516 Quail Meadow

Let the Children Come to Me

2009-09-30T18:53:00.000-07:00

Almighty God,
Prepare my heart and mind for the children who come to me. May this classroom be a laboratory for Your reign in this world. Bring glimpses of heaven to this corner of earth. Inspire me into creative experiments of love, compassion, service, humility and wisdom. Let the fear and knowledge of You flow organically from my words, gestures and presence. Oh, that we may discern the truth about Your world in the midst of a cachopony of voices from all over the political spectrum. Empower me with spontaneous energies, breaking out of the routine of day-to-day life on this campus. Liberate me from the daily grind of attention-seeking teens and my own longing to be admired. Let me be a gentle, humble, consistent, confident, non-anxious leader. Give me the audacity to carry around the death of the crucifed and risen Jesus so that the life of Jesus may shine the New Reality through me.
Amen.

Life in the Age to Come

2009-09-10T20:10:00.000-07:00

For God loved the world so much that God gave His only Son, so that all those who trust in Him may not be destroyed but may have life in the age to come.
John 3:16

This familiar passage is a highlight of John's story about Jesus the Messiah, the Passover Lamb [Jn 18:39] who died to liberate us from the bondage of worldly systems and powers. Throughout the Hebrew Bible [ie, Psalm 1], God's Story reflects a two-ways tradition: those who are saved because they boldly risk journeying God's way and those who are destroyed by the counterfeit ways of the world. Jesus, as the climax to God's story of Israel's salvation, dies at the hands of the powers that rule this world [a coalition of Roman and Jewish leaders]. On his way to the cross, Jesus confronts worldly power: 'My kingdom is not of this world' [Jn 18:36].

This long-awaited kingdom--or as the Jews called it 'the age to come'--was characterized by Jesus' self-denying love and foot-washing servanthood. God inaugurated the kingdom of God through the life, teaching, death and resurrection of His Son Jesus. Contrary to popular interpretations, Jesus' kingdom is not entered upon death in an other-worldly, disembodied heaven. Instead, the kingdom of God is ‘not of’ this world in terms of its ethos...its way-of-being: disciples enter this kingdom now as we love, suffer and serve the world.

Those of us Americans who 'listen to Jesus' voice' [Jn 18:37] trust that God will one-day fully liberate the world from bondage. Until then, we reject the fear and greed and lust that saturate the counterfeit stories that our world tells us. We are scripted by an alternative story featuring a God who loves His creation so much that He's willing to give his Son in self-donating love and calls forth a People 'who belongs to the truth' [Jn 18:37] by imitating His love with imagination.

Independence for All

2009-07-02T20:11:00.000-07:00

This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony...

For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced...

To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages...

...Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery...
Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852

In the decade leading up to the civil war, the prophetic-Christian-former-slave-turned-abolionist Frederick Douglass, gave a speech in his hometown of Rochester, New York to commemmorate the Fourth of July. Douglass boldly proclaimed that he could not celebrate the holiday since his fellow black Americans continued to suffer the injustice of slavery, as well as the undignified condition of not even being considered human beings by common white citizens and the offical force of law.

Douglass quotes from the Bible extensively, but his scripting strategy subverted that of his detractors--like the prestiguous Charles Hodge of Princeton Seminary--who [at their best] reluctantly admitted that the Bible was crystal clear. God ordained slavery:

The fact that the Mosaic institutions recognized the lawfulness of slavery is a point too plain to need proof, and is almost universally admitted. Our argument from this acknowledged fact is that if God allowed slavery to exist, if he directed how slaves might be lawfully acquired, and how they were to be treated, it is in vain to contend that slaveholding is a sin, and yet profess reverence for the Scriptures.
Charles Hodge

While Hodge was mired in the controversial theological and political debate of his own Presbyterian denomination [trying to keep abolitionist and pro-slavery camps together], Douglass spoke prophetically on behalf of his marginalized, vulnerable black brothers and sisters who suffered:

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is passed.

Douglass' strategic biblical scripting was liberated through the checks and balances of inhumanity. If it ain't humane, it ain't divine. He refused to miss the forest for the trees. The whole story of Scripture was about a God who was determined to liberate all of humanity from all enslaving forces: political, economic, spiritual, social, etc. Douglass quoted from Isaiah's vision of God's coming kingdom, gaining interpretive leverage with a passage fulfilled in Peter and John's Temple healing in Acts 3:1-16: the kingdom of God had arrived!

In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap as an hart." [Isaiah 35:6]

"The arm of the Lord is not shortened," and the doom of slavery is certain. [Isaiah 59:1]

Speaking on behalf of all black Americans, who mostly embraced the faith of their slave masters, Douglass equated emancipation with the coming reign of God who would most certainly deliver them from bondage.

Quoting from the most notorious of 'lament Psalms' [137], Douglass scripted the black American children of God into the role of the exiled Israelites, taken captive by Babylonian soldiers who made them play musical instruments for them:

If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!"

Douglass' prophetic words certainly criticized America's failure to live up to the words of Scripture and the Declaration of Independence. But his speech ended with hope. He drew on the first page of the Bible:

The fiat of the Almighty, "Let there be Light," has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light.

His hope was in a God who actively engaged with the injustice of the world. Patiently and gently, Douglass called for God's light to break forth into the dark world of American chattel slavery.

Douglass modeled a beautiful form of Bible Study. Those of us who pledge allegiance to God's Kingdom breaking into the world of sin, death and oppression, read in order to be transferred into God's Story. It is a liberating word for us now, in our own unique context. Our vision is to read prophetically and imaginatively, like Douglass, instead of whole-heartedly clinging to the status quo of the universalized, dogmatic truth mined out of the text, like Hodge. The tragedy of this biblical reading contest was that the slavery issue was ultimately decided by a brutal war, not by a genuine dialogue of Christians straining for consensus [like Acts 15]. Of course, we all now look back and side with Douglass' prophetic biblical outcome, but many Evangelicals 150 years ago concurred with Hodge's more 'scientific' readings [a reading strategy that continues to dominate Evangelicalism today]. This leads us Jesus-followers to the timely question: how do we discern what the Bible says concerning justice issues involving women, children, the poor, war, homosexuality, the unborn, workers and immigrants?

This week, we Americans celebrate the Fourth of July for the first time under the leadership of an African-American President. Barack Obama campaigned in the tradition of Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King and his inauguration was a partial fulfillment of what they lived [and died] for. But we prophetic Christians [what Cornel West calls 'a tradition of those who side with the weak'] still have much work to do as we speak truth to power, invoking our sacred Scripture and our Constitution to work for justice for our most vulnerable among us so that we can all experience Independence in its most authentic form.

This year, will God's Kingdom Light shine on...

...the brutal killing in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan?
...321,480 homes lost to foreclosure just last month?
...46 million people without adequate health care?
...1 million aborted fetuses in the US?
...12 million undocumented immigrants living in fear?
...30 million unemployed workers who are looking for jobs?
...10 million gays and lesbians yearning for basic rights?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful.
Frederick Douglass

The Fierce Urgency of Now

2009-06-24T16:38:00.000-07:00

It's been 42 years since Martin Luther King delivered his anti-war sermon to the Riverside Church in New York City [04.04.1967]. Delivered exactly one year before his assassination, this was the speech that finally set off the Powers-that-Be in the United States. Some folks found King's subject a bit odd coming from a civil rights preacher, but he gave 7 reasons why his conscience left him no other choice but to speak out boldly against American military action in Vietnam [and why we Evangelicals follow this prophetic voice and speak out against our current military endeavors]:

1. War is always an enemy of the poor

Spending billions on fighting so-called enemies 8,000 miles away from our borders acts 'like some demonic, destructive suction tube,' as domestic programs helping the vulnerable, disadvanted and marginalized are slashed.

2. The poor fought and died in higher proportions to the rest of society

Young men are manipulated to join up in order to earn money for living expenses or college. For many, it's the only choice after the high school years.

3. Social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action

King called the United States 'the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,' but didn't stand up as an innocent bystander, admitting it as 'my own government.' True change never comes from living out the myth of redemptive violence.

4. To save the soul of America

'If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read 'Vietnam.'
This war, like so many others, was 'some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war.'

5. His Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 made him a spokeman

This commission came from allegiances that transcended nationalism and patriotism.

6. As a minister of the enemy-loving Jesus Christ

If our Lord loved his enemies so much that he died for them, then what were Christians thinking to ordain and approve this war?

7. Bound by an allegiance to God's Reign

King was first and foremost a son of the living God. Peacemakers are blessed and shall be called 'children of God' [Matthew 5:9]. We worship a God who raises the dead...we can risk nonviolent obedience to his manifesto.

King's vocation to give a voice to the voiceless wasn't just his own. He called upon all ministers of the gospel of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. Calling upon immediate action [the fierce urgency of now], he called on people of conscience to abandon profits and privilege and be willing to sacrifice for God's Dream for the world.

This sacrifice, for King, must be soaked in what he called 'a true revolution of values.' This was a call to abandon our Western arrogance, [assuming that we need to teach others] and learn to listen to the voices of the other. This revolution of love, peace, fairness and justice would trump the truly systemic challenges of racism, poverty and militarism.

King called upon a progressive brand of Christianity who 'rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.' God's Dream for the world [the Kingdom of God] is at hand. We anticipate it by enacting it with loving creativity. This movement is ecumenical, open to all people of conscience, regardless of faith, nationality, sex or class. Jesus infused this vision to his disciples in Mark's gospel: Whoever is not against us is for us.'

Today, King's 'beloved community' continues to be sidelined by followers of Jesus who are convinced that Jesus' message was spiritual and future, rather than spiritual and political and economic: a dedication to 'the fierce urgency of now.' We need to relearn that long-lost line of the disciples prayer: May your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. In our stance towards Iraq and Afghanistan [and heating up in Iran], health care privileges, immigration status, and marital freedom, those of us who boldly take on a vocation of agony should strive for deep structural change to make the beautiful symphony of brotherhood a reality.

Everything in bold comes from his sermon entitled Beyond Vietnam. Let us meditate on these words today in our time of contemplation and prayer, concluding with 'Come, Lord Jesus.'

Homosexuality, the Bible and the Kingdom of God

2009-06-16T12:23:00.000-07:00

Romans 1:26-27 For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

Those of us who believe strongly in the authority of the Bible read passages like this with fear and trepidation. The Apostle Paul, writing to the network of house churches in Rome some 20-25 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, declares at the outset that homosexual behavior is the result of humanity's idolatry: arrogantly or ignorantly refusing to worship the Creator. Paul not only declares, he reasons, noting the unnatural nature of gay and lesbian sexual activity.

Evangelical Christians are unwaveringly taught that homosexuality is an easy, non-negotiable issue: there are 6 passages dotted throughout Scripture and all of them condemn it. Slam dunk. Game over. In recent conversations about gay marriage [Proposition 8 in CA], gays in the military [will Obama overturn 'don't ask, don't tell'?] and, first and foremost, gay/lesbian participation in Christian discipleship have opened the Bible to a mostly closed conversation. This issue, perhaps more than any in the American suburban context, opens our eyes to what it means for the Bible to function authoritatively in our lives.

Two passages in Israel's Torah [Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13], call homosexual behavior an abomination. The context is the radical formation of a new community, in a new land, setting themselves apart from the religious and social practices of Egypt [where they came from] and Canaan [their destination]. God would not tolerate the practice of homosexual prostitution used in the worship of foreign gods, nor would God condone the shameful degradation used in military practice after the invasion of a city. Perhaps, God was reminding his people of the need to increase in numbers ['be fruitful and multiply'] as they grew into a nation who would be a 'light to the nations.'

In the NT, Paul writes [in Greek] to the small Gentile Christian community in Corinth to abstain from μαλακοi & aρσενοκοiται. Contextually, these referred to the ancient practices of pederastry, a older, weathy man [aρσενοκοiται] purchasing a younger boy [μαλακοi] as a sexual slave. Even though it is hard for us to fathom, this nonconsensual, dehumanizing practice was a live option for Corinthian disciples of Jesus and, surely, those in Christ would abstain from it! These aρσενοκοiται would be the equivalent of 'dirty, perverted old men' today who get off on porn, prostitutes, or the old guy who used to attend baseball games at the University of Kansas to masturbate to girls' feet [sad, but true story].

In I Timothy 1:10, Paul again refers to aρσενοκοiταις and adds another group: aνδραποδισταiς. This probably was a word referring to kidnappers and sexual slave traders, supplying many of the μαλακοi for wealthy men. Again, horrific group of guys...no wonder Paul banned them from the Kingdom of God.

Lastly, there is Paul's blatant condemnation of gays and lesbian sexuality found in the introduction to his scroll letter to the Romans. Paul is reasoning from nature, just like the secular philosophers from the Roman Empire. These philosophers believed sex was for procreation and to stem the tide of overflowing lust. He had no concept of homosexuality as a committed relationship of two equal partners. He had no concept of homosexuality as intensely rooted in one's identity. He had no concept of the very live possibility that men and women develop sexual attraction and urges at birth or the first 18 months of life.

With this contextuality laid out before us, we must now decide what biblical authority means for us today. Most of us Evangelicals have been trained to understand Truth [with a capital 'T'] as coming from a simple and certain reading of the Bible. As my 4th grade teacher at Capistrano Valley Christian School used to say, 'God said it, I believe it and that settles it.' But a lot of issues in Scripture have become unsettled as we think critically about the text, weighing scientific and social-scientific findings, our own experience, the life testimony of others and the results of history: think slavery, women's roles/rights, charging interest on loans & sexuality in marriage [is it all about procreation?].

First of all, homosexuality is not a meta-label that we can use with broad brush strokes. Not all forms of homosexuality [like heterosexuality] are equal. We can narrow our questions [gay marriage, gays in the military, gay discipleship] to a specific form of homosexual orientation and behavior: the commitment to celibacy or monogamy [date one partner with sexual integrity or be committed for life in marriage to one partner in fidelity--just as we expect heterosexual disciples of Jesus]. Homosexual activity in baths and bars, one-night stands, prostitution, porn, partner-swapping--these are all dehumanizing, destructive and, most often times, non-consensual behaviors. The bold experiment of two men [or two women] committing to a lifetime of love, service, forgiveness, empathy and, yes, sexual intimacy should be a live consideration for radical followers of Jesus whose sexual testimony declares same-sex feelings/urges.

Second, the living Word, the movement of the Holy Spirit [the presence of the risen Christ!] as discerned through Scripture, prayer, testimony and consensus decision-making [see Acts 15 for our profound model] is the biblical paradigm for how God speaks in every era. Throughout Scripture, God's Word changes. Two examples: in the sermon on the mount in Matthew 5-7, Jesus overturns God's Word to Israel ['you have heard that it was said, but I say to you']; in addition, Paul's reading of Scripture [the Hebrew Bible] consistently finds fresh interpretive meaning and value as a result of God's shocking arrival in Jesus the Messiah from Nazareth. When the Body of Christ is bound by a status-quo reading of Scripture, we have often been positioned on the wrong side of history, oppressing the truth. Two examples [of many] should suffice here:

Martin Luther said, ‘This fool Copernicus wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture in Joshua 10:13 tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.’ Not only does this Luther quote remind us to humbly weigh what our leaders are saying, it also reminds of how not to read the Bible. Luther was assuming that the author of Joshua got it right in regards to everything, including astronomy. We know Copernicus was right and Luther's reading of Scripture was wrong.

In similar ways, the legendary Princeton theologian Charles Hodge found himself waffling in the middle of the 19th century with the moral question of his day: slavery. He wrote, ‘The fact that the Mosaic institutions recognized the lawfulness of slavery is a point too plain to need proof, and is almost universally admitted. Our argument from this acknowledged fact is that if God allowed slavery to exist, if he directed how slaves might be lawfully acquired, and how they were to be treated, it is in vain to contend that slaveholding is a sin, and yet profess reverence for the Scriptures.’ A flat biblical reading strategy led to Hodge's blunder.

Third, gay and lesbian issues are being swept under the carpet by Evangelical leaders partly because of homosexuality's uber-minority status. Just 2-3% of the American population professes a homosexual orientation. This leaves the gay community at the whims of the overwhelming majority of heterosexuals who mostly do not understand the issue [they've never had these feelings/urges] and mostly do not see it ever affecting their lives. They don't know gay people [or so they think] so they don't see it affecting their discipleship. However, homosexuality's minority status [both in numbers and in terms of oppression through name-calling, physical abuse and withholding Constitutional rights] should automatically make it a live issue for Evangelicals since God consistently moves at the periphery of society: ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ God is the protector of the oppressed, marginalized and broken-hearted over and over and over again in the Bible.

My wife has studied the issue of long-term homosexual relationships. Studies of non-distressed homosexual populations HAVE shown that gay male couples are actually more cohesive (on average) than heterosexual married couples, who are (on average) more disengaged. Are same-sex marriages a prophetic model for the onslaught of broken marriages in the American Body of Christ? Perhaps there is much we heterosexuals [who have the protected right to get married as many times as we like] can learn from this minority group.

What then shall we do?

1. Learn: there are some excellent, eye-opening writings by well-respected theologians that have put a lot of time and energy [and been converted] into this issue. Walter Wink and Jeffrey Siker are two valuable conversation partners.

2. Listen: when gay and lesbian disciples of Jesus tell their story it is a powerful spiritual practice. Their passion and pain are doubly convicting. Check the internet to see what's going on in your area. There are great opportunities even in the OC!

3. Prayerful Dialogue: what do your brothers and sisters in Christ think about this issue and how are they coming to these convictions? This happens best over a beverage of choice and a lot of space to ask questions and the boldness to leave some of them unanswered.

4. Mainstream the Conversation: ask your pastors and ministry leaders to make this topic a priority. Multiple voices should be represented in a forum that asks: should gays and lesbians be included as full participants in the Kingdom of God? [just like multiple voices were heard when Gentiles were considered for full membership in God's family...again, see Acts 15]. Most Evangelical pastors are scared to death of fully entering this conversation because what their congregations will think.

So...some follow up questions to consider:

1. Is homosexuality is sin? Depends on what one means by 'homosexuality.' I would propose that there are two gay options just as there are two heterosexual options: celibacy or monogamy---taking sexual integrity seriously. These options are not a sin, but an opportunity for service and growth in the kingdom of God. Other options [homosexual or heterosexual] are dehumanizing, destructive and erodes God's intent for love and sexuality.

2. Can someone be both 'gay' and 'Christian?' Depends on what one means by 'gay' and 'Christian.' Since my wife and I are rooted the Anabaptist Christian tradition, I believe a Christian is one who makes a decision to pledge allegiance to God's Kingdom. The New Testament refuses to define Christian faith outside of radical, scandalous discipleship: loving and forgiving our neighbor & enemy, serving the marginalized and committing to radical alternatives [to secular and accultured Christian options] of relationship, spirituality, justice and beauty as illustrated by God's Story in Scripture. For my definition of 'gay,' see #1. So, a 'gay Christian' is one who commits to radical, scandalous discipleship to the One they fall in love with [Jesus] and who commits to a life of reflecting Jesus' love, forgiveness and service to the other one they fall in love with [the member of the same-sex who completes him/her].

3. Am I crazy? Let the conversation begin.

You Know You are a Fundamentalist if...

2009-06-12T13:33:00.000-07:00

As you read each statement, ponder whether or not this is a conviction of yours.

