With that said, an old man walked quite directly down a country road.  Bearded, but not unkept he dressed in casual clothes, and his unassuming character went unnoticed by others. If one watched him in reverse and really listened, one might hear the strings playing from east to west the song of the unannounced American dream.

He turned a corner to come suddenly upon a small child, and stopped to watch the child play in the dirt.

The child was a female in the male’s domain acting out an usually masculine scene.  She had built out of the dirt a small dirt structure.  It is sometimes hard for adults to see from a child’s perspective.

The man longed to remember so got down to his knees, but it simply wasn’t low enough.

The man longed greatly to remember, so he lay on his belly, holding up his head by his elbows, but it simply wasn’t low enough.

The man longed so greatly to remember the perspective of a child that he put his chin in the dirt to see the structure face to face.

“What have you built?” the man asked.

“It’s my house.” she answered.

“It’s a little small for a house.”

“I am happy with it.” she replied.

“

Another dimension of the Eucharist is what it says about time. After serving the bread Jesus said, “…do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). Remembrance is something that takes place not in our minds, as we usually understand it, it is not something I can quite do still and in solitude. This kind of remembrance happens with our hands and with our bodies. It happens in us as the very real bread and the very real drink happen in our very real bodies, brought together as a body. Remembrance happens in your stomach, in your gut, not in your head. We are not just recalling the suffering of Christ but we are calling it out of the past and into the present. We remember as a way of saying, together with those who need bread regardless of who they are, together with the poor and the oppressed, in solidarity with beaten and crucified people, “what has happened to Christ is happening to us.” Just as Israel took the passover meal as a way of entering into solidarity with the liberated slaves of Egypt, the church which is the new Israel takes Christ’s body and blood, consuming and being consumed, as a way of entering into solidarity with the crucified Christ who shared and shares his identity with the “least of these.”

At the same time that we are calling the past out and into the present we also call the future into the present. After serving the cup Jesus said, “I tell you I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” As we eat and drink in solidarity with the crucified Christ saying, “what has happened to Christ is happening to us,” we are not only calling the past into the present but we are calling the future into the present–anticipating the day, as though it were now, that Christ drinks with us. We are calling the future into the present, insisting on a future when all will eat, drink, and live while denying a future–the Empire’s future–where death and decay are the inevitable and unavoidable end. We call Christ’s future into our present, with feet grounded in the suffering of Christ, proclaiming and anticipating with our hands the day when Christ will drink again from the fruit of the vine in his father’s kingdom, when “new wine will drip from the mountains” (Amos 9), when all will eat and bread will not be withheld. We become, in our freedom and in our openness in the body of Christ, the future here and now. We become the foretaste of God’s kingdom. in the Eucharist, we are now what we imagine the world can be.

The great and profound claim about time, which the Eucharist makes yet which so many Christian traditions miss, is that waiting is not on the agenda. Time is not governed by what must be but in the Eucharist it is governed by what can be. We do not have to wait for eternal life to happen in the future, giving in to cynicism and despair in our waiting. Instead we can call both future and past into the present, making this place the thin space in which heaven meets earth.

And that’s when I got to thinking…

Why do people believe in the literal “mark of the beast,” not to mention all the other problematic images in Revelation? Is it really because they read scripture and that was the most obvious interpretation (I’ll save questioning their hermeneutics for later)? Is it really only because that’s what’s been passed down to them (I’m sure this is often it!)? Or is it because it makes for very effective scare tactics?

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that dispensationalist literalism makes for very powerful conservative propaganda. I believe that this is part of the reason it is so alive and well in our world. While George W. Bush was in office, dispensationalism was used as propaganda for people to support war in Iraq and to give up on peace making in the middle east. Now that we have Barack Obama in office, it’s the mark of the beast language that scares people into looking negatively upon anything the president does or says. Whatever the situation, dispensationalism is good at twisting current events, no matter how horrific they are or how really good they really may be, and adapting itself so that everything is secret knowledge for the conservative dispensationalist. So the question is, do dispensationalists believe their outlandish interpretations because they’re being honest with the text or is it because it conveniently fits into their conservative bias and fear mongering? Is the literal and future mark of the beast expectation a reasonable interpretation or is it just a convenient scare tactic?

