Sacred Scarred

A Circle of Hope

For the last year, I've been involved with a small group of people in the book writing process of my pastor, Rod White.  His book, (for now) entitled, A Circle of Hope, is an interactive work in progress.  Today we launched a site dedicated to the book.  You can see it here.

The idea is this...

You are going to help shape this book.

If you are already connected to Circle of Hope, read the chapters as they are published (starting today, about one every two weeks until the Fall of 2007).  If something in the text grabs you (positively or negatively) - comment about it.  Maybe share a beautiful story about how what's being described has played out for you personally (tell us how Jesus has shown up).  Maybe share a painful story about where Circle of Hope has failed (be kind, but share honestly, we know we're not perfect and your story is valuable).  Maybe share your perspective on a passage of Scripture that is mentioned (agree or disagree...we'll talk).  Maybe share your expertise on a topic or a movie or an event (you're probably more well informed than we are).  Enter the dialogue - make the book a "Circle of Hope" thing - you know how that works.

If you aren't yet connected to Circle of Hope, you should read too.  Work it out with us.  Journey with us from wherever it is you happen to live.  Ask questions.  Share your stories about beauty and pain.  Share your opinions about Scripture mentioned or your expertise on topics touched or pop culture references (they abound).  Do this with us...enter the dialogue...we're asking you to (it's what we're all about...you'll see).

There are a group of editors and a group of commentators that are also shaping this book.  Our hope is that with your help, the ever expanding commentary that will be hyperlinked for your convenience (you may have to check back when chapters are updated with commenetary), and the finishing touches of the editors - this little book might turn into something significant.

Come, join the journey.

Justice (Righteousness)

On a few occasions recently, I've been questioned as to why I would be interested in things such as peace, reconciliation, and mercy.  Most of my questioners come from a "this world is not my home, I'm just a'passing through because heaven is the ultimate goal of living so you better pick up your ticket at the cross" viewpoint.  I happen to think that God's not done with the earth.  I happen to think that God is going complete the Kingdom establishment that he began with the incarnation of Jesus - that he's going to restore and reconcile all things to himself.  So for me it only makes sense that I be about the things that God is about.  For me it only makes sense that I be about the things that the Kingdom embodies.  And I'll grant that living like that seems to make very little difference - but it makes a difference for those who experience peace, reconciliation, or mercy as a result of my life and my living.  Imagine if all of God's people actually lived like that...

After firmly establishing a truly excellent line of thinking regarding Paul (which means you'll have to read it yourself), NT Wright toward the close of What Saint Paul Really Said (book 5, week 5) writes...

I suggest, in fact, that we should be prepared to think through the question of justice - God's justice for the world, in the eventual future, and anticipated in the present - as part of the theme of what we call the righteousness of God.  The word dikaiosune, after all, can just as easily be translated 'justice' as 'righteousness'.  If it is true that God intends to renew the whole cosmos through Christ and by the Spirit - and if that isn't true then Paul is indeed talking nonsense in Romans 8 and 1 Corinthians 15 - then, just as the holiness of Christian living in the present is a proper, albeit partial, fitful and puzzling, anticipation of the future life of the resurrection, so acts of justice, mercy and peace in the present are proper, albeit inevitably partial, fitful and puzzling anticipations of God's eventual design.  They are not lost or wasted; they are not, in the old caricature, a matter of oiling the wheels of a machine that is about to run over a cliff.  They are signs of hope for a world that groans in travail, waiting for its promised liberation.

God, allow my life to be a sign of hope to a world that groans in travail, waiting for its promised liberation.

The Neighborhood

The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighborhood. 
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
the one-of-a-kind glory,
like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
true from start to finish.

John 1:14 (The Message)

I didn't get a single minute of sleep last night.  I can blame it on caffeine, I can blame it on getting too much rest on Wednesday while I was sick, but the truth is...I was up because I couldn't get the image of Jesus moving into the neighborhood (the incarnation) out of my head.  I was shook up by these words...

The cross of Christ is both the symbol of our atonement and the pattern of our discipleship.  Today, many who name the name of Christ have removed themselves from human hurt and suffering to places of relative comfort and safety.  Many have sought to protect themselves and their families from the poor masses for whom Christ showed primary concern.  In affluent societies, our approach to social problems is to decrease their visibility.  The migration patters of Christians and their churches have again reflected the dominant social practice.  The church’s compassionless inactivity stems from being removed and out of touch with the suffering of the poor and exploited.  This modern isolation from human hurt is a major obstacle to being faithful to biblical mandates.  How can we open our hearts and lives to those whom we have hardly ever see, let alone ever known?