You know you are a Fundamentalist Christian if you agree with these…

1. The Bible is the inerrant word of God.
2. It is possible to read the Bible objectively and the Spirit will make its meaning self-evident. People read it wrongly when they read it through their own sinful filters [lifestyles, beliefs, etc].
3. Because the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit, it is completely, literally and historically accurate about everything it reports.
4. Absolute Truth is known through an accurate reading of the Bible.
5. Christians have a duty to stand up for the Truth.
6. ‘Politics’ is mostly a waste of time.
7. When you do spend time and resources on politics, Christian morality issues like abortion and gay marriage are the most important issues.
8. The goal of Bible reading is to find the one correct meaning for each passage and then apply it to your life.
9. The Old Testament is about the Jews trying to work their way to God and earn their salvation [and fail]…the New Testament is about God giving grace through Jesus Christ to those [Christians] who admit they’ll never be perfect.
10. Salvation is about going to heaven when you die.
11. You can only go to heaven if you have made a personal decision for Jesus Christ [as Lord and Savior].
12. The world is divided into spiritual things [or souls] that will live forever and material things [the rest of life] that will pass away forever.
13. Life is made up of a series of decisions: either for God or against him. We can’t blame anyone or anything for our plight.
14. Sin is ‘missing the mark’ of what God wants for human life.
15. God is angry with sin, but wants all humanity to be saved through Jesus.
16. Satan is a real being and does everything in his power to keep you from worshipping and serving God.
17. God has designated the man as the spiritual leader in the family and the church.
18. God created the world in a literal 6 days.
19. God will end the world with the rapture, saving His people and destroying the wicked.
20. Homosexuality is a sin. The Bible and nature prove that it perverts God’s original intent for sexuality.
21. At least one of these guys is your ‘pastor-hero’ [depending on your style]:
a. Francis Chan
b. John Piper
c. Mark Driscoll
d. Pat Robertson
e. Rick Warren
f. Franklin Graham
g. John MacArthur
h. Andy Stanley
i. James Dobson
j. Chuck Smith

These 21 Questions are my attempt to describe the distinct tribe of Christians who called themselves 'fundamentalists' back in the early 20th century [they published more than 100 pamphlets titled The Fundamentals and distributed them to churches all over North America]. This movement fought hard against the onslaught of theological liberalism and issues like evolution that were 'invading' Christian culture. They continue to have a lot of influence in our culture today. In fact, one of their own took up residence in the White House for the first 8 years of the 21st century. These 21 statements are not meant to be sarcastic or rude. They are meant to spark conversation and identify theological concepts that are contested: each of these convictions are not shared by other Christian traditions. I'd love to hear additions, questions, comments and concerns.

For more on this from academics, check out George Marsden & Mark Noll [histoically and sociologically] and Nancey Murphy's legendary Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism [philosophically]. Marcus Borg helpfully adds that there are 'hard' fundamentalists and 'soft' fundamentalists [theologically]. One of my professors at Fuller, John Goldingay, once told us in class that Evangelicals in North America have the unique contextual challenge of emerging out of fundamentalism...this takes time [Goldingay is British and observes a much stronger attraction towards fundamentalism in the States].

I write because I yearn for a Christian movement that transcends the fundamentalist/liberal packages. I would argue that the 21 statements above are not necessarily 'wrong,' but they are framing questions and focusing on certain concepts in harmful or skewed ways. I am humbly claiming that American fundamentalists misrepresent authentic Christian faith. Through my research, I am compelled that they are asking questions that Jesus and his original disciples would have never asked. For instance, the original followers of Jesus would have never understand Scripture as 'error-free' or historically accurate in the modern sense. They would not have understood salvation as 'going to heaven when you die' either. If I were to add a #22, it would be that fundamentalists live with the assumption that there is only one form of Christian faith: theirs [they struggle to recognize the contested nature of theological concepts & biblical interpretations within the various Christian traditions/denominations]. More to come in the next post.

Wright's Simply Christian [2006]

2009-06-11T08:45:00.000-07:00

NT Wright, the renowned British Anglican bishop, has written the Mere Christianity [CS Lewis in 1952] for our time: Simply Christian [2006]. Bland adjectives like ‘mere’ and ‘simply’ do not adequately describe Wright’s theological work. One cannot simply read his work with a shrug of the shoulders claiming that he’s offering nothing new. He is a pioneer, trailblazing fresh ways to understand Christian faith in the new world of post-modernity, where Europe has and the United States is moving away from Christendom [being a cohesive Christian society]. However, he is not trying to be original. In all of his scholarly works [and there are a lot!], he is asserting the best of biblical and historical scholarship to make claims about what the original message of Christian faith was [and is] all about and how it has been muddled by various cultures since then. The genius of NT Wright is that he is a genius...yet he can still communicate with the rest of us ordinary pilgrims who care deeply about discipleship and mission in a rapidly changing world. I've mined out 7 key paradigm shifts that I think Wright offers all of us who dare to engagement this work critically:

1. Compelling, not Proving: Wright’s 'apologetics' [his defense of Christian faith] is anything but defensive. He outlines 4 concepts universal to humanity, whether one lives in Lorrach, Germany or Littleton, Colorado:

• A Longing for Justice
• A Quest for Spirituality
• A Hunger for Relationship
• The Delight in Beauty

Wright calls these ‘echoes of a voice’ that whisper to the deepest parts of who we are. His treatise isn’t ‘a case for Christ’ or ‘evidence that demands a verdict.’ Wright knows we can’t prove Christian faith, but instead, he is attempting to provide a compelling portrait of why the biblical story makes sense. Christian faith, according to Wright, is true because it answers our deepest questions and yearnings. This voice that beckons us—that we can hear if we take time to listen and ponder—is from the God who created the world and is now determined to put the world back to rights.

2. Joining God’s People: The Christian story is about what God did through Israel, climaxing in Jesus the Messiah, to put the world back together again. The story becomes gospel—a great message—for us today because of what it means for us now. Our participation brings significance to the lost cause of living for ourselves. We imaginatively bring healing to a broken world through Spirit-inspired words and deeds. God invites us into the adventure of participating with him in this humble task, imitating Jesus Christ, the One who embodied the justice, spirituality, relationship and beauty that God designed for humanity to experience.

3. Not a disembodied heaven, but a renewed earth: The message isn’t only about now. It oozes hope. But hope is not about our souls spending eternal life in a disembodied heaven. Jesus’ resurrection is the first-fruits of resurrected life on this earth in the future. God inaugurated his kingdom in Jesus and now we live faithfully anticipating God’s eternal kingdom on earth, when all tears and pain and death are wiped away. God’s people live boldly as a sign and foretaste of the kingdom in the rugged details of our unique contexts. God’s kingdom, known partially now, will be fully realized when Christ re-appears in the near future!

4. Kingdom—According to Wright: ‘…we are all invited—summoned actually—to discover, through following Jesus, that this new world is indeed a place of justice, spirituality, relationship, and beauty, and that we are not only to enjoy it as such but to work at bringing it to birth on earth as in heaven.’ The Kingdom of God is not contained in some faraway heaven or individual hearts. Wright critiques the rapture—the idea that Jesus will return in the clouds to rescue Christians from this dirty, sinful, soon-to-be-destroyed world. Instead, Jesus will return to this world and restore it to Garden of Eden status—peaceful and harmonious, just as God intended. But God has been planting seeds of the kingdom from the original disciples through more than 100 generations of Christian communities all over the world. Now is the time to be a citizenship of God’s Dream for the world.

5. Israel: Wright claims that Christians wrongfully tell the biblical story when they jump from creation and fall straight to Jesus. There is an extremely important story between Genesis 3 and Matthew 1! It’s the story of God’s redemption strategy through Abraham’s family, the nation of Israel. God intended all along to bring justice to this world [‘putting the world to rights’] through Israel. This worshipping and serving family would model God’s justice socially, politically and economically. Israel continuously, throughout the Old Testament, fails at this vocation and is exiled from their promised land and scattered throughout the world. God never gives up. One of the key components to the significance of God sending Jesus the Messiah was [and is] to invite Gentiles to join Jews in participating with God in this ongoing adventure. Jesus—as the Jewish Messiah—fulfills the key Jewish concepts like Temple [where God’s Spirit dwelt], Torah [God’s Word to God’s People], King [a new David, a mighty leader after God’s own heart] and New Creation [a whole new world of peace, joy and love].

6. Forgiveness of Sins: the New Testament’s emphasis on sins forgiven must be rooted in this understanding of exiled Israel. Israel, as God’s people, was wayward in their vocation to model God’s intended path for humanity. They were steered toward dehumanizing practices like worshipping idols and hoarding their possessions away from vulnerable groups like widows, orphans and resident aliens. They needed to be forgiven collectively and to be set straight on God’s path. Jesus gathered around himself disciples, re-interpreting and intensifying God’s laws from the Old Testament, forming a new people to renew Israel’s pledge to be God’s people for the world. His death on the cross was interpreted by his earliest followers as a once-and-for-all sacrificial offering to atone for the sins of God’s people.

7. The Authority of the Bible—many American Evangelical Christians use words like ‘inerrant’ or ‘infallible’ to describe the Bible’s authority. Wright refuses to frame the Bible in these ways. It is not an encyclopedia of timeless & absolute truths or universal principles. Wright explains that the Bible is not that type of book. He compares the Bible to a script for actors or choreography for a dance. The Bible must be interpreted and imaginatively performed. It most certainly is not a rule book telling people to do this or don’t do that. It contains diverse narratives, poems, songs, strange apocalyptic literature, letters and, yes, some contextual rules within all these.

The Other Side of Education

2009-06-02T19:58:00.000-07:00

...he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’
Mark 4:35b

When Jesus led his disciples to the 'other side,' he was beckoning them into Gentile territory--different culture, different lifestyle, but same mission: to heal and liberate humanity. I ventured to 'the other side' today in a conversation with Aida, one of my senior Economics students. Aida is a soft-spoken, hard-working Latina who attends class on-time every day. She earned an 'A' in my American Government class first semester and will probably get an 'A' in Econ even though the final is insane. She asked me if I could help her apply for the Pell Grant, federal assistance dollars to help lower-income students attend college [Obama just increased the maximum to about $4000 per year for those who qualify]. She wants to go to Saddleback Community College and then a four-year school to get her nursing degree. Only problem is that Aida doesn't have a social security number because her passport expired--she's 'undocumented'...or as others might say: an 'illegal alien.' It was news to my own white suburban naivete that neither federal nor state government [Cal-Grant] allows undocumented students to apply for these funds. I did learn, however, that the state of California allows students in Aida's situation to qualify for in-state tuition by filling out an AB540 form.

The American suburban ethos, in my experience, shields us from the plight of young, vulnerable, impoverished students like Aida who desperately want a chance to work their way out of the shadows. Her dad [undocumented] works construction and her mom [who is paralyzed after falling off a roof 7 years ago] lives in Mexico. Aida spends most of her free time caring for her two younger sisters [12 and 9]. They live with her uncle.

Those who consider themselves citizens of the Kingdom of God have a different ethos: a calling to journey to 'the other side' and bring healing to those kept in bondage to the constraints of the Kingdom of America. From early on in the Story that, in Christ, we have been invited to participate in, God repeatedly calls his people to embrace those who have traveled in search for economic survival and opportunity--here's a sample:

The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.
Leviticus 19:34

Or has our King said on the mount [Matthew 5:5]:

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

Of course, a country with policies that deny our young the equal opportunity to an education is doomed. The United States has built its economy on the cheap labor of folks like Aida's dad [who hide in fear of INS], but its policies lack the grace and generosity to help with his daughter's education. A recent study debunked the myth that illegal immigrants milk government services and don't pay taxes--it showed that the typical illegal immigrant pays a net $80,000 in taxes over a lifetime and ironically those earning a college degree net $198,000. But we live in a system where those studying 'on the other side' do not have the same privilege as those born on 'the right side' of the border. You would be shocked at the number of wealthy white students who skate by in my classes and will go to college and will get a degree and will have economic opportunities that Aida and her undocumented brothers and sisters only dream of.

God's Dream has been inaugurated in Jesus the crucified and risen Lord and it is embodied by those who are called to the task of living out this vocation to the world. Our Spirit-led calling is to participate in the upside-down Kingdom of Christ with creative imagination and real-life adventures to 'the other side.'

If you are interested in giving financially to support Aida's journey towards 'the American Dream,' let me know and I'll make sure every dime goes to her education. We'll deliver a cashiers check anonymously when she graduates from high school in 15 days. Invite others to join us. Let's bring the hope and joy of God's Dream for the world to Aida.

The Gospel of Peace Undone

2009-05-21T18:15:00.000-07:00

GQ Magazine just got its hands on the cover sheets of secret war memos from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to President Bush from March-April 2003. Still hungover from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Rumsfeld included Bible verses depicting the US as the faithful fighters of justice. In this slide, Rumsfeld quotes Isaiah 6:8: Whom shall I send and who will go for us? Here I am Lord, send me. This is known as the commissioning of Isaiah the prophet, sent to the nation of Israel in exile. Isaiah's message combines the challenge of faithfulness to God's will with the hope that God will return to Zion and reign forever as the world flocks to worship. The authors of the New Testament heavily relied on Isaiah as a forerunner to the Messiah Jesus, who they believed inaugurated the long-awaited 'kingdom of God,' described in Isaiah 2:2-4:

He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more. [v.4]

God's reign of peace is fulfilled in Jesus who taught his disciples to love the enemy and pray for those who persecute us. His vision of the kingdom of God was not only taught, it was embodied in his obedience even to the point of death at the hands of the powers-that-be.

In Luke 4:17-18, King Jesus' inaugural address, he reads from the synagogue scroll Isaiah 61:1-2:

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners .

'Today,' Jesus boldly proclaims, 'this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.' Over and over again, the New Testament especially draws on Isaiah 50-65, linking Jesus to the Suffering Servant, who triumphed with humility and silence.

The Defense Department's use of Scripture is appalling and should serve notice to anyone who seeks to use the Bible for their own skewed agenda. Searching for moral highground by prooftexting passages is neither appropriate nor credible. God's Word simply should never be uttered in this manner. In the world of biblical scholarship, it would be laughable if it weren't so deadly.

Learning from a Muslim Brother

2009-05-17T10:48:00.001-07:00

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
Luke 4:17-18

Amir Abdel Malik Ali’s invitation to speak at UC Irvine’s Muslim Student Union on Thursday provided a sermon for me on fighting evil in the world. I don’t agree with everything he stands for, but I found myself inspired by his desire to fight oppression of all kinds. I grew up in the white, suburban Evangelical world, with its emphasis on eternal salvation and a personal relationship with Jesus who has cleansed me [and everyone else who invites him into their heart] from my sins. In my experience over the past 20 years, those who fight for peace and social justice in our world have consistently come from the outside of the Evangelical tradition, and mostly outside of Christian faith altogether. Sure, there’s been a turn towards a paternalistic brand of social justice in Evangelical dialogue, but it serves more as a bonus to the pure gospel [always defined as forgiveness of sins, reconciliation to God] and this kind of ‘social justice’ never seems to rebuke the systemic cause of injustice. So, yes, Ali’s lecture on Thursday night served as a much-needed sermon for this progressive Evangelical.

Ali, an imam from Oakland, was outspoken about the need for Muslims to unify with ‘people of conscience’ who share concern for the oppressed, in any and every circumstance in our world. Earlier that day, the Muslim Student Union joined their Latino brothers and sisters who worked on UCI’s campus in a protest demanding a living wage. He told his Muslim brothers and sisters that this is exactly where they should be, speaking truth to power, never humble in the face of evil. He explained to outsiders like me that Muslims chant the phrase ‘Allah ho Akbar,’ which means ‘God the most powerful.’ This is what Palestinian children yell out when they throw rocks at tanks. It means that no matter how strong the evil force is, it cannot match God, who made that force. Tanks, bombs, political leaders are not akbar. Allah is akbar.

For Christians, ‘Allah ho Akbar’ is simply an echo of ‘Our God reigns’ or in Jesus’ initial proclamation in Mark’s Gospel, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.’ Jesus gathered disciples who would pledge allegiance to God’s reign, his powerful force of justice, righteousness, peace and reconciliation in a world of oppressive forces. The Apostle Paul wrote of ‘principalities and powers’ that God unmasked and triumphed over on the cross of Jesus [Colossians 2:13-15]. In the face of these powerful forces, Jesus proclaimed the subversive reign of God. Not Caesar. Not the Jewish religious establishment. Not the unjust economic system of landowners and migrant peasants of the Galilean countryside.

Today, we must chant with our Muslim brothers and sisters, ‘Allah ho Akbar,’ or ‘Our God Reigns’ in the face of American imperialism and capitalism. On Thursday, Ali explained that the United States needs to decide whether we are an empire or a republic. Our political authorities [including Obama] continue to decide on behalf of empire, with its militarism and unjust capitalist economic policies, favoring banks and corporations over the homeless, unemployed and families forced to foreclose on their homes. Ali beckoned all progressives to learn from the philosophers and activists of the 60s. This was a time in American history that is preparing us for today. We are going to need to employ civil disobedience in the face of unjust policies. Each of us works in accordance with our own conscience discerning where God [Allah] is at work in redeeming these powers-that-be. Because the American Dream has become a Nightmare, we need to work for our own American perestroika, a restructuring of economic and political policies to favor those most vulnerable. Ali called upon ‘the microwave generation’ to embrace activism and sacrifice, to turn off the TV and stop shopping, and to be patient with results.

When asked who his heroes are, Amir Abdel Malik Ali, an African-American converted to Islam in his 20s, cited Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis and others, including Dr. Martin Luther King—specifically the radical Dr. King of the late 60s. In 1967, exactly a year before his assassination, King gave a speech in a church in New York City condemning the unjust war practices of the United States. King called the Untied States ‘the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today’ and ‘some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war.’ Indeed, our society continues to go mad on war, in Iraq and Afghanistan and spilling billions of dollars into our own ‘military-industrial complex’ [from the words of white suburban Dwight D. Eisenhower] and the militaries of allies like Israel. King called on a dissenting community with an alternative allegiance: ‘the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions.’ For King in 1967 and for us in 2009, we are ‘confronted with the urgency of now.’ In our rapidly changing society of technology and social networking, let us continue to carry the mantel of fighting oppressive forces, following this prophet who was killed and who we now honor with a national holiday [the irony].

This kind of progressive, politically-engaged Christian activism subverts the Western message of personal piety, spirituality and heavenly salvation. It is the political Jesus that John Howard Yoder uncovered in his 1972 book The Politics of Jesus. We disciples of Jesus have been coaxed out of political-economic engagement by a variety of methods: we are too comfortable; we are disillusioned with the complexity of American politics; we’ve been taught that Jesus wasn’t political, but spiritual. Yet, when Jesus stood in the face of death before Pontius Pilate, he unflinchingly said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’ Jesus' wasn’t a spiritual kingdom by and by, but a socio-economic-political kingdom with a different style and substance altogether. It was a tangible, practical lifestyle that subverted Rome’s domination, violence, fear, conquest and injustice. The coming Kingdom of God, predicted by the prophets and inaugurated in Jesus, enlisted disciples who pledged allegiance to God’s politics and economics: abundance, forgiveness and reconciliation, humility, celebration, ethnic unity [Jew & Gentile], compassion, human dignity and nonviolent solutions.

Together with Ali and our Muslim brothers and sisters, along with the radical Dr. King and John Howard Yoder, we progressive Christians proclaim ‘Our God Reigns’ to the unjust powers that systematize our world. As the author of Colossians writes, '[Jesus] is before all things, and in him all things systmatize.' The God of Jews, Christians and Muslims, as testified by the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and Koran, is about bringing justice to the oppressed of the world, and inviting people from all ethnic groups to participate with him in putting the world back to rights [what the Greek dikaiosune--'righteousness' or 'justification'--originally meant]. We Christians can risk this endeavor because we are convinced that we worship a God who raises the dead [a God who is akbar]. We obey like Jesus obeyed so that we will be raised like Jesus was raised.

Spirituality and Discipleship

2009-05-14T09:46:00.000-07:00

John 15:4 Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 5I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.

Galatians 2:19b I have been crucified with Christ; 20and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Romans 8:11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

Matthew 1:23‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel’,
which means, ‘God is with us.’

Matthew 25:40 And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,* you did it to me.”

