TGIF is back. I had a good time at the beach last weekend. I was at Myrtle Beach and left about three days before the wildfire hit. If you think of it, pray for the people in that area. There are a lot of folks who have lost homes, and some have lost loved ones.
There was a lot of good stuff out there to read. Here's a sampling:
Dan Edelen writes another good post. Rich Wagner on God in school. Good poem from Josh. Is this funny or just wrong? iMonk meditates on morality. It's amazing what you can do with peeps (HT: Scot McKnight). There's some interesting discussions about women and the church here and here.
The Emmaus Road story retold. What does a post-Christian culture reject? Judgement begins with the house of God. Beautiful, and heartbreaking (HT: Bill at The Thinklings). Todd Hiestand on spiritual formation. 'Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus? Amy writes about quarrelsome Christians.
It's finally warming up here in the sunny South. In fact, it's a bit hot. :) Enjoy your weekend.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Those Who Love Little
In chapter 7 of his gospel, Luke tells the story of Jesus at a dinner party at the home of Simon the Pharisee. During the dinner, an immoral woman comes into the room and washes Jesus' feet with her tears, dries them with her hair, and then anoints them with very expensive perfume. Of course Simon is appalled that this wicked women would dare to interrupt his event, and wonders why Jesus is allowing her to do this to him. Jesus then tells a parable of two men who were forgiven debts, and makes the point that the one who has been forgiven much will love much.
There are a couple of things that strike me about this account. The first is the attitude many who call themselves Christians show toward Jesus. In that time period, it was a common courtesy for a host to provide water to wash the feet of his guest, removing the dust of the journey. It also was customary to give a kiss of greeting and anoint the head of the guest with oil. By doing these things the host showed that he valued his guest and was glad for the visit. Simon did none of those things for Jesus, displaying an attitude of indifference, at best. Simon seems to think that Jesus is very fortunate to have been invited to a dinner at the home of an esteemed religious leader.
It seems that many, by their actions and attitudes, give the impression that Jesus is lucky to have them on his side. The statement by Jesus that we can do nothing without him is forgotten completely, or is explained away. I have heard folks talk about how great it would be if certain talented and famous individuals would become Christians and how much all their fame and talent could do for God. How many have given in to the idea that because I am doing all these things for God, he owes me? We wonder how God can let trouble into our lives when we have worked so hard and been so faithful.
This attitude also comes out in the way we treat others. We withhold forgiveness.We denigrate those who don't see eye to eye with us. We judge others who don't appear as spiritual as we try to. We place a premium on looking good in front of people, and spend a great deal of energy creating masks to hide our brokenness. So much of what we do is designed to put everyone, including Jesus at arms' length from who we really are. At some point we forget just how much we have been forgiven.
By contrast, the immoral women was not interested in hiding who she was. She knew she was a sinner. She knew that Jesus was the only one who could help her, and she was desperate to get to him, no matter what anyone thought. If she had any masks, she left them at home. She not only did for Jesus what Simon should have done, she lavished her attention on him. Many would probably say that she went a bit overboard with her worship. She not only sacrificed an expensive possession, but she also sacrificed any shred of dignity she may have had left. All because she realized how much she had been forgiven.
May we all be reminded of the great love God has shown us in Jesus and the great forgiveness he has given us. May we love greatly.
By contrast, the immoral women was not interested in hiding who she was. She knew she was a sinner. She knew that Jesus was the only one who could help her, and she was desperate to get to him, no matter what anyone thought. If she had any masks, she left them at home. She not only did for Jesus what Simon should have done, she lavished her attention on him. Many would probably say that she went a bit overboard with her worship. She not only sacrificed an expensive possession, but she also sacrificed any shred of dignity she may have had left. All because she realized how much she had been forgiven.
May we all be reminded of the great love God has shown us in Jesus and the great forgiveness he has given us. May we love greatly.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
N.T. Wright on Easter
This appeared on Easter Sunday in the Times Online.
