Church of Fools Pt. III

Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:10) Here we stand. Here today. Here today in the midst of a culture, a Christian culture that denies this very fact. A Christian culture that seems to forget this very thing. That once we were lost, but now we are found. Not that we found ourselves. Quite the contrary. We did not, nor must we ever suffer to think that we have found ourselves. We have not chosen ourselves for salvation. We have not elected ourselves as God's people. We have to start in humility, and yet I fear that we don't. We forget that once we were no people. Once we were not in relationship with God, and yet, and yet he called us. Each of us by name to bear witness to the light of life he sent in the word-made-flesh, Jesus Christ. We still seem to have ourselves convinced that our election gives us the right to lord this distinction over other people. We are the few, the chosen, the elite. But that's not who we are at all. That is simply not the case. Have we all too easily forgotten? Have we another log stuck in our own eyes. Some of us, we say that salvation is for the church. No longer for the Jews. Popular thinking still posits that salvation has superceded the call of the Jews. But have we not read the scriptures? God simply does not break promises. God simply does not revoke his covenant. Today you claimed, to put it bluntly, that "they broke the covenant, they messed it up," all the while forgetting that we, the chosen, the elect, the church have fucked things up just as bad. How is it that we have been more faithful than they? How is it that we have succeeded where others have failed? The honest, real truth of the situation is that we have been just as disobedient, just as hard-hearted, and just as stubborn as anyone in history. Today you said that the Church testifies to God's relationship with those who love him, and Israel is a testament to those who are ignorant of this covenant, of those who reject him. But hold on. Hold on just one second. I know we've been over this before, I know we've tried to explain it, explicate it, express it clearly, but apparently it just hasn't sunk in. It's a whole lot more complicated than that. I have a confession to make, and I think we all do, don't we? I, we, singularly and corporately have fallen short. We have not fulfilled our end of the bargains we have failed to uphold covenant. So who are you, who am I, who are we to claim that the Church testifies to a group who have accepted him? We haven't. The most scandalous part of the Gospel must be this, that even though the Church lives in conflict with the will of its Lord, even though it rejects God's love, even though we stifle hope and fail to act charitably; even though we fail at every turn to fulfill God's desire for us, his love, and his grace still cover us. We have not chosen ourselves (or rather, we have, and that's the problem). We have been selfish, uncaring, unrelenting in our zeal to exclude everyone but ourselves. In so doing we have succeeded even so in excluding the one who sent his only begotten son to save us from our selves, who chose us despite our failures, and who maintains his covenant with Israel to this day. Technorati Tags: Christianity, Church

This is Not a Feeding Trough

Some good thoughts from Kim Reid of Open Door in Montreal by way of Jared Siebert at the Lifecycle Project. What do you do when you run into christians who just don’t get it? Christians who just want to get together and be “ministered to”. Christians who have very little if any contact with the real world. Jesus told us to go into the world and make disciples. The only real way to do this is to go into the world and BE a disciple. To enter your community/culture with the same grace, compassion and mercy that Jesus did. I find it disheartening that so many christians think the only contact they should have with “the world” is to preach at them. An interesting idea since Jesus didn’t make it a rule to do that. There is no record that He said anything to Zaccheus that even remotely could be construed as “preaching”. Jesus ate with him and loved him. Interesting that we feel the need to add to Jesus example. God has asked us to feed the poor far more than he has asked us to preach, and yet we prefer to preach, and even use this as a reason not to feed the poor,… unless we can preach at them. Much of the church is over-fed and lazy and make excuses for not serving the unlovely. I met with a group of pastors this morning. One asked, “Is it our job to tell church people they don’t get Jesus’ message?” My answer to this was, “if christians are not doing the things that Jesus told us to, regarding the people he died for (that is everyone), ie. feeding the poor and taking care of those less fortunate, then they are “other than” christian. It is time they knew it.” christians who sit back, demand to be fed and don’t do anything to love the world need to consider their “christian-ness”. Who does God say “I never knew you” to? They are people who thought their actions spoke loudly of God,….. but in the end, only spoke of religiosity. Micheal Frost has suggested that Jesus would never be allowed membership in most of our churches… interesting. Technorati Tags: Christianity, Church, Discipleship, Evangelism

Stop it. Please.

Don't stop the discussions, don't stop the intellectual gymnastics if you don't want. I suppose that doesn't really matter. But what I keep on seeing, what continues to sadden me is the points at which these so-called discussions treat people merely as inconsequential objects, as ideas to be refuted, as dissent to be quashed. There is a certain point at which our discussions descend very quickly from an equitable "I-Thou" subject-based relationship (thank-you Martin Buber) to "I-It" relations where people become inequitably treated objects. It's true. We accuse each other of not listening, and then proceed to not listen ourselves. Sometimes our points are half-written, half-thought, or half-baked. Other times, they're well-written, well-thought, well-baked. It's neat. We've read the moderns and bought it all, hook-line-sinker. Or maybe, we've discovered discourse theory. We've read our Foucault, and understand it. But in the end, after all the argumentativeness, do we come out stronger as a community, or have we merely succeded in proving one another unworthy of our intellectual prowess? There's danger in these discussions. Not the danger you might think tho. Not so much in the material, but in the way you approach it. The material doesn't frighten me in the least, but come on. Please just come on and listen. Please just come on and breathe before tearing off another response. Please just come on and breathe, and consider this: “Our coziness with the surrounding culture has made us so blind to many of its evils that, instead of calling them into question, we offer our own versions of them—in God’s name and with a good conscience." If you've taken some time. If you've breathed in Miroslav Volf's warning, and thought it through, welcome back to the conversation. Welcome back indeed. But please. Please for the love of the God you claim to serve. For the love of people you claim to be brothers, sisters, don't continue to treat them as your enemies. Technorati Tags: Christianity, Church Conflict, Emergent Church

Saviour?