Matthew 28:20 And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

I come to know myself not alone, but in the company of fellow travelers; I come to know others not merely in collusion, but in shared commitment to the One who brings us together justly and safely in the triumphant surrender of ultimate trust.
David Augsburger, Dissident Discipleship

I confess. I've resisted Christian spirituality. It's been a reaction to the hyper-individualism of my Evangelical roots, longing for a more socio-economic-political faith reflected in the New Testament. The Kingdom of God--his Dream for the world inaugurated in Jesus the Messiah--invites all and sundry to join in radical living and loving. But my error has been an indifference to the Source of discipleship. Christian faith is rooted in the belief that the God who created the world incarnated himself in a Jewish man from a small town in backwoods Galilee. His death at the hands of the Roman political and Jewish religious leaders was vetoed by a resurrection empowered by God's Spirit. This vindicated Jesus' way of life--the kingdom of God!--communicated through teachings, miracles, healings and modeled by Jesus' life.

Jesus' disciples, from Peter and Andrew on the shores of Galilee to those of us pledging allegiance to God's Kingdom in Orange County, live out the legacy of Jesus' Presence in our world. God's Spirit continues to guide, comfort, energize and empower us to live out his way. John's Gospel has Jesus, on the night before his death, urging his disciples to stay connected to Jesus--like a vine connected to branches--receiving life and sustainance to bear fruit. Christian spirituality is intimately connected to a Living and Loving God who has invited us to participate in the redemption of the world. This is hard and mysterious work, yet we believe it is the most compelling and fulfilling lifestyle on offer. The real Jesus is not only what he did and taught back then, but what he continues to do with communities of his followers in our rapidly changing world today. He will be with us until he returns in glory, when we see reality for what it really is 'face to face' [I Cor 13:12].

How then do we crucify ourselves [our identity and vocation focused on ourselves] so that 'the faithfulness of the Son of God' lives in us? Like an athlete training for the Olympics, we bring a whole program of disciplines and practices to shape our lives in his messianic pattern of humility, enemy-love, service, forgiveness, compassion and rugged resistance of all counterfeit ways of being and living. The end goal of Christian spirituality is more dangerous participation in the adventure of God's Dream for the world.

We meditate on Scripture...reminded that we are in his Presence.
We memorize Scripture...reflecting on it throughout the day in his Presence.
We sit in silence...listening for his Presence.
We sing...celebrating his Presence.
We pray...asking his Presence to guide us and change circumstances.
We fast...leaning on his Presence for all of our energy.
We love and serve our friends, family, acquaintances and enemies...remembering they are his Presence.

Our spirituality, habits that train us to discern and engage with Jesus' Presence, is for the world because we are God's family that serves and models Jesus Way. Jesus' continued Presence does not call us to flee the complex and confusing world of sin, shame, death and destruction, but instead to engage with the world, living an embodied reminder of God's redemption. We do this together. David Augsburger calls this 'tri-polar spirituality'--self, others and God. We cannot know any of the 3 without each other. Our identity and vocation, our healing and transformation, is shaped by God's Spirit working through others that have also joined up in God's Dream for the world.

Kingdom Thinking on May 19th

2009-05-12T08:26:00.000-07:00

A Primer on Kingdom Voting:
Those baptized into Christian faith pledge allegiance to the Kingdom of God, the 'New Reality' inaugurated in Jesus the Messiah. Apprenticeship to Jesus means that our American citizenship is neither primary nor ultimate. Some Kingdom practices and values collide with American counterparts. We choose to love our enemies, instead of seek their destruction. We live with contentment and generosity, not hoarding and shopping. We embrace humility and service, not self-interested success and wealth. We seek to influence society through evangelism [inviting others to participate in this New Reality] and through the leavening process [planting seeds of the Kingdom by modeling this New Reality, waiting for God to grow fruit]. Because we live with a dual citizenship [Christian and American] we can cast our vote for more peace, justice and compassion in the budget policies of the Legislature and Governor. But we place our hope and worship in the 'Governor of the Universe' [James Madison's phrase] to make all things new, reconciling creation and humanity back to God at the reappearance of King Jesus someday soon. This tension neither drives us into self-protecting, self-righteous ghettos nor does it authorize us to triumphantly control our societies policies against the wish of the electorate. We citizens of the Kingdom mostly find ourselves as the outvoted minority.

A cheat-sheet for the upcoming Propositions:
*The 'special election' was called for by the Legislature and Governor to make decisions on about $6 billion to close the current budget gap. The federal government is allowed to have a deficit, but CA Constitution demands that the Legislature/Governor balance the budget each year. The Legislature/Governor need the consent of the electorate [us] in order to bypass current spending mandated by law. Now, studies show that there will be a $15 billion budget gap even if the propositions pass [$21 billion if none of the propositions pass as polls are showing]. Voter turnout is expected at about 30-35% [in contrast to 78% for the November 2008 Presidential and Prop 8 election].

1A--creates a rainy-day fund [controls spending] for our next recession and extends the tax hikes created by the Legislature and Governor to balance the budget in February

1B--supplemental payments to K-12 schools and community colleges starting in 2011 for money lost in the recent cuts in Education spending

1C--borrows money from the state lottery--this would be repaid by revamped lottery: increasing lottery profits through better marketing and bigger prizes to attract more customers

1D--diverts money away from state early-childhood development programs

1E--diverts money away from state mental health programs

1F--prevents pay raises for legislators and statewide office holders in deficit years

Thinking Theologically?
I’m advocating for a NO vote on ALL 6 propositions. Propositions C, D and E all divert place economic burden on vulnerable population groups. The lottery [C] advertises to and profits off the poor. Research continues to show that those living below the poverty line continue to buy lottery tickets with the hope of overcoming the challenging obstacles of keeping them financially afloat. The state knowingly and willingly does this because it is an easy, time-tested way to raise revenue for programs like education. Early childhood [D] and mental health [E] programs have mandatory [by the law] funding. Although the Body of Christ shouldn’t simply rely on the state to do this work, these marginalized groups can be helped best when churches and other ‘faith-based organizations’ collude with the government to care for them. Churches do it because it is the gospel, the proclamation that the God who raised Jesus from the dead is the God of the poor, the lame, the blind and the prisoner [Luke 4:17-18] and we will be judged worthy of bearing the name of Christ [or not] based on our solidarity [through word and deed] with them [Matthew 25:31-46].

Propositions A and B are tied together [a strategy to get the omnipotent teacher’s union to endorse and campaign for it]. A rainy-day fund could very likely be created by skimming off funds designated for programs that aid the poor and vulnerable. In the next decade, legislators and our next Governor should learn lessons from this budget calamity and make ‘conservative’ [as opposed to lavish] decisions to save for future recessions. The Legislature needs to fix the education crisis in our state. Too much money flowing into a broken system. This will take hard work, but won't be achieved by just throwing money at it. These political leaders should be held accountable for these decisions by the Body of Christ, the protector of the lost and the least. Proposition F is unnecessary. Legislators are overpaid and shouldn’t have this cheesy incentive to pass the budget on time. Legislation is needed to stop pay increases altogether. They make $113,098 and $162 stipend per day they are in session. That’s double the salary of a public school teacher with 15 years of experience. Again, they should be kept accountable for these decisions that don’t benefit the general public.

In Matthew's Gospel, disciples of Jesus are held accountable by whether they 'build their house on the rock' of the Sermon on the Mount and whether they tangibly meet the needs of 'the least of these.' On May 19th, we citizens of God's New Reality can put our vote [and money] where our mouth is.

Intramural Love

2009-04-26T10:14:00.000-07:00

Deuteronomy 30:19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, 20loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the LORD swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

I John 3:14 We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death. 15All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. 16We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. 17How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?

In Christianity the cross is the test of everything which deserves to be called Christian.
Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God

Moses' inspirational speech on the banks of the river Jordan inaugurates a 'two-ways' tradition for God's people. Humanity is divided into those who choose life and those who choose death...the righteous and the wicked [Psalm 1]...those who are being saved and those who are perishing [I Corinthians 1:18-25]. Moses reminded the wandering band of Israel, preparing to claim the promised land, that blessings and curses in life had everything to do with their ability to pledge allegiance to God's covenant and follow through with action. When Israel loved, obeyed and held fast to God, they were blessed. When they disobeyed, they were cursed, vomitted into exile.

Jesus gathered around himself disciples who would fulfill Moses' mandate by adopting Jesus' radical love ethic: the obedience to God's will and loving each other even to the point of death. It was a 'new' commandment [John 13:34-35] because it had the audacity to interpret Moses' law through the teachings, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. Now, love for family, neighbors and enemies was known through the death of God's own son. It was also 'new' because it was a new time, the long-awaited 'age to come,' which Paul called 'a whole new world' in II Corinthians 5:17. Disciples of Jesus are now empowered by God's Spirit to love as he loved.

The community listening to I John lived some 50 years after the death of Jesus. Their task, living as minorities through indifference and hostility from various Jewish denominations, was to model Jesus' love through their radical devotion to each other. In John's Gospel [probably written in slightly different circumstances before I John], situated during his final meal before his death, Jesus calls his disciples 'friends' and compares their relationship with him to a vine and its branches [John 15]. This connection brings life from the source [Jesus] to bear fruit [self-giving love]. Just as Jesus was fully connected to God's will [even to the point of death], so also his disciples would be connected to him in order to live authentically.

For God's people, it has always been a matter of life and death. For the Christians, the Christ followers, we participate real life only by embracing his death. The only way we really know that we've passed from death to life is the tangible modeling of our Master's love...to the point of death. This intramural love for each other in Christian community is eternal life itself [John 17:3] and is the identity marker for true Christian discipleship [John 13:35]. But intramural love overflows to the wider watching world as an invitation to join up [evangelism] in the cause and functions as a leavening process, growing God's Reign slowly--a Conspiracy--as people finally find what they are searching for: the unconditional, abundant love of God in Christ.

The End of Christian America?

2009-04-22T13:50:00.000-07:00

Last week's Newsweek cover story by Jon Meacham ['The End of Christian America'] highlights the decline of America's Christian population. 15% of Americans--double the rate since the early 90s--are 'unaffliated' in regards to religion/spirituality. Of course, 75% of the population still identify with some brand of Christian faith: Evangelical, Catholic, mainline Protestant, Orthodox, Fundamentalist, etc. Here's Meacham's thesis:

The decline and fall of the modern religious right's notion of a Christian America creates a calmer political environment and, for many believers, may help open the way for a more theologically serious religious life.

I agree with Meacham [an Episcopalian] that these trends point to an opportunity for disciples of Jesus in the American context, but I'm skeptical [yet hopeful] that it will create a 'calmer political' or 'theologically serious religious' environments. The religious right, especially in the southern Orange County context of our house church community, has a strong influence [monopoly?] on what Christianity essentially is: a belief system with the monopoly on the Absolute Truth about the world with an offer for relationship with God and a guarantee of eternal life in heaven--all through the saving work of Jesus. This Christian package emphasizes penal-substitutionary atonement [Jesus died for my sins], the self-evident and inerrant Bible ['God said it, I believe it and that settles it.'], pietistic revivalism [a emotionally-driven personal relationship with Jesus--ie, Evangelical worship music] and a curious ambivalence towards culture [sometimes fighting vigorously for judeo-Christian laws and sometimes shunning the whole enterprise for private spiritual faith].

My own 'unaffliated' friends are turned off by the perceived dogmatism, judgmentalism, arrogance, anti-intellectualism, bad listening skills, wealth and politically conservative nature of even the soft fundamentalists who pride themselves on catering to 'seekers.' Some of this perceptive criticism is fair, some of it isn't. But many 'unaffliated' Americans of a younger generation have little use for a Christianity with this kind of baggage and unfortunately most don't see that there are 'other' Christian options.

A key issue with this dominant form of Christian faith is that it most often speaks with language indicating that it is the only form of Christian faith on offer. A case in point is Jonathan Merritt's essay in USA Today this week, calling fellow Evangelicals to a more loving with homosexuals. He writes:

As Christians, we clearly won't be able to support any and everything. For example, our biblical convictions prohibit a redefinition of marriage. Yet, there are other areas where we may be able to offer support. We should support protecting our gay and lesbian neighbors from discrimination in the workplace and cleaning up the legal cobwebs that govern hospital visitation rights and inheritance for same-sex couples.

What is and is not a 'biblical conviction' is a contested concept. Many faithful Christians, in fact, would argue that gay marriage is not redefining biblical marriage [for example, see this one and that one]. Merritt's language continues the rhetoric of the recent election season where conservative Christians in the US pleaded for all God's children to vote for 'biblical' issues, naively equating their dominant view as the only claim to biblical truth for all God's children.

From its beginnings, Christian faith in the United States has been dominated by the Constantinian curse. Since the 4th century when Constantine became a 'Christian' and baptized the Empire, Christian faith has shifted from what is faithful to God's kingdom to what is effective and pragmatic for faith in the kingdom of this world. When Christians have historically sought to Christianize society through laws baptized in biblical principles, they have inevitably watered down Jesus' message of radical love, humility and service to the world. Contemporary American Christians have conjured up a reasonable, pragmatic, respectable belief in Jesus that is spiritual, personal and eternal. The dominant form of Christian faith is arguably an individualized faith that is more about common sense, traditional sexual ethics, free market economics and Church membership.

In the past week, Delwin Brown and Diana Butler Bass have contributed essays describing a historic progressive brand of Christianity that has functioned as a 'minority report' during the past 150 years. This faith confronts systems of injustice and inequality, but does not equate Christian faith with American patriotism. Evangelicals and 'unaffiliated' Americans are slowly discovering these as valuable alternatives to the larger and louder brands of conservative evangelicalism.

In addition, Anabaptist voices like John Howard Yoder, Ched Myers and Jim McClendon have inspired a few communities here and there over the past few decades to radical discipleship that interprets the cross as 'the price of social nonconformity' and cherishes the Bible's authority like an actress does a script, submitting to it through memorization and imagination in the context of diverse audiences. These communities are microsocieties of the kingdom of God, patiently and faithfully living the politics of Jesus, subverting the 'civil religion' of 'In God We Trust' and 'God Bless America.' These communities proclaim boldly that America never was a Christian nation because it has never collectively and intentionally followed Jesus' challenge to love the neighbor and enemy, as well as commit to equality and justice in our economic and civil policies towards those vulnerable and marginalized people groups inside and outside the States. Provocative Christian faith strains to be faithful to Jesus' way, not to be effective by majority rule or through leaders enacting 'Christian' policies. The cross of Jesus is the symbol of how God orders his world: we can risk 'ineffective' obedience to God's will even to the point of death because we worship the God who raises the dead.

516 Quail Meadow is hopeful that a calmer political environment and more theologically serious religious life results from the changes in American culture. We are committed to offering a brand of discipleship that confronts the illusions of 'Christian America' and commits [intentionally, yet imperfectly] to living Jesus' way of suffering service, forgiveness and enemy love, patiently waiting for God to bring the world to rights. We believe that God will transform the world through non-coercive, non-manipulative evangelism [inviting others to pledge allegiance to God's alternative reign] and the leavening process in society [slowly changing attitudes and habits by modeling God's reign], not by finding strength in population counts and laws that protect 'Christian' morality. The End of Christian America is good news for the United States [both 'Christian' and 'unaffliated'] longing for a different style of discipleship.

He is Risen

2009-04-09T11:23:00.000-07:00

...declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord...
Romans 1:4

Many Pharisaical Jews in the first century believed in the Resurrection from the dead, a day when the God who created the heavens and the earth would plant his feet on this world and raise the righteous ones to eternal life in God’s Kingdom. This ‘end-times’ expectation was contested within Judaism, but it was an ultimate hope for many. The Pharisee Saul, believed fervently in this hope, and on his road to Damascus to arrest Jews for Jesus, he was confronted by the resurrected Jesus himself!

Saul became the Apostle Paul after 3 days of physical blindness and spiritual illumination. It seems that this long-hoped-for day of Resurrection had actually come in this crucified Servant-King Jesus from the out-of-the-way town called Nazareth. God inaugurated the ‘end-times’ in Jesus partially, as a foretaste, a first-fruit of a still future reality for all of God’s people. In Jesus’ resurrection, God vindicated Jesus’ interpretation of what the kingdom of God looks like: the vulnerable and marginalized are given dignity and priority, forgiveness and reconciliation is bestowed in relationships, neighbors and enemies are served and loved, possessions are shared, illnesses and addictions are healed, lust and sexual perversion are shelved, and the whole world—both Jew and Gentile—are invited to participate in what God is doing to redeem his creation. Resurrected life is offered to all…now! But we participate in the kingdom of God only by signing on to the cross: a death to self and the ‘common sense’ of our culture. As the 20th century American prophet Martin Luther King said in Chicago months before his assassination:

The cross we bear precedes the crown we wear. To be a Christian one must take up his cross, with all of its difficulties and agonizing and tension-packed content and carry it until that very cross leaves its marks upon us and redeems us to that more excellent way which comes only through suffering.

Just 25 years after Jesus death and resurrection, the Apostle Paul pleaded with the small Christian community of Jews and Gentiles in Rome to participate in this death and resurrection way:

Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. [Romans 6:4-6]

Those baptized into citizenship in God’s international kingdom pledge to crucify our old selves in order to live freely in ‘the whole new world’ [II Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15] of Jesus’ way.

On Easter Sunday, 516 Quail Meadow joins Christians all over the world to celebrate God’s vindication of Jesus’ way, but we also renew our vows to journey with him to Jerusalem, bearing the cross, confronting power structures that enslave many. Today, this means committing to ridding our own self-absorption and self-gratification to be a team of healers and givers and servants and energizers to our neighbors and foes. It also means critiquing the counterfeit narratives cleverly told by commercials, print ads, movies, songs and websites. But we are not alone in this hard task of continuing Jesus legacy:

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. [Romans 8:11]

Cursed on a Good Friday

2009-04-05T21:39:00.000-07:00

Deuteronomy 28:45 All these curses shall come upon you, pursuing and overtaking you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the LORD your God, by observing the commandments and the decrees that he commanded you.

Lev 18:26,28 But you shall keep my statutes and my ordinances and commit none of these abominations, either the citizen or the alien who resides among you...otherwise the land will vomit you out for defiling it, as it vomited out the nation that was before you.

Is 2: 2 In days to come
the mountain of the LORD’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.

Is 44:3b I will pour my spirit upon your descendants,
and my blessing on your offspring

Galatians 3:10 For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of the law.’ 11Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law; for ‘The one who is righteous will live by faith.’ 12But the law does not rest on faith; on the contrary, ‘Whoever does the works of the law will live by them.’ 13Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’— 14in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

The Torah, God's Law to Israel, found its final form in the 6th century BC while God's people were exiled in Babylon. Deuteronomy 28, then, was a 'prophecy' of what would happen to those contemporary Jews living under a curse far from their homeland. In other words, Israel is telling the story of what happened to them in their failure to be a blessing to the world. God vomited them out of the land. But the covenant God refuses to give up. Yahweh's promise for Israel was that he would restore them as a blessing to the world by adding to their numbers [inviting the Gentiles] and by empowering them to keep God's commands [empowering them with the Spirit of God].

The Torah was vital for the covenant between God and Israel. The Torah was supposed to give God's people direction. It was a script on how to bless the world God's way. Unfortunately, the weight of these 613 rules burdened them into a curse. God's promised land exit strategy involved foreign empires like Babylon, Persia, Assyria, Greece and, in Jesus' day, Rome. They became a cursed people because of their unwillingness or inability to keep the Torah.

In about 55AD, St. Paul sent a letter to the small community of Jewish and Gentile Christians in Galatia. In it, Paul expresses his astonishment and frustration over the recent trend of Gentile circumcision in the community. It seems that Jewish-Christian missionaries came to Galatia after Paul left and convinced these Gentile-Christians that they needed to be circumcised. It was an act that insured Gentiles a share of full membership--both identity and vocation--in God's people.

