altera civitas

So this week I am going to write some thoughts for the Blog. We have some pretty amazing writers coming up in the next few weeks so please keep checking back to hear some really good stuff. I twitter here and have a defunct blog here.

It may come as no surprise to you all but I have some fairly strong opinions about “What the Church is” and “How we do that.” And I think many of them can be illustrated by this passage in Ephesians:

“Although I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ, and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; so that through the church the wisdom of god in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose that he has carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have access to God in boldness and confidence through faith in him.”

- Ephesians 3:8-12

I won’t go to much out of my way to “expound” on the text but perhaps you can read the following words through the lens of this passage and let it guide as a the framing of many of my thoughts.

If you go onto my facebook page (first off any diatribe on “church” that opens with “on my Facebook page” should be looked at as suspect… or at least I would… so feel free) you should take a look at my “political” and “religious” views. I spent way to much time trying to figure out what to put there. Part of the reason is that those two distinctions seem odd to me. “Political views” seems to imply the question “how do you think the present reality and it common goods should be organized?” while the “religious views” seems to ask the question, “ what internal set of moral principals do you adhere to as a means to derive your ethics.” This, to me, seems like a very strange distinction as two separate things. I believe, if we are going to follow the biblical narrative, that how our present reality is ordered (or our politic) is directly derived and is intertwined with the origins of our ethical motivations. What I am getting at is simply this: Christians have our own politic called the church and an ethic determined by the Christ’s Cross and Resurrection. The church is its an alternate city to the cities of the world, that is constituted by a people who are governed by a good father, guided by the Spirit and are being transformed in to the likeness of the Son.

I know this all seems drastically abstract, and for that I apologize, but I promise you that this alternate city metaphor is drastically helpful for understanding how we are to be a people called by YHWH and are being transformed in to the image of His Son. Let me expound a little further and then try to give some examples of how this “applies to the real world.”

We are a people who believe in a God that pronounced that his Kingdom is at hand. N.T. Wright summarizes the tangibles of this kingdom well in his book “Justification,” when he says that God’s coming kingdom (which is the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 15) is the place where God will be “Dealing with sin, saving humans from it, giving them grace, forgiveness, justification, glorification… now fulfilled in Christ.” As you can tell by the tense in his verbs that this Kingdom of God is presently happening and eternally coming. And as people who received this story we believe that those who are in Christ are participants or conspirators in that Kingdom.

I think that using the simple example of sacrament of communion will help make this whole “church as alternate politic’ thing a little less abstract. Partaking in communion is one thing that Christ asked all his followers to do in order to remember him. And there are three things that I want take out of sacrament of communion as means to illuminate what I am talking about.

First, when we take communion we remeber the sacrifice of our God. This is an action. When we take the bread and wine into our body it gives us nutrients as fuel to propel our actions forward. I think it is amazing that the way we remeber our savior is through a community “meal,” it is so counter cultural! And by that I mean that, the political leaders in Jesus’s time were very similar to ours. In order to remeber their great leaders of the past they built monuments and statues in their honor. I think this is specifically because, to some degree, the monument is the thing that does the remembering for the people… it lets us off the hook. Americans don’t need to remeber the great sacrifices of the soldiers in WWII because there is a memorial that will do it for them. And when they go to visit, they are thankful for the memorial because carrying the weight of remembering would be difficult. But we, as the alternate political body of the church, remeber the death and resurrection of our God by becoming remembrance, we embody the memory of our God. The way our memory is constituted is different than the world around us. We are an alternate political body.

Second, in the same way Christ was “the bread of the world” we too become a like sacrifice as we take communion. I had a theology professor in college who said that “in the western church we always got to much wrapped up in what communion is.” Was it transubstantiated or was it a symbol? He went on to say that “such a question takes away from the more important question of what we become when we take communion.” When we take communion we become the body of Christ. We take on his mission when we become his body in the world. And in the same way that he did, and in the same way that the bread and wine we just consumed nourishes our body we, we go out into the world to nourish it. We make sure sure that the poor are cared for, the broken are healed, the widow has safety and orphan has a home and we give shelter to the stranger for we know what it was like to separated from our family. We have conversations with our God, we read the words saints before us have written and the spirit told us that those are our Holy Scriptures. We go out into the world and act like the kingdom is already here but just not finished. In a world that builds fences around its homes to keep people safe, in a world where might is the thing that bring security and peace, we believe in a way of sacrifice and generosity as means to progressing our Father’s Kingdom and in the process we find that we are transformed more and more into the likeness of our God.  We are an alternate political body.

