A Literal Mess

Nothing but some random ramblings for my friends...And whoever else would have any interest in reading this.

[aliteralmess]

“...at least in race relations, the dominant white religious voices are nearly always...”

“In 1931, sociologist and co-founder of the NAACP W.E.B. Dubois minced no words in his analysis of the Christian church and its role in black-white relations: ‘It is mainly a social organization, pathetically timid and human; it is going to stand on the side of wealth and power; it is going to espouse any cause which is sufficiently popular, with eagerness.’…

“For our purposes, there is an important consequence of this segmented market.  A key function in most religions is to proclaim what ought to be, what is universally true, what is right and just.  We may call this the prophetic voice.  But the organization of American religion fragments this prophetic voice, even within the same religion, into thousands of different voices.  What are the effects of this?  Ultimately, exactly what Dubois concluded…

“…Sociologist Stephen Hart…found that people use religion to come to every conceivable position on economic inequality—from extremely conservative to extremely liberal.  Should economic inequality be overcome?  Yes.  Should economic inequality be preserved?  Yes.  It depends on who is asked, and the answer is often, but not always, associated with the respondent’s religious tradition.  Although most attempt to apply their faith, American Christians, even within the same race, run the gamut of possible positions on economic inequality.  Thus, religious people, in such a context, compete ideologically against each other, fragmenting the religious voice.  And given the relative equality of power, the different religious voices negate one another.  

“But it is not reasonable to assume equality of power.  And we contend that, at least in race relations, the dominant white religious voices, amid the vast variety, are nearly always those that are least prophetic, most supportive of the status quo…

“….American religion encourages religious groups to cater to people’s existing preferences, rather than their ideal callings…The congregation often looks to religion not as an external force that places radical demands on their lives, but rather as a way to fulfill their needs…Prophetic voices calling for the end of group division and inequality, to the extent that this requires sacrifice or threatens group cohesion, are perfectly free to exist...They will have followers, but they will be a minority voice, both in terms of size and strength.  This is in part because, as seminary professor Charles Thomas Jr. has summarized, ‘In practice congregation members expect the minister to do nothing (such as taking a prophetic voice) which would interfere with the harmony and growth of membership.”   -Michael Emerson and Christian Smith in, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, p.162-164.

(This was painfully necessary for me to read again. It’s true. And even as someone who desires the opposite, I still find myself simply settling into lifestyle  status quo myself. Lord help me to move my heart and my choices away from this.) 

[aliteralmess]

What had all this pernicious nonsense to do with religion?

“In terms of time the eternal Lord of all order appears to be the Lord of misrule. No wonder the pharisees, who seem to have been always wholly serious, had to have Jesus put down. He couldn’t be allowed to go on indefinitely standing everything on its head and making their piety look ridiculous. Why, in the end, they might even laugh them­selves, and that would be the ultimate catastrophe.

“Who in reality had ever witnessed a pious man blowing a trumpet before he put a pound note in the church box? The notion was irresponsibly misleading. And then there were camels going through the eyes of needles, not to mention camels being swallowed easily by those who choked when they swallowed a gnat. And if people did sometimes get a speck in their eye who ever heard of a man, and an improving teacher at that, who had a log in his? And worse: idlers who were given full pay, stewards who were successful cheats, spendthrift and debauched sons being feted on their return home—what had all this pernicious non­sense to do with religion? It could only undermine the morals of society, and, being socially danger­ous had to be stopped; stopped before the contagion of eternal love showed up the whole solemn system of moralism and religiosity as a complete knockabout farce. So the Jester had to be crucified.

“But Eternity had the last laugh after all. For that is the final joke—the resurrection. Here are Caiaphas and all his crowd, Pilate and Herod and all theirs, sitting complacently in a state of grave and dignified self-congratulation. They have done their duty and justified the authority vested in them by efficiently disposing once for all of a dangerous fool. He is safely dead. And with solemn calm again restored they can concentrate once more on the really serious matters to which their lives are dedicated. But behind their backs, without them having the slightest inkling of what is going on, the fool has popped up again like a Jack-in-the-box and is dancing about even more vigorously than before and even more compellingly.”