Paul was incensed by this symbolic act because it counterfeited the gospel of Jesus. In his commentary on Galatians, Richard Hays imaginatively puts words into Paul's mouth: ‘If you affiliate yourself with those who place their hope in obeying the Law, you are joining a losing team.’ That old Israel was still under the curse of Deuteronomy. Paul had the audacity to proclaim that the cross of Jesus birthed a whole 'new world' [Gal 6:15] where the Gentiles became equal partners in God's Reign and the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead was unleashed to give these people the power to bear fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control. Paul and every other messianic Jew were 'crucified with Christ' [Gal 2:19-20; 6:14] to the old identity of Torah: neither circumcision nor uncircumcision meant anything anymore! The death of Jesus was the pivot-point of history, a new exodus, liberating God's people from the bondage of Torah-identity, freed to live the fruit of the Spirit with their Gentile colleagues.

Q: What then does Jesus death mean, according to Galatians 3:10-14?

A: This difficult to understand passage offers us a 'fusion of images,' according to Fuller's Joel Green [in Recovering the Scandal of the Cross]:

Christ as the representative of Israel in whose death the covenant reaches its climax: the promised and long awaited new age has come!

Justification: how is one justified to be a part of God's people? By being 'in Christ' not 'in Torah.'

Redemption [evoking exodus and exilic themes]: a 'new exodus' giving us freedom in Christ to bear the fruit of the spirit

Substitution: Christ is cursed so that God's people are blessed and can become the blessing that they were intended to be

Sacrifice: implicitly, his shed blood on the cross is 'for us,' bearing the shame, guilt and death so that the people of God can be forgiven--removing the curse to walk in newness of life

The Promise of the Spirit: faith is risky and socially nonconforming, but only by this real faith are we guided and empowered by the spirit

Jesus' death becomes a fulfillment of these prominent themes from the Hebrew Bible. The long story of God intersects with this perfect Jew from Galilee who boldly obeys God's will in the face of evil and injustice from the religious and socio-political powers of the world. God's people have crucified themselves to the old games and rules of the systems of the world in order to pledge allegiance to the mentality of Jesus the crucified messiah. He became the curse so that we can rekindle what it means to be God's people for the world. His curse is our identity so that we can live out the God-ordained vocation.

Who are these Christians?

2009-03-31T07:33:00.000-07:00

For we are the aroma of the Messiah...
II Corinthians 2:15

The Christians are a peculiar tribe. They are a race of people who pledge allegiance to God’s Dream for the world embodied in Jesus. ‘Christian’ is not a status, but a vocation. It is hard work keeping the Dream alive. They do not work to get to heaven, but to bring heaven to earth. They are not sidetracked with the drama of celebrity worship or consumer advertising. They are committed to blessing the world through sacrificial service and self-giving love. They reflect Jesus—the image of the invisible God—by advocating for those on the periphery and by forgiving family, friends, neighbors, strangers and enemies. They cling to the audacious claim that—although given the death penalty on a Roman cross—God raised this Jesus from the grave. They claim that the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead empowers them today. They live to please God and refuse to preoccupy themselves with what others think and who gets the rewards and recognition. They think deeply and critically about the world that God has created and pour time and resources into preserving and restoring the intended design for humanity, all creatures and land. They re-enact Jesus’ death and resurrection through the ancient practice of baptism, which signifies their own death to self, risen to newness of life. They have Time to listen to others and respond with gentleness, humility and care. Because they have been enamored by God’s grace and mercy, they live to pass it on to others. They do not motivate with nor are they motivated by guilt, shame or manipulation. They refuse violent solutions and self-defense because they worship a God who raises the dead. They look out for the needs of society’s most vulnerable and least capable. They give dignity and respect to life in regards to the womb, the bomb and the slum. They live with material simplicity and spiritual abundance. They interpret, meditate and enact the New Testament script, a collection of inspired documents written by Jesus’ original followers. They hope in a someday-soon, redeemed Reality that God will bring to this world. Their vocation is to be a sign and foretaste of this Reality by living it now. They are trained and formed by disciplines like prayer, fasting, confession, giving, praise and bible memorization. They work aggressively for peace and justice—socially, politically and economically. They yearn to see personal transformation: hurts healed, relationships reconciled, minds at peace, work fulfilled and enjoyed, addictive and codependent cycles broken. They pledge solidarity to each other, resolving conflict with nurture and honesty. They confess wrong-doing and identify weaknesses in themselves. They do not fear those with different beliefs, worldviews and lifestyles. They dialogue with them and learn from them. They humbly admit that they do not have the monopoly on the Truth. They are convinced that love will have the final word in the universe. These Christians keep the Dream alive, anticipating the ultimate Reality when God mysteriously shocks the world again.

From Galatia: An Interview with St. Paul

2009-03-23T19:12:00.000-07:00

516QuailMeadow: St. Paul, it’s been 1950 years since you wrote this letter to the little Christian community in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, and here we are, reading dead people’s mail! How did this become Scripture?
St. Paul: That happened a long time after I gave my life for the gospel in Rome. A lot of these little messianic communities of Jews and Gentiles gradually collected letters from me and Peter, James and John and copied them and traded them with each other. Over time, these churches had quite a collection and eventually they had to make some serious decisions about what was ‘in’ and what was ‘out’—in other words, what made the cut to be a part of the Bible and what didn’t!

516QuailMeadow: So how in the world does this ‘collection’ of letters and stories written by followers of Jesus--like you--function as God’s Word for us in 2009?
St. Paul: This is obviously a debated concept today in the Body of Christ. Some believe in what’s called the ‘dictation theory,’ that God actually breathed these words through writers like me—that the Spirit of God used me as an error-free instrument to say exactly what God was trying to say. Quite humbly, as a human—weak and imperfect—I can’t quite say that this is the case. I believe that God still uses saints like me and you to do his will, but I still think we’ve got very ‘human’ ideas throughout the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. The way I would define the authority of Scripture—how it functions as God’s Word to us—is that a community gathers around it and reads it and studies it and prayerfully interprets it together and then commits to living it. They place themselves under its authority like an actress with her script. The script guides the character by offering boundaries, but it also demands creativity and imagination as it is interpreted on stage or screen. There will be different interpretations, though, depending on the denomination/tradition of the church community, as well as the experience and the specific culture of the community. For instance, there have been many interpretations of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet over the centuries [some better than others] for catering to a diversity of audiences devoted to Shakespeare. The internet helps us to see, better than ever, that different Christian communities throughout the United States--let alone the entire world--interpret all of these biblical passages, including my letters, in a variety of ways. This doesn’t mean that just any old interpretation is valid. I think there are probably 2 or 3 valid interpretations of what the Spirit of God is saying through my words for any given passage. But seriously, there are all sorts of ideas floating around about what exactly I was saying to the Galatians!

516QuailMeadow: What exactly is the point that you were trying to get across to the Galatian Christians?
St. Paul: The birth of this community of Jews and Gentiles was really divine intervention, but the maturity of the community was a painstaking work-in-progress. Jews and Gentiles are ethnically very different. A group of Jewish Christians called aptly ‘the Judaizers’ influenced the Galatian church after I proclaimed the gospel to them and spent some time with them. What can I say: while the cat’s away the mice will play! The Judaizers demanded that Gentiles be circumcised in order to participate in the community. In essence, they were telling the Gentiles to become Jewish in order to be a part of God’s People. I dedicated most of my effort in this letter attempting to communicate the vital concept of what it means to be ‘in Christ.’ When we Christians have our conversion experience, when we become 'in Christ,' all of our identity markers are consumed by Christ. Our faith or better yet, faithfulness, becomes the crucial factor. But I do want to emphasize that Christians over the centuries—-especially since Martin Luther—-have overemphasized the salvific ‘status’ of individuals and the unintended consequence has been to de-emphasize what it means for the people of God to have a ‘vocation.’ Protestant Christians since Luther have really focused on faith [or belief] as a mental assent to certain doctrinal statements like ‘Jesus is my Lord and Savior’ or ‘Our eternal salvation in heaven comes from grace not works.’ These statements are not bad or wrong as simple statements, but they have kept Christians from understanding what I was attempting to challenge these Galatians with. The basic unsaid assumptions working behind the scenes of this letter are that, as the people of God, we have our work cut out for us. Our faith in Christ, of course, must translate into action—-or it’s not really faith at all. Action starts by understanding that the death of Jesus—-echoing the first Passover for Jews—-liberates us from being enslaved to the mentality of the ‘present evil age.’ I also use language like the ‘flesh’ and the ‘world’ for this same concept. Christians are those who participate in the death of Christ [‘I have been crucified with Christ…the world has been crucified to me and I to the world’] so that means that we are a part of a whole new world, a 'new creation' made possible by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. We have been liberated [‘freedom in Christ!’] to be citizens of the promised land [‘the age to come’] having the subversive mentality of the kingdom of God even though it will not fully arrive until Jesus returns in glory. As liberated followers of Jesus, we bear the fruit of the Spirit now. Peace, love, kindness, gentleness, self-control overflow from our lives, sweetening the present evil age, as we anticipate ‘the age to come’ in its fullness.

516QuailMeadow: How does all of this translate to the issue at hand: circumcision?
St. Paul: Circumcision was a hangover from the ‘present evil age.’ It was a powerful identity marker for the Jewish people, a symbol of their covenant with the living God. It represented an ethnic way of thinking about God and what it meant to follow him. Circumcision was an issue that kept the Galatians from fully understanding the social implications of Jesus’ life and death. The people of God became an eclectic bunch of Christ-followers with unique customs, all of which were transcended by identification with the Messiah in baptism. Of course, now circumcision is completely irrelevant and is not an issue for most Christians in the States. But back then it was huge, a potential deal-breaker for many Jews and Gentiles alike. You can feel my passion and anger in this letter. I even tell this community they might as well emasculate themselves if they are thinking this way—some language for a saint, eh?!

Circumcision was a stumbling block for Gentile Christians because it was a cheap tool to fit in with Jewish Christians and non-Christians. These Gentiles wanted to walk in two worlds at the same time. The Judaizers convinced many of them, through fear and manipulation, to get circumcised. This, in effect, watered down the powerful message that God had expanded his reign to the non-Jewish world. For us Jews, this could only mean one thing: that God had accomplished, rather mysteriously, his promised return to Zion, the new covenant, pouring out his Spirit upon all flesh. This signaled an apocalypse, often translated as a ‘revelation’ in your English Bibles: the official unveiling of God’s mysterious plan for the world. These were exciting times in the decades after Jesus’ inauguration of the kingdom. God was keeping his people on the edge of their seat. To command non-Jews to get circumcised was back-pedaling into old ways.

516QuailMeadow: How does this seemingly ‘irrelevant’ issue become relevant to Christians living in Southern California today?
St. Paul: First of all, we have a lot of ethnic challenges in our world today. One of our lessons from Galatians is how we connect and worship with people who have different customs and lifestyles than us. I think about immigrants coming from the south [Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador] who work all these tough jobs like dishwashing and gardening, making less-than-minimum-wages. Many of these folks follow Jesus passionately, but it is rare to see them worshipping with the wealthier, mostly white, restaurant owners and home-owners that they work for. 40 years ago, Martin Luther King said that Sunday morning in the church was the most segregated hour in American life. There are some communities defying these odds, but not many.

In addition, I think about the variety of Christian denominations who exclude other Christian traditions based on certain worship practices, doctrines or daily customs. In American religious life, depending on geographic region, Christians often cling to rituals that are based more on human tradition than on what God ordains.

The big takeaway from Galatians, I think for Americans, is this big-picture concept pitting the ‘present evil age’ with the ‘age to come.’ To be a ‘Christian’ means quite simply that we pledge allegiance to living as a sign and foretaste of the ‘age to come.’ The Gospels, which came a good 2-3 decades after I wrote the letter to the Galatians, called this ‘the kingdom of God.’ In the first century, the Jews were awaiting God’s return to this world in a decisive manner. They thirsted God’s final triumph over the imperial empire of Rome. Only God could manhandle Caesar’s militaristic domination system. There were a lot of different types of Jewish communities [kind of like Christian denominations now] and each of these had a different idea about what true Jews should be doing until God comes back and how exactly God would come back. Pharisees, Saduccees, Zealots, Essenes, Herodians and Messianic Jews [or ‘Jews for Jesus’] all had their firm [yet diverse] convictions about what it meant to be God’s people. I was a Pharisee who ran into [literally] the risen Jesus on my road to Damascus where I was going to arrest and kill these subversive Jews for Jesus. On that road, I was confronted by Jesus and then converted to his ‘way,’ but most importantly I was commissioned, like the Prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah centuries earlier, to bring the message of Jesus the Lord and Messiah to the Gentiles all over the Roman Empire. After this confrontation, I was convinced that the long-awaited ‘age to come’ had been inaugurated in Jesus. It certainly did not happen how I expected it to and it was inaugurated partially, as a first stage in God’s end-times drama. Jesus will re-appear someday soon and commence the ‘age to come’ in its fullness, when every knee will bow to him. But until then, Christians live by a completely different set of rules than anyone else. This set of rules should never lead us to be triumphalistic or judgmental. Instead, the Body of Christ should be a rich harvest of the fruit of the Spirit. Remember, it’s a whole new world [‘new creation’] now that God has raised his son Jesus from the dead. Our symbol for this new world is the cross. We’ve crucified our ideas of ‘the way things are’ and now it’s all about faithfulness to Jesus’ way—-even if it doesn’t bring success as the world defines it. The pattern of death and then resurrection implies that it's about obedience, not effectiveness. As modern-day saint Martin Luther King used to say, 'The cross we bear precedes the crown we wear.'

516QuailMeadow: What does Jesus’ death mean for you?
St. Paul: First of all, let me just say that was by accident that I even spent any time with the Galatians at all. I was in a bad state physically and not only did they nurse me back to health, but they received my message of good news about Jesus with open arms. Back in the day, folks did not usually listen to a stricken prophet. A sickness or injury like this would have meant that God was not really with the messenger. But the Galatians seemed to understand that the ways of God were often mysterious. In the true story of his ‘anointed king’ Jesus, we really have a beautifully mysterious picture of how God actually works through the weak and condemned. Right there in Deuteronomy, the Torah [law] of God, it reads that any man who hangs from a tree is cursed! So God used this cursed one to be a curse for us so that we can all be reconciled back to God. God exchanges the curse of Jesus’ cross for the curse of our sin to cancel each other out! Jesus’ death was an exchange for Jews and Gentiles to be a part of the people of God. Gentiles had always been enemies of God’s way in the world—they were mostly foreign to what it meant to be truly human. Jesus’ death erased this curse. They have been given an opportunity to be a part of a new race of people that are a true blessing to the world. As God’s people from the time the Exodus until Jesus, the Jews were also a cursed people, consistently falling short of what it meant to be the light and salt of the world. Jesus’ death gave them, too, an opportunity to be a part of this new race—Jews + Gentiles—that would bless the world [again, back to the fruit of God’s Spirit].

But Jesus’ death means a lot more than that. I see it also as a mystical union with Messiah. I have to embrace Jesus’ death everyday to remind myself [and others] that I’m now living and breathing every moment as Jesus himself. But we followers of Jesus know that whatever is killed will be raised to newness of life. His faithfulness to God’s way is being lived out in me. There are all sorts of things that we should crucify in order to experience fullness of life and be God’s people. Identity markers like going to church on Sunday and which political party we vote for and the correct formula for taking the Lord’s Supper and the exact words we say in prayers and praying the once-and-for-all eternal insurance prayer for salvation—these and many others can be obstacles for experiencing the true identity and vocation of Christian faith.

516QuailMeadow: OK, let me quote you. In what is now called the second chapter of Galatians verse 16, you wrote: 'we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.' Interpret this for me. What are you doing here?
St. Paul: Since Luther, most European [and then American] Protestant Christians have interpreted this through Luther's grid of Catholic Church oppression. In his day, Luther proclaimed to the common peasants that we are reconciled to God not by good deeds and rituals, like church attendance and pricey indulgences, but instead through an act of faith in Jesus. You grew up Protestant so you learned that 'justified' means that God now views me 'just-if-I'd-never-sinned.' This is the meaning of Christ's death for Protestants. Theologians call it forensic justification or penal-substituationary atonement theory.

But remember why the letter to the Galatians was written: I was responding to the counterfeit gospel of coerced circumcision. The word 'justified' comes from the dikaios family of Greek words meaning 'righteous' or 'innocence,' referring to God's covenant faithfulness to his people. To be 'justified' was simply to gain full-membership into God's covenantal people, not only to have our sins wiped away to face an angry Protestant God. However, the Gentiles, according to my gospel of what God did through Christ, were fully members of God's people by the faithfulness of Christ. His life of obedience to the point of death become the paradigm and sacrifice to expand the margins of who was 'in.' In addition, the faithfulness of the Gentiles, not adherence to the Jewish law [torah], was how membership in God's new race of people was solidified. The unintended consequences of Luther's interpretation has been an overwhelming insistence that faith as mental assent or belief in Jesus as Lord and Savior--and not works--was what 'saved' individuals. This divorced faith from works, as well as the individual from the importance of the people of God [church or Body of Christ]. Allegiance to God's people and radical obedience have become after thoughts to getting personally saved for eternity and evangelizing all others into the same understanding. After all, Luther thought that James' letter [which also became part of the New Testament] was an 'epistle of straw' because James had the audacity to write that 'faith without works is dead.' James and I were on the same page. I was never fighting a 'works-righteous' salvation, where people apparently think that they can work their way to heaven. That wasn't on my radar. I had never dreamed of a 'faith' that wasn't radically about 'works.' I just wanted Gentiles to throw away those knives and experience the freedom and power in Christ!

516QuailMeadow: Do you think you’ve been misunderstood by Christians through the ages?
St. Paul: Look, interpreting someone’s words after hundreds and even thousands of years have past is a daunting task. Christian pastors and theologians have tried as best as they can over the years to interpret what I was saying to different church communities. Anytime sincere and faithful folks are trying to determine what the author meant by their words on paper there has to be humility. About a decade ago, Duke Professor Richard Hays proposed 3 ‘focal images’ to guide New Testament interpretation: community, cross and new creation. These images should illumine readings of my letters, the Gospels and all the other writings of the New Testament. The cross is a paradigm for the Christian lifestyle—a pattern of humility and social non-conformity. Community reminds us that all of these documents were written to groups of people pledged to the kingdom of God. Too many Western 21st century Christians read these words individualistically. We have to recover the notion that the church is the place where individual Christians work out the politics of Jesus—the practices of the kingdom that separate us from the counterfeit systems of the world that have naturally shaped us. Lastly, new creation signifies the audacious claim that we are living in ‘the age to come’ now. We anticipate the kingdom of God by living it now, no matter how hard and abrasive and ineffective that may be.

I think we should work as hard as we can in our communities to interpret the Bible with all the resources that we have available: our historical tools, understanding the Greek language, our own experiences, the research of contemporary sciences, deep prayer and fasting and a lot of dialogue. We should never have a relativistic attitude that we should just shrug our shoulders and give up because we don’t have access to absolute truth. Hays’ images can help us by acting as controls for interpretation and guides for our readings. People quote me all the time in regards to the legitimacy of slavery or how we should vote for laws regarding gays and lesbians or if women should be leaders in the church or if we should justify militaristic policies of the government or how we go about evangelizing certain people groups. I think Hays’ focal images are pretty helpful to guide these dialogues and set a goal to shoot for, but don’t get me wrong: I don’t think the images are a formula to guarantee absolute truth or certainty. Like I told the Corinthians 1950 years ago: ‘Now I know only in part,; then I will know fully, even a I have been fully known.’

6 Months and Counting

2009-03-23T19:08:00.000-07:00

For the past 6 months, we have been meeting on Wednesday nights to read Scripture together. We call this scripting because our hope and desire is that the Bible functions for us [communally and individually] as does a script for an actress. It shapes us into characters of the kingdom of God as we meditate, dialogue, pray and interpret what this word is saying to us. Our focus has been big picture—conceptual and thematic. It was largely been a time of offering new perspectives on evangelical themes: the gospel, salvation, biblical authority, the cross and personal faith. Deconstruction can be jading, even frustrating, groaning to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. Our reading has turned to philosophical and deep theological questioning. In light of this, our application, perhaps, has suffered. To be scripted—instead of finding timeless truths and principles mined out of Scripture to have one-to-one correlation with our lives—is tougher, more nuanced work. It is a complex practice. These 6 months have been an invitation into social exile.

