eyes to see

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“It is customary to blame secular scienca and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society.” Abraham Joshual Heschel

Christians often moan about the fall of “Christian culture” within which we live. We look around us and wonder why it is that things have gone this way. It seems as though we are in the Autumnal stages of a culture that so many people dearly loved.

However when I see this movement I say, “Good ridance.” The so-called Christianity which seeped its way into the popular culture became so warped and twisted, so allied with earthly powers and kingdoms that it became virtually unrecognisable from the good news for the oppressed which it is. It slowly became good news for the rich and powerful. It became a tool to oppress rather than one to liberate.

In many places it still is.

“It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religions declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rahter than with the voice of compassion–its message becomes meaningless.” Abraham Joshual Heschel

We have to admit that perhaps the reason many people around us no longer claim to follow Jesus is because we have not given them sufficient reason to want to. Often our lives seem to be more drugery than joy.

What happens, however, when these problems are reversed? What happens when habit turns into love, when discipline changes to worship, creeds are imbibed with deep faith?

What happens when the faith we receive as an heirloom suddenly begins to flow living water?

God is opening our heart to the lost, the hurting, the oppressed. God is renewing our first love for him, and changing our hearts of stone to hearts of flesh.

God is moving in this world.

May we open our eyes to see.

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answers to the wrong questions

I recently went through a DVD series and book called The Present Future: Six tough Questions for the Church with some members from my church. Reggie McNeal, the author and presenter, does a bang up job of showing that we often get things wrong when it comes to church practice, to BEING the church. This is because we are often asking the wrong questions.

“If you solve the wrong problems precisely, what have you accomplished? You have wasted a lot of energy and perhaps fooled yourself that you have done ssomething significant.” (McNeal, Reggie; The Present Future; p. XVIII)

A friend of mine, who is now planting a church in New York City, City Grace Church, recently posted some thoughts about trying to answer the wrong questions with our good news of the gospel.

Christians have lots of answers to lots of questions.  The problem is that no one wants to hear our answers.  Why?  Because our answers are to questions that people aren’t asking.  The whole problem with how the gospel has been packaged for as long as I can remember is that it was packaged for people who already believed most of it.  To care about how to be forgiven for your sins, you have to believe there’s a divine being keeping track.  To care about “getting to Heaven,” you have to believe something comes after you die.  To care about how to be made right with God, you have to believe there is a God and that you aren’t right with him.  To people who don’t share these assumptions, the Gospel itself is irrelevant.

He goes on to say that the good news is NOT irrelevant, but that it is our presentation which is, and I have to agree whole heartedly. The problem is that in our own little bubbles, if you do not speak in the proper “Christianese” framework, then you are not a proper Christian. If you talk about salvation in a way that a non-Christian might understand and actually be interested in, like Rob Bell did in his interview with Christianity Today, you are branded as someone leading people away from Christ.

What if we were more concerned with making sure that everyone in our neighbourhood had food to eat than the colour of the carpet in the sanctuary? What would it look like if we not only told people about the love of Jesus, but actually showed them?

This is NOT an either/or proposition, it is a both/and. We do not need either the message of rescue from sin through Jesus or a concern for social justice, we need both. The kingdom of God, which Jesus initiated in the cross, includes both. After all, Jesus himself said so in his inaugural sermon.

The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he said to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:17-21, NIV)

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perfection

There are things that Jesus said which make me a tad bit nervous. There are times when I just want to pass over some sentence and pretend like I did not hear it.

That never works.

In my last year at seminary I created a class with a bunch of other guys called The Use of Scripture in the Early Church. One of our professors turned us on to the idea and was willing to oversee the class. We spent the majority of our time simply memorising scripture. The Early Church has no printing presses and so the vast majority of the beleivers would try to memorise scripture in order to have it with them.

Among other things I chose to memorise the sermon on the mount (Matthew 5-7).

This turned out to be a very challenging assignment, not because it was difficult to memorise, but because the subject matter is so far from what we normally associate with Christianity.

There is a phrase that always stuck with me.