The biblical idea of love carries with it the deliberate extension of ourselves to others.  The incarnation, the supreme act of God’s love, required the intentional plunge of the Lord of Glory into the chaotic, violent, and rebellious human situation at tremendous cost (Phil. 2:6-11).  But this act brought the salvation of the world.  We cannot profess the name of Jesus without seeking to incarnate his pattern of self-emptying love and servanthood.  Again, this is not only an individual effort but a corporate one undertaken by a body of people who have given themselves over to Christ and his kingdom, to each other, and to serving in the midst of the broken world for which he died…

…The Gospel knows nothing of what sociologists call “upward mobility.”  In fact, the gospel of Jesus Christ call us to the reverse; the gospel calls us to a downward pilgrimage.  Former attachments and securities in the false values of wealth and power are left behind as we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to seek first the kingdom.  From an obscure birth in a dirty animal stable to the crucifixion of a poor suffering servant who never had a place to lay his head, the gospel witnesses to God’s identification with the poor and powerless.  Such a life of identification will bring rejection from the world, and if one becomes too prominent, one might even be crucified.  We may measure our obedience to the gospel by the degree of tension and conflict with the world that is present in our lives.  If our lives are secure, comfortable, and at home with wealth and power, we belong to the world rather than to Christ.

Our downward pilgrimage will drive us to community and is meant to take place in the context of a common shared life.  The life of the early Christian fellowships, as seen in the Book of Acts and elsewhere in Scripture, presents the Christian life as a common life, the life of a people more than the life of individuals.  Here were the ones who had known Jesus, had walked with him, talked with him, listened to him, and lived with him for three years.  They had seen him live and die and rise again from the dead.  They were eyewitnesses to the gospel.  They had both followed him and forsaken him.  Their lives had been decisively and irrevocably changed by him. He had set their feet upon a new path, and they would never be the same again…

If I'm going to follow Jesus, I'm never going to be the same again.  Let the downward pilgrimage begin - for the sake of the kingdom and broken world for which Christ died.

52 Books in 52 Weeks

Normally, I don't share New Year's resolutions ahead of time (I like to keep them mostly private and report on them at the end of the year) - but one of my goals this year is to read 52 books in 52 weeks.  The reality is that some books will take less than a week and some books more - but I'd at least like to read 52 books that I have never read before over the course of this year (I've also committed to re-reading about a half a dozen books).

So...if you could sugguest one book that is a must read for me in 2007, what would it be?  (If you suggest a book that I've already read, fear not, I will contact you for another suggestion)

Please come through for me, I want to know what you'd like to see on my mind...what one book is informational, transformative, inspiring, a "must read"...

Obedience to the Voice

Richard Foster writes in Celebration of Discipline...

If God is alive and active in the affairs of human beings, why can't his voice be heard and obeyed today?  It can be heard and is heard by all who know him as present Teacher and Prophet.

Do you clearly and distinctly hear the voice of God?  Do you then in turn obey God's voice? 

Or...

Do you clearly and distincly hear your own voice and go your own way?

I have been wrestling with this concept over the past week.  Do I really hear God's voice and am I willing to obey or am I listening to myself and doing my own thing?

Here's what I know...

I believe that God through the person of Jesus is my present Teacher.  God is able to instruct and direct and model through my simple interaction with the teacher Jesus.

I believe that God through the person of Jesus is my present Prophet.  God is able to challenge and correct and speak truth through my simple interaction with the prophet Jesus.

And so here's my belief...as I am being transformed into the image of the Teacher/Prophet Jesus, God speaks to me...I need to obey.

And so in the days and weeks to come, anticipate radical obedience to the voice of God in my life.

Little Ms. Can't Be Wrong

Robert Capone in Hunting the Divine Fox writes...

What’s so all-fired important about morals? Why isn’t it just as important for us to have infallible answers about Economics? Or Art? Or Child Rearing? Or Cooking, for that matter? God knows, the number of evil cooks in the world is enough to make any reasonable man long for guidance from on high.

I’ll tell you why morals got up there in the Top Two. It’s because they thought it was the church’s real business. But it wasn’t, and it isn’t, and it must never be allowed to be­come so. The church is not in the morals business. The world is in the morals business, quite rightfully; and it has done a fine job of it, all things considered. The history of the world’s moral codes is a monument to the labors of many philosophers, and it is a monument of striking unity and beauty. As C. S. Lewis said, anyone who thinks the moral codes of mankind are all different should be locked up in a library and be made to read three days’ worth of them. He would be bored silly by the sheer sameness.

What the world cannot get right, however, is the forgive­ness business—and that, of course, is the church’s real job. She is in the world to deal with the Sin which the world can’t turn off or escape from. She is not in the business of telling the world what’s right and wrong so that it can do good and avoid evil. She is in the business of offering, to a world which knows all about that tiresome subject, forgiveness for its chronic unwillingness to take its own advice. But the minute she even hints that morals, and not forgiveness, is the name of her game, she instantly corrupts the Gospel and runs headlong into blatant nonsense.