Most of the Christians that we know are not interested in asking these same questions. Some are. And many non-religious folks that we talk to long for a faith that is more humble, loving and thought-provoking. Evangelical Christians, in our experiences, are—by and large—content with the neat and organized categories that have been handed to them. The gospel is simple [and will never change]: eternity in heaven is secure for those who have pledged allegiance to Jesus as personal Lord and Savior. The Bible’s authority comes from it’s error-free, Spirit-inspired qualities. The cross was the place where God blotted out all of our sin in order to have a relationship with him.

Instead, our questions strive towards a more holistic understanding of what God has done and continues to do in history. Our salvation is not only spiritual and future—it is the path of resistance and repentance, a turning from the counterfeit ways of being in this world. The gospel—God’s message in Christ—is about what God has done and continues to do to remake the world according to his design and how humanity can join up with his underground movement. The cross of Jesus unveils the illusion and lies of the powers/systems of our world and it is a paradigm for the obedience/faithfulness for God’s people. In addition, it is a sacrifice [scapegoat] that ends all need for violent solutions and a psychological symbol for death to self and the systems of this world. Seeking truth in the Bible is hard work. We cannot naively assume that God has made this text simple to read and absolutely true according to our definition of truth. Truth is a life-long journey of humble interpretation and committed practice. We seek truth best when we do it together. Lastly, faith in Christ is a pledge of allegiance to practices that are a sign and foretaste of God’s reign. We anticipate Christ’s return by radically reflecting his subversive habits: prayer, generosity, simplicity, enemy love, forgiveness, empathetic listening and service to others.

The implications of this theological shift are vast. We haven’t had an opportunity to really work through how our lives may change as a result of thinking differently about these concepts. How do we view God differently than we did 6 months ago? How does this relate to us individually, remaking our identity and vocation in Christ [healing our wounds, weaknesses and destructive habits]? How will this lead to a transformation of our lifestyles [socially, financially, economically, religiously]?

Our next phase needs to offer space/time to pursue these types of application questions. We will not forsake the overall task of constructing theology, but it must be practical. It must connect to our actual lives. We’ve been quite top-heavy, with the constructive outweighing the practical.

Maundy Thursday

2009-03-21T12:14:00.000-07:00

Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it.
Mark 14:23

A Disciple's Prayer at the Lord's Supper
We acknowledge that you call ALL of your disciples to the ultimate price of social nonconformity: ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. [8:34-35]
Lord, we long to be a part of a more radical form of Christian faith. We come to this Lord’s Supper with an emphasis on ‘participation in Christ, not substitution by Christ’

We acknowledge that we are sick and we need the doctor—we are enslaved by the power of sin and we long for liberation. [2:17]
Lord, liberate us from self-absorption and ego-centeredness—free us from the idols of wealth [desire to possess], prestige [the drive to be someone] and power [the will to dominate others].

We acknowledge that Jesus came to bind the strong man, the powers-that-be that enslave humanity. [3:27]
Lord, liberate us from the economic, political and religious forces—as well as the media—that hold us captive—the apathy, the trivializing commentary, our narcissism and the insatiable appetites that come from what most people might say is just ‘the way things are.’

We acknowledge that Jesus redefined family—our brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers are all those who pledge to do God’s will with their lives. [3:35]
Lord, transform us through the patterns of this alternative family and give us the strength, energy and discernment to do your will on Wednesday nights and throughout the rest of the week.

We acknowledge that we live as the people of the new covenant in a culture where the seed of the gospel is cast ‘among the thorns,’ limiting it from bearing abundant fruit. [4:18]
Lord, free us from the cares of the world…the lure of wealth…the desire for other things.

We acknowledge that you fed the hungry and downtrodden by delegating that abundant mentality, through creativity and ingenuity, to your disciples, but that the hard work can only be done through Christ, not our own efforts or control. [6:41; 8:6]
Lord, saturate us with your compassion for humanity—the world is full of sheep without a shepherd. Give us vision to give generously and abundantly to those in our circle tonight to those living in CA where unemployment is in double-digits and to the rest of the world where a billion people live on less than $2 per day.

We acknowledge that your kingdom gives status to the vulnerable and marginalized, symbolized in the children that you not only embraced but then beckoned your disciples to do the same—10:13ff
Lord, let us be a community that values people differently than the domination system of our culture, placing the unknown, hidden and quietly faithful before celebrities, political leaders and financially successful. Let us be a voice for the unborn, but also for children impoverished, abused, abandoned and neglected. Let us ponder those w/o status in our own culture: the elderly, the immigrant, the homosexual, the sexually abused and those who bear all the blame for the economic crisis that affects so many.

We acknowledge that your leadership model is not about bringing attention to ourselves or gaining positions of power to use it for leverage. You call us to be servants to each other and the rest of the world.
Lord, we pledge to join your procession, riding the lowly donkey, with the poor and downtrodden hoping in you to bring the world to rights. [9:35; 10:43]

We acknowledge that out of all the characters in Mark’s story about Jesus, we are most like the rich man who refused your procession because he loved his possessions too much. [10:22]
Lord, we repent and resist this entitlement and privilege of living in southern Orange County. Give us the perspective of the periphery so that we can see clearly that you side with those who are down-and-out and are longing for mercy.

Drinking Milk [2008]

2009-03-14T17:23:00.000-07:00

Evangelical Christians have been mostly shaped by the ongoing culture war to reject certain things instantly: churches that question the Bible’s authority, politicians who accept abortion as a legitimate choice, whenever Hollywood goes around glorifying gay heroes. Milk has Christians rolling their eyes and digging in their heels. The film’s namesake is Harvey Milk [Sean Penn], a member of the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco who was the first elected openly gay man in the history of the United States in 1977. Milk’s charisma galvanized the gay community who endured police brutality and discrimination even in progressive San Fran, leading them during an era of when rights were being revoked in cities all over America, with Christian singer Anita Bryant leading the battle against the apparent homosexual takeover of traditional values. With that said, Milk probably isn’t at the top of any Evangelical’s Netflix queue but it should be for three reasons.

First of all, most suburban Evangelicals have been quite removed from gay and lesbian culture itself. We really don’t know them no matter how much we say ‘I have gay friends’ or ‘They are free to do whatever they want behind closed doors but they shouldn’t be able to redefine ‘marriage.’ Milk gives us a front row seat to observe the same intimacy, brokenness and yearning for justice that defines the heterosexual experience. Gays and lesbians come from families who have mostly rejected them for one reason or another and they are convinced that they’ve always had these sexual feelings making them naturally ‘deviants’ and ‘perverts’ to the other 98% of the population. These young people, in Harvey Milk’s era as they do today, flock to the Castro district in San Francisco to resonate with each other and experience the intimacy that had mostly eluded them for two decades of their upbringing. Milk puts a face to this struggle. Sure, it’s a little awkward seeing two consensual men French kiss and flirt but aren’t there all sorts of things that heterosexuals do [and don’t do] with each other that, quite frankly, rival this awkwardness. Investigating a movie like, say, Juno, proves to be a laboratory of non-consensual sexual awkwardness, with the soon-to-be adoptive father trying to pick up on the 20 years younger and uber-pregnant Juno.

Second, knee jerk reactions using the Bible are speculative at best. There is an interpretive debate in the American Body of Christ about whether the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament ever really deals with sexual orientation, let alone gay marriage. Most Christians would put all forms of homosexuality under the same umbrella, but some [like me] are compelled that the Apostle Paul would have been a bit more careful with his words in delineating between what soldiers do to their captives in war or what men and women did in idolatrous temple worship or what elderly wealthy men did to boys for pleasure when compared with the concept of a small percentage of men and women who develop sexual orientation within the first 2 years of their lives and long for intimacy with that someone else for a lifetime of commitment, love and service [what we heterosexuals have taken for granted as ‘marriage’]. In the name of Harvey Milk, Evangelicals should recognize the humanity and dignity of the gay community and embrace humility in all of our biblical endeavors.

Third, the movie drops back to pass us an issue that was intensely divisive and headline-making then as it is now. Milk echoes back 30 years ago to Proposition 6 in California when—you guessed it—Evangelicals jumped on the political bandwagon to ban homosexual teachers from the classroom. Unlike Proposition 8 in 2008, it lost. Harvey Milk even travelled the hard road to Orange County to debate with State Senator John Briggs to make his case to conservative audiences who thought he was Satan incarnate. Milk beckons us to consider whether these gays and lesbians really do threaten the sanctity of marriage or if perhaps they might even strengthen it with skyrocketing heterosexual divorce rates and rampant [hetero] sexual addiction.

Milk sets up its hero as one of the most unlikely Christ-figures in recent memory, murdered in his office by his political foe as he looks across the street at the San Francisco Opera House: the fight for justice is not over until the fat lady sings. The film ends with multitudes of protestors memorializing Harvey Milk in the streets of San Francisco with lit candles in a march to City Hall, inviting us all to keep his legacy alive by joining the march to fight the misunderstanding, inequality and injustice that continues to saturate this closed-knit community today.

Will Rachel Maddow Be Left Behind?

2009-03-10T18:29:00.000-07:00

Of course, the appearance of Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC talk show a week ago could just be chalked up as yet another short episode in America’s tired culture war. But the interview [in its entirety] was too illuminating to be left at that. The leftist Maddow had home-court-advantage with the ultra-conservative authors of the Left Behind series and she went right after allegations by some in the conservative camp that—-hold your breath—-Obama may be the anti-Christ. Of course, Jenkins and LaHaye dismissed the claim only because the anti-Christ would obviously not show up until after the rapture—when God would scoop up his beloved before all hell breaks loose…literally. The elder LaHaye, especially, made no effort to veil his discomfort with Obama’s ‘socialist’ policies, though reluctantly allowing that Obama may be a ‘closet Christian’ [the irony here is that Obama was far more specific with his Christian testimony at Saddleback Church’s Civil Forum back in August than was the Republican John McCain], giving priority to his concern for ‘Christian America.’

What I yearn to hear from conservative Evangelicals of all stripes in these sorts of interviews is twofold [both interconnected]. First of all: humility about biblical interpretation. Shouldn’t these pastor-theologian-writers be more open with the notion that this is their unique interpretation of the book of Revelation, along with an assortment of other biblical texts regarding ‘the end times?’ Their series of fictional accounts of Armageddon and beyond is simply a twist on the [less than] 150-year tradition of fundamentalist-dispensationalist theology. Many dispensationalists themselves would chuckle at the Left Behind interpretations. And what about those ‘other’ 50% of Americans who also claim to be Christians that are not Evangelicals? These traditions have different understandings of what the Beast, 666, dragon, battles and rapture imagery actually are [‘the anti-Christ’ is not in the book of Revelation].

Second: humility about their brand of Christianity compared to Obama’s. Our President comes from the minority black liberal tradition. This is a form of Christian faith which has much to share with the Christian world, including the loud and numerous trive of suburban Evangelicals. African-American Christianity has historically emphasized God’s decisive partiality towards the poor, oppressed, vulnerable and marginalized. In addition, their readings of Scripture have often defied literalistic and inerrant claims to superiority. For them, the Bible is a story that the faithful imaginatively participate in. The book of Revelation, in much of the black tradition, is a script of political resistance proclaiming that God’s just and nonviolent kingdom, not Caesar’s empire, should be our primary allegiance. We Christians follow ‘the Lamb who was slain’ into martyrdom because we know God alone [not American empire with its economic and militaristic solutions] will have the final say in the universe. In 2009, white Evangelical male leaders [a bit redundant, eh?] must learn that there are other forms of Christian faithfulness that should be given voice and that can contribute to their own imperfect tradition. Now, I’m sure that, if pressed, they would admit that there most certainly are other types of faith, but why do they consistently communicate—in the media and before their own congregations—without acknowledging other points of view?

We can all debate theology and biblical exegesis, but if Evangelical leaders continue to embrace the fundamentalist philosophical notions of the past 100 years, the dialogue will continue to be a monologue. More and more, there are less and less people listening. This will be vital for the next generation of Evangelical leaders, whoever they may be, as polls show and pundits predict the demise of their movement in the decade to come.

Religulous [2008]: A Review

2009-03-08T12:36:00.000-07:00

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Matthew 9:36

In Religulous, TV funnyman Bill Maher gives us part autobiography, part investigative reporting in his 'search' for truth on the [mostly] American religious landscape. He has long-shunned his own Jewish-Catholic roots for a more rational, anti-religious ideology. This full-disclosure doesn't bring humility, but rather a mean-spirited look into the eyes of some of [mostly] Christian America's most clueless and naive characters. From the director of the Creationist Museum to the actor who plays Jesus in a daily passion-play at a theme park to the truck-stop chapel, Maher wades hip-deep into American Fundamentalist Christian culture. This 100-year tradition full of exuberant passion and withered intellect provides Maher with a cast of characters that quite frankly wouldn't be believable if it wasn't a docu-drama.

Maher's thesis is that religion is the cause for the problems of our world and that we should all embrace doubt as an instrument to temper our violent, unthinking passions. He also calls out 'moderates' to vocalize the absurdity of religious extremism in their Christian brothers and sisters [and mothers and fathers] as well as pleading with fellow nonbelievers to come out of the closet and be heard for the sake of society's salvation. Using clips of decades old Bible cinema, denominational propaganda and graphic religious violence side-by-side with contemporary interviews, Maher is out to mock the 84% of American religious subscribers for his [mostly] unfaithful audience. But is this just a classic case of 'preaching to the choir' or do followers of Jesus [or Jehovah or Mohammed] have something to learn from his biting criticism?

First of all, many followers of Jesus like me would agree with Maher's critique of the rampant anti-intellectualism in American Evangelicalism/Fundamentalism throughout its history. Mark Noll and George Marsden [both from Notre Dame] both have extensively chroncicled and tenderly warned against this problematic strand of Christian faith. In addition, Maher's caricature does unveil how vast and powerful the crowd of American fundamentalists are today. These aren't just folks living off Sonic Burger in trailer parks in the Bible Belt. In fact, a supermajority of American Christians have been deeply influenced by this strand of faith. With that said, we should humbly shudder at our own faith tendencies that Maher easily casts off.

However, Maher's style, gross over-generalization and unwillingness to portray another option to fundamentalism and doubt expose a festering sore in his own doubting-yet-critical thinking skills. Maher mimics Borat, taking on characters so intellectually anorexic perhaps to prop up his own religious insecurity. It would be on par with me going to mock a 7th grade girls to assuage my own regretful withering of skills. Maher uses both bad language and manners to shock and awe his fundamentalist props, surely to the pleasure of his 'unfaithful' following.

He over-generalizes everything and cites 'consensus' scientific studies and biblical quoting that many of us can seeright through. We intuitively know that there is another side of the issue that Maher leaves out as the characters are left dumb-founded, groping anywhere for answers. More astute spectators know that if Maher interviewed religious adherents who were either better prepared/researched or who had formal theological training, the outcomes would be different. This, of course, doesn't mean fundamentalism has any merit, but his strategy just plays the culture-war to a crowd tired of these foolish games.

Lastly, the film desperately yearns for a 'third way' to triangulate 'fundamentalism' and 'doubt.' Religulous' conclusion leaves all of us groping for another possibility: we have more than 200 cable channels but only 2 religious options? We intuitively [I hope] know this can't be. The combination of deep critical thinking, dialogue with the religious other and passionate faithfulness is a blend that many are longing for. This mixture will give us Jesus-followers--who know that 'proof' is a chimera--the resources to be citizens of the kingdom of God in a complex culture that finds itself in a continual quest for certainty in an attempt to stabilize the chaos. This certainty, Maher rightly proclaims, is a mirage, but his cynical doubt and mockery simply will not ease our pain and discomfort.

As Maher is confronted with the masses of blindless followers and the obviously harmful [yet unintended] consequences of their faith, they become his easy comical targets and he can't quite mask his deep frustration and bitterness. The way of Christ, which Maher prophetically calls his interviewees to, is rather a deep compassion for the sheep-like quality of humankind who are harassed and helpless in a black-and-white fundamentalist system that begs its followers to refrain from any sort of critical thought. And, unfortunately, there's nothing really funny about that.

Tuesday's Coin

2009-03-05T11:41:00.000-08:00

Mark 12:13 Then they sent to him some Pharisees and some Herodians to trap him in what he said. 14And they came and said to him, ‘Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality, but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? 15Should we pay them, or should we not?’ But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, ‘Why are you putting me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me see it.’ 16And they brought one. Then he said to them, ‘Whose image [ikon] is this, and whose inscription [epigraphe]?’ They answered, ‘Caesar’s.’ 17Jesus said to them, ‘Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ And they were utterly amazed at him.

Q: How does this Gospel episode, on Tuesday just days before his crucifixion, function as authoritative for us today?
A: 2 Options:

1.) We should place the priority on what historically actually happened in 30AD. What did Jesus' audience hear him say, what did that mean and how did they respond? The answers give us principles for what is important and how we might then follow today, like a manual or guidebook.

2.) We should place the priority on how the author of the Gospel of Mark literarily shaped his story about Jesus for his community of Christ-followers around 70AD. What is Mark claiming about what it means to follow Jesus based on the whole narrative [about the length of a short movie]? How would this messianic community, convinced of Jesus' ongoing presence 40 years after the death/resurrection, identify with the story and actually participate in it, like a script.

What we are attempting to do on Wednesday nights is option #2. We are a community who find biblical authority in its ability to script us for today's challenges. We, too, are convinced that Jesus continues to be present with us as we imaginatively find ourselves inside the story, creatively finding connections with our own reality.

As such, we humbly and critically study the text, groping for historical and literary aids that bring the text alive and light a fire in our hearts as they burn in our journey with Jesus [Luke 24:32].

In Mark 11:13-17, a small snippet of his long Tuesday [115 verses in Mark!], Jesus is confronted by an unlikely coalition of Jewish groups that rarely found common ground. Their desire to 'destroy' Jesus goes all the way back to Mark 3:6, creating deep tension in a 'competition of kingdoms': God versus Caesar [Mark 1:14-15]. As N.T. Wright helpfully proclaims, 'If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not.'

When Mark's story, from start to finish, is read as a critique of both Jewish and Roman claims to power, then this coin episode can be more clearly understood as just one more event in a gripping narrative about what or who really is on the throne, ruling over the entire known world. Jesus' questions about 'image' and 'inscription' should be read in light of the wider echoes of Scripture ['So God created humankind in his image'...Genesis 1:27] and striving towards the awfully beautiful conclusion of Mark's story of Jesus on the cross ['The inscription of the charge against him read, ‘The King of the Jews’...15:26] as confessed by the Roman soldier of all people ['the son of God'...15:39]. God's image is stamped on all humankind [even Caesar!] and Jesus is the true 'king of the Jews' [not Herod] and 'son of God' [not Caesar].

With this boldly communicated, Jesus leaves his hearers 40 years after his death/resurrection with this proclamation: 'Give to Caesar what belongs to him and give to God what belongs to him.' Jesus continues to extend this challenge to us today: who or what is our ultimate allegiance and how might that cost us everything?

A Journey to Hear the Wright Stuff

2009-03-02T13:13:00.000-08:00

N.T. Wright, the popular Anglican bishop of Durham, visited Southern California this week, giving a series of lectures at Fuller Seminary. A few of us got an opportunity to listen to his talk on Thursday night at Lake Avenue Presbyterian in Pasadena. His topic on the table was the role of Christian virtue ethics for today's world. He drew on the work of Alidair MacIntyre, whose analysis of current culture can be summed up in one word: fragmentation. We have inherited fragmented worldviews because the Enlightenment period [1650--Present] has slowly eroded the capacity for individuals and communities to identify a common telos--the whole point of living. 'What is our telos?' is the question each individual and community ultimately asks, if not so overtly. We have a wide variety of intentional answers in the West, but the most dangerous is what Nancey Murphy calls the 'default narrative': the story and telos that we take on without even critically thinking about it. So media and various other factors shape our 'default narrative' if we don't do the difficult work of cultivating Christian virtues.

