long as Christians - who should be the loudest voice standing with the migrant - stay silent; politicians can ignore it.
Ours is the Christian generation that can accomplish historic things.
This is the generation that could abolish world famine; this is the generation that could eradicate malaria as a killing disease; and ours is the generation that could create an equitable and fair immigration policy for the US.
What an opportunity!
It comes with the challenge for Christians to live on the margins as Christ expects us to.
To live the Gospel!
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Week 2 or 3 ...spirituality is living more than lessons.
Week 2 or is it week 3?
Begun running some bigger distances than I have for a couple of years. Wondering/testing if this is the year I try for another marathon.
So I pulled out a new type of marathon training plan - the Hansen plan.
In my 14 weeks training plan I will cover a total distance of 622 miles.
The last time I did a marathon I ran 3 days a week and covered a total of 380 miles.
The short of the Hansen - kill you before the race date so you'll never actually run a marathon!
Or .....run 622 miles so that when you run a 26.2 mile marathon it will feel a mere walk in the park.
So I've begun.
I'll give it a few weeks trial and see how my body holds out. Then decide.
But interesting methodology.
Run double what I've run in training before - and yet - while my other training plans had four runs that were either 18 miles or 20 miles in total the Hansen plan only sees me reach 16 miles (still 10.2 short of marathon distance)!
The philosophy includes you may not do a big 20 miler, but when you do your 16 miler, the runs you've put in the days before and the days after will make the 16 miler feel like a 26 miler without the actual pounding of the concrete and the wear and tear on your body.
So now, as a church pastor, I have to now try and link this methodology and my attempt to train with it, to something to do with Jesus!!!
Here's the best I can come up with:
......nope, got nothing.
But then maybe that's a good thing.
Maybe this constant need to try to spiritualize everything, misses it.
Maybe its the doing itself that is spiritual not a lesson you can learn from it.
Maybe its not about finding a spiritual parallel but living spiritual in whatever parallel you are in.
Maybe my marathon training can be spiritual.
What I won't now do is list a whole number of ways it can be. That misses it as well.
What I will do is take on the challenge of this training wanting to know God in the midst of it.
Spirituality is living more than lessons.
Begun running some bigger distances than I have for a couple of years. Wondering/testing if this is the year I try for another marathon.
So I pulled out a new type of marathon training plan - the Hansen plan.
In my 14 weeks training plan I will cover a total distance of 622 miles.
The last time I did a marathon I ran 3 days a week and covered a total of 380 miles.
The short of the Hansen - kill you before the race date so you'll never actually run a marathon!
Or .....run 622 miles so that when you run a 26.2 mile marathon it will feel a mere walk in the park.
So I've begun.
I'll give it a few weeks trial and see how my body holds out. Then decide.
But interesting methodology.
Run double what I've run in training before - and yet - while my other training plans had four runs that were either 18 miles or 20 miles in total the Hansen plan only sees me reach 16 miles (still 10.2 short of marathon distance)!
The philosophy includes you may not do a big 20 miler, but when you do your 16 miler, the runs you've put in the days before and the days after will make the 16 miler feel like a 26 miler without the actual pounding of the concrete and the wear and tear on your body.
So now, as a church pastor, I have to now try and link this methodology and my attempt to train with it, to something to do with Jesus!!!
Here's the best I can come up with:
......nope, got nothing.
But then maybe that's a good thing.
Maybe this constant need to try to spiritualize everything, misses it.
Maybe its the doing itself that is spiritual not a lesson you can learn from it.
Maybe its not about finding a spiritual parallel but living spiritual in whatever parallel you are in.
Maybe my marathon training can be spiritual.
What I won't now do is list a whole number of ways it can be. That misses it as well.
What I will do is take on the challenge of this training wanting to know God in the midst of it.
Spirituality is living more than lessons.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Week 1 Non Violence: A Dangerous Idea!
I know its only the first week of 2011, but here's my best book so far in the new year:
Non-Violence:The History of a Dangerous Idea @ Mark Kurlansky.
