1 May 2005, part 2
There is a popular phrase among missiologists (those are the people who study “mission”). Christians are a missionary people of a missionary God. Sounds nice doesn’t it. But I suspect that this statement is often used in a self-aggrandizing way that validates abusive mission.
Saul and Paul may very well typify two types of spiritual orientation, two ways of understanding who God is and how God operates in the world.
Saul seems to have the type of spirituality that sees God as demanding, overbearing, and on a mission. That mission is to be worshiped properly. Saul, of course, is the herald of this God, in whose image he is conformed. Therefore, his approach to mission is to bring God to others, in the form of righteous indignation and holy wrath if necessary, for the worship of God will not be compromised. His primary mission: bring God to the people.
Paul approaches mission quite differently. Note what he says: “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” When I hear him talk of “an unknown god,” I think of Socrates. Socrates was a philosopher who believed, in a nutshell, that the high god of the universe was at once a god who is love and yet truly unknowable. Paul seems to be saying to the Athenians, “Yes, the god whom you worship here is indeed Love, but let me tell you how that God can truly be known. Let me tell you the story of Jesus whom we call Christ.” This is a very different approach to mission than that which we find in Saul.
Whereas Saul is seeking to bring God to the people (whether they want it or not), Paul is looking for where God is already at work in the midst of the people, and then he tries to participate in that divine activity that is already at work. For Paul, God is always at work everywhere seeking to be known more fully, seeking to draw people deeper and deeper into intimate and loving relationships, and Paul’s task is to help that along.
Paul does not bring God to the people. Paul does not expect people to conform to his image and his form of worship. Rather, Paul helps people to come to know more fully the God who is already active in their lives just a little bit more. Whereas Saul is a hammer, Paul is an unveiler. Whereas Saul promotes purity and obedience, Paul promotes attentiveness and openness to the Holy Spirit, which naturally transforms us into vessels of divine, self-giving Love, thus taking us down the path that we call “repentance.”
1 May 2005
This Sunday I will be changing the passages. I am going to tie in last weeks Acts passage (7.54–8.3; yes, it is expanded) with this week’s Acts passage (
17.22–31).
Something to keep in mind when reading these passages is that the Saul in the first passage is the Paul in the second. Some people read the book of Acts and say that Christ gave Saul the new name of Paul. However, in the ancient world, it was not uncommon for people to have more than one name. Different languages required different designations. This happens today. I know of several people from Taiwan who choose American names for the time that they stay in the states. This does not “change” their names. It simply gives them a culturally appropriate designation. No, Saul’s name was not “changed” to Paul with his conversion experience.
But did the author of Acts play off of that “renaming” of Abraham in Genesis, thus literarily tying Paul into Abraham? That’s possible. There is a sense that Paul becomes the Apostle of Apostles by the end of the book.
Maybe that is one of the literary devices used to promote that. I’m not sure I buy it though.
I will use the name to differentiate two “spiritual states of being” in the world that I want to juxtapose. For the sake of the sermon, I will talk about “Saul” as the pre-conversion Paul, and “Paul” as the post-conversion Saul.
I need to be clear here: I am not going to pit Paul’s “Christian” mission verses Saul’s “Jewish” mission. That would be to grossly pervert the texts. I will talk about the texts and their significance for us as Christians. So, what I really want to focus on is how their state of spiritual being manifests itself in their missionary approach.
24 April 2005, part 2
Forgiveness it is then. But the focus will be on the struggle that we carry within ourselves in order to get to that point where we can
really forgive.
Something that Thomas Keating talks about in
The Mystery of Christ: The Liturgy as Spiritual Experience, is that we have negative energy centers in our lives. Those he identifies are the affection/esteem center, happiness center, and power center.
The affection/esteem center is the part of us that wants acceptance and affirmation. The happiness center is the part of us that wants to experience a glorified self, which can happen through stardom or even simply numbing comfort. The power center drives us to attain control over event and power over others so that the world can conform to our image. Add it all up and we build a false vision of the self, or the "false self." This false self is the sin-activity in our lives. It is not good. It is not holy. It is the darkness we carry within.
It is the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives that works to liberate us from our false self with all of its selfish concerns. In this liberating activity, more and more of our true self is unveiled. As the Holy Spirit always points us to Christ, we find that our true humanity is nothing less than the humanity of Christ. As this (our true humanity, or our true self) emerges in our own lives, it does so as the result of the inner conquest of those negative energy centers that strive for acceptance, happiness, and power. As we are emptied of those negative, self-serving energy centers, we are able to be filled with the positive, self-giving energy of forgiveness and grace, which is love.
This is what happened to Stephen, he was liberated from his sinfulness and filled with the Holy Spirit of the Living Christ, which drove him to give of himself in a holy way: he blessed his enemies and prayed for those who cursed him, knowing while he did so it would cost him his life. It is our call as Christians to become like Stephen, to be filled with the Holy Spirit and conformed to the image of Christ, who is the spiritual sacrifice for the sins of the world.
