Paris, Islam, Jihad and Christ

Last night recreation venues in Paris were attacked, bombs were detonated, AK-47 guns were fired into crowds and hostages were taken, suicide bombers exploded themselves.  We don't yet know for sure who is responsible for the murder of 200+ and wounding of 600+ people.  One witness reports the gunmen shouting 'God is Great!' in Arabic, and shouting about Frances participation in Syria.   It seems likely this was an attack by Islamist Jihadists against a soft 'western' target.  I anticipate that IS in its various forms is the instigator. 

Perhaps you will disagree, but I think it's necessary to say that these attackers were Muslims - followers of Islam. I know many peaceful, law-abiding gentle and wise Muslims.  That's not my point.  My point is that these people - were also Muslims, radicalized and driven by some big idea.  We know two things for sure about IS and radicalized Islam in general: First, they have an apocalyptic vision in which provoking the west to war is seen as a necessary precursor to bringing about their understanding of the 'end-times', and therefor s a victory for universally enforced Islam.  (This is understood primarily as a Christian versus Islam Holy War in their particular framework of apocalypse.); Second, they want to establish a 'Caliphate' immediately - a single Muslim ruler to rule all Muslims across the world.  This Caliph will enforce unity among Islam, imposing the Sunni variety of Islam and forcing either the conversion or death or all Shia Muslims. I don't know what they would do with Sufi Muslims - I presume kill them. 

Last night took careful planning and funding.  Imagine the time and care it took to make those bombs - the slow, attentive process of packing the explosives, forming the detonator, packing the metals around the explosives to cause maximum carnage.  Imagine the heart that beat in those chests as they undertook this painstaking and careful work. Imagine the nurtured hatred, the heart of murder, cold, slow and deliberate.  The westerners they killed were seen by them as sub-human.  Yes, I am assuming this, but how else could any person operate at this level?

Jesus Christ - God born as a human - came with a different approach.  He expected that He and we would be persecuted, insulted, injured, robbed and murdered.  What is His teaching and commandment to us?  Love those who hate you, bless those who persecute you, walk a second mile if forced to walk the first mile, offer an uninjured cheek if hit in the face. It doesn't make any sense, and that's exactly why it is the only answer to murder.  

The Holy Spirit, speaking through Paul says the same in Romans 12, quotes Proverbs 25:21-22.  It is written:

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.  Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.  Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.  Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.  Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.  Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.  Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.  If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.  Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”  To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

So, may we, as Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, refuse to speak of retribution and revenge.  Let us weep with Paris, pray for Paris and act with honor towards our enemies and also our Muslim neighbors who live peacefully as a part of our shared society.  Let us work for justice at home and in the Middle East and shame the men of death with our care and wisdom.  May our military work to empower people in the middle-east with equity and upholding the rule of law.  May our leaders carry the sword of leadership (Romans 13:4) with humility and wisdom.  Let us overcome evil with good.

Thanks be to God for Jesus Christ, who transformed hearts of stone into hearts of flesh, first of all mine. Jesus fulfills not only the Jewish Torah law but also He fulfills and exceeds Shariah law. He alone can change the human condition, transforming us from fear to love, power to service, hate to care, war to peace. 

Liturgy

I hope you will take a moment to click on this link and read this page of another blog.  He argues that liturgy in church worship is a good thing.  I agree.

At Christ The Way we do not use classic Christian liturgy for all of our service, but we have introduced some beautiful liturgical elements to our services, all while embracing the best of modern thought and post-modern thought.

Enjoy.

http://pagebrooks.org/2015/10/16/why-you-shouldnt-use-liturgy-in-your-worship/

No Guile

John 1:14 Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!”

Why did Jesus say this of Nathaniel? Why was it so noteworthy that this soon-to-be-disciple had no 'deceit'? (The old King James Version uses the word 'guile'.)  Why was this quality important to Jesus?

One of the most remarkable things about the beginnings of Christianity is that it started with one person - The Lord Jesus Christ, and the world has never been the same since.  Christ's chosen method of changing humanity and the world for all time...was to entrust the entire mission to 12...soon to be 11...quite ordinary men.  They were an odd mixture of people, of personality types, of professions.  You or I probably wouldn't chose them to start a company, let alone change the world.  So what exactly was Christ doing by selecting them?