Here's a quick breakdown of MacIntyre's scheme:

Narrative—the master story about life, the world, God and everything else there is—

Tradition—a historically extended conversation [ie, 'Christian' or more specific 'Anabaptist']

Community—we are defined by a context-specific, locally gathered group of people who are on mission together and make decisions for the group together

Telos—the goal of life [ie, to follow the Way of Jesus together as a witness to the wider world or to be citizens of the kingdom of God]

Practices—the activity of the community—what the community does to achieve its telos

Virtues—skills for living—what it takes for practices to become more and more effective in order to achieve the telos [ie, courage, stewardship, enemy love]

Wright's proposal is that our virtues, as followers of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus, should be governed today by the future new heavens and new earth, our hope of cosmic renewal in Christ. Christian vocation is all about anticipating, through word and deed, the reign of God. Jesus' teachings, life and ministry model this in action for the people of God. These kingdom virtues, according to Wright, demand habits that, over time, shape us. They don't just 'happen.' Wright is following a recent ethical uprising of theologians that have been compelled by MacIntyre's analysis and subsequent proposals. Basically, living faithfully, for Christians, is not about citing rules or principles from Scripture for all of life's complex questions and ethical quandaries. Is it instead about taking the Bible as a Script and living as characters in the ongoing story of God and his reign on earth...as it is in heaven.

Monday in the Temple

2009-02-27T11:34:00.000-08:00

Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.
Mark 11:12

At the end of the procession into Jerusalem on a baby donkey, nothing happens. Or at least that is what appears to be the case. Jesus actually gets his scouting report on Sunday night for how he will organize his protest on Monday morning in the crowded Temple. This is an important point because Jesus' 'Temple cleansing' has been read for centuries as a spur of the moment fury of righteous messianic anger. Instead, it was a premeditated act of political protest. Just what exactly happened and why was he protesting?

Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, ‘Is it not written,
“My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations”?
But you have made it a den of robbers.’
Mark 11:15-17

This is planned chaos, overturning tables and blockading the daily marketplace activities in one small section of the huge court of the Gentiles [3x5 football fields in size]. Bible scholars only really agree on two things in this episode: that, indeed, Jesus historically did something in the Temple and that this action somehow lead to his arrest and death a few days later. The scholarly proposals focus on 3 issues:

1. Economic Exploitation by the religious leaders--these powerful aristocrats were using the very dwelling place of God to oppress the peasant class of mostly tenant farmers who would come to the Temple to pay dues, make sacrifices to God and worship. These economic practices kept the bottom 95% in their place.

2. The Violent Political Vocation of Jewish Rebels--Mark wrote his gospel about 40 years after the events of Jesus' life. In about 70AD, Palestine was in a crisis of warfare and chaos as rebels stormed the temple to take it over from the Roman-Empire-collaborating religious leaders. These rebels were turning the vocation of Israel, 'the light of the world,' into a violent people on the edge of the Empire. In 70AD, the Temple was destroyed by hordes of Roman soldiers who finally put down the rebellion. Jesus cites Jeremiah 7 during his Temple protest. Here are some of the verses leading to the passage he quotes:

For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors for ever and ever…Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? You know, I too am watching, says the LORD.
Jeremiah 7:5-7, 11

'Robbers' is the greek word lestes which is more accurately translated 'rebels' or 'brigands,' groups of violently resisting marauders. The Temple had become a hiding place for these rebel groups whose violent solutions were contrary to God's original vocation for Israel: a light to the nations.

3. The Substitution of Worship for Justice--throughout the Hebrew Bible, the prophets consistently call on Israel to pledge themselves to social justice for the most vulnerable members of their community. God's people would naturally forsake the real notion of worship [reflecting God's care for the oppressed and marginalized] for the sacrificial system and other worship traditions of the Temple.

The key to interpreting this Temple incident hovers around two aspects of Mark's story-telling genius. First, Mark 'frames' this episode with figs:

On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. He said to it, ‘May no one ever eat fruit from you again.’ And his disciples heard it...In the morning as they passed by, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. Then Peter remembered and said to him, ‘Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.’
Mark 11:12-14, 20-21

In a few instances in the Hebrew Bible, the fig tree is used as a metaphor for Israel. God, through the prophets, was asking whether Israel, as God's agent in this world, would 'bear fruit' or not? If not, they would wither. In this episode, Jesus condemns the fig tree...and the Temple.

Second, earlier in Mark's story, Jesus is first confronted by the Jerusalem scribes in chapter 3, where Jesus offers a peculiar parable about his own vocation:

And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.’ And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, ‘How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.
Mark 3:22-27

Jesus is the one who comes to 'bind the strong man,' the system that economically-politically-religiously oppresses the bottom 95% of Palestinian society. Just as Jesus, throughout his earlier ministry, 'casts out' demons from those oppressed by the system, he 'casts out' [same greek verb] those oppressors in the Temple in the last days of his life...then 'the house [temple] can be plundered.'

Jesus' confrontation with the Powers-that-be certainly leads to his death as the action heats up in the days ahead. How effective were his prophetic protests? Perhaps it all depends on how messianic communities continue his legacy of protesting all sorts of economic and political injustice today, including the various ways that religious leaders legitimate the oppressive system. The vocation of kingdom citizenship has been passed on to us in all of our diverse locales. How can be muster the Spirit-led imagination to stage protests that illuminate God's new creation in the midst of an old, broken system?

Two Processions

2009-02-19T17:28:00.000-08:00

When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, “Why are you doing this?” just say this, “The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.” ’ They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, ‘What are you doing, untying the colt?’ They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,
‘Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!’
Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve. Mark 11:1-11

On this Sunday in 33AD, the governor of Judea, the now infamous Pontius Pilate, paraded into Jerusalem from the westside, traveling about 60 miles from his palace on the shores of the Mediteranean. This procession touted the glorious Roman Empire and its 'Son of God,' Caesar Tiberius, who was the 'Savior' and 'Lord,' bringing 'peace' to the entire world. This military cavalry represented the domination system, 'the way things were,' with its political prowess, economic exploitation and religious legitimation through the Temple.

Mark's Gospel highlights Jesus' 'triumphal entry' as a staged event. Starting from the Mount of Olives and riding on a donkey colt [Zech 14:1-4; 9:9-10], Jesus vividly embodies these apocalyptic scenes to the those who first heard the Gospel story in its entirety in about 70AD. Jesus and his motley crew of peasants reflected the rebel groups that classically threatened seizing the Temple and overthrowing the powermongering establishment. But this was a nonviolent demonstration emphasizing the humility and servanthood of those who pledged citizenship to the reign of God...not Caesar.

The way of Caesar was what the Empire represented to the world: a false sense of peace and justice. It was a dominating system of competition, violence, coercion, celebrity worship, economic inequality and patriarchialism [no women's rights here]. Ingrained in this system was the need 'to show them who is boss.' Leaders and rulers made it known who was running the show. It was assumed and accepted by pretty much everyone. As we sometimes say about our world 'it's just the way things are.'

Jesus' way opened the eyes of blind disciples to Caesar's illusions and lies. Jesus invited his followers into God's Reign of peace and justice: poor peasants were fed, the sick and lame were healed, women and children were given status, and disciples were called to imitate Jesus life of suffering service, compassion and humility. Jesus came to criticize and energize Israel's ways. Jesus' social nonconformist way came with a price: the cross. All disciples are called to radical obedience...all the way to death.

Jesus from Gaililee came all the way to Jerusalem for two reasons: a confrontation with the powers-that-be and for his death-and-resurrection. These were a cause-and-effect. Those in places of power seek out ways to destroy those who stir the pot and threaten their privilged status. If we view these events through the nonviolent campaigns of Martin Luther King and Gandhi, we can better understand what was at stake and what led to his assasination.

So we are confronted with the poking question of discipleship: will we join Jesus along the way...all the way to Jerusalem...to the awkward confrontation with oppressive establishment structures and laws...to the demands of the privileged elites...to drop the baggage of convenient entitlement that we were born with...to view life through the perspective of the periphery...to the cross? Do we have the discernment, courage and energy to join Jesus' procession in every area of life: in our relationships, jobs, spending habits, leisure time and public policy debates? In the end, will we be the ones who feel more comfortable in Caesar's domination system or Jesus' suffering-serving-humbling-compassionate reign?

A Green Kingdom

2009-02-12T17:27:00.000-08:00

God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth'...The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.
Genesis 1:28; 2:15

The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants. Throughout the land that you hold, you shall provide for the redemption of the land.
Leviticus 25:23-24

Perhaps it is a bit chic to be green in 2009. Organizations inside and outside of the Body of Christ are embracing the label as doomday prophets proclaim the end of our overheated world as ice melts in the South Pole. But what kind of green theology might govern our kingdom practices and is there really a mandate from the Script to find time and energy to make this a priority?

Of course, discipleship is about priorities. What sorts of passages within the Script are cherished and focus our meditation and performance? What issues are most important and what stances actually make us radical obedience to the Servant-King? We believe that environmental discipleship--whether recycling, conserving, or preserving--is a crucial concern in our day, as it always has been for God and His people.

The people of God have a three-fold vocation with God's creation: to be caretakers, servants and preservers. Our 'dominion' must reflect the image of God, to bring life and sustainance to the world. This is not a powering-grabbing status, giving us free-reign over these resources. Instead of 'drill, baby, drill,' we hear the saints chanting 'stop consuming now.' Our primary practice is to strategize how to live with less. As we strive to minimize--in fuel, food, clothing, water and toys--we can [albeit imperfectly] root ourselves in God's home-team in the struggle to liberate creation from those who squeeze out its life in order to sustain a comfortable, convenient, and [sometimes] lavish way-of-life.

This intentionality will lead to recycling, bicycling, reusable shopping bags, reusable water bottles, shorter showers, longer lasting lightbulbs [CFLs], national public policy and local farmers markets [and a lot more]. This simple living follows God's jubliee platform: for God's people to be about redemption...for the land and all of humanity.

The Rule of Paul

2009-02-05T18:07:00.000-08:00

Acts 15:2Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to discuss this question with the apostles and the elders...
8And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving [the Gentiles] the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; 9and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us...
25we have decided unanimously...
28For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us...

500 years ago, on the European Continent, radical reformers of the Church committed themselves to the kingdom practice of communal discernment. They committed to what is written in the Script: that the people gathered around Jesus are a kingdom of priests, not with priests [I Peter 2:9-10; Revelation 1:9] and that when gathered, multiple voices should have a word for the community while everyone was commissioned to weigh what was being said [I Corinthians 14:26-29]. The big-name Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin called this 'the rule of Paul': essentially, everyone from the seminary trained to the single mom should have an opportunity to speak in the power of the Spirit...after all, God 'has made not distinction [Acts 15:10]. The Anabaptists have quietly attempted to continue this practice after Luther and Calvin abandoned it to traditional and more practical male-dominated hierarchies. This authoritarian model, along with its classically American individualistic counterpart dominate decision-making in Christian [and secular] communities today.

The 'rule of Paul,' instead, strives for consensus, which breathes accountability and unity into any dialogue governed by the Holy Spirit, no matter how controversial. This process is messy and time-consuming but offers a gospel paradigm to our wider cultural, yearning for a model which gives dignity to the individual [everyone has a unique voice] and transfers authority to the community [multiple perspectives are heard and weighed]. Our pluralistic context is ripe for a discernment and decision-making reformation of sorts. God is longing to utilize communities empowered by the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead [Romans 8:9] to take up the challenge of dialogue and listening. We will grow in intimacy and empathy as we open ourselves to the Spirit's use of each and everyone of us. This practice will undoubtedly grow ripe fruit of the Spirit through Paul's pruning procedure of spiritual discernment. After all, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control are thirsted after in our dry and barren cultural climate. Bearing that kind of fruit has never been easy. Maybe it starts with 'the rule of Paul?'

What They're Saying...

2009-01-29T19:14:00.000-08:00

Some thoughts from biblical scholars and theologians, from a diversity of Christian traditions, about what it means to be the church.

...this Way is not a way for escape into isolated community, but a way of witness by an engaged community.
James McClendon, Ethics

The church is the sign of the dawning of the new age in the midst of the old and thus the vanguard of God’s new world, battling against the forces of evil and being beleaguered by them.
Johan Christiaan Beker, Paul’s Apocalyptic Gospel

Paul conceives the church as a people being prepared by God for the fullness of God’s Kingdom; the holiness that will make them ready for the final judgment finds expression in the love that abounds within the community.
Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament

…God is at work through the Spirit to create communities that prefigure and embody the reconciliation and healing of the world.
Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament

The church is a wedge of newness, as a foretaste of what is coming, as a home for the odd ones…
Walter Brueggemann, Texts Under Negotiation

...to be odd in this world is God’s intention for this people
Walter Brueggemann, Texts Under Negotiation

The politics of the reign of God in Jesus Christ calls the people of God to recognize this Other ruler, this Other empire, this Other citizenship as having the prior and primary claim upon its people as such, in distinction from all other ‘peoplehoods’.
Dennis Harink, Paul and the Post-Liberals

Wherever and whenever persons transcend their self-absorption—in working for peace and justice, for reconciliation and healing—and whenever and wherever people are fighting against dehumanizing forces in the world and for human dignity, there and then we can see marks of the work of the Spirit and we can discern the breath of God.
Wilbert Shenk, The Transfiguration of Mission

The Kingdom is present and actual wherever and whenever someone is restored to relationship with God, the enemy is loved, the hungry fed, the sick healed.
Jonathan Wilson, A Christology for Disciples

The church in its missionary vocation is not so much the agent of the process as the product of the process on the way to its God-given goal.
Richard Bauckham, Bible and Mission

The church’s calling is to be the conscience and the servant within human society. The church must be sufficiently experienced to be able to discern when and where and how God is using the Powers, whether this be thanks to the faithful testimony of the church or in spite of its infidelity.
Yoder, For the Nations

Paul does not present a primitive Jerusalem congregation running its baronial fences around a widening spread of converts—one extended ‘church’ operating through many branch outlets, a kind of ecclesiastical McDonald’s, Inc. The Pauline view is rather of an earthly, here and now new creation, a new people, whose character is to gather in assemblies, each original, each dependent upon the present Spirit, each gathered around the risen Christ as was their Palestinian prototype.
James McClendon, Doctrine

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer to be the church in a therapeutic technological consumer militaristic culture.

New Creation on the Road to Gaza

2009-01-22T17:00:00.000-08:00

Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over to this chariot and join it.’ So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this:
‘Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,
and like a lamb silent before its shearer,
so he does not open his mouth.
In his humiliation justice was denied him.
Who can describe his generation?
For his life is taken away from the earth.’
Acts 8:27-33

He loved and worshipped God...but he had two strikes against him. Being both a foreigner and 'sexually mutilated,' he couldn't receive full citizenship rights in Israel, the people of God for the world [Dt 23:1-3]. However, Isaiah [56:3-5] had prophesied rather graphically that foreigners and eunuchs should and would one day be fully included in God's community [do not let the eunuch say,‘I am just a dry tree’--who said the Bible was boring?]. But for centuries, the status quo remained the policy for a ethnically and heterosexually purified people. This bold episode in Acts turned the world upside-down for these Jews for Jesus who followed the leading of the Spirit to open wide the gate of heaven here on earth. The Apostle Phillip found himself on the road to Gaza, confronted with this God-fearer who was struggling to comprehend a reading from Isaiah 53, the third song of the amgiguous Suffering Servant. God was in the business of 'new creation,' restoring a new heavens and a new earth [Is 65:17] and Jesus was the Key Character whose alternative way could only triumph by suffering obedience [see Luke 24:26-27]. After all, the religious and political powers of the day weren't just going to roll over and let God and his subversive prophet have their way, were they?

The Spirit's powerful hand on the action during this episode of Luke's sequel to the Gospel indicates a revolution. New Creation was now flourishing where only a seed had been planted [Isaiah 56:3-5]. Now, God's people were constituted by more than just ethnic Israel. This man was both a foreigner [even into the depths of Africa!] and a socially outcast sexual mutant, but he was an adopted child of God through Jesus, the suffering marginalized servant-king. Of course, this eunuch was also a marginalized servant of royalty [Queen Candice of Ethiopia] so he certainly was an apt fit for the Kingdom. His baptism into the people of God began a new journey of full inclusion, a pledge of allegiance to a King ruling over the entire world.

No doubt, this episode shimmers with the similiar light of our contemporary debates over gays and lesbians in the Kingdom of God ['Love the sinner, hate the sin' or 'open and affirming?']. If the Spirit of God in Isaiah 56 and Acts 8 could veto the previous legistlation of Deuteronomy 23, then couldn't the Spirit of God be on the move today in the lives of many gays and lesbians in our current context? If the New Testament is any precedent, then God might just be gathering up His long-cast-aside-children who long for full recognition of citizenship in God's Kingdom.

Hearing the Gospel Again...for the First Time

2009-01-19T17:07:00.000-08:00

From the word ‘gospel’ (εuαγγeλιον in Greek) we get the label of the ‘Evangelical’ Christian tradition, which, in the United States, boasts far more than the 30 million ‘official’ members of the National Association of Evangelicals. Unfortunately, the ‘gospel according to Paul’, in the Western evangelical world, has become almost universally summarized as the ‘road to individual eternal salvation’ or the message that is told for someone to make Jesus their ‘personal Lord and Savior’—answering the question, “How can I get saved from my sins?” A closer, more contextual glance, however, will reveal that Paul’s gospel was (and is) an announcement about what God has done—not what we need to do—and, therefore, far better news than most of us who grew up in the Evangelical tradition would have ever expected. In the end, his gospel, as Karl Barth once wrote, ‘sets a question-mark against all truths’ and answers the questions: (1) What has God done and what is He doing in the world? (2) What time is it in the history of God’s plan for the world and what do we expect to happen next? (3) Who, then, are the people of God who form the community that does what He wills? This 3-fold question requires a 3-fold theocentric answer: God has raised the crucified Messiah making Him the Lord of the world, flipping the calendar to the ‘age to come’ and inviting all humankind to celebrate and live out the Spirit-filled reality. As Anglican Bishop NT Wright notes, this gospel is a ‘command requiring obedience, much more than an invitation seeking a response.’

The noun εuαγγeλιον is used by Paul 60 times in the letters of the New Testament which are ascribed to him and he uses a variety of formations like “my gospel”, “the gospel of Christ” and “the gospel of God.” The word ‘gospel’ is derived from two sources. First, Paul speaks from the language of the Septuagint. The Greek translation of Scripture was his world of language. Paul viewed himself as an apostle who was ‘called’ like the prophet Isaiah who proclaimed ‘the good news’, the coming event that God would decisively deliver Israel from their unfortunate, devastating life setting of exile. Secondly, Paul borrowed εuαγγeλιον from his Greco-Roman culture where it was used as a word for the royal herald who proclaimed the good news of the empire: Caesar’s arrival in town or His birthday or a victory over the enemy. It would be cause for an immense, communal celebration throughout the known world. This dual derivation is important because Paul’s message is both a continuation of the great covenant acts of God for His people (promise-fulfillment) and, therefore, a critique on the counterfeit ideas of ‘salvation’, ‘lordship’, ‘peace’ and ‘divinity’ for the gentiles in the Roman Empire. Paul’s message, received directly from the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, was that ‘Jesus is Lord’ and, therefore, Caesar was not, and he motivated small Christian outposts in Roman colonies like that in Phillipi to ‘eagerly await a savior (from heaven).’