-From Tensions, by H.A. Williams

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So we actively wait

Advent is a season of focused intentionality of celebration of and waiting for Jesus' coming...In the midst of all the brokenness, questions, fears, joys, sin, and delight of our lives, he still chooses to come to us now, and in complete fullness one day. So we actively wait--with our worship, our tears, our hurt, our questions, our laughter and our anger...And he delights in our waiting, His coming, our waiting, and His "one day" coming...

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The Irrational Season, The Irrational Christ, The Irrational Christ-Ones

Image: Original piece, “Flow: Irrational Beauty” © Anna K. Messer 

This is the irrational season When love blooms bright and wild Had Mary been filled with reason There’d have been no room for the child.

-Madeleine L’Engle, “After Annunciation”         

“We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created.”                 Colossians 1:15-20 (The Message)                                         

Irrational. A remarkably apt word to describe, not only what we contemplate during the Advent and Christmas season - the impossible birth of Jesus - but that which we must recognize as the whole of God’s relating to, and intention for, his image bearers. The grace of God in Christ is irrational by any and every measure one could come up with.  This irrational God, Jesus the Christ,  invites us to live in his irrational love, becoming conduits of the very same irrationaility.

Consider hearts prone to wander from the Creator and Sustainer of all things who names us beloved daughters and sons. The irrational Father, knowing our self and other-destructive proclivities, watches, waits long, and runs toward us that we might know home rather than wilderness.

Consider love disordered: hearts so often bending in worship and centering around created gifts (believing them to be our deserved and special rights),   instead of awestruck wonder, thankfulness, and passion for the one who has actually bestowed them. Jesus, the irrational Son, continues to gift us each breath, meal we eat, and relationship with fellow image bearer we experience.  Reminding us of his reckless grace designed to flow through us in kind.

Consider the untethered, confused emotions believing God unfair when things don’t go as we deemed fit or demanded. The irrational Spirit continues to intercede for us, as she translates our whines and petulant pouts into groans too deep for words; asking for that which we actually need but don’t know to request.

Our minds, attempting to manipulate the Almighty King, this very Christ, by “doing the right things” and spit-shining the outside of our cups while leaving the stained interior to mold, that we might obtain special crowns and jewels or at least place him in our debt. The irrational LORD of all Creation has none of it, reminding us we are owed nothing and that all is grace; everything a gift flowing unearned from the waterfall of the King’s love and mercy.  And as LORD, calling us to follow his lead, individually and corporately.

And so, as awestruck receptors of the irrational love, grace and mercy of Christ, we - the Christ-ones - are called to actively participate in the impartation of this same irrational love to a beautiful-broken world.  To those we know well and those we don’t. To those we love and to those we think of as enemy.  To our neighbor who looks like us and to our neighbor who looks nothing like us.  To fellow citizen (no matter the country in which we live) and to the refugee or the immigrant (legal or not).  To the rich and to the poor.  To fellow Christ-one, to Muslim, to Hindu, to Buddhist, to Atheist, image bearers all.  To those we think of as deserving and to those we deem undeserving.  To do so, during this irrational season and beyond, we must remember and remind one another that none of us is deserving of this irrational love from this irrational Christ.