Lastly, and this will be the most controversial but I think drives the point home, communion makes a space for all people who are God’s family to commune with one another and their Father. This means everyone, documented or undocumented. How can we as the church believe in a space where we commune with the Father, are transformed into the Son, and propelled by the Spirit and then forcefully send those same brothers and sisters away from this physical location simply because they do not have the proper documentation. How can a people who have this passage in their holy writings expel strangers from their midst:

“For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

- Deuteronomy 10:17-19

The identity of being part of God’s family supersedes any national identity. In a land that is suspicious of the stranger, the church welcomes them openly to the table of the Christ. The church is an alternate body politic.

This is already long so I will some it up with a question…

- How do we become this body that is transformed and sent out into the world?

- What functions do you personally participate in that makes this happen for you (and if you simply say i come to a gathering on sunday… please don’t be offended if I say, get your ass in gear and get yourself into space where people are being transformed into the likeness of Christ… our sunday gathering is one place that happens but not the primary place)?

Questions…. Comments…. Name Calling.

p.s. None of these thoughts are original. For more in depth inoformation on this perspective of Church check out “Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony” by Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon or “A Peculiar People: The Church As Culture in a Post-Christian Society” by former editor of “Christianity Today” Rodney Clapp.

- Garret Shelsta

If I were to write my thoughts on the definition of “Church” every year  since I’ve been a Christian, it would hardly be recognizable, with grammatical errors and tangential thoughts being the only common thread. Having been a believer now for only 5 years, my paradigm keeps evolving – molded by my ever-changing relationships, experiences, and encounters with Christ.

The experience of Teresa and I moving to Boulder within the past year, with no friends and family, has either taught, or solidifed, three main ideas on what the church is and why each one is relevant in our lives.

First, the Church is a community of intellectual faith and action. These two aspects of Church are often put into a false dichotomy where more of one is less of the other. The right wing of the church seems so fixed on doctrinal truths and conversion of the soul that they turn their back, albeit unknowingly, to justice, love, acceptance, and mercy. The left wing is dominated by tolerance, rejection of tradition, and subjectivity which often leads to an aversion of Jesus’ divinity and Scriptural authority. These two traditions, I believe, are different paths, not the extremes of a “Church” gradient.

A community who solely speaks their theology without acting on it is not being the Church. In the same way, a community which only shares action, and no core belief, is also failing to live up to its calling. We are called to walk down the path that fully incorporates intellectual pursuit of truth and passionate action.

It becomes obvious that this aspect of the Church is vital for our lives because this is where the Kingdom of God is brought to earth. Through our Orthodoxy, and Orthopraxy, we create a grace-filled sphere around us where the will of God is done – whether that be supporting a distraught friend, ministering to the broken, or growing in the knowledge of God.

Secondly, the church is blessed diversity. Blessed, because of God’s affirmation of our indiviual gifts. Diverse, because of the constrasting personalities, desires, and passions (1 Cor. 12). The truth is, for the first few years I was a Christian, I believed all people would think the same as I if they were more educated, more “spiritual”, or more passionate. I look back on that and laugh now as I have truly seen the beauty of diversity within the Church. Fundraising, worship, ministering, child care, social justice, counseling, mentorship, etc. would all be impossible if it were not for the grace of God to bless us each individually.

This diversity should always define the Church and must build the body up, not tear it down. After all, in one of the most profound passages of Scripture, Jesus prays that we:

“may be one as we are one: 23I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me (1 John 17:22b-23).”

How profound. Our unity as a body of believers should result in the world knowing that God has sent Christ and that He loves them. Might this be one reason why the contemporary Church has had such a hard time convincing the world that Christ loves and accepts them when they don’t even accept each other?

Lastly, the church is where intimate knowing takes place. Moving to Boulder without any relationships, save for marriage, showed me the invaluable importance of knowing and being known. The Church is the community in which we are known, and accepted, at our deepest levels. Everyone desires to be in a community in which their identities are affirmed. People find this through athletics, professions, cults, gangs, and other secular communities. However, in the Church, our identity as a beloved child of God ties us together more intimately than any race, gender, trade, hobby, or genetic makeup can. I had met people through work but missed that connection that the Holy Spirit brings to the Church.

The relevance of being known lies in the fact that we were created to be so. Without sharing life deeply with a community we are missing out on how God called us to live. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, have been in community eternally and could not exist otherwise. Just as the Son cannot truly live without the Father, we cannot truly live without the Church.