Maybe as we start a new year we need to revisit how we live in a world that annually is growing more violent than the years/centuries before.
Kurlansky is not writing from a Christian perspective but he does quote a powerful divine decree "those who take the sword shall perish with the sword."
Does it not seem ironic that a nation that purports to hold to Christian heritage holds the most powerful military force in the history of humankind!
The classic pamphlet on this subject was written in 1815 by David Low Dodge, the man who is considered the first American peace activist. A devout Christian, who at the end of the 1812 war formed the New York Peace Society. Risking the accusation of being disloyal and unpatriotic (how things never seem to change) he postponed his publication until the war was over. It's title was "War Inconsistent With The Religion of Jesus Christ."
Here's a most thought provoking quote from his writing:
Perhaps the most fascinating and disturbing insight that Kurlansky reveals is that throughout history though most religions shun warfare and hold nonviolence as the only moral route toward political change - governing people have always shunned nonviolence and co-opted religion and its language into their violent campaigns.
"If someone were to come along who would not compromise, a rebel who insisted on taking the only moral path, rejecting violence in all its forms, such a person would seem so menacing that he would be killed, and after his death he would be canonized or deified, because a saint is less dangerous than a rebel. The first and most prominent example was a Jew named Jesus!"
Ouch!!!
Gets you thinking about what it means to be a follower of the rebel Jesus.
Non-Violence:The History of a Dangerous Idea @ Mark Kurlansky.
Maybe as we start a new year we need to revisit how we live in a world that annually is growing more violent than the years/centuries before.
Kurlansky is not writing from a Christian perspective but he does quote a powerful divine decree "those who take the sword shall perish with the sword."
Does it not seem ironic that a nation that purports to hold to Christian heritage holds the most powerful military force in the history of humankind!
The classic pamphlet on this subject was written in 1815 by David Low Dodge, the man who is considered the first American peace activist. A devout Christian, who at the end of the 1812 war formed the New York Peace Society. Risking the accusation of being disloyal and unpatriotic (how things never seem to change) he postponed his publication until the war was over. It's title was "War Inconsistent With The Religion of Jesus Christ."
Here's a most thought provoking quote from his writing:
"The professed object of war generally is to preserve liberty and produce a lasting peace; but war never did and never will preserve liberty and produce a lasting peace, for it is a divine decree that all nations who take the sword shall perish with the sword. War is no more adapted to preserve liberty and produce a lasting peace than midnight darkness is to produce noonday light."
Perhaps the most fascinating and disturbing insight that Kurlansky reveals is that throughout history though most religions shun warfare and hold nonviolence as the only moral route toward political change - governing people have always shunned nonviolence and co-opted religion and its language into their violent campaigns.
"If someone were to come along who would not compromise, a rebel who insisted on taking the only moral path, rejecting violence in all its forms, such a person would seem so menacing that he would be killed, and after his death he would be canonized or deified, because a saint is less dangerous than a rebel. The first and most prominent example was a Jew named Jesus!"
Ouch!!!
Gets you thinking about what it means to be a follower of the rebel Jesus.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Day 364 Disequilibrium
Day 364.
So my Executive Minister had a listen to my controversial Christmas preach (the one where I talked about how Jesus failed) and he told me that I did well at creating disequilibrium.
Disequilibrium [noun] - the loss of equilibrium attributable to an unstable situation in which some forces outweigh others.
Was he telling me that my thesis was 'unstable'?
Or, was he telling me that the forces of insightful new truth outweighed the forces of suggestive heresy...... or vice versus?
But I've found that disequilibrium is an ideal state for re-creation.
I wonder if this was the reality in Genesis 1 - the formless and empty of verse 2
The tōhû wābōhû, a state of disequilibrium (wasteness, emptiness and darkness) was primal conditions for God to move and bring design and shape to. This is precisely the territory that God's creative power manifests itself in.
Sunday's.
Ever entered a Sunday service and everything from the past week is sticking to you. All the junk you picked up as you tried, but could have tried harder, to not conform to the world. Ever entered a Sunday service just desperate to reorient your life back to God and his ways.