And we thank you oh great irrational God and Father.  Amen

[aliteralmess]

The Abyss of Self & Laughter of Unknowing

Witness to our dissolving into the abyss known and experienced as self-satisfaction - Our imaginations stunted in what, not only could be, but that which simply is - Dissolved once and again toward isolation and certitude while terrified uncertainty - increases at compounding interest; rates not dissimilar from those pay-day lenders, holding - captives. At best, our becoming amounts to indentured servitude; in truth more like willing slaves - And so we plow unending fields of self- interest, protection, justification, assurance. - A ground unyielding, unforgiving and stern; in which our shovels bend, splinter, fail. - Would that we allow ourselves to become real persons whose imaginations fly and dance - In mystery and self- forgetting laughter of what is, could be, and one day will. - Communion’s offer and invitation of falls, wounds, complex lives that invite true breathing; freedom and forgiveness - Wherein shovels are useless, unnecessary as means of proof or paying- off the unknown, usury- loving creditor’s rigged system. - Instead, firmed up in process of shared breathing, touching, confusion, hugging… and holding on. - Holding on for life so dear; so given; mysterious in its call to greater unknown knowing - Selves realized anew; ever growing imaginations free to wander into one another. Always more solid, shared. Facing each other - Persons discovering again, increased imaginations free to wander, and crash life into life; centered, communal. Faces shining upon faces.

© R. Douglas Messer, 2014

[aliteralmess]

God invites into this conspiracy of the poor...

"Our Lord is sitting by the Temple watching all the people coming and going, putting their offerings into the box. Some of them were making quite a show of it, no doubt, so that everyone would know how much they had put in. But there, among them all, was a little old lady, rather shabbily dressed, who slipped in her twopence halfpenny when no one was looking. But the Lord saw her. And he got terribly excited about it. “She’s put in more than all the rest put together!” he exclaims. "This little old lady did not realise that she was doing anything spectacular; nothing could have been further from her mind. She did not want to draw attention to herself, because she knew that what she was giving was not worth very much, it was not going to repair the Temple roof or get them a new organ or even pay for the Boy Scouts’ Annual Outing. The Temple authorities might well think it was a confounded nuisance having to count all the small change put in by people like her. But she had given all she had, knowing that it was not much, knowing that she was not going to solve anyone’s problems. And surely the Lord recognised in her a kindred spirit. She was doing the same kind of thing that he was doing. He was not solving the world’s problems in any sense that the world could understand, he was not reforming society or abolishing poverty”the poor you will always have with you” was his comment on that (Mt. 26:11) he was not doing any of the things some modern Christians think he should have been doing. And many people considered him a nuisance. But he was giving himself, he was giving all he had got, he was giving his very life. "Blessed are the poor! How easily we take that always to mean somebody else. Yet if we want to be with God, we must learn to hear it as “blessed are we who are poor”, we who have not got anything very impressive to give to anybody, whose giving may very well be rather a nuisance, but who still have not given up giving. Who knows? Our giving of ourselves in all our poverty may one day bring some joy to somebody else who is poor, who is not calculating, not trying to repair a church roof. God invites us into this conspiracy of the poor, making himself its head, giving himself in poverty and weakness, knowing that if we will only receive that humble gift of his, it will transform everything. If we are prepared to be poor enough to learn and to appreciate the manner of God’s giving, we shall find in that poverty the seed of all perfection."

–Simon Tugwell, Prayer

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She Is

I sat down to write

a painting of my wife;

the picture that develops

in my reflecting

Any attempted sketch, though,

of this woman known -

images and emotions experienced,

is no simple thing

This, not for any reason

drawing away from her - No.

In fact, her complexity

draws me always nearer

She is a strength

I do not possess;

her powerful presence both

quickens and relaxes my breath

She is an overwhelming beauty

perennially opening

to fuller bloom

year after year

Yes, she too, of course, has weakness

Hiding and seeking security

in being unknown; leaning away

from others, at times wrong in anger

Yet she remains open

to the discovery of self,

of others; desiring

open countries of vulnerability, being known

She is fierce, no doubt, and tender-

neither negating the other

these ever living and moving together

in complementary relation

Without question she is a prophet

reluctantly so, as true ones are;

her words carry weight -

truths that disquiet and call for response

She is a priest, gentle -

leading, walking, surrounding

with love, particularly

for me, you, they most hurting

She is a wife powerfully intimate

toward a man with history: fragile,

prone to fits, starts, sadnesses, humor

and love - ever, ever deepening love.