First, he says, make sure your church is clean.

“If the overall atmosphere is not generally clean and adequately maintained, a statement is being made about your congregation,” Driscoll says.

Yes.  I am glad that Jesus sent his disciples out two by two to look for clean places of worship.

“I am sending you out,” Jesus says. “To find a clean place for my people to meet.  Make sure if dirty people come in, the homeless and the poor, that they clean up first and put on clothes.  Otherwise, what do you think is being said about my church?”

Second, Driscoll says, it needs to be accessible (easy to find), and third, it needs to be a place you can put signs so that people can find you.

Yes. I am glad that Jesus sent his disciples to find the most accessible and easy to find places so that Jesus could preach to as many people as possible.

“Find me an accessible location that is easy to find,” Jesus says.  “So that I can place signs with my picture on them, and they will be seen by the maximum amount of passerby.  Too bad we don’t live in an age of billboards.”

“What are billboards?” Peter asks.

“Oh, if only you Peter,” Jesus smiled. “If only you knew.”

—————————–

I am sick of people trying to sell a clean accessible Jesus.  Please somebody stop the madness!

Theologians Practicing what the Theologize?
We always talk about pastors practicing what they preach, but what about theologians? Halden has one point of view, and it seems that Adam had another (HT: Ben Myers).

The Search for God and Guinness
This book, reviewed by Jonathon, talks about the life of the Guinnesses and the good they did in Ireland for their community and for their workers.

Zach Lind on Thinking our Way to Heaven
Zach reflects on Scot McKnight’s latest post on evangelism.

Glenn Beck as Sincere as … Stephen Colbert

HT: Halden

Can Megachurches Be Missional?

Ed Stetzer & Dave Fitch – a missional conversation Part II from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.

I want to note first of all the complexity of the word “missional.”  It is very difficult to define, but I found this video very interesting and both points of view very interesting.  For those who read my blog (especially my tirade againt Mark Driscoll), you know that I dislike using statistics in trying to prove certain points within a church.  I think statistics are both misleading and often oversimplified for the use of point proving.  Both men here, however, do a good job of staying on point and having a respectable dialogue.  Fitch seems to be taking a “straw man” megachurch and Ed Stetzer does a good job of showing that Fitch is doing this.  However, I tend to agree with Fitch more in general in his past posts on the dangers of the attractional model.

In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, ⁴for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, ⁵because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel ⁶that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God. ⁷This you learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow-servant.^* He is a faithful minister of Christ on your^* behalf, ⁸and he has made known to us your love in the Spirit (Colossians 1:3-8)

After introducing himself as Paul, the apostle enters into a short thanksgiving/prayer emphasizing the hope of the present (”bearing fruit and growing in the world” 1:6) and not yet (”hope laid up for you in heaven” in 1:5) aspects of “the gospel.”  For a side-note on the Pauline term gospel, please see my article here.

In this introduction, there is a three-tiered structure of the familiar Christian motifs: faith, hope, and love.  The first two, faith and love, seem to form one seamless pair in Paul’s mind.  One must have faith in Christ and love for the saints.  The term “saints” here refers to “fellow-believers” (see F.F. Bruce, 41).  The two idea of faith and hope stem from the hope “laid up for them in heaven.”

Again, the future hope is rooted in the present “word of truth.”  Words must be spoken in a particular place, with a particular people, and into a particular context. This is extremely true here when the word of truth broke through into a particular context, and as it broke through (as a tree’s roots break through the ground) we see the gospel “bearing fruit” among them.

There are two things about fruit that we must understand (and perhaps agricultural workers in the Lycus Valley may have understood better than us).  First, trees take time to grow.  The roots that one takes in the “word of truth” may, at many times and in many places, be cut off or destroyed (a la the parable of the sower).  Second, trees need the faith and love spoken of in the triad above.  One might think of the analogy of trees needing both sun and water.  We need both our faith in Christ and the love for our fellow members in our community to see the gospel bear fruit in our communities.