Noteworthy also, is that each of these men gradually understood that the Kingdom which Jesus was building was not one that would bring them glory or power, but separation from their families, homes, businesses, and a life of constant uncertainty, risk, danger, and eventually, certain death (all but John who seems to have died of old age after a long lifetime of hardship and imprisonment). They were at no point compelled to take on this life, this calling.  At any time, indeed over many thousands of opportunities, then could have bugged out, and simply faded back into any other life.  It required a continually renewed commitment to their life of hardship and death to see their vocation through. What motivated them?

I think it was that they had seen the truth, and were people who could not deny the truth that they had seen.  This, I think, is the one quality that they all shared - they could not deny the truth.  Perhaps this was the quality that Jesus was selecting for, when he chose his 12 disciples...and it worked through in all 12 of them.  Even Judas Iscariot did not run from the truth - but rather his own fear and hunger for influence and power overtook him.  The other 11...the truth overtook them. 

Yes, here are men in whom there is no deceit. They are men who are true to the truth...to The Truth. 

May I, may we, be so called. 

Buddhism, The Four Spiritual Pains, and Christ

Buddhism (as reported by Richard Rohr, the celebrate Franciscan contemplative) identifies  Four Limitless Qualities: loving kindness (maitri), compassion, joy, and equanimity.

The American Book of Living and Dying - a wonderful text often favored by hospice chaplains, identifies four areas of universal spiritual pain, often faced by those who are dying: Meaning/Purpose, Relatedness, Forgiveness, and Hope.

It seems to me that these two sets of ideas can be connected together...layered. Also, that the central living-giving truths of the Christian Way - that is Christ Himself - provide a uniquely effective way to satisfy the deepest human needs that these two sets of 'four' map out:

Meaning and Purpose: Each human person has a profound need to to matter, to have made a difference, to have discovered our place in the universe. That is, we need to have understood that we, our life, has meaning and that we exist for a reason.
The Buddhist value of equanimity connects here, and closely resemble what Christians mean by 'peace', We find balance - equanimity and peace when we are at rest in ourselves. This comes when our unrest is satisfied. When we discover that our purpose is to love God, others and ourselves, when we have insight that the meaning of our lives is to worship and love God, we find rest for our souls, we can focus our seeking and yearning and it finds its satisfaction in discovering the loving God who is above us, beside us and within us. This active, growing rest, is what Augustine spoke of when he said that 'we find our rest when we rest in thee', meaning Christ. Christ alone purposes us and gives us meaning and thus we find equanimity in Him. The Gospel of John calls this 'abiding'.

Relatedness refers to the ability to relate to people, places, times and things (pets even) and yet to hsve the grace to let these connections slip away and release, especially as we die. you can see that this requires great peace and a certains restful , centeredness in Christ, to do well. Only when we have anchored our meaning and purpose in Christ and found equanimity, can we yield up all other relationships. The Buddhist quality of Loving Kindness connects here because it is essentially a relational quality. Kindness is shown from one creature to another - in relationship. Love is also a relational quality. What Buddhists call maitri, what Jews call hesed, is this Loving Kindness - sometimes rendered in Judeo-Christian circles as mercy - although I think that word has come to mean something slightly different these days.) Hesed is an essential quality of the One True and Living God - Yahweh - who came to us as Jesus Christ. On the cross, Christ demonstrated the ultimate and one-time-forever relational loving kindness when God died to absorbs and nullify the power of all death and darkness so that we might be free from death and it's seed, sin Sin is essentially broken relationship.

Forgiveness can follow now that the cross means that God has forgiveness us. As we respond to this wonderful truth and accept God's forgiveness, we can offer forgiveness to others. All the offenses against us pale in scope and significance when we gain insight into the depth to which God has forgiveness each of us, and us collectively. Only when we have forgiveness another person, can we have full compassion with them. Compassion means to have co-passion - to 'feel together' with them. To allow ourselves to feel what they are feeling. Indeed I have long held that compassion is not only a fruit of forgiveness but also it's precursor. When we can climb into another person's shoes, then we can understand them, realize that we are not so very different from them, and in turn find the compassion to forgive them. God has compassion toward us, that is he is forgiving toward us. The Cross enacts His compassion and forgiveness as God was alone able to clear away all that stands between a healed relationship between us and Him.