She is a mother to four beloved gifts

allowing space for much:

confusion, tears, laughter, growth

Forceful love in grace, strength, constancy

After years numbering 45

two dimensions are inadequate,

words are insufficient

but these are an offering of color

On a pallet large with depth, length

width, texture, dimension; a fresco unique-

a life given, a life lived, a life loved

She is, this woman, one magnificent.

©R. Douglas Messer, 2017

[aliteralmess]

“But the Biblical message and the good news of the gospel that I read is that it’s all about interdependence; and the understanding that the abundance that has been given to us is not intended for the wealth of a few of us but the abundance of all of us. I think that prosperity is usually prosperity for the few, and we have that situation in our country in a way that just defies the imagination really; this concentration of wealth in the hands of a few and then the impoverishment of many...We’re suffering a kind of crisis because our commitment is not to the common good. We live in a culture that is based on competition and so people are trained from the earliest age to see one another as rivals rather than people with whom they can be in community with mutual care and concern for one another.” -Joyce Hollyday

[aliteralmess]

Next PubTalk: Challenge and Opportunity Amidst the Current Refugee Crisis - Thinking about and caring for refugees with grace, compassion and wisdom 4/7/17 - 7:30-9:00p (doors open at 7) - Honeybee Coffee West 10716 Kingston Pike Knoxville, TN 37934

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Come be part of our next PubTalk: 

Challenge and Opportunity Amidst the Current Refugee Crisis - Thinking about and caring for refugees with grace, compassion and wisdom

Come join us as April 7th, at 7:30pm (doors open at 7:00) at Honeybee Coffee West (10716 Kingston Pike Knoxville, TN 37934 - across from Costco).

Piers Van der Merwe will be sharing with us about what God would have us do, as Christians, for our refugee and immigrant neighbors. Amidst all the complexities and uncertainties, the opportunity to reach out, to care, and to share the beauty of God's love and grace for the most vulnerable among us is remarkable. But how do we do this not only compassionately but wisely? Join us not only to listen, but to consider, ask, and discuss. We really hope to see you there!

[aliteralmess]

