Christ the Tiger

I announce to you your redemption. Behold, I make all things new! Behold, I do what cannot be done! I restore the years that the locust and worms have eaten. I restore to you the symphonies and operas which your deaf ears have never heard; and the snowy mountains that your blind eyes have never seen; and the freedom you lost through plunder. And I restore to you the good which your own foolish mistakes have cheated you of, and I bring to you the love of which all other loves speak – the love which is joy and beauty, and which you have sought in a thousand streets and for which you have wept and clawed your pillow.

From Christ the Tiger by Thomas Howard.

N.T. Wright on Orthodox Christianity

“If you put all the elements of Orthodox Christianity within the story of the post-Enlightenment story of a deist God sending a spaceman-Jesus to undergo some redemptive violence to satisfy his primal vengeance, to rise again to show the way back to heaven and away from Earth, and then to return to snatch people away as the Earth finally goes off to Hell…If that’s the narrative to which you’re (proclaiming) ‘Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement, Resurrection,’ you’re producing a violently distorted parody of biblical Christianity.

“The Holy Spirit is given not simply so that we can enjoy a deep and lasting relationship of trust and love with God through Jesus Christ, though that is of course true. The Holy Spirit is given so that those who are drawn into Jesus’ family in faith and baptism can be equipped to carry forward the work of new creation, the kingdom project that has been launched through the unique achievement of Jesus himself.

“It’s very noticeable how in the resurrection narratives and in the beginning of Acts, the disciples do not say ‘My goodness, Jesus has been raised, therefore we’re going to heaven!’ That’s never mentioned. They say, ‘Jesus has been raised, therefore God’s new creation has begun and we’ve got a job to do.’ And it’s precisely at that point that they are given the Holy Spirit to do that job, continuing the project of new creation.”

From N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham’s lecture during the January Series at Calvin College on January 5th, 2007.

Waiting

Return to us, Lord -
Christ is dead.

We watched Him climb Sinai
And we waited
Until someone realized
“The wait is shorter for the roller coaster” and
“Then we would know what we are waiting for.”

When He returned someone said,
“I thought I heard a knock.”
But when dad left
He said not to answer
And I didn’t want to get up anyway.

Return to us, Lord -
Christ is dead
And our idols are gone too.

We replaced a meek Savior
With something so discreet that
I didn’t feel it fall from my neck.
He saw it happen but chose not to tell me
That He had made it
In China
Because nothing is free,
Yet nothing is precious.

Return to us, Lord -
Christ is dead.

How did He die?
Most were sent to the camps
And no one told the others why
They were left out.

A Poem by Thaddeus McCleary called Waiting.

Science and Religion

As powerful as the scientific method is, it is restricted to seeking natural causes to explain the workings of the natural world. So there are areas of inquiry that science cannot address. The scientific method cannot tell us, for example, what is morally right or wrong. Science can inform us about how men and women differ physically, but it cannot tell us what the morally correct way is to act on that information. Science cannot speak to the existence of God or any supernatural being. Nor can science tell us what is beautiful or ugly, which poems are lyrical, or which paintings most inspiring. So although science can exist comfortably alongside different belief systems–religious, political, personal–it cannot answer all their questions.

From page 7 in Discover Biology, 4th edition textbook by Cain, Yoon, Singh, Cundy. W.W. Norton.

“Mission” & “Missionary” in History

The term missionary journey finds its origin in nineteenth-century German commentaries on Paul. It was probably influenced by the fact that the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw the rise of world missionary work couple with the economic exploitation of India, Africa, the Orient, and elsewhere by Europeans. (The commentaries of A. Schlatter confirm this.) As far as I know, the earliest reference to missionary journey in English is in David Thomas’s A Homiletic Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles published in 1870. The word mission was not used to refer to human outreach until the sixteenth century. Before that time, it was used to refer to the sending of Jesus by the Father and the sending of the Spirit by the Father and Son (John 17:18). The Jesuits were the first to use the term mission to refer to the spreading of the Christian faith. In time, the word mission came to refer to the sending of people across frontiers to propagate the Christian faith, convert the heathens, plant churches, and improve society (R. Paul Stevens, The Abolition of the Laity [Carlisle, PA:Paternoster, 1999],192).

From Finding Organic Church by Frank Viola.

A Prayer of Thanksgiving by Rob Bell

God we thank you for this big, beautiful, compelling world that you have placed us in. We thank you that you meet us where we are at with this joyous, counter-intuitive, exuberant announcement that you are with us in our mistakes and our brokenness and our sins and our failures and our stumblings. You are with us. We are blessed because of your grace, your gift. We thank you for Jesus who shows us what this looks like in flesh and blood. As we work through looking for insight into what your Word might mean for us today, we ask that you meet us exactly where we’re at and remind us that we are loved and valued and embraced by you, our loving Heavenly Father. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

A Prayer by N.T. Wright

Almighty God, we thank you for minds to think, hearts to understand, eyes to read your word, and the energy to put it to work in your world. We pray that now you will stand alongside us, and in the power of your Spirit enable us to use these gifts to your glory. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

A Trinitarian Prayer by N.T. Wright

Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, set up your kingdom in our midst. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on us sinners. Holy Spirit, breath of the living God, renew us and all the world. Amen.