Private Eye ran a cartoon some years ago of St Peter standing in front of Jesus’ Cross and saying to the other disciples, "It’s time to put this behind us now and move on." It was a satire, not on Christian belief, but on politicians and counsellors, and their trivializing mantras. The satire depended on the fact that Jesus’ death is not just an odd, forgettable past event – and on the fact that it was his Resurrection, rather than a shoulder-shrugging desire to "move on", which got the early Christians going.
Easter was the pilot project. What God did for Jesus that explosive morning is what he’s intending to do for the whole of creation. We who live in the interval between Easter and that eventual hope are called to be new-creation people, here and now. That is the hidden meaning of the greatest festival Christians have.
This true meaning has remained hidden because the Church has trivialized it and the world has rubbished it – reactions which feed off one another. The Church has turned Jesus’ Resurrection into a "happy ending" after the dark and messy story of Good Friday, often scaling it down so that "Resurrection" becomes a fancy way of saying "he went to Heaven". Easter then means "there really is life after death". The world shrugs its shoulders. We may or may not believe in life after death, but we reach that conclusion independently of Jesus, of odd stories about risen bodies and empty tombs.
But "Resurrection", to first-century Jews and pagans alike, wasn’t about "going to heaven". That’s a different matter. The word "Resurrection" always referred to people who were physically dead being physically alive again. Some Jews (not all) believed that God would do this for all people in the end. No pagans we know of believed this. Language about a post-mortem life in Egyptian religions, for instance, isn’t the same kind of thing. Nobody, including Jesus’ followers, was expecting one person to be bodily raised from the dead in the middle of history. The stories of the resurrection are certainly not ‘wish-fulfilments’ of that kind, or the result of what a somewhat dodgy social science calls "cognitive dissonance". First century Jews who followed would-be prophets and Messiahs knew perfectly well that if your leader got killed by the authorities it meant you’d backed the wrong man. You then had a choice: either give up the revolution, or get yourself a new leader. Going around saying he’d been raised from the dead wasn’t an option.
Unless he really had been. Jesus of Nazareth was certainly dead by the Friday evening; Roman soldiers were professional killers, and wouldn’t have allowed a not-quite-dead rebel leader, as they imagined him to be, to stay that way for long. When the first Christians told the story of what happened next, they were precisely not saying "I think he’s still with us in a spiritual sense" or "I think he’s gone to heaven" or "let’s continue his work anyway". All these have been suggested by people who have lost their historical, and well as their theological, nerve.
The historian has to explain why Christianity got going in the first place, why it hailed Jesus as Messiah despite his execution (he hadn’t defeated the pagans, or rebuilt the Temple, or brought justice and peace to the world, all of which a Messiah should have done), and why the early Christian movement took the shape it did. The only explanation which will fit the evidence is the one the early Christians themselves insist upon: he really had been raised from the dead. His body was not just re-animated. It was transformed, so that it was no longer subject to sickness and death.
Let’s be clear: the stories are not about someone coming back into the present mode of life. They are about someone going on into a new sort of existence, still emphatically bodily, if anything more so. When St Paul speaks of a "spiritual" resurrection body, he doesn’t mean "non-material", like a ghost. The word translated "spiritual" is the sort of Greek word which tells you, not what something’s made of, but what is animating it. The risen Jesus had a physical body animated by God’s life-giving Spirit. Yes, says St Paul; that same Spirit is at work in us, and will have the same effect – and in the whole world.
Now, suddenly, the real meaning of Easter comes into view, as well as the real reason why it has been trivialized and sidelined. Easter is about a new creation which has already begun. The creator God is remaking his world, challenging all the other powers that think that’s their job. The rich, wise order of creation on the one hand, and its glorious, abundant beauty on the other, are reaffirmed the other side of the thing which always threatens justice and beauty, namely death. Christianity’s critics, then and now, have always sneered that nothing has changed. But in fact everything has. The world is a different place.