This is what Peter talks about. For him, the “spiritual sacrifice” to which we are called is our own self-giving that happens when we forgive those who hurt us. We proclaim “the mighty acts of him” when we say to those who curse us (in one way or another) “once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” In other words, the proclamation happens when we say wordlessly, through our actions, “I know you are used to living in a world where sinful human ego-trips lead people to lash out at you when you threaten them or do them harm. But this time is different. Whereas you are used to merciless reaction, through me you now receive mercy. Yes, what you’ve done hurts, but you are forgiven, by the Spirit Christ through my very flesh, in the hope that you too may be free as I am.” That’s Christian witnessing. That’s why the church exists, to spread that message in that way.
But how do we get there? Through our experience. Often, we human beings don't "get" something until we've experienced it for ourselves. This is why our corporate prayers of confession, the assurance of pardon, and the passing of the peace are so important. The experience of forgiveness in our own lives teaches us not just
how to forgive, but
why we forgive, even if we don't know how to vocalize that. It helps us to become aware of our false selves and how powerful the darkness within indeed is. That awareness helps us to confront our false selves and to open ourselves up to being human in a new way, to embrace our true selves. As the darkness within is overcome by the Holy Spirit, the creative power of love in our lives, we find that we are driven to forgive because we know whe power of forgiveness in our own lives. When a people are open to this process, they not only share their holy experience, they share the power behind their human transformation, and they make a difference in this world.
24 April 2005
The lectionary:
Fifth Sunday in EasterSo many directions to go with these passages. Some brief thoughts:
Acts 1.55-60The need for forgiveness and our call to forgive.
1 Peter 2.2-10Work with the concept of “a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ” as living lives of self-sacrifice for the sake of others (ref. Stephen’s martyrdom)
Psalm 31.1-5, 15-16“Into your hand I commit my spirit”: Jesus’ words on the cross, echoed by Stephen.
John 14.1-14“Belief” in the Gospel of John is emphasized as an “incarnational” reality, not a checklist of cognitive assertions. Tied in with “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places,” what does the Gospel of John have to say about the relationship of other religions to “eternal/abundant life”?
I suspect that I will probably work with the Acts passage and discuss the effect that forgiveness has in our lives. That will probably resonate better with where this particular congregation is right now.
17 April 2005
I'm on vacation this week, so there won't be anything on here for this week's sermon. This reminds me, I need to make sure that the elder who is preaching knows what's up. Better get on that.
Luke 23.13-25, part 2
Something else struck me this morning in this passage. They may have thought themselves to be in crisis at first when it appeared that their hopes had been dashed. But perhaps the larger crisis came after Jesus reavealed himself and then disappeared. The text reads, "That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem." That makes it all
sound easy, but how easy could the decision have been? After their hopes had been dashed, there was no reason to stick around. (And remember, since Jesus had been crucified for political crimes his associates were indeed in a bit of danger. Leaving Jerusalem was certainly safer.) That's a pretty easy decision. But to go back where it is potentially dangerous? This is a crisis moment. Do they choose the easy path or the hard one? In Jesus' Presence they find comfort and illumination. In Jesus' Absence they find a tough decision that may have taken them the better portion of an hour to make. I wonder what that conversation would have been like?
Luke 24.13-25
Currently, I am at a congregation that has applied for a redevelopment grant, but it did not pass. This loss has crushed them. They are a struggling small, rural congregation and had seen the grant as their hope for a future. Now, things are all up in the air. The future is uncertain.
When I look at the passage in Luke, we find a couple of disciples leaving Jerusalem and going to Emmaus. Thomas Keating, in
The Mystery of Christ: The Liturgy as Spiritual Experience, writes: "Notice that the disciples were heading away from Jerusalem. They had evidently decided, despite what the women were reported to have said, that their part in the community of Jesus' disciples was over." (76)
It sounds to me like they had given up. Jesus, if he were the messiah, was supposed to "fix" everything. He was supposed to liberate the Jewish people and restore them to the land. That was the key to the messianic job description at the time. The problem of course, was that this did not happen. Instead, Jesus was crucified. The problem remained.
What the two disciples didn't realize at the time was that while they wanted Jesus to "fix" the big problem that loomed over their heads, God was about other things. Their expectations had gotten in the way of their openness to experiencing what God was doing in their midst. Until they could transcend themselves (their wants and desires) they could not recognize God's wisdom in recent events.
That's where I think I'll tie it all in. In our congregation, we had been hoping (and expecting) God to work in a certain way: give us the money. When it didn't come, it looks as though everything has went wrong. God didn't "fix" the problem. Unless we are able to step outside ourselves we will not be able to see how God has been actively at work in our midst bringing about...well, something else. Just because we don't understand God's wisdom and activity, it doesn't mean that God wasn't doing what was ultimately best. Rather, maybe God was doing just what needed to be done and that we need to wrestle with that.
Why?
I wanted a place to put some of my thoughts as I prep for sermons. Primarily, this will entail some reflection on upcoming lectionary passages. The lectionary I use can be found on the
Vanderbilt Divinity site. I'll try to reference insightful material as I use it. I may even drop in a couple or so completed sermons. If others can benefit from this process, so much the better.