Finally, Hope, which is the prospect of life and goodness, the sum of all that has gone before, is yet ahead of us. The dying can die in hope because God has broken death and provided eternal life. Those who die without God , die with crippled hope. Hope is not just for death but for every moment of life. Indeed the contemplatives of both Christianity and Buddhism encourage us all to live 'in the moment' by which they really mean to live fully alive - to have life and to have it abundantly. Christ alone brings thi s hope and abundant life. Without hope there is no joy - Joy and Hope are synonymous in that hopelessness and joylessness are also synonymous. Just ask anyone who has faced suicide. Hope, Joy, Life - these words travel together. They are facets of Christ, who alone brings Joyful Hope, Hopeful Joy.

To Christ be the glory, Prince of Peace, the Hope of Nations, Minister of Reconciliation, The Way, the Truth and the Life, now and for all ages, Amen!

Ashley Madison and Germanwings

This is a two - part post.  Here a brief thought from earlier this year that I did not publish at the time.

Depressed Morality April 17, 2015
Today I have been taking in the enormity of the Germanwings aircraft crash, in which, it now seems, the co-pilot locked the captain out of the cockpit and flew the airplane into a mountainside at full speed, killing all aboard.  The cockpit sound recorder carries the steady sound of the co-pilot's breathing and the screams of the passengers just as the airplane hit the ground.
     Subsequent reporting reveals that the co-pilot had been suffering for some years with bouts of depression.  Of course lots of people suffer with bouts of depression without intentionally murdering almost 200 people - men women and children.  It seems to me that something else must have been happening in that man's mind.

Now for a more recent musing - Ashley Madison
The Ashley Madison website for married people who are seeking to commit adultery, or at least play with the idea - was always reprehensible to me.  So I  don't feel any sorrow for the 33 million people whose identity has been revealed in the recent hack and Internet-publishing of their client base.  What has surprise me is that they had 33 million paying customer. The NYT reports that only 3 zip codes in the USA did not have payin Ashley Madison customers - two is Alaska and one in New Mexico, all are tiny towns with sometime intermittent Internet connectivity.  Wow.  What does this tell me?  Some commentators write that this is another fruit of the individualism and the metaphysical-sexual fulfilment culture that is the zeitgeist of our culture. I agree.

I'm not making any further connection between the Germanwings mass-murder and Ashley Madison, except this - that in both there is the assertion that the need of the individual trumps the needs of the 'other'.  That pilot was surely mentally unwell - and just how and in what way, we will never know. What we do know is that he chose his own perceived and immediate needs over the very lives of 200 people.
 Surely those who act out their need for further sexual excitement than their marriage currently provides, are engaging in deeply selfish short term thinking that will reap deep and long lasting pain in the very souls of their spouses, parents, children and friends. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.

I yearn to ever more become the sort of person who embodies a deep, loyal, empowering, dignifying presence not just in my own self, but in the community and families that I am a part of.  More and more I see this Christian life as shared.  Truly no person lives alone. Our lives are not our individual fiefdoms, they are a shared and deeply connected organic life in which sin never affects just the sinner, and love never can be contained in just one soul.  Both ripple through the connections that are the essential us.

I acknowledge the darkness, sin and dysfunction that remains in me, a work-in-progress, a sinner saved by grace and currently being sanctified by Christ.  Inside me is a little piece of the Germanwings pilot. Inside me is the potential to be in the Ashley Madison shame database. There is no them, only us. Thanks be the Christ, the author and sustainer of our faith, our life, our hope.

Antediluvian Widespread Evil

As someone interested in both science and theology, I have a particular interest in the human race and it's history.  Contrary to some people who believe the human race is only 6,000 years old (based on their arithmetic of Bible accounts) the overwhelming, irrefutable evidence of science is that humans have been around for a lot longer.  That does not mean the Bible is wrong, just that the Bible is not that interested in telling us about exact time periods of human history.   The Bible is not a science handbook but a book of infallible truth, carried in a variety of literary genres, most of which are not concerned with being a text book.

One such idea is that there was once a great flood that God used to wipe all humanity off the face of the earth, except for 8 people he preserved in a boat. The Noah's Ark and the Flood story is about evil human nature and it's relationship to the environment, disinterest in the good God, God's sovereignty and right of judgment, and His continuous desire to redeem and recreate, and finally His inviting us into that recreating process.   The timescales are quite irrelevant. The exact extent of the flood is not the point.  The essence and quality of the truth conveyed in the Bible narrative is what is intended.