Drinking the Cup Jesus Offers

From Can You Drink the Cup? Henri J.M. Nouwen Conclusion "THE ANSWER" I have looked at many cups: golden, silver, bronze, and glass cups, splendidly decorated and very simple cups, elegantly shaped and very plain cups. Whatever their material, form, or value, they all speak about drinking. Drinking, like eating, is one of the most universal of human acts. We drink to stay alive, or we drink ourselves to death. When people say: "He drinks a lot," we think of alcoholism and family trouble. But when they say: I wish you could come over to have a drink with us, we think about hospitality, celebration, friend ship, and intimacy. It is no surprise that the cup is such a universal symbol. It embodies much that goes on in our lives. Many cups speak of victory; soccer cups, football cups, and tennis cups are eagerly desired trophies. Pictures of captains holding a victory cup while being carried triumphantly on the shoulders of their teams are imprinted in our memories as reminders of our excitement at winning moments. These cups speak of success, bravery, heroism, fame, popularity, and great power. Many cups also speak of death. Joseph’s silver cup, found in Benjamin's sack, spelled doom. The cups of Isaiah and Jeremiah are the cups of God's wrath and destruction. Socrates' cup was a poisonous one given to him for his execution. The cup that Jesus speaks about is neither a symbol of victory nor a symbol of death. It is a symbol of life, filled with sorrows and joys that we can hold, lift, and drink as a blessing and a way to salvation. "Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?" Jesus asks us. It is the question that will have a different meaning every day of our lives. Can we embrace fully the sorrows and joys that come to us day after day? At one moment it might seem so easy to drink the cup, and we give a quick yes to Jesus' question. Shortly afterwards everything might look and feel quite different, and our whole being might cry out, "No, never!" We have to let the yes and the no both speak in us so that we can come to know ever more deeply the enormous challenge of Jesus' question. John and James had not the faintest idea of what they were saying when they said yes. They hardly understood who Jesus was. They didn't think about him as a leader who would be betrayed, tortured, and killed on a cross. Nor did they dream about their own lives as marked by tiresome travels and harsh persecutions, and consumed by contemplation or martyrdom. Their first easy yes had to be followed by many hard yeses until their cups were completely empty. And what is the reward of it all? John and James' mother wanted a concrete reward: "Promise that these two sons of mine may sit one at your right hand and the other at your left in your kingdom" (Matthew 20:21). She and they had little doubt about what they wanted. They wanted power, influence, success, and wealth. They were preparing themselves for a significant role when the Roman occupiers would be thrown out and Jesus would be king and have his own cabinet of ministers. They wanted to be his right- and left-hand men in the new political order. Still, notwithstanding all their misperceptions, they had been deeply touched by this man Jesus. In his presence they had experienced something radically new, something that went beyond anything they had ever imagined. It had to do with inner freedom, love, care, hope, and, most of all, with God. Yes, they wanted power and influence, but beyond that they wanted to stay close to Jesus at all costs. As their journey continued, they gradually discovered what they had said yes to. They heard about being a servant instead of a master, about seeking the last place instead of the first, about giving up their lives instead of controlling other people's lives. Each time they had to make a choice again. Did they want to stay with Jesus or leave? Did they want to follow the way of Jesus or look for someone else who could give them the power they desired? Later Jesus challenged them directly: "What about you, do you want to go away?" Peter responded: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we have come to know that you are the Holy One of God" (John 6:67-69). He and his friends had started to glimpse the Kingdom Jesus had been talking about. But again there was that question: "Can you drink the cup?" They said yes over and over. And what about the seats in the Kingdom? They might not be the kinds of seats they expected, but could they still be closer to Jesus than the other followers? Jesus' answer is as radical as his question: as for seats at my right hand and my left, these are not mine to grant; they belong to those to whom they have been allotted by my Father" (Matthew 20:23). Drinking the cup is not a heroic act with a nice reward! It is not part of a tit-for-tat agreement. Drinking the cup is an act of selfless love, an act of immense trust, an act of surrender to a God who will give what we need when we need it. Jesus' Inviting us to drink the cup without offering the reward we expect is the great challenge of the spiritual life. It breaks through all human calculations and expectations. It defies all our wishes to be sure in advance. It turns our hope for a predictable future upside down and pulls down our self-invented safety devices. It asks for the most radical trust in God, the same trust that made Jesus drink the cup to the bottom. Drinking the cup that Jesus drank is living a life in and with the spirit of Jesus, which is the spirit of unconditional love. The intimacy between Jesus and Abba, his Father, is an intimacy of complete trust, in which there are no power games, no mutually agreed upon promises, no advance guarantees. It is only love-pure, unrestrained, and unlimited love. Completely open, completely free. That intimacy gave Jesus the strength to drink his cup. That same intimacy Jesus wants to give us so that we can drink ours. That intimacy has a Name, a Divine Name. It is called Holy Spirit. Living a spiritual life is living a life in which the Holy Spirit will guide us and give us the strength and courage to keep saying yes to the great question.

[aliteralmess]

This Day?

Anxious churning alongside

beauty and quiet

rest and laughter -

This day?

-

Simplest joy amidst

pangs of reality

and foolishness -

Yet caught within the scuffle

-

To run and sing

while stumbling along

to recognize all as gift -

A chance lost in dark corners

-

Peace, unshackled, rushing

inward, pouring out even

amidst landscapes of fear and anger?

Yes. This day.