I often enter a Sunday feeling formless and empty. drained and bruised by a week of real life living.
Primal conditions for God to move and re-create.
Maybe a state of disequilibrium is the best way to enter, but not leave Sunday.
So my Executive Minister had a listen to my controversial Christmas preach (the one where I talked about how Jesus failed) and he told me that I did well at creating disequilibrium.
Disequilibrium [noun] - the loss of equilibrium attributable to an unstable situation in which some forces outweigh others.
Was he telling me that my thesis was 'unstable'?
Or, was he telling me that the forces of insightful new truth outweighed the forces of suggestive heresy...... or vice versus?
But I've found that disequilibrium is an ideal state for re-creation.
I wonder if this was the reality in Genesis 1 - the formless and empty of verse 2
The tōhû wābōhû, a state of disequilibrium (wasteness, emptiness and darkness) was primal conditions for God to move and bring design and shape to. This is precisely the territory that God's creative power manifests itself in.
Sunday's.
Ever entered a Sunday service and everything from the past week is sticking to you. All the junk you picked up as you tried, but could have tried harder, to not conform to the world. Ever entered a Sunday service just desperate to reorient your life back to God and his ways.
I often enter a Sunday feeling formless and empty. drained and bruised by a week of real life living.
Primal conditions for God to move and re-create.
Maybe a state of disequilibrium is the best way to enter, but not leave Sunday.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Day 360 My soul needs me to write.
Day 360 and I'm only 5 days away from finishing my 2010 blog.
Doubt I'll attempt a daily blog in 2011. I'll keep it going .....but watch for something more and something new coming in social networking.
Writing.
It's interesting that in the digital age the most popular website is a site that sells books - Amazon.
Social networking might be pushing us to short grammatically flawed sentences for our texting or Twitter pages - but real books with real English and real sentences aren't about to go out of fashion.
Recently I came across an good article on writing in the ODE Magazine. It highlighted three rules for writing as a spiritual practice:
1. Don't write what you know.
2. You can't write what you don't know.
3. You must write.
Over this past year I've come to appreciate these three frustrating yet inspiring rules, and come to appreciate that like meditation and prayer no one can do it for you.
This is what makes writing such a spiritual practise.
So, my blog writing this past year was actually more for my soul than anybody else's. Difficult to tell whether the frustrating times did more for my soul than the inspiring times.
I'll keep writing in 2011.
My soul needs it.
Doubt I'll attempt a daily blog in 2011. I'll keep it going .....but watch for something more and something new coming in social networking.
Writing.
It's interesting that in the digital age the most popular website is a site that sells books - Amazon.
Social networking might be pushing us to short grammatically flawed sentences for our texting or Twitter pages - but real books with real English and real sentences aren't about to go out of fashion.
Recently I came across an good article on writing in the ODE Magazine. It highlighted three rules for writing as a spiritual practice:
1. Don't write what you know.
2. You can't write what you don't know.
3. You must write.
Over this past year I've come to appreciate these three frustrating yet inspiring rules, and come to appreciate that like meditation and prayer no one can do it for you.
This is what makes writing such a spiritual practise.
So, my blog writing this past year was actually more for my soul than anybody else's. Difficult to tell whether the frustrating times did more for my soul than the inspiring times.
I'll keep writing in 2011.
My soul needs it.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Day 358 The Day After Christmas
Day 358 and I managed to carve out a 78th Christmas preach!!!
It's the day after Christmas (Boxing Day in many parts of the world) - did Christmas fulfill your expectations?
Its the day after the first Christmas and Jesus is fleeing for his life, a refugee heading to Egypt. Herod the Great was after him.
A hugely crazy king.
Killed everybody in his way.
Married 10/11 wives.
Killed the only one he really loved as he got suspicious of her.
Killed her two sons.
Killed his barber who stood up for his two sons.
Killed his predecessors.
Taxed the people into massive poverty.
On the day he died he wanted people to mourn, so he rounded up some of the most eminent men of Israel and gave orders that on the day he died they should be executed to ensure there was
weeping in Israel on the day he died.