You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48, ESV)

I never really understood that line. I can see the other bit, about how we are to be kind and loving to others, but are we really supposed to be perfect?

Sunday I preached on a similar passage in Luke (Luke 6:27-36). Luke has Jesus finish the teaching differently.

“Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. ” (Luke 6:36, ESV)

The teachings are on the same things, loving our enemies, and there are many overlaps. This may be two different recordings of the same teaching, or it may be two different times that Jesus said similar things (I think it is the later).

Seeing these two phrases together got me thinking, what does it mean to be perfect?

I had always assumed that perfection was doing the right things, saying the correct statements, living the ten commandments with a loving and glad heart.

These are good things, but I no longer think this is what Jesus means by perfection.

Perhaps perfection comes not when we make all the right choices (when we do the right things with the right motivation), but when we live with grace and mercy toward others.

Perhaps being perfect is about being merciful.

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questions for understanding

On my desk I have a little piece of paper with three questions listed on it. These questions are ones that I have slowly gathered and honed regarding the understanding of a passage of scripture. There are many, I am sure, and I by no means have them cornered. But I have found them extremely helpful in my life to better understand a passage, especially as I do my devotions in the morning. So, without further ado, here they are.

1) What does this text reveal about God and his relationship to his people and his creation?

2) How does this theological message (this talk about God) connect with the larger Biblical story of Creation/Fall/Redemption/Recreation?

3) What grace does this text offer to us to us today?

These are, of course, huge questions to answer for every text. Though often they provide a nice prod to help place a text within the context of the Biblical story and our lives.

tragedy, comedy, fairytale

Frederick Buechner is a genius, at least in my humble opinion. I have to say that I have not read much of his stuff, but I have read his book on preaching Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, & Fairytale. This book outlines how in our world, the gospel is so much more than a simple outline of the proper doctrines to repeat. The gospel is a story that takes account of the pain and struggle that takes place in all of our hearts.

The story of Jesus is so much more than a simple ten minutes can outline (though that can cover the basics). It is more than the most seasoned saint will ever be able to grasp. It is a story. A story of love and loss, fidelity and betrayal. It is the story of God redeeming people who continue to run away from him.

Our current world desperately needs to hear this story, says Buechner.

The weight of these sad times we must obey and must obey just because they are sad times, sad and bewildering times for people who try to hold on to the Gospel and witness to it somehow when in so many ways the weight of our sadness all but crushes the life our of it. One wonders if there is anything more crucial for the preacher to do than to obey the sadness of our times by taking it into account without equivocation or subterfuge, by speaking out of our times and into our times not just what we ought to say about the Gospel, not just what it would appear to be in the interests of the Gospel for us to say, but what we have ourselves felt about it, experienced of it. It is possible to think of the Gospel and our preaching of it as, above all and at no matter what risk, a speaking of the truth about the way things are.

Speaking the truth about the way things are, not just how we hope them to be, not just how we make things to be, but how things truly are.

This does not mean that things are always doom and gloom. There is a lot of bad things happening in the world, but God is at work in the world too and his presence should be noticed. It may take more work, but sometimes light shines brighter in the darkness. Lee Eclov wrote an article for preachingtoday.com called The Gospel for the Gospel-Saturated: Preaching the good news in all its dimensions. He mentions how the gospel is often set against a very dark back drop.

The Scriptures take us into back alleys sometimes—sunless, trash-strewn, narrow, sinister, bums lurking. Over there—Saul huddled in the firelight with the witch of Endor. There—Jezebel and Ahab plotting. The scrawled graffiti—”Darkness is my only companion” and “I curse the day of my birth.” And there’s Simon Magus leaning over his abacus, toting up the profit margin in the gospel. Here, a snake; there, a lurking lion. Yet I imagine the gospel hiding around the corners of that dark alley, as delightfully out of place as a laughing child. Sometimes our job as gospel preachers is to portray the dark alleys of life, mirrored in Scripture, till people shiver at the thought. Then we show them the laughing gospel-child.

That is what we need to look for, both in the scriptures and in the world; the laughing gospel child.