All in all, I have realized that being the Church is a journey – filled with the inevitable ups and downs. Times of joy, times of sorrrow. Times of community, times of isolation. And isn’t that how our walks with Christ are – joyous, intimate, depressive, isolated and everything in between?

- Dustin Jones

Dustin and Teresa Jones... good peoples.

local expression of the body

This week some words about some thought on “what is church” are coming to us from our very own Aaron Strumpel. Check out his website for tour dates over here or follow him on twitter here.

I’ve had an idea drilled into my head and heart numerous times since meeting my friend and mentor Ben Pasley.  It’s that when we use the word “church” to talk about what we do on a Sunday morning or night, we do a GREAT disservice to the “Church,” also referred to as the Body of Christ…every time I say, “I’m going to church,” I let myself and the people around me think (even if subtly) the Body of Christ or the Church is something a person can simply go to.  It becomes something that was good on one Sunday, bad on another.  The Body being judged by the richness of the coffee or the talent of the worship leader.  Geez.  So I think the re-claiming of the word “Church” for what it is in all of it’s beauty, complexity, diversity, and breadth is really important.  And maybe the re-naming of what we do on a Sunday is also important.

That said, I say that I’m going to church all the time!  Haha.  What I mean is that I’m going to a meeting or service or time of worship and/or fellowship with a group of people who have committed to one another and submitted to Christ as a community.  The local expression of Church.

Another bad fruit of using the word “church” for local expressions of the Body was that I felt that each “church,” in order to live up to it’s moniker, had to embody all the theological exactness and hands-on incarnation that Jesus offers us.  A couple of things have broken me of this nasty little spirit of judgment: 1. I’ve recognized the diversity of worshipping communities (Jesus may or may not be an English speaker who shares in our love of coffee, 1980′s synths, and spas), 2. I’ve seen that different personality types really NEED different things to get closer to God (smart, analytical people often NEED to ponder every mental avenue in a road to rationalizing a theological point; emotional, unbalanced people like myself, haha, NEED to feel like God literally touched them in a time of worship; tree-huggers NEED to walk like St. Francis with birds on their shoulders and trees whispering songs in their ears!), 3. I’ve grown to trust God, specifically the Holy Spirit, to take care of other places I don’t necessarily agree whole-heartedly with and I can serve where God’s given me a voice, I can release where I don’t have anything beneficial to share.

Ok, now that I’ve got that off my chest, I really love that Garret started this discussion as he was pondering Ephesians.  The fourth chapter of Ephesians is one of my favorites.  It talks about all these gifts being poured out on specific people within the Body for the sole purpose of bringing the Body into maturity…to a place where they aren’t tossed to and fro by the winds of false teaching and deceitful scheming.  To a place where we can experience the incarnation in a richer way, seeing Christ in one another, in our city, in our families.  And that’s why it’s SO VERY important to live in community, in the context of a local Body.  We NEED each other to see God in a complex way, to know His hand in our lives in new ways…if we could be lone rangers, we’d all have every gift…

Personally, I’ve loved being a part of the Origins family since the Rileys moved to town with the crew from Oklahoma.  I’ve seen the Body grow and evolve in a really beautiful way.  But the foundations of freedom in worship, justice for God’s children, and hospitality to name a few, have always been present…I’ve often said I would never “work” in a “church,” but I’ve found we are one of the most exotic, beautiful expressions of the Body and can’t help but be a little dazzled and smitten by our people.  So it’s with that in mind that I leave this blogging to go seal the grout in the second bathroom in my house in Woodland Park so I can sell this beast and move north to be among a fragrant people, purposed to live lives of sacrifice to each other and Christ.  Yummy people, prepare your tables and dishes, get your summer tires on, pick up your hammers, here I come!

- Aaron Strumpel

Particular...

“If I ever get to the point where I feel that I am playing it safe, I stop. That is all I can say about how I plan for the future.”

— Miles Davis

“If we are to keep growing, we must continue to risk failure throughout our lives.”

—Brennan Manning

Church.  From the day I was born, for better or for worse, church has been in my life—I’ve gone to it, been part of it, wanted to run from it, gathered more than my share of collected wounds from it.  And yet it often feels as though I’ve been chasing this illusive Bride as wildly as Christ himself for nearly as long.  Despite the mix of weeds and wheat that pervade the Body, there is something that keeps me searching, restlessly pursuing what our Creator had in mind for us when he gave Eve to Adam.

Strange as it is, in the midst of all the disillusionment and all the hurt that has come at the hands of The Church, the question that continues to drive me is “What does the body of Christ really look like,” but never has the thought Why bother? entered my mind.  Something in me keeps believing that the answer to the first question is worth fighting for more than anything else.