A crazed, despot.
Now - the day after the first Christmas Jesus is wanted dead by Herod the Great.
You would have thought the Godhead would have planned the incarnation at the time of a better king!
But they didn't.
In fact Scripture elsewhere tells us that "when the time was fully come" - the exact, right, precise time ...even if it was slap bang in the middle of one of the craziest, violent kings of history.
What's the point?
If Jesus could enter the world of evil and tyranny under Herod ....maybe he can enter our world of evil and tyranny with the genocide happening and multiple wars raging.
If Jesus could enter the world of Herod's day when most people were held in poverty and oppression .... maybe he can enter our world where so many remain in poverty, where millions earn less than a $1 a day, where millions of children can't gain education.
If Jesus could enter the world of pain and disappointment in Herod's day .... then maybe he can enter our world filled with its disappointment and pain.
Jesus entered the world at the time of the meanest Herod ...... giving hope to all of us as we face our Herod's .....because in every day and every age there are Herod's.
So ....who's causing you to flee?
Who's your Herod?
Jesus entered this world right at the time of Herod!!!
It's the day after Christmas (Boxing Day in many parts of the world) - did Christmas fulfill your expectations?
Its the day after the first Christmas and Jesus is fleeing for his life, a refugee heading to Egypt. Herod the Great was after him.
A hugely crazy king.
Killed everybody in his way.
Married 10/11 wives.
Killed the only one he really loved as he got suspicious of her.
Killed her two sons.
Killed his barber who stood up for his two sons.
Killed his predecessors.
Taxed the people into massive poverty.
On the day he died he wanted people to mourn, so he rounded up some of the most eminent men of Israel and gave orders that on the day he died they should be executed to ensure there was
weeping in Israel on the day he died.
A crazed, despot.
Now - the day after the first Christmas Jesus is wanted dead by Herod the Great.
You would have thought the Godhead would have planned the incarnation at the time of a better king!
But they didn't.
In fact Scripture elsewhere tells us that "when the time was fully come" - the exact, right, precise time ...even if it was slap bang in the middle of one of the craziest, violent kings of history.
What's the point?
If Jesus could enter the world of evil and tyranny under Herod ....maybe he can enter our world of evil and tyranny with the genocide happening and multiple wars raging.
If Jesus could enter the world of Herod's day when most people were held in poverty and oppression .... maybe he can enter our world where so many remain in poverty, where millions earn less than a $1 a day, where millions of children can't gain education.
If Jesus could enter the world of pain and disappointment in Herod's day .... then maybe he can enter our world filled with its disappointment and pain.
Jesus entered the world at the time of the meanest Herod ...... giving hope to all of us as we face our Herod's .....because in every day and every age there are Herod's.
So ....who's causing you to flee?
Who's your Herod?
Jesus entered this world right at the time of Herod!!!
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Day 353 - what if He hadn't come?
Day 353.
So, what if Jesus hadn't come.
It's maybe my Christmas theme for 2011 .....got a year to craft 4 preaches out of that title.
We would still have had the Son of God. Eternally was and is.
But we would not have had the Son of Man.
Here's 3 to mull over that I'm thinking about:
No Son of Man - no new humanity.
No Son of Man - no High Priest who empathizes with us.
No Son of Man - no substitutionary atonement.
We'd be up the creek without a paddle.
But, these three are the obvious .....334 days to figure out some more and make a Christmas series our of it.
Suggestions welcome.
So, what if Jesus hadn't come.
It's maybe my Christmas theme for 2011 .....got a year to craft 4 preaches out of that title.
We would still have had the Son of God. Eternally was and is.
But we would not have had the Son of Man.
Here's 3 to mull over that I'm thinking about:
No Son of Man - no new humanity.
No Son of Man - no High Priest who empathizes with us.
No Son of Man - no substitutionary atonement.
We'd be up the creek without a paddle.
But, these three are the obvious .....334 days to figure out some more and make a Christmas series our of it.
Suggestions welcome.
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