I spent my teen years tramping the upland massif of Dartmoor in Devon in England, where bronze age relics are everywhere to be seen.  Perhaps that is why i have no problem thinking about human in great antiquity.

That's Grimspound - the remains of a Bronze age settlement on Dartmoor dating from about 1300 BC.  I read today a story from the nearby county of Somerset:

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150416-our-ancestors-were-cannibals

Our ongoing research shows that ancient people, although great artists and craftspeople, had a poor view of human sanctity.  If cannibalism and human sacrifice were normal ancient impulses, how much suffering did God abate when he selected a few people in a global 'do over' for humanity?
Do we need historical evidence of the 'fallenness' of human nature?  Perhaps the news headlines from various war zones and ISIS provide evidence that human morality is not evolving or improving as many modernists might suppose or hope.  Human nature, like God, is the same yesterday, today and I fully expect, tomorrow.

Thank God - for he has made a way of saving us from ourselves, from the darkness we each carry, and has made a path of forgiveness, affirmation, healing and growth.  That is the Way of Christ.

(And just in case you were worried about all the ancient humans who died in those days of flood and rain...see my previous blog post.)

A Rich Day, Part 1: Humility and Recognition

     Wednesday April 15, 2015 was an extraordinary day in the life of this chaplain.  4 aspects will remain with me, and I'll blog on each one.  In this post I want to share with you a simple moment.
     As usual for my workplace chaplaincy role, I visited with the employees of one of my companies at 6:15 AM to walk the line of field-technician trucks and meet the men and women with a one-on-one handshake and a friendly word.   Today the company was meeting at a function hall to give everyone a breakfast buffet, some hoopla and to announce the first quarter results.
     The company principals gave their presentations followed by each of the senior directors, finally the HR director.  She had a couple of slides and the final bullet-point was my name with two exclamation marks after it.  Ashley Chartier was so gracious to me, thanking me for my work over the year 'from the bottom of her heart'.  Everyone applauded and then a few people stood up, then more, and soon all 80 people in the room were on their feet, applauding me.  A standing ovation for a chaplain. For me.  I was just crushed with humility, genuinely - which I was as unexpected to me as their applause.  I motioned for them to sit down and they did.  The principal echoed Ashley's thanks and the meeting moved on.  I however was just so deeply moved.
     I don't work for either praise or thanks, but I'll take them if they come.  What moved me so very deeply was that my ministry was recognized and valued.  It was a gracious gift of God to me.  Not all the leaders of my last church shared their sentiment, a fact that has humbled me these last 3 years.
     I may not know what the next few months may bring, but I want to stay with this group of people, just as I have stayed connected to the kind people from my previous church.  Thank you God for a unique moment.  You have humbled your servant, and in due time, have lifted him up (James 4:10).  Thank you Lord for this encouragement.

Easter Saturday - Christ walks Hades

Easter Saturday. God, apparently, is dead. At least for today, because we know that Sunday is coming...tomorrow. For now though, Jesus is in the tomb. cold. dead. utterly dark. silent. sinews rigid, corpse, almost blood-drained, scarred, naked apart from the burial shroud. Humiliated, cut, brutalized.

The Apostle Peter, writing some years later, mentions a beautiful early Christian tradition (1 Peter 3:18-20) that Jesus was not inactive in His death, but that He was busy in Hades bringing new life to those who had died trusting in God, for all the years leading up to this momentous day. The penitent thief who died alongside Him on the cross would have experienced hades turned into Paradise as Jesus came to greet him. The faithful men and women, boys and girls of Old Testament times too. Even the ancient ones who died in and before the great flood, says Peter.
Wherever Jesus Christ walks, death turns to life, darkness to light, indifference to love.
There is a movement among some modern Christian theologians to think that hell cannot exist, because it is incompatible with the central notion of the loving all-power all-knowing God. Yet Jesus, whom I follow, never taught such thinking, Notably, Jesus Christ taught more often and at greater length about hell, that he did about heaven. God, He reminded us, is equally about justice, as He is about love. And justice seeks righteousness. Since Jesus IS God, He is speaking with self-understanding here. Who will provide the righteousness needed to undo the the darkness we each carry? It was God come to us, revealed to us as Jesus, who allowed all humanity - the hegemony of state power (Imperial Rome), and the baying crowds, and the self-righteous right-wing conservative religious elite (Pharisees), and the left-wing liberal intelligentsia (Sanhedrin) - to brutalize, mock, marginalize and execute Him. The Holy One absorbed into Himself all the darkness, hatred, self-righteousness and brutish ignorant stupidity of humankind. There is noting more we can do to Him, we have done it all in our fore-fathers, confirmed in our every micro-decision to prefer our own ways. Yet here comes Jesus, walking though the hallways of our minds, bringing paradise, bringing life, and always saying - "come follow Me".
Love has satisfied Justice and here He comes. On Easter Saturday we get the chance to decide to follow Him into Resurrection Sunday, or stay in hades.