I do not believe that we can ever really understand what the purpose of the church is or our role in it until we sit down and consider what the entirety of our lives is even about.  I think we begin to ask, “What is the point of church” when we allow ourselves to think of it as something else we have to do, when we compartmentalize our faith and spirituality into a realm disconnected from our real lives, when we fail to allow the rule of God to take over the whole of our beings.  The truth is, if we really believe that Jesus really came to do what he said he came to do, following Christ means claiming and entering a whole different way of thinking and living; if it is for us an act of taking on a whole new identity, the church simply becomes the context in which we truly come to realize and flesh out the implications of our true citizenship in the Kingdom of God.

In an interview a number of years ago, Rob Bell said this: “Your job is the relentless pursuit of who you were created to be.  To be about anything else is sin.” This idea has come to pervade much of my daily pursuit because I think it truly speaks to the heart of what our lives are about.  How can we even begin to consider how to live, what we are about, what will even make us happy, without considering what we were made for?

The more I come to know Christ, the deeper I enter the heart of the Father, the increasingly engrained his Spirit becomes in me, the less my life becomes about attaching the right things to my life for the sake of acceptance and validation and the more it becomes about realizing who the Creator has had in mind for me to be since the beginning and learning to live that life.  The more I journey, the more I search for what is really true, the more I find that the old, dead parts of me must give way to reveal what part of His Image the Lord has endowed me with.

And so, what can the Church be other than the context in which we come to truly understand who we really are?  In his excellent book, “Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places,” Eugene Peterson speaks of our place in the Body of Christ in this way:

“There can be no maturity in the spiritual life, no obedience in following Jesus, no wholeness in the Christian life apart from an immersion and embrace of community. I am not myself by myself. Community, not the highly vaunted individualism of our culture, is the setting in which Christ is at play.”

–Peterson, “Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places”

Because our culture and lives have become so tragically hijacked by the false security of individualism and isolation, coming to know the deep beauty of what God intended in the experience of knowing and being known by one another seems to be one of the most difficult areas of the Kingdom to enter. Yet, I love what Peterson says here: I am not myself by myself.  I am not an isolated entity, acting upon the world as I see fit for the fulfillment of my own desires.  The truth is that we are a part of something much larger.  Dallas Willard provides a beautiful picture of what that “something bigger” looks like:

“In Eden, one of [the] specifically human powers was the power to interact, not only with the organic, the other living beings such as the creatures of the air, earth, and water, or even with the inorganic, the nonliving matter, but also with God and his powers. But the death that befell Adam and Eve in the moment of their initial sin was also the death of this interactive relationship with God, the loss of this central closeness as a constant factor in their experience. And with this loss came the loss of the power required to fulfill their role as God’s rulers over the earth.

This original job description for humanity hints at a power far beyond what it now possesses independently of God’s Kingdom order. I believe men and women were designed by God, in the very constitution of their human personalities, to carry out his rule by meshing the relatively little power resident in their own bodies with the power inherent in the infinite Rule or Kingdom of God.”

–Willard, “The Spirit of the Disciplines”

Claiming our identity as members of God’s family is essential to our participation in the restoration of The Kingdom. I cannot become the person God had in mind for me at Creation without bringing to light the fallen parts of me that still remain in the presence of others who can see in ways I cannot see myself.  I cannot truly live out the energies, passions, and affections that Lord has given me without taking a risk on relationship, without risking failure.  I cannot truly come to understand the fullness of who God is without believing that his image is to be found in the deepest parts of those around me.  I cannot actually believe that the Father loves me without limit as his Child and work of art if I am unable to imagine how he could love those around me with that same love.

The truth of the matter is that we ask the question “why bother?” because I think there are few risks greater than vulnerability.  We wonder if it is really worth it in the end.  Relationships are messy, messy things.  It is one thing to say, “Yes, Jesus, I will bring before you my sins, my shortfalls, my weaknesses,” but quite another to trust that he is great enough to remain and restore when the exposure of our broken humanity to one another results in rejection, hurt, and disappointment.  I don’t know if I believe that the incredible greatness of truly experiencing the Image of God in another is worth the treacherous journey of vulnerability and risk of disappointment it takes to get there.

The deeper the Lord draws me into life with him, the more I come to realize that perhaps entering into relationship may be the greatest step of faith we can take.  There is no investment we can make in one another without the risk of rejection; there is neither guarantee of outcome nor promise of met expectations.  It seems that with each relationship, with each person I come to know, I become more convinced that humans are perhaps the most beautiful, most volatile, most powerful, most complex, most dangerous beings on earth.  There is always a promise of both beauty and pain when we come in contact with one another because our bodies house the very breath of God.  It seems impossible to come in contact with another human being without being impacted in some way, whether we even realize it or not.