First and foremost, Paul’s gospel was the announcement of the significance of the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. Before Paul’s ‘call’ on the road to Damascus, his life was consumed with a zeal to stamp out the counterfeit movement of Jesus, the supposedly ‘failed Messiah’ who died on the Roman cross. When Paul met the resurrected Jesus, however, the cross became his life and his message—the proclamation of hope to the world. The message of the cross was ‘veiled’ to so many who recognized the obvious ‘foolishness’ of embracing a Jewish Messiah who received the Roman death penalty. But Paul claimed that the death and resurrection of Jesus happened ‘according to the Scriptures.’ Wright proposes that this must have meant that “the entire biblical narrative had at last reached its climax.” Paul uses a litany of images and metaphors to come to grips with this historic, powerful and scandalous event—reconciliation, redemption/ransom, sacrifice/atonement, and conquest. The death of the Messiah ‘disarmed’ the so-called powers of the world—the insufficient allegiance of Torah for the Jew and the idolatrous and immoral lifestyle of paganism for the Gentile. For Paul, the cross was not simply a forensic act of acquitting people of their sins, but instead a major breakthrough in the release of the authority of sin, a powerful force of evil that formerly took the world hostage.

Secondly, this extraordinary event signaled that God had, indeed, been shockingly faithful to His covenant, inaugurating the ‘age to come’. God had already ‘announced the gospel to Abraham’ [Galatians 3:8] and then it had been fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus—as Barth poetically writes: ‘the words of the prophets, long fastened under lock and key, are now set free.’ Israel had waited expectantly for God to uphold His claims of vindication. In his letters Paul tempers, modifies and intensifies what scholars refer to as ‘apocalyptic dualism’ in the 2nd Temple Jewish period [587BC to 70AD]: the present evil age and the long-awaited ‘age to come.’ Paul recognized that, in the Christ event, the future has come forward to the present and the confrontation of sin and death has been further aggravated. According to Paul, the people of the Messiah live in the ‘now’ of the new age of the Spirit, groaning, suffering and waiting for the ‘not yet’ of the parousia, the return or re-appearing of Jesus the Messiah. This was the ‘new creation’ of apocalyptic Judaism, the contextual world in which Paul was a herald of this gospel message.

Lastly, the highlight of this new age brought on by the Messiah’s death and resurrection was the unveiling of a secret revelation, which Harvard bible scholar Krister Stendahl refers to as ‘the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God.’ This mysterious action of God was the radical inviting of the Gentiles into His people, commanding them to “turn” from their idolatry in order to “serve” the living God and “wait” for the Messiah’s return [I Thessalonians 1:9-10]. The death of the Messiah created what Evangelical theologian Dennis Harink calls the ‘theological-political space for reconciliation between Israel and the nations.’ In the words of Duke bible professor Richard Hays, there was, no longer, a ‘favorite-nation clause’ for Israel to cling to. Paul uses δικαιοσuνη (‘justification’ or ‘righteousness’) to address the status of Gentile converts. This Greek word can be tricky and its interpretation is important for understanding Paul’s proclamation. It is best understood as the ‘righting of all things’ or ‘God’s covenant faithfulness’ and although it has the language of the law-court, it takes on the language of the end-of-times when read in light of Isaiah and Psalms. The gospel was the formation of this new community of God, as the Gentiles are adopted as ‘heirs’ along with their Jewish brothers and sisters. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus established a new Jew+Gentile-people-of-God, the church, which is the sign and foretaste of the coming final consummation of God’s reign. Jesus’ death became a ‘curse’ in order to ‘annihilate’ the demands of the Law [Galatians 3:13], both as markers that divided Jew and Gentile and as requirements to get in. Jesus had last fulfilled the many ‘promises of God’ to Israel, who was longing for God to vindicate their cause.

The Gospel according to Paul was not simply a relief to guilty consciences to take care of all of our personal sins. It was and is the message about God’s covenant faithfulness to Israel and the world and it flowed directly into his ethical vision. As Harink claims, Paul’s message deals not with “a notion of religion, but rather with the idea of ‘a people’ which…bears testimony to the world-transforming power of the good news of Jesus Christ.” For Paul, the people of God live at the ‘collision point of the two ages’ because ‘Jesus is Lord’, not just of individual hearts, but of the whole created world. This has cataclysmic implications for our Western gospel of personal piety and individual salvation. When Paul’s message is understood in its 1st century context, Jesus the Messiah’s domain of reign comes out of the inner sanctuary of the believer’s spiritual life and into the whole world. The ethical implications of that message start with the fact that God is calling a people to be a part of His creation-redeeming Lordship. For Paul, there was not a division of what is ‘sacred’ or ‘secular’ because his gospel announced that Jesus’ death and resurrection made Him the Lord over all of life and because it dawned a new era (eschatology) and created new people (ecclesiology), it demanded participation in a new way of living (ethics).

Scripting as Kingdom Practice

2009-01-16T10:08:00.000-08:00

'The dominant scripting of both selves and communities in our society, for both liberals and conservatives, is the script of therapeutic, technological, consumer militarism that permeates every dimension of our common life.'
Walter Brugeemann

Brueggemann, a preeminent OT scholar, has proposed that we are scripted by the culture we inhale everyday: therapeutic, technological, consumer militarism.

-->Therapeutic—convenience, comfort, quest for youth/beauty/immortality
-->Technological—everything can be fixed by human ingenuity
-->Consumer—whole world [and its resources] available w/o regard for the neighbor—more is better
-->Militarism—protecting and maintaining US exceptionalism/monopoly

A character in Fight Club [1999] had a similiar cultural critique:

We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.

It is vital for the gathered, local Christian community to discern where and when the dominant script is scripting us individually and collectively in counterfeit ways that make us [in the end] neither safe nor happy. What are the myriad ways that the dominant script shapes us into characters of the world rather than citizens of the Kingdom? In order to disengage from this dominant script, we need an alternative story to participate in. We believe the Bible, read as a script for characters of the reign of God, is that alternative adventurous story that will make us [in the end] safe and happy and fulfilled. It is a true story that challenges us to empty ourselves for the cause of the Kingdom.

Reality viewed this way minimizes the false assumption that beliefs and timeless truths, if believed rightly, will lead to a faithful Christian way-of-life. Instead, we should spend time focusing on working together as a disciple community to interpret and perform the God's Word to us...the alternative script. This Script has a Key Character who made the world and is determined to redeem it. This Key Character invites us to be devoted to the script that will guide us as we participate with Him in this work of healing and reconciling. This process of scripting is not unlike the intensely committed actor Daniel Day-Lewis who once went so far as to call Liam Niesen only by his character's name when they worked out together off the set of The Gangs of New York. Like Day-Lewis, we Christians are never off-stage, acting out the compassion, forgiveness, integrity, humility and enemy love of all the characters that have gone before us in the earlier stages of the Script.

Scripting is a difficult task that should be done in community. Like an orchestra performing Beethoven or a company of Shakespearean actors performing King Lear, we need to bring creativity into the process as we seek to radically own the interpretation. The script should always be read with the whole story in mind, and a premium should be placed on the Key Character, imaged in Jesus Christ in the second half of the story [who incidentally remains present in our current stage].

The Kingdom Practice of Minjung

2009-01-08T14:51:00.000-08:00

Mark 14:3 While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head. 4But some were there who said to one another in anger, ‘Why was the ointment wasted in this way? 5For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor.’ And they scolded her. 6But Jesus said, ‘Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me. 7For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me. 8She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial. 9Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.’

The interpretive contest over this episode in Mark's Gospel has important implications. Some Christian traditions construe Jesus' words in verse 7--'you will always have the poor with you'--as a God-ordained mandate for poverty. These traditions emphasize the need for 'spiritual' worship of Jesus, and usually, the corruption of this world, which will continue to degenerate until Jesus' return or we die and escape to heaven. Other traditions read his words through the call for social justice, the communities mandate to care for those in addition to our worship of Jesus.

As we read this episode in the context of an 'apartment church' in Orange County, we are drawn to Jesus' solidarity with the poor and marginalized throughout Mark's whole story, from his humble beginnings in Nazareth to his radical discipleshp call to deny self and lose your life to healing the sick and oppressed to his criticism of the powerful practices of the establishment. In Mark 14:3-9, Jesus finds himself in the home of Simon the leper, being anointed by a woman! Again, one more episode where Mark puts scandalized characters on center-stage. Jesus shuns the rational-thinking disciples who complain that the woman could have sold the ointment for a year's salary and given the earnings to the poor [essentially what Jesus calls the rich man to do in 10:17-31]. Instead, Jesus quotes Scripture [Deuteronomy 15:7-11], echoing God's call for the children of Israel to care for the needy and oppressed in their land and then brings attention, once again in Mark's story, to his impending death [an anointing for his burial]. This unnamed women is held up as a model for the kingdom of the gospel: just like the child without status in 10:14 and the poor widow who gives 2 meager copper coins to the Temple treasury in 12:41-44...just like Jesus' call for his disciples to pour out there lives for the sake of the gospel [8:34-35] and Jesus' impending death, giving up his life 'as a ransom for many' [10:42-45]. Ched Myers in Who Will Roll Away the Stone writes that Jesus' words about the poor 'always being with us' is ‘about the social location of the church, not about the social necessity of poverty…we have gotten Jesus backward because the site from which we read him is insulated from, rather than in solidarity with, the poor.’

A fringe Christian tradition in Korea has elaborated on a concept called 'minjung' in order to focus on the gospel commitment of solidarity with the poor. Minjung takes into account the relations of power in any given context. Peasants are minjung to landowners. Women are minjung to men. Koreans are minjung to Japanese. Homosexuals are minjung to heterosexuals. Dishwashers and busboys are minjung to restaurant managers and owners. Undocumented workers are minjung to those born into suburban insulation and entitlement. This concept calls followers of Jesus to be in solidarity with all groups of marginalized and oppressed people groups. The gospel calls us to be among the poor and be on their side. Orange County is a unique context that intentional, structurally hides the poor and dominated ones. We can begin to learn the rhythm of minjung, an underrated kingdom practice that beckons us to walk alongside the poor and learn from them what it means to be on God's side.

What Does it Mean to be the People of God?

2008-12-21T16:50:00.000-08:00

The Bible is a script for the faithful performance of the people of God. It portrays the nature of Israel and the church in a variety of ways:

Genesis 12:1 Now the LORD said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’

Galatians 3:8 And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you.’

Jeremiah 29:4 Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

I Peter 1:1b To the exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia…

Exodus 19:4 You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. 5Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, 6but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.

I Peter 1:9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.

Matthew 5:14 ‘You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

Phil 1:27 Only, live your life [πολιτεuεσθε] in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ…3:20But our citizenship [πολiτευμα] is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Acts 19:38 If therefore Demetrius and the artisans with him have a complaint against anyone, the courts are open, and there are proconsuls; let them bring charges there against one another. 39If there is anything further you want to know, it must be settled in the regular assembly [eκκλησia].

God's reign was inaugurated in the life, ministry, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus. Since that time, Spirit-empowered communities called 'church' [from the Greek word 'ekklesia' meaning political body or assembly] have worked out what it means to be faithful to God's reign in diverse settings all over the world.

We believe, through prayerful interpretation of Scripture, analytical observation of our culture and humble dialogue together, that a faithful church community in Orange County, CA, will strive [albeit imperfectly] after these convictions:

1. A community that values critical thought through openness and dialogue.
2. A community that reads the Bible together as a script for faithful performance.
3. A community that embodies friendship, even family, on Wednesday nights and all through the week.
4. A community that values the 2000-year tradition of the Church.
5. A community that values intimacy and transparency.
6. A community in exile, striving to be faithful according to God's Reign, not necessarily effective according to our culture's standards.
7. A community that embodies these unique 'Kingdom Practices':
• Scripting [Biblical interpretation that leads to radical performance]
• Praying
• Conflict Resolution [peaceful confrontation with gentleness and forgiveness
• Breaking Bread [solidarity and economic sharing]
• Truth Telling
• Baptism as pledge of allegiance to God's Kingdom people [the new humanity]
• Loving Enemies
• Consensus decision-making
• Multiplicity of Gifts
8. A community that inclusively welcomes anyone and everyone who want to pledge allegiance to God's Kingdom in Christ and its scandalous practices.

The Apocalyptic Sower

2008-12-13T14:07:00.000-08:00

And he said to them, ‘Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. These are the ones on the path where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: when they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. But it is different for those sown among the thorns: these are the ones who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing. And these are the ones sown on the good soil: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’
Mark 4:13-20

We evangelicals grew up with the simple idea that Jesus' parables were 'earthly stories with heavenly meanings.' They were ways that Jesus made spirituality and eternal life comprehendable to the masses. However, biblical scholars in the past century have unmasked this farce. Instead, Jesus the prophet followed the legacy of Daniel and Ezekiel who used common imagery to speak subversive truths to the faithful for socio-political action in their day. Mark 1-3 portrays Jesus' efforts to gather a motley crew [lepers, fishermen, paralytics, tax collectors, demonic possessed, crippled] around himself to pledge allegiance to God's inaugurated reign. This was a new family who did God's will differently than the handful of other Jewish groups who were competing for legitimacy in 1st century Palestine.

Jesus told this story of the sower to a large group of mostly poor peasants who were both (1) quite familiar with the hard lifestyle of tenant farming and (2) longing for deep structural change in the economic and political landscape where the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Jesus was campaigning for followers under the platform of far more than 'change' and 'hope.' This was the socio-political revolution of the long-awaited reign of God [Mark 1:14-15]. But followers who were bold and courageous enough to enact Jesus' platform in the presence of powerful groups like the scribes and Pharisees were hard to come by...especially when these groups were making allegations that Jesus was demon-possessed, not to mention that Jesus' own family was ready to check him into a mental ward [Mark 3:20-27].

The parable itself equates the difficult lifestyle of tenant farming with discipleship. There were many obstacles to bearing fruit: hungry birds [representing the force of evil that robbed many of receiving the message], shallow rocks [representing the trials and persecutions that sent messengers home defeated and dejected] and thorns [representing the anxieties of life, the desire for more money, and the lust for more stuff]. The glimmer of hope in Jesus' parable is that good soil is available in some places. This rare fruit-bearing discipleship produces an overwhelming harvest of 30, 60 or 100-fold [far more than the average 7-fold in the Palestinian farming world].

In the thorny world of Orange County, the anxieties of car payments and lost jobs and body image, as well as the longing for financial security and consumer goods, is a tremendous obstacle to fruit-bearing discipleship: it 'yields nothing.' Our prayer is continually that 516 Quail Meadow will be a community who hears and enacts the gospel of Jesus' 'original revolution' of God's reign, bearing abundant fruit wherever and whatever the Spirit of God leads us to do.

Forgiveness of Sins: The End of Exile

2008-12-05T13:30:00.000-08:00

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel’,
which means, ‘God is with us.’ When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.
Matthew 1:18-25

The story of the pregnant Mary and her fiance Joseph is a staple for the people of God during the Advent season, a time of preparation for the birth of the Lord and Savior of the world. The story is packed with expectation and hope for Israel, an impoverished people living as second-class citizens in the Roman Empire. These people had hope that their God would--someday soon--reign triumphantly. According to this episode in Matthew 1, the source of that hope, the one who would would 'save his people from their sins,' was going to be born from the virgin womb of a poor soon-to-be married Jewish girl!

Matthew's quoting of Isaiah 7 & 8 is a classic source of debate for polarized biblical scholars. Conservatives site 'proof' of a messianic prophecy, while liberals unveil differences in the Greek ['virgin'] and original Hebrew ['young girl'] that make Matthew's quoting a bit odd. Could it be that another focus could transcend these two options? A 'third way' is to recognize that Matthew and his community read Isaiah through the lens of Jesus' life, death and resurrection. This provided early Christian communities yet another reading in light of what God had miraculously done in his Servant-King.

The usual evangelical emphasis on Jesus' task to save and forgive us of our personal sins in order to open up the gates of eternal salvation in heaven is deconstructed by Anglican Bishop NT Wright:

‘the most natural meaning of the phrase ‘the forgiveness of sins’ to a first-century Jew is not in the first instance the remission of individual sins, but the putting away of the whole nation’s sins. And, since the exile was the punishment for those sins, the only sure sign that the sins had been forgiven would be the clear and certain liberation from exile. This is the major, national, context within which all individual dealing-with-sin must be understood.’
N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God

If, indeed, God was liberating Israel from exile and turning a new chapter in the ongoing Story of God and the redemption of the world, what does this mean for those who follow Jesus in community today? Perhaps the whole narrative of Matthew is needed to illuminate the fullness of 'forgiveness' and its significance for the identity [who are we?] and vocation [what are we doing?] of the people of God since the crucifixion, resurrection and pentecost.

Must We Utterly Destroy Them?

2008-11-20T18:59:00.000-08:00

When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy, and he clears away many nations before you—the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations mightier and more numerous than you— and when the LORD your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy.
Deuteronomy 7:1-2

How can a text like this possibly be Scripture? Sometimes, passages from the Bible can be disturbing, confusing, jarring or just flat-out insane. This one qualifies for all of the above. As we read this story, we can come alongside scholars who have gone before us. They have offered nuanced biblical reading strategies that can offer rich implications if we boldly own one or more of them. Here is a not-quite-comprehensive multiple choice dialogue that any Christian community in our context can wrestle through:

A. God said it, I believe it, that settles it…sometimes war is necessary! [offered by Augustine in the 5th century and Reinhold Niebuhr in the 20th]
B. One Hit Wonder—it happened early in Israel's history, but it doesn't justify it ever happening again...AND does not apply to the USA [offered by Fuller Professor John Goldingay]
C. Violence wasn’t the point then…it shouldn’t be now—God was patient and building trust and community [offered by John Howard Yoder and James McClendon]
D. Disillusioned Leadership—Joshua heard God…wrongly—the prophets and Jesus attest to peace as normative for the ‘people of God’ [offered by Fuller's Glen Stassen]
E. These events NEVER happened…and they should NEVER happen—Scripting in Exile [offered by Reformed Bible Scholars Johanna Van Wijk Bos and Walter Brueggemann]
F. These stories are shocking! Warning: religious exclusion may lead to genocide and extermination of ‘the other’ [offered by Dora Mbuwayesango from Zimbabwe]

Dialoguing these interpretive options in the power of the Holy Spirit models 'the rule of Paul,' the 500-year-old Anabaptist emphasis on the words of the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 14:29: Let two or three [or six] prophets speak and let the others weigh what is said. None of these options are 'wrong' per se, but they each have diverse implications for Christian communities who own them...and some of these implications are more compelling than others. We must weigh them with other voices in the metanarrative of Scripture, including God's Word in the Torah about the stance and care for 'the other': you shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien [Ex 22:21]...not to mention the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: you have heard that it was said...but I say to you: love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. Perhaps the biblical image that causes the most tension with the OT Joshua is the NT Joshua [Jesus] whose life of humble obedience and service and sacrifical death on the cross fulfill the message of peace proclaimed by the OT prophets: Oh how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory? [Luke 24:25-26].

We live in a context of imperialism, arrogance and aggression. If you don't believe it, just ask the rest-of-the-world. We must tenderly approach passages in Deuteronomy, Joshua and I Samuel that glorify genocide in the name of the God incarnated in the Prince of Peace. We must prayerfully reason out what a faithful reading strategy might be and what the implications are for a community whose primary task is to be 'a city on a hill' in a world addicted to the myth of redemptive violence.

There is a New Creation!

2008-11-15T12:37:00.000-08:00

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
II Corinthians 5:17

‘Our response is to continue living in a manner that witnesses to our belief that the world was not changed on September 11. The world was changed during the celebration of Passover in AD 33.’
Stanley Hauerwas

One of the fallacies of Bible reading is the notion that it is self-evident. God’s love letter to the world is easy to read, as long as the Spirit of God is guiding us. Now, I don’t doubt that the Spirit comes alongside of us, but one thing I’m sure of is that when we can get a bigger glimpse into the backstory of these writings, we are provided with new lenses to read and we are injected by deeper, fresher understandings of who God is and what He is about in this world. II Corinthians 5 is one of these classic passages that most Evangelical Christians are well-acquainted with. We’ve all read it, most of us have memorized it and it’s meaning is crystal clear. But upon further review, with some historical and biblical complexity, we can see a deeper meaning in the text. As we rewind the scene in II Corinthians 5 to give us another look at both Paul’s overall worldview and the immediate context of the letter, we can begin to shed new light on what God’s Word is saying to us and how that might affect our participation in the reign of God.