Investing

“Gentlemen, there are only two things on earth that will last forever—the Word of God and the souls of men. Give the rest of your life to these two things.” Dr. B. Gray Allison, past president of Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary.

These words were reported in a recent blog post I read.  I agree with them.  (To be gender-inclusive I would say the souls of people.)  This is the essential nature of my own calling into ministry: a relational commitment to God, The Bible and People, and the place where they intersect.  It's a complex place.  Of course The Bible is the written word of God, and The Lord Jesus Christ is the living Word of God.  So wherever the Bible is being read/heard then Jesus is especially present, inspiring the reader/hearer, just as he did when those words were being written, and transmitted to us through the centuries.   The words lift off the page, and enter our hearts.  Not just the words, but the very presence of God Himself.  

So I am bold to say that if you need God, crave God, seek God, then read the Bible.  Better still, read the Bible in the context of a worshiping community that honors Christ and the Bible.  That could be a church, a Bible study group, a simple group of friends.

www.ChristTheWay.org 

A poem from my Family: Andy

Andy

That grey day it was raining on the cobblestones of Oxford

We hugged and kissed my brother before he stepped on the bus

His long hair and blue corduroy jacket

and all his worldly goods in a duffle bag

Off to Spain and the rest of his life

We stood silently after the bus, and he, had left our sight

And our lives, knowing it would never be the same

That by any definition we were now three, plus one in Spain.

Dad suggested fish and chips for lunch and we tried to be cheerful

As the mugs of steaming tea fogged the café window while

People outside were shopping, their lives having not taken

Any irrevocable turns today.

That summer came photos falling out of letters sent with foreign stamps.

Of  a sunlit apartment, a beach, blue sea, a pretty girl.

Then the news we already knew – they had decided to marry

Mum cried and Dad tried hard not to.

And they decided to be happy for him.

And he wrote I could have his guitar if I wanted it.

Which I didn’t, because it was his stupid guitar.

And anyway, he was too dumb to know I’d already bought one.

Be Sanctified - Christ's Very Purpose.

John 17:19 ends with 4 words that describe Christ's desire for us, that we be 'be sanctified in truth'.  Four little words.  Four colossal words. The first two words are the topic for this blog post: be sanctified.

Sanctified:  The Greek word here is 'hagiazo'.  It is a perfect, passive verb-participle and plural, nominative and masculine, just so you know!  Let's unpack what that means and why it is so dynamite:

This is a participle, form of verb, a doing word.  The tense of this word is 'perfect'.  "The basic thought of the perfect tense is that the progress of an action has been completed and the results of the action are continuing on, in full effect. In other words, the progress of the action has reached its culmination and the finished results are now in existence. Unlike the English perfect, which indicates a completed past action, the Greek perfect tense indicates the continuation and present state of a completed past action."

So my friend, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, Christ wants that you will have already been sanctified, that He wants this work to be complete in you, so that the full effects of your sanctification will reverberate on in full beauty throughout all of your life!  If you have not been sanctified, or if your life is only partially sanctified (made holy) then this falls short of what Jesus wants for you.  he wants for your sanctification to be complete...that is fully... and ongoing.

The passive voice of this verb-participle means that we are NOT the one doing the sanctifying, but rather that we are the one's receiving the sanctification.  The sanctification is being done to us, or perhaps in us.  Our work is to receive/accept the sanctification.  Chris is the subject, we are the object.  Christ is sanctifying us.  To be more exact, this connects back to verse 17 in that Christ is asking The Father to sanctify us.  That Christ declares he is consecrating Himself to this end makes it clear that God the Father is achieving our sanctification through Christ's consecration.  Connecting this to the rest of John's gospel, it is clear that the cross and the empty tomb - Christ's death and resurrection - provide the necessary means and power for the Father to sanctify us through Christ. Wow. 