Therefore, there is truly great danger in entering relationship, investing something of ourselves in community, in Church.  We will not escape unscathed.  There is sometimes more promise of loss than anything else.  Yet, as we grow in faith, as we move deeper into the realization of our true identity in the context of this Body, bearing the Image of God in its multitude of facets, we come to know a life that draws from a source much deeper than the fulfillment we may ever seek in one another.  We may come to lean on one another, but only in the sense that each heart that comes in contact with our own is but a momentary a gift of the Father, sent to bring us a little closer to who we really are, to invite us deeper into himself.  We cannot be refined without fire.  The iron will not be sharpened without the clashing of the metal.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to speak about the Church in a context independent of the all-encompassing reality of God and his purposes in us at creation.  The church must be the context in which an entirely new reality is lived out and that life must begin with a new understanding of our identities.  The Church must be the place in which we are free to risk it all on one another and on the world around us because we are, at the heart, a Person born out of an understanding that we do nothing apart from the father.  We can give ourselves fully to each other and those we are called to serve because we know that we are cared for by a Father who never runs out.  We love because we understand that our love comes from the One who first loved us, we give because the Lord is our provider, we risk everything because we know we are held by the hand of the only One that will never let us go.

So why have I, after all of these years, continued to chase after the Body?  Because I know that at the heart of the matter, it is the expression of the only life I really want to live.  I continue to delve into the mess of all of these other broken lives because I have come to realize that we can only love as deeply as we hurt.  I continue to bother with church because I am on a relentless pursuit of who I really am and I realize that I am not myself by myself.   And neither are you.

- Heidi West

this is heidi... she is smiley.

Remind Me

I’ve attempted life without church. I’ve tried with all my might to not live in genuine connection with the body of believers. Sometimes it was ignorance behind indecision. Other times it was frustration with the way church happened mixed with the desire to somehow reinvent myself. Either way, my choice to try to live as a follower of Jesus Christ completely on my own left me feeling…completely on my own. And lost. And confused. And just really dumb––like a sheep obsessed with following other sheep instead of the shepherd.

Then I moved to Boulder. And I learned about the true church––the living, breathing body of Christ here on earth––for the first time. I was finally free. Free to stop performing and impressing and following rules. Free to just be a dumb sheep who finally caught a glimpse of the Shepherd. I was invited to be in the process of knowing Jesus individually while continuously celebrating with others who He is in me, and who He is in them.

I love that our church met in folding chairs and couches in those early days. I love that we don’t own the building we worship in now. I love that the church I go to is made up of people walking with Jesus together. Period. I love that church is not one time or one place each week. It’s fluid and ongoing. It’s how we meet together throughout the week to look each other in the eye. It’s how we hurt together, laugh together, and choose to love all that is Boulder together. It’s just life.

The church––the community of believers who follow Jesus together––is vital in my life as the thing that pushes me to the Cross. I’m reminded of who the real Person of Jesus is. I see my sin pressed in to the Cross. I see the perfection and completion of His work there because I have people who tell me to look at it. I walk as a new creation, confident as a daughter of the King who wants me in His presence, because others have walked with me in my brokenness and rejoiced as God has begun to restore me.

We need each other, don’t we? We need to point each other to the truth when we can’t see straight. We need to not pretend we can live on our own. We need Jesus, and we need Him together. So how do we live all this church stuff out?

We show up. We just show up…to gatherings, to coffee dates, to living rooms, to each other’s lives. We choose togetherness over individuality. Availability over busyness. Honesty over pretense. And then we watch the river flow, baby. God meets us when we ask Him to meet us. He shows us the way when we desperately need direction. He answers us when we question. He comforts us and convinces us we are not alone. He is the Father who loves His family well. He is the Savior who washes the whole lot of us clean. He is the Spirit who dwells in every one who invites Him in.

I want to drink deep with my community. I want to know more and more of Jesus with you all, and then just see what all that Jesus-knowing looks like as we spend time together. I need you to push, prod, and remind me of the way, because it turns out that God created weak, forgetful me to be part of His body here. And frankly, I don’t want to miss out on the beauty and fullness of that experience (see Ephesians 3:14-21).

I know my Shepherd’s voice; I’ve learned to hear it with you all. Let’s keep moving toward Him as we catch a glimpse of His glorious kingdom together.