Finally, what does it look like for the gospel to bear fruit?  Paul does not address this specifically, but I think it has a lot to do with what I talk about in my post on the Pauline conception of Gospel.  When we see the gospel in action it breaks down the walls between “us” and “them,” the “clean” and the “unclean,” or whatever blocks us out from others.  There is no line between “rich” and “poor” (in fact, it might be good for us to stop thinking in terms of serving the poor, as Claudio Oliver has done).

These dropping of lines can seem dangerous and even heretical at times.  What would the church look like without lines?  What would the church look like without the usual boundaries of the four walls?  What would the church look like if it truly loved?

Resources for Studying Colossians
1. Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire:
2. Colossians (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries): by N.T. Wright

Halloween: Yes or No?
One person argues that the Puritanical fear of the occult and the general evangelical hatred towards the Roman Catholic Church is what originally created the fear of Halloween. Perhaps, he argues, we have come to believe our own propaganda?

A Theology of the Land
tallskinnykiwi talks about and quotes Christian farmers who are doing what they can to bring justice and equality to what Paul called “the whole created order.”

Pray for Glenn Beck
He surely needs it.

New Smashing Pumpkins album to be Free
If you love Smashing Pumpkins, you’d better read this.

The Jesus we Never Knew
:

In later clarifying the second mistake (don’t do announcements at the beginning), Easum says:

…announcements at the beginning of a worship service so deadly- because they violate every media tenet as well slap as our culture in the face.  Most younger people today do whatever they can to avoid watching a commercial on TV. Imagine what a media savvy twenty-something feels when subjected to five or ten minutes of commercials up front before they have the chance to decide if they like what’s happening in your worship.

And if you say, “That’s tough. We don’t bow to the culture,” you’re missing the point. The way to be counter-cultural is not by intentionally turning people away with your methodology. The way to be counter-cultural is to make the worship so appealing that the Holy Spirit has time to speak into their lives and transform their hearts into followers of Christ. You can’t do that if you run them off at the beginning of the service.

I don’t know Easum personally.  He seems to have reasonably valid credentials for talking about church growth and church marketing, but I wonder if we have lost something in this message of making the Holy Spirit “appealing.”

There is nothing all that “appealing” to me about Jesus.  He didn’t hold nice services and invite lots of people to hear him.  In fact, he tried very often to turn people away or keep what he did a secret.  What do we do with this Jesus in light of modern church marketing?

I’m not sure I have the answers, but I would appreciate any thoughts on the matter.

Picture from flickr

I was talking to Sarah recently about how to teach ownership to students and children.  I have no children of my own, but I do (eventually) want to teach in some capacity.  I have my history credential, but there are no jobs this year.  The question remains how teach Christ’s message to children and in the same breath teach them about ownership?

The Christmas photo reminds me of many Christmases where my brothers and I would fight over who gets to light the candles at Advent.  It also brings back many memories of fights over shared toys and anger when my brothers would destroy “my” legos or when games on the super nintendo would get erased and we would have to start over.  Needless to say, I was taught from a very young age the idea of ownership and sharing.  But how would Jesus have us live and think of ownership?

It is here that I turn to the book of Luke (9:3-6):

He said to them, ‘Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money—not even an extra tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there, and leave from there. Wherever they do not welcome you, as you are leaving that town shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.’ They departed and went through the villages, bringing the good news and curing diseases everywhere.

Jesus sends the disciples out with nothing and they are required to depend on others.  It is quite a thing to lose your independence in America.  I have only seen a few people really lose it in my lifetime and it would seem now they have no choice but to obey him.  I don’t think this passage is talking to everyone for all times, but I do think there is a kind of message in the text that reminds us that the “independence” we often talk about in America is not what Jesus had for the apostles.  He taught them utter dependence on the communities they were to live in.  Perhaps we would be wise to follow in those footsteps.

Perhaps we would be wise to depend and trust one another in a Christ filled community.

Perhaps we would be wise to play together in a way that ownership becomes secondary to friendship.

Perhaps we would be wise to begin the project of really getting to know each other.