It is a participle, which means it isn't the main verb, but accompanies the main verb.  The main verb is 'be'.  Jesus wants us to 'be'.  It's about what we are, not what we do.  How does Jesus want us to be?  Well, he wants us to be sanctified.  The 'sanctified' here is modifying the verb 'to be', acting as an adverb that describes the verb 'to be'.  It answers the question 'how are we to be?  (It is an instrumental adverbial participle, and adverbial participles are always nominative case.) The type of being Jesus wants for us is 'sanctified'  Sanctification is what Jesus wants us to be.  It's not our work, but our condition, our way of being, our mode of existence. 

It's plural - Jesus wants this not just for one of his disciples, but for all of us.  This is a universal desire for all those who follow Christ, love Him and belong to Him. Sanctification is not for the select few, the top-class Christians, but for each and every one of those who are following Jesus.

In summary, to 'be sanctified' is a beautiful way of being that Christ wishes for us, and that we receive from Christ.  We can't get their ourselves, it is something that is done in us, from The Father, through Christ's work, in Christ's personhood.  The work of sanctification is not the point really.  The point is that the 'state of being' or ongoing condition that Christ wants for all of us is to continually be sanctified.  That is Christ's desire, prayer and action.  Christ's very purpose is that we be sanctifed. 

John 17:19 "And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth."

John 17 is a deep and rich passage of scripture.  Jesus is praying, and He is soon to be crucified.  John is listening in and reporting the prayer to us.  On this occasion Jesus is fully aware that His prayer is being listened to.  This prayer (usually called the 'High Priestly Prayer') is Jesus' gift to His immediate disciples, and to us.  We can be confident of this because Jesus makes it clear.  The prayer is given in three discrete but connected passages:

• John 17:1-5  Jesus opens his prayer by detailing His relationship with God The Father, for our benefit.  This is a theological goldmine - a gift from Christ to all Christians, and indeed to all people, for all time.  If you ever had any doubt about how Jesus Christ understood Himself, this is a go-to passage of scripture. 
• John 17:6-19  Jesus prayers for this immediate disciples (the 12 - or possibly a wider circle of believers) - the "people You gave Me out of the world".  Even Judas Iscariot gets a mention albeit by an unhappy description as "the son of destruction" (verse 12).  Jesus uses this part of His prayer to make crystal clear the relationship between The Father, Jesus Christ, the 'world' and his disciples.  There are enough complex themes here to keep a small group Bible study busy for weeks!
• John 17:20-26 Jesus prays for all the believers who will ever live.  Yup - that's us! Again there is compact depth and richness here, enough to ponder on for a lifetime. 

This is a wonderful chapter of scripture to chose as 'food' for Lent.  As Jesus prays on the very threshold of His passion, death, resurrection and ascension, they are all in view here in these 26 verses of prayer. 

But for today, and I suspect for some days to come, I will focus in on just one little dynamite verse.  Right now I have only a shallow sense of what it means.  It is verse 19: "And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth."

Jesus is speaking; 'They' refers to His then-current disciples...the "people you gave me out of the world";  Jesus wants them to be sanctified in the truth.  

What would that look like exactly?  Jesus' method of ensuring that this goal would be achieved is for Him to 'consecrate' Himself.  What does that mean?  How did He do that?  What would it matter if this verse had been omitted from the Bible?  What effect does this verse have on our understanding of God The Father, Son and Holy Spirit?  Is the Holy Spirit even involved?  How does this verse effect the church, me and you?

I apologize for that string of unanswered questions.  If you are still reading,  thank you. May we be sanctified by Christ, not because of anything we deserve, or anything that we may do, or anything that we may already be, or not be.  But rather, because Jesus wants it.  Because Jesus prayed it.  And Jesus is God.  So that means we have it, because when God prays, His prayers never fail.

I hope to journey into this verse and penetrate it's depth and riches.  Pray for me, and let me know the truth that the Holy Spirit is speaking to you about, so that we can stand together in Christ's consecration, and be sanctified.  I need it.  I know this from deep  within my own brokenness.  I need Him.  How about you? 