- Betsy Zenz

untangle?

On sunday nights we have been walking into what the book of Ephesians has to say about the nature of the God’s Church. So, I thought that it would be good to do some additional processing here on the blog and hear how some of this stuff is hitting you all. So, over the next few weeks I am going to be asking a few different people to contribute to the blog. Each person has been asked one set of questions “Why is the church important and How do you do that?”

A few things to say about this blog series though. First, this is a blog. There is no way that we would be able to “answer” this question in any definitive way in this medium. All of what is said is going to be limited simply because of the nature of how it is being communicated. This is simply a space where we can work out some the stuff that we are thinking through, expose it to other people and get some feed back on it.

Second, all of this is opinion. None of what is said is the “official” position of the church (origins doesn’t have to many things in the way of “official” statements), but what is said in theses spaces definitely helps shape those positions. Third, let these posts spark conversation. Whether, you write about it in the comments section, or you talk about it over a beer, or in your small gatherings or house churches… let these be a tool for you to utilize. If you find these conversations helpful let them inspire you all to continue these conversations into other spaces. Lastly, we are all friends… right? So, if we disagree with something lets remember that this is conversation between people who love each other and desire to see similar things…

So, quick question to ask as we move into this series, How would you answer this question? Why do you think the church is important and how do you think that we do that?

Alright…  Next week Betsy Zenz is going to bring us some love… and I for one am really looking forward to it.

-garret

p.s. if you would like to write a post please let me know because I still have a few space to fill.

The largest slum in central america

Guatemala Day 2 (3/22/2010)

Matthew 5:1-12

5When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

3 ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4 ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

5 ‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

6 ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

7 ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

8 ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

9 ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

10 ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

11 ‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely* on my account. 12Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Lord, I came to this passage with some presumptions today. I thought that all of these “beatitudes” were describing reality in the present tense (aka all of these things were true right now). But that is not the case. It seems that you are saying that really only two things are in the present. When you sat that the poor and the ones who are persecuted for righteousness have the kingdom of God you meant that in the present tense, as in RIGHT NOW.

I wonder how these things are connected?

Maybe they speak to different social classes? One to the poor but and one to the wealthy…

However, I don’t want to write modern social class divisions into the text. But really, Lord, that is what makes sense to me. I think that in our attempt to make you as “PC” as possible we have tried to make you seem as impartial as possible. But it seems that you have given your kingdom away…. and specifically you have given it away to those you have preference for. And, as you have given away your kingdom in the present moment, the ones you have given it to, the poor and those who are persecuted as they work for righteousness, experience your kingdom right now.

Also, what strikes me is that these two statements of present reality are bookends to a group of promises that are not yet true. The middle sets are talking about something that WILL happen in the future. The meek will inherit the earth but not yet… the peace makers will be called children of God… but not yet. This all gives us an insight into that odd theological assertion that I say over and over again…that we are living in the “Time between the times” or the “already but not yet.” God help me live into that tension today. Help me see your kingdom today…

But God, if the poor experience the Kingdom now, then I, the rich, experience it when I am persecuted for righteousness. Lord, I don’t see how how what we are doing in the schools is working for righteousness, much less how we are persecuted for what we are doing. I feel like I am always asking this question: How is playing worship songs helping you kingdom? How doest this aid in what you are doing. Every time I come on one of these trips I wonder if this is some poverty feel good tourist trip.

Lord, I pray, if it is your will, that you move in the hearts of the people who you say that the kingdom is theirs. Move them to tell me how or if this trip helps them.

I don’t want to give false hope. I don’t want to presume that as the wealthy American that I know what these people need…only to leave a few days later. But God, that is why I am so thankful for all the people that you have here full time. What Tita, Kate, Shorty, Donnie, Kerri, Ina, Monica, Lucia, April, Wade and all the rest of them do is magnificent. They make me feel what I do in my posh cozy mountain town is fairly insignificant compared to what they do day in and day out.

What is more is that their work is SO strait forward. They simply ask “what do you need?” and then wheather it is, prayer, food, a song, a bath, or a place to go to school, they attempt to meet that need. If I tried to ask one of my co-workers at my overpriced computer fruit themed retail company, How could I pray for them…. I am sure most of their responses would be laughable. The way that I go about letting people know about you here in Boulder seems just as laughable. I have a time period that I won’t talk to people about you, because I want to make sure that we are friends first. In “la limonada” that idea seems ridiculous but back in Boulder  it is necessary.