And it’s up to those who follow Jesus to show that this is so. Easter gives Christians a double vocation. They are themselves to be part of that new creation, plunged into Jesus’ death and finding new life in his resurrection. But, second, they are to be agents of that justice and beauty, planting signposts in the Easter soil which point forwards to the renewal of all things. Conversion, symbolized in baptism (which the Church associates with Easter), isn’t just about "me being saved". It’s about all of us being given our various instructions as new-creation people.
Easter has been sidelined because this message doesn’t fit our prevailing worldview. For at least 200 years, the western world has lived on the dream that we can bring justice and beauty to the world all by ourselves. The split between God and the "real" world has produced a public life which has lurched to and fro between anarchy and tyranny, and an aesthetic which has swung dramatically between sentimentalism and brutalism. But we still want to do things our own way, even though we laugh at politicians who claim to be saving the world, and artists who claim "inspiration" when they put cows in formaldehyde.
The world wants to hush up the real meaning of Easter. Death is the final weapon of the tyrant, or for that matter the anarchist, and resurrection indicates that this weapon isn’t as powerful as it had seemed. When the Church begins to work with Easter energy on the twin tasks of justice and beauty, we may find that it can face down the sneers of today’s sceptics, and speak once more of Jesus in a way which will be heard.
Private Eye ran a cartoon some years ago of St Peter standing in front of Jesus’ Cross and saying to the other disciples, "It’s time to put this behind us now and move on." It was a satire, not on Christian belief, but on politicians and counsellors, and their trivializing mantras. The satire depended on the fact that Jesus’ death is not just an odd, forgettable past event – and on the fact that it was his Resurrection, rather than a shoulder-shrugging desire to "move on", which got the early Christians going.
Easter was the pilot project. What God did for Jesus that explosive morning is what he’s intending to do for the whole of creation. We who live in the interval between Easter and that eventual hope are called to be new-creation people, here and now. That is the hidden meaning of the greatest festival Christians have.
This true meaning has remained hidden because the Church has trivialized it and the world has rubbished it – reactions which feed off one another. The Church has turned Jesus’ Resurrection into a "happy ending" after the dark and messy story of Good Friday, often scaling it down so that "Resurrection" becomes a fancy way of saying "he went to Heaven". Easter then means "there really is life after death". The world shrugs its shoulders. We may or may not believe in life after death, but we reach that conclusion independently of Jesus, of odd stories about risen bodies and empty tombs.
But "Resurrection", to first-century Jews and pagans alike, wasn’t about "going to heaven". That’s a different matter. The word "Resurrection" always referred to people who were physically dead being physically alive again. Some Jews (not all) believed that God would do this for all people in the end. No pagans we know of believed this. Language about a post-mortem life in Egyptian religions, for instance, isn’t the same kind of thing. Nobody, including Jesus’ followers, was expecting one person to be bodily raised from the dead in the middle of history. The stories of the resurrection are certainly not ‘wish-fulfilments’ of that kind, or the result of what a somewhat dodgy social science calls "cognitive dissonance". First century Jews who followed would-be prophets and Messiahs knew perfectly well that if your leader got killed by the authorities it meant you’d backed the wrong man. You then had a choice: either give up the revolution, or get yourself a new leader. Going around saying he’d been raised from the dead wasn’t an option.
Unless he really had been. Jesus of Nazareth was certainly dead by the Friday evening; Roman soldiers were professional killers, and wouldn’t have allowed a not-quite-dead rebel leader, as they imagined him to be, to stay that way for long. When the first Christians told the story of what happened next, they were precisely not saying "I think he’s still with us in a spiritual sense" or "I think he’s gone to heaven" or "let’s continue his work anyway". All these have been suggested by people who have lost their historical, and well as their theological, nerve.
The historian has to explain why Christianity got going in the first place, why it hailed Jesus as Messiah despite his execution (he hadn’t defeated the pagans, or rebuilt the Temple, or brought justice and peace to the world, all of which a Messiah should have done), and why the early Christian movement took the shape it did. The only explanation which will fit the evidence is the one the early Christians themselves insist upon: he really had been raised from the dead. His body was not just re-animated. It was transformed, so that it was no longer subject to sickness and death.