Amen. 

Dust Thou Art and to Dust thou Shall Return, Repent and Believe the Good News!

Today is Ash capital Wednesday, the only Christian day on the calendar that Hallmark will not produce a greeting card for!  It is the first day of Lent - the 40 day (not counting Sundays) preparation for Easter.  Christians typically fast for this period - a form of spiritual preparation for the great high feast of Easter.
To mark our period of fasting - and mourning for the sin we carry and the death that accompanies sin, we borrow from the Old testament tradition of ashes and sackcloth for mourning.  Well, the sackcloth piece has not really been adopted, but we do mark ourselves with ashes - usually on our foreheads in the sign of the cross.

 As the forehead is marked, the minister will usually say "Thou art dust, and to dust you shall return", reminding the person of their mortality, that we carry the inevitability of death within us and that this is theologically linked to our sin nature, and the sins that we may chose.   For added poignancy try being a hospital chaplain and walking through the oncology floor with ashes.   As I did so, I reflected that there is no guarantee that I will outlive any of these dear souls.
In more recent days, ministers may chose the alternative, more positive words "Repent and believe the Good News".  The Good News is that when we could not find God, God has come to us in the person of Jesus Christ, and has done for us what we could not do for ourselves - to remove the guilt and disease of our sin far from us, reconciling us to God and giving us His Spirit within us to comfort, guide and mediate His love to us, for right now and for evermore.  Good News indeed!

This is a free gift from God, but it must be received:  We 'repent' or turn away from living for our own selves, ambitions and agendas, and instead we take upon ourselves the role of servant of God, adopted children, obedient not from fear but from love, to the Father God who freely gives unconditional love, forgiveness, encouragement, and human flourishing (blessing).

So welcome to Lent.  We journey towards the cross that saves us, and the empty tomb that brings us new life.  As we go, we shed the baggage of our sin, and we start with the ashes.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the spirit of humankind

AI is on the rise.  Microsoft has Cortana, Apple has Siri and Google has Google Now.  The Big Three technology companies are all vying for supremacy to provide you with a software assistant that knows your wants and needs and can help you get the most out of your day.  Personally I use Google Now and I'm impressed by how much knowledge about me it extracts from my emails, texts, calendar bookings and telephone calls.  I like it.
This is the current experience of artificial intelligence (AI) and it's been getting a lot of press recently. Eric Horvitz of Microsoft and the people at Google say there is some reason for caution but nothing much to worry about.  Stephen Hawking (a physicist and all round clever person) says it a big threat to humankind, and dear old Clive Sinclair says AI will replace humanity - along the lines of many science fiction stories.  Terminator anyone?

I want to ask...what is it to be human exactly?  Sure computers can gather vast amounts of data, apply analytical rules to it, extract conclusions and even act on them.  Is that all that we mean by 'intelligence'?  If so, then yes, the computers will take over the world.  The Net will reign supreme and we will be reduced to slaves.  Dystopia. But wait a moment...

I'd like to add to the conversation. To be human is to be an integrated body, mind and spirit.  Some atheists and humanists poo-poo the idea of the spirit, and they are welcome to their opinion.  However, I notice that the people that suicide are usually intelligent thinking people, and not always acting on mental illness or momentary grief.  Sometimes these troubled souls are responding to despair and hopelessness that transcends reason and rationality and even just feelings.  There is more to being alive that the mind and the emotions.  There is the connection to God, the Universe or the Higher Power - however you like to nominate whatever it is that is beyond yourself to which we sense a deep connection.  This connection is deeper than memory or imagination (both activities of the mind), bigger than emotions - also activity of the mind.  It effects our bodies, affects our emotions, and provides deep motive, relationship and peace.

We religious/spiritual people have vocabulary to talk about this - not that we understand it all, but having words helps.  Spirit - our spirits and God's Holy Spirit, worship, awe, praise, the night of the soul, the mountain top and the valley.

If the 'net' or my smart phone or computers can help me deal with the busy-ness of life great, but they will never be able to take on the essence of being truly alive - the connection we have to each other, to God, to ourselves and to creation.  To be alive is about so much more than intelligence.  It is about relationship, and that involves all of ourselves.  There is more to consciousness that intelligence.