When the teachers ask their kids and parents what they need their responses are simple…

“I want to be healthy” or “I want to believe in the God that I know is taking care of me”

Their responses seem to say that they know or experience something that is true but are trying to live into what they know despite their broken humanity (this is just striking me how much this rings true in myself). But Lord, I don’t want to project to much on these people. I don’t want to sat “they” feel or experience something if they don’t really experience it.

Lord… I want to simply ask that you teach me what you want me what you want me to learn… amen.

So…  some questions:

What are some of your thoughts about that interpretation of the beatitudes?

Do you think that sometimes short terms missions trips like this are just feel good poverty trips?

questions, comments, name calling?

- Garret

I am back from Guatemala. The trip was amazing and the culture shock has been … well lets just say server. Going from serving in a strait forward way in the ghetto to the morally ambiguous retail environment of high end electronics in Boulder, CO is a pretty big jump. Anyway… if you want to know more about that please ask me next time you see me. But, I hit the ground running this week as we prep for our Good Friday art reflection. That starts at 6:00 this up coming Friday over at Cornerstone Church (1190 South Broadway Street, Boulder Co).

This show has been birthed out of a weekly lenten conversation by artists and theologians. These conversations were guided by book written by a professor of Ethics from Duke Divinity School name Stanley Hauerwas called “Cross Shattered Christ.” It has been a wonderful conversation for us to engage in and has been really wonderful for us to be impacted by this mans book.

So, for this blog, I thought I would give you a “cliff notes” version of the book we spent the last few weeks working through. Here is the text of an interview taken from www.beliefenet.com  that Hauerwas gave shortly after he published the book. Please read it and let it guide you holy week reflections this week, it deeply impacted us and our art. If you want to see how please come this Friday.

(This is taken from: http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/2005/03/Why-Have-You-Forsaken-Me.aspx?p=1)

Stanley Hauerwas

Known for afflicting the comfortable, Duke University professor Stanley Hauerwas “has been a thorn in the side of what he takes to be Christian complacency for more than 30 years,” according to his fellow theologian Jean Bethke Elshtain. Whether condemningabortion or the war in Iraq, his views challenge believers to see Jesus’ message as a radical one. Hauerwas spoke with Beliefnet about his most recent book, “A Cross-Shattered Christ: Meditations on the Seven Last Words.”

You say in beginning of “A Cross-Shattered Christ: Meditations on the Seven Last Words” that you don’t want to explain Jesus’ seven last words. Are you unsatisfied with past explanations?

Yes. There’s an inclination to get on the inside of Jesus’ psyche, and I think that’s a deep mistake because it assumes that what you have here is someone analogous to us. Of course it is analogous to us-he’s fully human-but it oftentimes fails to take into account that this is the Son of God. I tried to exegete the seven last words in a way that does justice to their mystery.

You seem to critique the narcissism of today’s Christians, saying “sentimentality is the urge to make the gospel conform to our needs, to make Jesus our ‘personal’ savior.” This seems to echo what happened after the movie ‘The Passion.’ A lot of people were repeating the well-known profession, “Jesus died for me”-but with quite an emphasis on the ‘me.’

That Protestant evangelicals would leave Gibson’s movie and say “gee, I didn’t know he had to suffer so much for my sins”-quite frankly, that’s to make yourself more important than you are. It also underwrites satisfaction theories of the atonement, which fail to do justice to the fact that this is the second person of the Trinity who is suffering.

When you say, “someone had to suffer to reconcile me with an angry Father,” you forget: it’s not an angry Father who has given the Son to receive our violence. The problem with saying “I didn’t know he had to suffer that much for my sins” is it fails to do justice to the Trinitarian character of the Christian faith. What is happening in the cross is a cosmic struggle.

Your book says, “any account that suggests God has to satisfy an abstract theory of justice by sacrificing his Son is clearly wrong.”

The problem with those kinds of typologies is they separate the person from the work of Christ. They concentrate on the cross, separate from the life. I think it’s a deep mistake. It’s one of the problems with Mel Gibson’s film.

What did you think of the film?

[It was] an extended exercise in showing how much punishment a human body could take. It didn’t help us understand why that punishment was correlative with the kind of life Jesus led. It becomes a kind of sadism that it’s not wise to be exposed to.

Can’t evangelicals still make an argument that we should think of Jesus as our personal savior, and think of the gospel in terms of how it affects individual people?

I really don’t like the word ‘personal.’ It makes it sound like I have arelationship with Jesus that is unmediated by the church. They have the idea that “I have a personal relationship with Jesus that I go to church to have expressed.” But the heart of the gospel is that you don’t know Jesus without the witness of the church. It’s always mediated.