Paul's Jewish worldview was saturated in a intense hope that God would inaugurate a new reign, bringing down a New Jerusalem. This would be a time when the nations flocked to worship the true God of Israel. It would be a time when the Spirit of God would be poured out on everyone. It would be a time of peace, reconciliation and compassion. Paul believed in the shocking notion that in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God had, indeed, fulfilled this hope...partially. The reign of God had come, but the 'old age' of sin, death and suffering continued. Those who boldly followed Jesus' call to 'take up the cross' lived in the tension of two ages. 'New Creation' [referring to Is 65:17-19] referred to God's determination to make all things new, reconciling the entire world back to himself. Christians, then, are those who find themselves transformed into the image of Christ by finding themselves in the bigger story of what God is doing in the world. By his mercy and grace, our identity and vocation are wrapped into joining God in his redemption of the world. Our task is living out the new creation way-of-life as we await Jesus' reappearing.

Living in post-9/11 Southern Orange County has all sorts of challenges and demands for the people of God. In order to embrace a faithful lifestyle, we should be reminded that the world did, indeed, change during that Passover weekend in the first century as God vindicated Jesus radical obedience all the way to the cross...by raising him from the dead. This climax or pivot-point of God's rescue plan is where Christian communities find themselves out-of-place in a world fixated on military and markets. What a task as we await the final chapter of 'the new heavens and new earth' that God will bring to this world in Christ. We eagerly participate now...as we await the not yet.

Invitation, Welcome, Challenge and Summons

2008-11-07T10:25:00.000-08:00

In NT Wright's heavily footnoted 662-page Jesus and the Victory of God [1996], he summarizes Jesus' kingdom-announcement as

'a narrative in search of fresh characters, a plot in search of actors'

Jesus was prophetically forming a renewal movement for God's People. According to Wright, the Gospels follow the latest developments in God's Story for the world, a story that isn't simply read or analyzed, but a story that the original disciples, as well as all of us, are invited/challenged to participate in. This story is characterized in the Gospels in these five distinct ways:

1. The call to turn around and join the cause [repent] and to place trust in Jesus [believe]

2. The welcome of 'sinners'

3. The call to live by a different set of goals and values [counter to those options to Jesus' contemporaries]

4. The offer--and requirement--of the renewed heart

5. The call to follow Jesus in the way of the cross, rather than to follow his contemporaries in the way of violence

All of these characterize what it means to repent. Repentance was not primarily an individualistic, spiritual concept. It was a social, communal command to jump ship and join the new social revolution--the Jews for Jesus revolution. Those who 'repented' lived a risky, lonely, countercultural venture--alternative to both Roman and traditional Jewish lifestyles.

Justification: What Does It Mean to be a Part of the People of God?

2008-11-06T09:25:00.000-08:00

Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!

The Gospel of Luke is a story about the reign of God inaugurated in Jesus the Messiah. It is a manifesto about a revolution, an alternative to other ways of being God's people. Jesus invited tax collectors and sinners to gather him and continue his way after his death, resurrection and ascension. In Jesus, God opened wide the gates into his kingdom. He modelled a risky, bold hospitality. God's kingdom is upside-down. The death and resurrection of Jesus is a paradigm for how God's reign works: those who humble themselves, will be exalted...and vice-versa.

Luke's use of the greek word δικαους throughout his Gospel is an important study for those of us jaded with traditional, individualistic understandings of 'salvation,' 'forgiveness and 'repentance.' δικαους, throughout the Old and New Testament, refers to God's determination to use his gathered people Israel 'to put the world to rights.' This 'right-wising' was the vocation of Jesus of Nazareth. He prophetically offered a different way of being 'a light to the nations.' His platform of generous sharing, forgiveness, enemy-love, servant-leadership and humble trust in God modelled an alternative to Pharisee, Hellenist, Essene and Zealot options [different claims about what it meant to be God's people].

The Pharisee's list of sinners--thieves, rogues, adulterers...tax-collector--evokes contemporary outcasts who are consistently assumed out of God's kingdom: gays, lesbians, baby-killers, alcoholics, wife-beaters, illegial immigrants. Just as it was in Jesus' day and in Luke's day 40 years later, God's reign stretches out and embraces those who would be usually be 'left behind' by other Christian options. In this vocation, we too risk being labelled 'glutton,' 'drunkard,' 'a friend of _________,' and 'sinners,' as we invite these outcasts to 'repent' [to turn around] and be a part of this right-wising community of Jesus-followers.

A Kingdom Decision

2008-10-30T15:04:00.000-07:00

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler* of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.
Luke 3:1-2

This year's contest to be the leader of the free world pits 72-year-old war hero John McCain and 47-year-old rookie Barack Obama. They have decisively different visions for the future of America, on issues ranging from economic policy to abortion to health care to the 'war on terror.' Perhaps one of the most confusing dialogues in the Body of Christ is how we go about choosing the 'kingdom candidate.' How do we prioritize issues? How do we assess how much peace and justice each candidate will help bring to the world? Just as we bring our own baggage to task of interpreting the biblical script [socio-economic-status, ethnicity, theological tradition, family upbringing, peer pressure, etc], so also each of these factors, no doubt, creep in to influence our vote. How do we make sense of all that goes into voting for a Presidential candidate in our quest to view the whole enterprise through a kingdom lens?

Acts 15 invites us into a strategic paradigm for making decisions within Christian community. The Jerusalem council's decision to openly receive Gentiles into the people of God without becoming circumcised, or following the strict table fellowship rules of the Torah, was made as a response to the Spirit's voice...speaking through Scripture and the voices of those who had been witnesses to the presence of the Spirit in the lives of believing Gentiles. This required trust, openness and a whole lot of listening. Our 'political' dialogues can take the same cue. We can make attempts to come to 'unanimous' decisions in the power of the Spirit through faithful reading and patient listening. It's takes both the word of God and a group of fellow kingdom citizens, with virtues like humility and empathy, to sharpen our political sensibilities in order to let God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

One night of debate-watching, Scripture-searching and testimony-listening is one step of a thousand mile journey of trudging through the quagmire of American politics. As fellow citizens of the Reign of God, at least we can experience solidarity with each other in the confession that Jesus is Lord, and therefore, both McCain and Obama are not. This doesn't mean that the whole American political enterprise is for not. We are called into this messy democratic arena to discern which candidate will look out for Lazarus, being licked outside the gates of the suburbs and exurbs. We can boldly dare to view this race through the perspective of the periphery and call both candidates to more peaceful and just policies for the marginalized of the world.

Luke 16.19-31: A Reversal of Fortune

2008-10-27T08:24:00.000-07:00

Written 50 years after the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, Luke's Gospel homes in on the socio-economic nature of God's good news in Christ. Over and over, stories and teaching revolve around the nature of money and social status. In God's Economy [kingdom], those impoverished and marginalized are flipped into positions of privilege and comfort. In Jesus' parable of Lazarus and the rich man, Lazarus lived outside of the rich man's gate, begging for crumbs, with only a dog as his licking companion. When they both died, Lazarus finally found comfort in the arms of Abraham and the rich man begged Abraham to send Lazarus to serve him.

This text served as Martin Luther King's last Sunday sermon. He pointed out that heaven and hell, as a destination, had nothing to do with poverty and wealth. After all, the 'little millionaire' was in hell and the 'multi-millionaire' [Abraham] was in heaven. However, their divine reversal had everything to do with the rich man's inability to notice the poor man Lazarus. Where are all the Lazarus' in our world? Are we failing to notice them in our midst?

This text serves former suburbanite Shane Claiborne as a warning sign to the fundamental danger of wealth. He shuns the alarmist concerns of mostly white suburban-dwellers who warn him of the dangers of inner-city Philadelphia [where he strategically moved to reach out to the poor and outcast]. Claiborne claims, on the contrary, that if Luke 16 is our script for enacting God's Economy, then we should be frightened by the secure, comfortable, convenient and gated suburban landscape. So much of Southern Orange County is built to block eyesores like Lazarus from our view. If we don't see it, we don't have to deal with it.

God is longing for his covert kingdom agents to unveil these unjust socio-economic structures and give dignity and humanity to the variety of OC Lazaruses. Where is the gardener, the maid and the dishwasher that invisibly works double-shifts to make our economy [and my household] run smoother? Where are the young people grappling with sexual orientation, longing to understand this confusing concept? Where are the disabled and diseased who barely hold-on without health coverage? Today, where is Lazarus?

The Messianic Pattern: The Perspective of the Periphery

2008-10-17T13:36:00.000-07:00

The original message of Jesus was that God's way to rule was to serve the marginalized and oppressed of the world and to obey to the point of suffering. We renounce triumphalism and power and privilege. 516 Quail Meadow is a community of 8 white folks [for now] who have pledged our lives to the messianic way, the pattern of Jesus who emptied himself of dominating, triumphalistic ways of ruling. He, instead, was the Servant-King, taking on the form of a slave [Philippians 2:5-11], washing his disciples feet, associating himself with the down-and-out lepers and prostitutes and sell-out tax collectors. He was gathering around himself a community bold enough to love enemies, share resources and live in solidarity with those on the margins of society. Paul, too, in Philippians 3:1-11, embraced this same messianic pattern, regarding his own ethnic and religious power and privilege as 'shit' [skubalon in the original Greek!].

In order to embrace the messianic pattern which inspired the New Testament writers, we are slowly coming 'to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets' [from feminist scholar Peggy McIntosh]. Faithfulness to the pattern of Jesus and Paul consists of repenting [of years of unacknowledged privilege and skewed assumptions] and resisting [all the ways that this world presses us into using our white privilege to our own advantage]. Faithfulness to the pattern of Jesus and Paul consists of seeing the world of markets and military power from the perspective of those 'minorities' in the US who have been systematically oppressed [economically, psychologically, politically] throughout the past 500 years in the New World.

Philippians II: Downward Mobility

2008-10-10T09:10:00.000-07:00

Philippians 2:5-11 is a passage that biblical scholars love to debate. Was it an early Christian hymn that Paul was quoting or was it penned by Paul himself? Was it a passage that emphasized God becoming man in Christ or was it emphasizing the way that Jesus, as a human being, went about his business, forsaking his own ambition? Our task revolves around what Paul is doing with this lyrical piece about Jesus. His main point is to invite the Philippian community into the Jesus story: as Jesus emptied himself and took on the form of a slave, obeying to the point of death, so shall the Christian community face life. His mentality is our mentality. Throughout most of Christian history, the passage has been interpreted with an emphasis on Jesus' pre-existent God-like status--God becoming a man...the incarnation. The big church councils in the 4th and 5th century split hairs over the substance [or essence] of Jesus' nature. However, interpreters like John Howard Yoder and James McClendon claim that all that hair-splitting shifted followers of Jesus away from the main point. Instead, they point out, the hymn focuses on Jesus' earthly life, the nature of his vocation, his way-of-life. They claim that Paul's point is that Jesus, as a human being, refused a quest a become God-like, to control history [Adam's issue in Gen 3:5]. The Gospels report that Jesus faced down a variety of temptations concerning how to be the king [Luke 4:1-13]. Use of force was the greatest temptation...one that Jesus denied over and over again. Jesus refused to control history by unfaithful means, instead living out God's will and the consequence was death at the hands of the Powers. Jesus made space for the drastic possibility of God's action, both martyrdom and miracle. As a result, God bestowed glory on him. Jesus became worthy to receive the same praise and honor previously only reserved for God [Isaiah 45:23 & 49:7]. This is the nature of what God and his people are all about: a downward mobility, shunning the ambition and control and status-seeking that the world's stories invite us into. The Jesus story is told and re-told in order to be imitated. It is a script for participation.

‘…the cross and not the sword, suffering and not brute power determines the meaning of history. The key to the obedience of God’s people is not their effectiveness but their patience.’
John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus

'The cross we bear precedes the crown we wear.'
Martin Luther King

Phil 2:5 Let the same mind be in YOU that was in Christ Jesus,
6who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
9Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
10so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Philippians, Part I: Geography, Sociology, Political Science

2008-10-09T07:56:00.000-07:00

Philippi had been a colony of the Roman Empire for about 100 years when Paul wrote his letter to the little house church in about 50AD [two decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus in Palestine]. With a population of about 10,000, most residents of Philippi were not citizens of the Roman Empire, and many resented Rome's intrusion into their culture, but they benefited greatly from Rome's military might and economic stability. The cross was used as the ultimate symbol of intimidation, scaring everyone into being faithful to the Empire. Caesar was not only 'Lord' and 'Savior,' but also 'God'--the 'Caesar Cult' was quite popular in this Eastern section of the Empire. No doubt, this small Christian community in Philippi was experiencing persecution and intimidation of sorts and Paul was writing from prison, enduring his own struggles [Rome? Ephesus?]. This community was probably unanimously 'gentile,' but Paul was inviting them into the story of the people of God [Israel]: the story of the first human, Adam, and his quest to be God-like [something Jesus refuses] and the story of Israel's God being worshipped by the entire world someday [something Jesus replaces]. Paul calls this Philippian community to a different kind of 'politics' [both 1:27 and 3:20] which is exemplified in both Jesus [2:5-11]and Paul [3:7-11]. How might the 'politics of heaven' be different than the 'politics of Rome?' What does this tell us about God and his people?

Phil 1:27 Only, live your life [politeuesthe] in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ…

Phil 2:5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
6who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God  see Genesis 3:5 [Adam]
as something to be exploited,
7but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
9Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
10so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.  see Isaiah 45:23 & 49:7

Phil 3:7 Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. 8More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through the faithfulness of Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. 10I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, 11if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Phil 3:20 But our citizenship [politeuma] is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. 21He will transform the body of our humiliation so that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.

A Journey to the Border

2008-10-06T14:53:00.000-07:00

Dairy Mart Road, just north of Tijuana from I-5 to Friendship Park, is not a 'bridge to nowhere.' It is the same length as the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus, where Cleopas and his friend dialogued with anguish just a few days after Jesus' death. Their journey led to a common meal made a bit more extraordinary with a guest appearance by the Crucified One. Our journey to Friendship Park yesterday on World Communion Sunday also ended with with a meal...and yet another guest appearance.
With Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol looking on, United Methodist pastor John Fanestil delivered a bilingual message to both sides of the fence, defiantly proclaiming the absence of borders in God's worldwide kingdom. Brothers and sisters of Christ, from many denominations and ethnicities, both Mexican and American, participated in the Jesus meal, taking the bread and wine together. Sure, the obnoxious fence was a bit of a nuisance, but it didn't stop the body of Christ from being passed back and forth in a minor act of civil disobedience. For the average onlooker, it was just some Americans and Mexicans singing, eating and gazing at each other across through fence, but for those who have 'eyes to see' it was none other than the risen Lord in our midst: 'When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him' [Luke 24:30-31]. We recognized the Crucified One in the solidarity of fellow citizens of God's Reign, in the tears of the daughter in the States who got to see her mother in Mexico through the fence, in subverting the unjust policies of 'border security,' at the finish line of a 700-mile fence poking into the Pacific and in the stories of suburban Christians like me who are dying with the Messiah, in repentance and resistance, to the privilege, entitlement and prejudices of our youth.

'Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the border...'
Luke 24:32

Participating in Mark's Story

2008-10-02T06:37:00.000-07:00

‘This election campaign is…about a collision of myths. Every 4 years, various versions of America wrestle with one another…to choose not only how it wants to be led but what it wants to affirm, how it wants to be known—really, what it wants to be.’
Todd Gitlin, Professor of Journalism and Sociology at Columbia University

Just as this Presidential election is about competing stories about America that voters find themselves in, Mark was a story among stories in the first century about what it meant to live in Empire. Mark was a manifesto for followers of Jesus. It told the story of the Servant-King [1:11] who called his followers [8:34-36] to disown themselves [just like he did] and to take up the cross [just like he did]. The cross is the 'social price of non-conformity [John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus], a path freely chosen by Jesus' disciples whose way-of-life confronts the status quo and common knowledge. This subversive messianic lifestyle should have produced 13 crosses, but in the end only Jesus faithfully lived out [and died] God's kingdom vision: loving enemies [not nationalistic], forgiveness [not revenge], service [not domination], restoring wholeness to the sick and marginalized, and confronting the enslaving Powers-that-be.

Of course, Jesus' way was vindicated by his miraculous resurrection, but this event did not leave the cross behind. The cross, 3 decades after Jesus' death, was the symbol of what it meant to follow Jesus. The powerful Roman centurion identified him as the son of God while he breathed his last breath on the cross. We too boldly reject the temptation to 'come down from the cross' [15:32] as we follow Simon of Cyrene's lead out of the fields and on to the scandalous path [15:21].

Choosing the radical way, however, is always possible with the second-chance God. As Jesus calls his disciples back to Galilee [16:7] to start the story over, we too re-read ourselves into the text, learning again what this strange way of the messiah is all about. This same Jesus is present today, calling us to discipleship, to live as citizens of the reign of God.

A Micro-Society of God's Reign

2008-09-25T11:04:00.000-07:00

He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Colossians 1:13-14

God's reign has come in the life, teaching, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah and Lord. Those who boldly call themselves 'Christian' pledge allegiance primarily to the reign of God, not the 'counterfeit' kingdoms on offer in our culture today. To be a citizen of God's reign means that our identity and vocation are firmly rooted in who Jesus was and, post-resurrection, continues to be today in micro-societies of God's reign all over the world today: from Quail Meadow to Kuwait. We are his ambassadors, working out on Wednesday nights what this messianic citizenship means, and then proclaiming God's unique politics through word and deed throughout the week.

We live in a 'contest of stories,' as the Powers deceptively assume different worldviews that compete for our allegiance and formation. On Wednesdays, our goal is to be formed by a different script, the Bible. The gospel story proclaims a God who created the world with passionate love and who is determined to set the world to rights. We are invited to actively participate in this story in all the diverse settings of our lives. We simply desire to be transfixed and transformed by the irresistible love of Jesus and invite others to join our journey.

This week, let us be energized to participate in the reign of God in the misdt of counterfeit stories...

...to forgive instead of seek revenge.
...to serve instead of dominate.
...to share instead of hoard.
...to seek out the marginalized and hidden ones instead of the popular ones.
...to speak humbly instead of certainly or arrogantly.
...to listen with empathy instead of analyze with authority.

This week, let us pray specifically for...

...Rosanna's mom
...future decisions for Megan/Collin and Rosanna/Jared
...Dan's college friend who died tragically this summer--for his grieving mom

‘The gospel is not a message of personal salvation from the world, but a message of a world transfigured, right down to its basic structures. Redemption means actually being liberated from the oppression of the Powers, being forgiven for one’s own sin and for complicity with the Powers, and being engaged in liberating the Powers themselves from their bondage to idolatry.’
Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers [1992]

516 Quail Meadow: Participating in God's Reign

2008-09-12T12:15:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, September 24, 2008, a small group of young people who pledge allegiance to God's reign will start gathering at 516 Quail Meadow in Irvine at 6pm. We will eat together, pray together, read the Bible together, wrestle with the Bible together, share our lives together, laugh together and maybe even cry together. We aren't doing anything unique or revolutionary...we are just following what the disciples of Jesus did after their leader was murdered and rose from the dead. These disciples carried on the legacy of Jesus by re-enacting his love, forgiveness, compassion, humility and service to the world. When those original disciples met together--in their reading of the Hebrew Scriptures [and eventually letters of some of the Apostles, gospel stories about Jesus], through their kingdom work [‘whenever you have done it to the very least of these, my brothers, you’ve done it unto me’], through their witness to the world [‘and lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age’] and through their common worship together [‘whenever two or more of you gather in my name I am with you in your midst’]--they were convinced that the presence of Jesus the crucified Messiah and reigning Lord of the world was in their midst. We, too, are convinced.