Ecumenical Creeds?

Christ The Way church is concerned to live-out the ancient Christian faith, contextualized to the modern world. In order to faithfully do that, we need to deeply understand the ancient Christian faith.  This is a very Wesleyan pursuit.  John Wesley had the same concern, seeking for the early doctrines and practices of Christians that later gave rise to more divergent patterns of worship and understanding.

The Church of the Nazarene states in its official Manual that "It receives the ecumenical creeds of the first five Christian centuries as expressions of its own faith" (page 14, Historical Statement).  This statement seems a little vague to me.  I suppose it means the creeds that resulted from the Ecumenical Councils of the ancient church that happened before the year 500 AD.  Those councils were:

• The First Council of Nicaea - 325 AD
• The First Council of Constantinople - 381 AD
• The First Council of Ephesus - 431 AD
• The Council of Chalcedon - 451 AD

The next Ecumenical Council, The Second Council of Constantinople was held in 553 AD, so cannot be said to have been in the 'first 5 Christian centuries'.  It was a council widely rejected in the West, which is probably why The Manual draws the line before 2nd Constantinople.  It did not produce a creed. 

There is only one creed that properly resulted from the first 4 councils, that is the Nicene Creed.  It was first issued as a result of the Council of Nicaea (hence the name), as a sort of communique to announce the conclusion of the council, and to serve as a clear statement of universally held, true Christian belief.  The second council extended the creed, making certain points even more explicitly clear,  The Nicene Creed as widely used today is the result of the second council. 

The Manual, in using the plural 'creeds' must be doing so to embrace both versions of the Nicene creed.  The Apostles' creed did not result from a council, nor is it truly 'ecumenical' as it is rejected by the Eastern churches (Orthodox), and is used only in the Western churches (Roman Catholic, Anglican and Protestant).  So it seems unlikely that the Manual has the Apostles' creed in mind, even though the denomination embraces both the Nicene and the Apostles' creed.  I want to encourage the Church of the Nazarene to clarify this line in the Manual.

As an 'Ancient Future' kind of guy, I embrace both creeds as wonderful expression of the Christian faith, and gifts to the church from God, albeit not at quite the same level of Scripture.    I hope that Christ The Way people will learn the Nicene Creed by heart as a goal for 2015.  Here it is, in a fresh rendering into contemporary English borrowed the the Anglican Church in North America's new 'Texts for Common Prayer':

We believe in one God,

      the Father, the Almighty,

      maker of heaven and earth,

      of all that is, visible and invisible.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,

      the only Son of God,

      eternally begotten of the Father,

      God from God, Light from Light,

      true God from true God,

      begotten, not made,

      of one Being with the Father;

      through him all things were made.

      For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven,

      was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,

      and was made man.

      For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;

      he suffered death and was buried.

      On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures;

      he ascended into heaven

      and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

      He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,

      and his kingdom will have no end. 

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,

      who proceeds from the Father [and the Son],

        who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified,

      who has spoken through the prophets.

      We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

      We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

      We look for the resurrection of the dead,

      and the life of the world to come. Amen.

Dones

An interesting article:

http://www.churchleaders.com/outreach-missions/outreach-missions-articles/177144-thom-schultz-rise-of-the-done-with-church-population.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=clnewsletter&utm_content=CL+Daily+20150111

This is the first times I have read the term 'Dones' and to some degree, I resonate.  I also feel that the traditional church has done all that it can to represent the dynamic powerful presence of Christ.  Like some others, I have decided that I am NOT 'done' with church.  I love the bride of Christ so much, and I know Christ can build a fresh new church that shakes off the old morbidity.  I do feel 'done' with the traditional 20th century North American Evangelical Protestant formula though.

Even so - come Lord Jesus...to Church!  I need you Lord - and I need you not just in a consumerist individualistic way that I can opt in or opt out of.   I need you in a genuine authentic loving nurturing forgiving community - which I believe is what You had in mind, Lord, all along, when you invented the church for us,

Preparing for Retreat #2

I wanted to share a little picture that summarizes what many Christians see as the three purposes or dynamics of the church:

I hope you like my artwork!  :-)  

So here are my questions for you - please make a note of your reactions and responses so you don't lose the thoughts...

Which of the three is the most important to you?  least important?

Which would you like to see grow in our church?  What might that look like?