You quote Bonhoeffer and say Jesus’ death and resurrection are not the solution to the problem of death. Many people take it as such.
It’s a deep mistake, a pietistic reading of the cross. The idea is that Jesus overcame death through the resurrection. What that does is fail to appreciate the fact that the resurrected Christ is the crucified Christ. It’s not like, “Oh, that was just a mistake, now it’s over.” Jesus continues to suffer from our sins.

I think the assumption is that we all now no longer need to fear death. We no longer need to fear the death that sin perpetrates, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to die.

I think some people take the words “Jesus overcame death” to mean they don’t have to be afraid of death, as you said.
Well, they certainly have to be afraid of the judgment of God. And that judgment is going to be more frightening than death itself.

Than non-existence would be.
Right.

You also say Jesus’ death is not that of a martyr.
A martyr can never cooperate with death, go to death in a way that they’re not trying to escape. Jesus obeyed the Father’s will to submit himself to the powers and the powers’ ability to dominate our lives because of our fear of death. It’s important that that kind of struggle be understood as at the very heart of the cross.

One of the most challenging chapters was the one on the words “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” You say the words “shatter our attempts to understand God in human terms.”

It shows that Christ does experience the darkness of being completely alienated from the Father.

So one person of the Trinity could feel completely alienated from the other?

Yes. And that means there is a time when we cannot approach God through Christ, because Christ was completely abandoned. That is a chilling, chilling notion: that there is a time when we cannot reach God through Christ. I think that’s what that means.

You say it reveals that “our assumption that God must possess the sovereign power to make everything turn out all right for us, at least in the long run,” is idolatry.

It’s idolatry to think that to be a Christian means this is all going to work out well for me. That’s not what God is in the business of being God for. The idea that Jesus’ whole project was to make sure my life would be OK is a far too narcissistic account of the crucifixion.

It also touches on the age-old theodicy question: Do you believe God is simultaneously all-powerful and all-good?

I believe that whatever it means for God to be all-powerful and all-good “names” the fact that God could not be other than the Father to the Son, who submits himself entirely to sin. You never start with an abstract notion of omnipotence or all-powerful in a way that those words become self-defining separate from Christology.

So we have to accept God first, and not certain words in the language?

That’s right. That was what Karl Barth well understood.

You say we try to explain the “why have you forsaken me?” phrase to “protect God from making a fool out of God.” Why do we have such a problem with these words?

Because we want God not to be the God we find in Christ. We want God to be the great all-powerful daddy, who makes sure our lives will not have to be lives of suffering. It’s an idolatrous position.

So we shouldn’t expect God to do anything about our suffering?

We know God has done something about our suffering-it’s called the cross. It gives us the resources to have even our suffering be a service to God and God’s kingdom.

Questions, Comments, Name Calling….

- Garret

St. Patrick

It is St. Patrick Day. And for many that means green beer day. Well that is normally means for me but given that I gave up alcohol for lent… this is not the case this year. I wanted to point out one thing about the man that is celebrated on this usurped Christian feast day because there is still some great conversation going about the Glenn Beck stuff.

St. Patrick was a bishop in Northern Ireland dating sometime around 340-440 A.D. The details and stories surrounding his life are a hazy but this is for sure he  is largerly regarded as the leading voice that brought the Gospel to that area. He also set up drastically different way that the church functionally operated than the rest of europe at the time. What I think is most interesting, is that during the middle ages the European church began to decline, finding it self in a very precarious position. Many people that had grown up in a “churched” context suddenly had spiritual vocabulary but no really idea of what it meant to BE a follower of Jesus (sound familiar). And during this decline the Irish Church, due to some interesting and innovative forms of theological contextualization implemented by St. Patrick, was flourishing.

Some scholars say that Europe was no longer a “christian culture.” Disease was destroying huge numbers of the population and people were loosing hope. Enter the Irish church. They began sending missionaries throughout the devastated European continent performing acts of mercy, helping the sick and the poor. They also brought a fresh vision of the gospel that helped harness peoples spiritual views and direct them back into the horizon of the Gospel.  These missionaries are largerly responsible for helping turn Europe from death to life. Centuries after a man named Patrick helped local pagan people form communities of faith which entered them into vibrant conversations with God in their context, the Irish people were to shift an entire culture, giving it hope and a future… You never know what kind of reach a community of God can have.

So, here is to St. Patrick… here is to the the unknown reach of the Kingdom of God.

For some more information about this check out a great book called The Celtic Way of Evangelism… super interesting stuff.