Caught sight of this on Jordon Cooper's flickr. Eeek.

Just a Little Older

Officially in my mid-to-late 20s today. Anyone in town, I'm to the Horseshoe Tavern this evening to check out the Jack Kerouac Knapsack Band.

All Creation Groans

From TREES, FORESTRY, AND THE RESPONSIVENESS OF CREATION by Walsh, Karsh, and Ansell How can trees have agency in the way in which we have been speaking of it here? To begin to answer this question requires that we be clear about what we mean by the exercise of agency. Does agency require that the agent be able to exercise some sort of will? This would appear to be the case. But if we confine our understanding of "will" to rational decision-making, it becomes ridiculous to speak of creatures that lack higher intellectual capabilities as exercising such will. This has been perhaps the greatest stumbling block to perceiving agency in plant life. The problem is that this is a false stumbling block. Human agency and will cannot be understood primarily in terms of rational decision-making. We are multidimensional creatures and our intellectual capabilities are but one factor in the exercise of our wills: an intellectualistic conception of will cannot adjudicate the claims of our volition, let alone those of nonhuman creation. To say, as the Bible does, that trees praise, sing, clap, and rejoice is to say that trees, as trees, in their whole physical, chemical, spatial, biotic functioning can fully respond to their Creator when that functioning is uninhibited and free. To say that trees groan is to say that trees experience and respond to conditions of human abuse or neglect that inhibits and closes down their responsiveness. In this way, metaphors of praising and groaning enable us to "hear" what the trees have to "say." Technorati Tags: Christianity, Ecology, Ecotheology

Cigarettes Count The Hours

Thirteen. The things I've seen. The people I've been. The things I've seen you wouldn't even want to know. And you know? I don't think I want to know either. Not anymore. Sick of all this shit, sick of time and again being told who to be and how to hold myself. Struggling against time, struggling to tow a line I've been handed, but just can't hold. Mom at the kitchen table. Smoke hovers above the ashtray where six cigarettes count the hours from breakfast, where time goes up in smoke. Where has the time gone? Where did the time go? Walk by the stained doorframe, blood splatter remains from yesterday's godawful night. Fire, fear. Mom's been drinking again, and dad just gets in. Which is weird, of course, cos he's not been around in four years. Dad gets in, just in time for the fireworks. Causes the fireworks. Where have you been and what have you been doing and why the hell did you leave me with this mess? Barefoot and pregnant you left me, and now you're back, and now you want back in. But I've moved on, you see, I've moved on with no one to take care of me and we're doing fine. We're doing just fine without. That's all he needed. That's just what he wanted. Picks up a knife, still covered in blood from dinner, and he waves it, chicken juices splattering on the doorframe. You'll take me back, he says. I've made my fortune. I went away, but I still love you, I always did. I just had to go. I just had to leave and make some money to make this marriage work. Ran off with your secretary, mom says, and starts to seethe. Fire and rage, anger out of its locked cage to say all that had to be said. Love of a knife? What kind of love is that? What kind of love waves a knife at a wife and her children. What kind of love is that. And he's been doing coke. And he's freaking and waving the knife, and I'm scared for my life, and my mom, what has she seen, what has she been to be here, now, with this? I jump in, tell him to go away, that wherever he goes, he'd best stay, so long as it's not here, not with me. But he won't take it, and he won't let go the knife, waving it ever closer, ever closer to my neck. I'm your only daughter, the firstborn, your child. But demons in his eyes he won't ever recognise the pain he's made me feel, the hate that's conquered any hope I'd had to see our relationship heal. So I run and I call and the cops they come. The cops they come to take him away. Take him away from here, as far as far can be. As far as will be safe for me. But the demons are stronger, and they rage, and they've taken my dad away from me. Taken him away in handcuffs, away, away, away. And I don't know what to do, and I have no-one to talk to. My dad's locked away, but it's always been that way, it's always been that way, and I don't know how I'll ever tell him the things he needs to hear, the way I fear for him, for his life, and how much I hate the way he hates his wife. Technorati Tags: Abuse, Creative

In the Bleak Midwinter

Lunch has finished. We say good-bye and part once again, another good conversation and time spent in one another's company. It's been a long time since we talked, and a long time since we've been able to do that. I've been busy, as I suppose we all are, and I feel bad that I'm not around as much as I'd like. These are the thoughts that carry me to the subway. Nothing extraordinary about the day. Nothing extraordinary about this subway ride. Clamber down the stairs to the tracks. High school girls on the eastbound platform. Giggling, laughing, carrying on. Insults abound, but it's all in fun, right? Down the platform, closer to the end a girl sits alone. Despondent she swings her legs over the edge of the platform, waiting for the train. Despondent she swings her legs, waiting for something, anything to take away her pain. The train will come, the train will come and take her away. Take her away from the pain she's been fighting, from the masks she's been hiding behind. Behind her, a man approaches. Concern streaks his face, as the girl, despondent, swings her legs ever more intentionally, ever more dangerously over the edge. Can't you see the train is coming, the train it comes to take us away. But she doesn't want to be taken away. Not like that, in any case. Death in her eyes, tears unshed at the impending loss of life. Or was her life, long ago, taken away? Technorati Tags: Suicide, Toronto