Let’s be clear: the stories are not about someone coming back into the present mode of life. They are about someone going on into a new sort of existence, still emphatically bodily, if anything more so. When St Paul speaks of a "spiritual" resurrection body, he doesn’t mean "non-material", like a ghost. The word translated "spiritual" is the sort of Greek word which tells you, not what something’s made of, but what is animating it. The risen Jesus had a physical body animated by God’s life-giving Spirit. Yes, says St Paul; that same Spirit is at work in us, and will have the same effect – and in the whole world.
Now, suddenly, the real meaning of Easter comes into view, as well as the real reason why it has been trivialized and sidelined. Easter is about a new creation which has already begun. The creator God is remaking his world, challenging all the other powers that think that’s their job. The rich, wise order of creation on the one hand, and its glorious, abundant beauty on the other, are reaffirmed the other side of the thing which always threatens justice and beauty, namely death. Christianity’s critics, then and now, have always sneered that nothing has changed. But in fact everything has. The world is a different place.
And it’s up to those who follow Jesus to show that this is so. Easter gives Christians a double vocation. They are themselves to be part of that new creation, plunged into Jesus’ death and finding new life in his resurrection. But, second, they are to be agents of that justice and beauty, planting signposts in the Easter soil which point forwards to the renewal of all things. Conversion, symbolized in baptism (which the Church associates with Easter), isn’t just about "me being saved". It’s about all of us being given our various instructions as new-creation people.
Easter has been sidelined because this message doesn’t fit our prevailing worldview. For at least 200 years, the western world has lived on the dream that we can bring justice and beauty to the world all by ourselves. The split between God and the "real" world has produced a public life which has lurched to and fro between anarchy and tyranny, and an aesthetic which has swung dramatically between sentimentalism and brutalism. But we still want to do things our own way, even though we laugh at politicians who claim to be saving the world, and artists who claim "inspiration" when they put cows in formaldehyde.
The world wants to hush up the real meaning of Easter. Death is the final weapon of the tyrant, or for that matter the anarchist, and resurrection indicates that this weapon isn’t as powerful as it had seemed. When the Church begins to work with Easter energy on the twin tasks of justice and beauty, we may find that it can face down the sneers of today’s sceptics, and speak once more of Jesus in a way which will be heard.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
Waiting
This is something I wrote for the Easter season last year.
"How could this happen? How could we have been so wrong?"
"We believed the kingdom was going to be restored and those pagan dogs sent back to Rome where they belong. But this 'messiah' turned out to be just like all the others."
"Now here we are hiding from the priests and the Romans."
"Why didn't we fight back? What kind of wimps are we?"
"Fight back? Did you see how many men they had? Besides, Peter tried and he told him to put the sword away!"
"Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but as soon as all this mess dies down, I'm going back up to Galilee."
"Me too. Back to the old life. When the only thing we had to worry about was catching fish and fixing nets."
"Yeah. It's been an interesting three years, but I'm through with messiahs and kingdoms. Just give me my boat out on the water. As soon as I can, I'm getting out of here."
And so, they waited.
"How could this happen? How could we have been so wrong?"
"We believed the kingdom was going to be restored and those pagan dogs sent back to Rome where they belong. But this 'messiah' turned out to be just like all the others."
"Now here we are hiding from the priests and the Romans."
"Why didn't we fight back? What kind of wimps are we?"
"Fight back? Did you see how many men they had? Besides, Peter tried and he told him to put the sword away!"
"Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but as soon as all this mess dies down, I'm going back up to Galilee."
"Me too. Back to the old life. When the only thing we had to worry about was catching fish and fixing nets."
"Yeah. It's been an interesting three years, but I'm through with messiahs and kingdoms. Just give me my boat out on the water. As soon as I can, I'm getting out of here."
And so, they waited.
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