What Baptism and the Eucharist Do by N.T. Wright

The Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist create a context not merely for a private spirituality, but for a people who are called in Baptism and equipped in the Eucharist for fruitful work in and for the world.

If you have been baptized, you have in fact died with Christ and risen with him, and you had certainly better work out what that means. Baptism is the thing which shows that we are linked to Jesus and his dying and rising and the power of his victory is ours because we are in him.

God’s inclusiveness is always a transforming inclusiveness, and that is precisely what baptism is all about.

The Eucharist is a narrative, like Baptism, it’s a story, it’s God’s story, it’s the world’s story, it’s Isreal’s story, it’s Jesus’ story, and it’s our story.

A Prayer on Waking Up by N.T. Wright

May we be people with energetic lives and minds, who go out and take on the challenges of this world with the message of wisdom and glory and virtue that we find in Jesus Christ and by his Spirit. God be with us in this day and these coming days, and give us the grace to wake up from sleep, to live as children of day, to learn the language, to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, to practice the instrument, and to discover by dying and rising with Christ, what it means to flourish as image-bearing human beings, Amen.

A Prayer on God’s Will by N.T. Wright

Gracious Lord, may we be filled with the knowledge of your will, in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that we may lead lives worthy of you, fully pleasing to you, as we bear fruit in every good work, and grow in the knowledge of you, our God. Amen.

A Prayer on God’s Glory by N.T. Wright

Almighty Father, we thank you for your glory in the face of Jesus Christ. We thank you for your strange glory, by the Spirit, in one another and even, dare we say, in ourselves. We thank you that your glory will one day flood the whole creation, and we pray that you will make us both to celebrate that glory and to bear witness to it and to bring signs of it into your world that needs it so much. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

A Prayer by N.T. Wright

Almighty Father, as we thank you for the gift of your Son and the gift of your Spirit, we know that we will never plumb the depths of all that it means to belong to your Son and to be indwelt by your Spirit. But we pray that you will give us enough insight to take us from where we are on the next step of the journey to where you want us to go. And that as we think about these two extraordinary and mysterious gifts of Baptism and Eucharist, we pray that not only we but our Churches in this generation may learn afresh how to value and celebrate these mysterious and wonderful Sacraments, so that your Church may be built up in faith and in holiness and energized for mission in the world. We ask it in Jesus name and to His glory, Amen.

A Prayer of Justice and Good News

Almighty God, we thank you for this opportunity where we can get together as friends, as people who you have called to be part of your Church and community, and to be witnesses of a Gospel that must be good news to the poor. We ask you to be with us now in this time, that we may be challenged to act justly, and that because of our actions, people and countries in the third world would have a fairer share of the world’s resources. Inspire us. Challenge us. Equip us, and send us out to preach the good news of the Kingdom, and to heal this broken world. We ask all this in Jesus’ blessed name.

Breathe by Rob Bell

We should breathe 6 to 8 times a minute.  But most of us breathe 16 to 20 times a minute.

The name of God, four vowels in Hebrew “Yod, Hey, Vav, Hey,” are essentially the sounds of breathing.

God created the first person from the dust of the ground and breathed life into him.

The divine breath is in every single human being.

The Psalms say, “Each person’s life is a breath, even those who seem most secure.”

In the Bible, the word for breath is the same word as the word for Spirit (ruah in Hebrew and pneuma in Greek).

The Scriptures say that when God takes away the ruah, the breath, of all living creatures then they die and return to the dust, but when God sends the ruah, the Spirit, they are created.

Romans 8 says that if the pneuma, the Spirit of God, that raised Jesus from the dead, is living in you, then God will give you life.

Another Scripture says that what the Spirit of God living in you does is it sanctifies (purges, cleans out), which essentially means that when you breathe, when you let God in, you become aware of all the things you need to leave behind and let go of.

What’s inside? What are you angry about, cncerned about, anxious about? What’s stressing you? Is there anything you need right now to breathe out?

Jesus said that the Spirit guides us into truth. Is there anything you need guidance in?

Maybe what we need is as close as breathing.

Another Scripture says that God gives the Spirit without limit.

Is there anything you need to breathe in? Ephesians says there’s one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. Hebrews says there’s God for whom and through whom everything exists.

Jesus said God IS Spirit.

You are a sacred creation of God whom the divine breath is flowing through. And it’s flowing through the person next to you, and the person next to them. You are on holy ground, and there’s a holiness to the people around you. Jesus said that whatever you do for them, you do for Him.

A person doesn’t have to agree with this for it to be true.

When a baby is born, what’s the first thing that it must do or it isn’t going to make it? Does it have to take a breath, or does it have to say the name of God?

What’s the last thing you do and then you die? Is it you take your last breath? Or is it that when we can no longer say the name of God, we die?

Is it possible that you could be having a meal with a good friend of yours who doesn’t believe in God, and you could be sitting across the table from your friend who is saying “There. Is. No. God,” and what you would be hearing is “Yod. Hey. Vav. Hey.”

May you come to see that God is here, right now, with us all the time, and that the ground you are standing on is holy, and as you slow down may you become aware that it is in “Yod, Hey, Vav, Hey,” that we live, and we move, and we breathe…

You’re Here Now

Become with me,
A people who see,
A light, a world, a stage, a scene.