The church becomes, not Ms. Forgiven Sinner, but Ms. Right. Christianity becomes the good guys in here versus the bad guys out there. Which, of course, is pure tripe. The church is nothing but the world under the sign of baptism. It is the mixture as before, dampened.

Given this presupposition...the church is to be about forgiveness and not morality...why is it that we as the church care so much about the morality of the world?

Hero or Saint?

Samuel Wells in Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics
outlines the following...

Christians are called to be saints, not heroes.

• Heroes are the center of stories told about them, whereas saints are part of a story in which God is the center.
• A hero is willing to sacrifice himself - perhaps even give his life - for some cause, whereas the saint rests assured that Christ has already gained the greater good.
• The icon of heroism is the soldier; for the saint it is the martyr.
• A hero cannot fail, lest some great clamity occur, but the saint expects to fail and knows that repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration are needed.
• Finally, by their heroic actions, heroes stand out from the rest of society, whereas saints depend upon their brothers and sisters in the faith community.  All 64 New Testament references to saints are plural; saints are never alone.

Parker J Palmer

For my Parker J. Palmer friends (especially Martha and JR)...

Len at NextReformation posts these PJP thoughts...

“The people who plant the seeds of movements make a critical decision: they decide to live “divided no more.” They decide no longer to act on the outside in a way that contradicts some truth about themselves that they hold deeply on the inside.

“As often happens on the spiritual journey, we have arrived at the heart of a paradox: each time a door closes, the rest of the world opens up. All we need to do is stop pounding on the door that just closed, turn around — which puts the door behind us — and welcome the largeness of life that now lies open to our souls. The door that closed kept us from entering a room, but what lies before us is the rest of reality.

“If we are to live our lives well and fully, we must learn to embrace the opposites, to live in a creative tension between our limits and our potentials. We must honor our limitations in ways that do not distort our nature, and we must trust and use our gifts in ways that fulfill the potentials God gave us.”

Parker J Palmer, Let Your Life Speak

Good thoughts contained in those 3 paragraphs!  Thanks to Len for sharing.

I now feel compelled to embark on rereading To Know As We are Known.  Wish me luck!

Spiritus Sanctus

O Holy Spirit,

As the sun is full of light,
the ocean full of water,
Heaven full of glory,
so may my heart be full of thee.

Vain are all divine purposes of love
and the redemption wrought by Jesus
except thou work within,
regenerating by thy power,
giving me eyes to see Jesus,
showing me the realities of the unseen world.

Give me thyself without measure,
as an unimpaired fountain,
as inexhaustible riches.

I bewail my coldness, poverty, emptiness,
imperfect vision, languid service,
prayerless praers, praiseless praises.

Suffer me not to grienve or resist thee.

Come as power,
to expel every rebel lust,
to reign supreme and keep me thine;

Come as teacher,
leading me into all truth, filling me with
all understanding;

Come as love,
that I may adore the Father,
and love him as my all;

Come as joy,
to dwell in me, move in me,
animate me;

Come as light,
illuminating the Scripture,
molding me in its laws;

Come as sanctifier,
body, soul and spirit
wholly thine;

Come as helper,
with strength to bless and keep,
directing my every step.

Come as beautifier,
bringing order out of confusing,
loveliness out of chaos.

Magnify to me thy glory by being magnified in me,
and make me redolent of thy fragrance.

The Valley of  Vision, 50-51

Needing Space

I need God.  It is so funny (read: scary) to me that time and time again I find myself doing my own thing.  I find myself going about my business without a real thought about the presence of God in my life.  It has been almost 2 months since I last posted and if you boil it down and siphon it off the reason that I took a break is that I needed space to rediscover that I need God.

I get so caught up in me and what I'm doing that I forget about God and what's he's doing.  So 2 months ago, I looked at my life...I said, "What is it that I do more for me than for God."  And the answer was this.  I do this more for me than for God.  Most of the time I blog and post on the blogs of others because it makes me feel good in some way I can't explain.

And so a sabbatical of sorts was needed.  A time to create space to allow God to minister to and through me apart from me.  And boy oh boy has it been a stretching 2 months.  It has been a stretching 2 months in terms of ministry to students.  It has been a stretching 2 months personally when it comes to my family and friends.  It has been a stretching 2 months for my marriage (Jen is pregnant!  We are due the 2nd week of November!  Wow, that's awesome!).  It has been a stretching 2 months in my relationships with those whom I consider my community.  But I've come through to the other side and this is what I know - I need God.

Douglas Coupland is one of my favorite authors.  In his book Life After God, he writes this...and it has become the cry of my heart...

Now - here is my secret:
I tell it to you with an openness of heart that I doubt I shall ever achieve again, so I pray that you are in a quiet room as you hear these words.  My secret is that I need God - that I am sick and can no longer make it alone.  I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.

I need God.  Thank you God for allowing me the space to remember that.