[aliteralmess]

Eugene Peterson on “Willed Passivity”

“After another decade and a few years into marriage, I was surprised to find myself at the center of what has turned out to be the richest experience yet in my will and God’s will.  I had supposed when I entered marriage that it was mostly about sexuality, domesticity, companionship, and children.  The surprise was that I was in a graduate school for spirituality—prayer and God—with daily assignments and frequent exams in matters of the will…

“It goes without saying that in marriage two wills are in operation at the same time.  Sometimes, and especially in early months of marriage, the two wills are spontaneously congruent and experienced as one.  But as time goes by and early ecstasies are succeeded by routines and demands, what was experienced as gift must be developed as art.

“The art is willed passivity…

“St. Paul’s famous ‘Wives be subject to your husbands.  Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her’ (Eph. 5:22-25) sets down the parallel operations of willed passivity.

“A [vital] earlier sentence establishes the necessary context, apart from which the dual instructions can only be [and more often than not are] misunderstood.  The sentence is ‘Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ’ (Eph. 5:21).

“Reverence is the operative word…awed, worshipful attentiveness, ready to respond in love and adoration.  We do not learn our relationship with God out of cocksure, arrogant knowledge of exactly what God wants (which then launches us into a vigorous clean-up campaign of the world on his behalf, in the course of which we shout orders up at him, bossing him around so that he can assist us in accomplishing his will).  Nor do we cower before him in scrupulous anxiety that fears offending him, only venturing a word or an action when explicitly commanded and at all other times worrying endlessly of what we might have done to offend him.

“NO, gospel reverence, Christ reverence, spouse reverence is a vigorous (but by no means presumptuous) bold freedom, full of spontaneous energy.  This is the contextual atmosphere in which we find ourselves loved and loving before God.

“We are more than ready to bow down before Christ unafraid that we will be tyrannized, for Christ has already laid down his life for us on the cross, pouring himself out and holding nothing back.  Willed passivity.

“St. Paul teaches husbands and wives how their wills can become the means for love and not the weapons of war.  He counsels willed passivity in both marriage partners as an analogy of Christ’s willingness to be sacrificed.  Love is defined by a willingness to give up my will…a voluntary crucifixion.

“Marriage provides extensive experience in the possibilities of willed passivity.  We find ourselves in daily relationship with a complex reality we did not make—this person with functioning heart and kidneys, with glorious (and not so glorious) emotions, capable of interesting us profoundly one minute and then boring us insufferably the next, and most mysterious of all, with a will, the freedom to choose and direct and intend a shared life intimacy.

And all the time I am also all those things, also with a will.  When we are doing it right and not always knowing how we are doing it right, the two wills enhance and glorify each other.  We learn soon that love does not develop when we impose our will on the other, but only when we enter into sensitive responsiveness to the will of the other, what I am calling willed passivity.  If the operation is mutual, which it sometimes is, a great love is the consequence.  The high failure rate of marriage is the sad statistical witness to the difficulties involved.  We would rather operate as activists in our love, commanding our beloved in actions that please us, which reduces our partner’s options to indolent passivity or rebellion.  No ambiguities in either case.  But also no love—and no faith.

“…Every act of intimacy, whether in work or [friendship] or marriage or prayer, suppresses willfulness and cultivates willingness.” (italics mine)

[Eugene Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor, pgs. 105-109]

"God is love.  Love is the core of God's being.  Man and woman, made in the image of God, are also, at that core, love.  This is who we were created to be, persons who love, persons who receive love.  When we love we are most ourselves, living at our very best, mature.  Everyone, I venture to say, feels at some deep level this primary core identity.

"But here is the supreme irony: love is who we are, love is what we want, love is what we want to practice, but it is in loving and being loved that we accumulate the most failures.  We are repeatedly disappointed in love.  We realize that we are hopelessly inadequate in love...competence in love eludes us.  There are no awards given in the practice of love.  There are no levels of achievement.  There are no graduate degrees to affirm our accomplishments.  What so often happens then is that we give up...

"We misunderstand love when we suppose that it has to do with saying the right things at the right times.  No.  It has to do with being in relation with God and our neighbors, regardless of what we are saying and doing and wherever we are...We also misunderstand love if we are ignorant of its origin in God...

"Love is not self-starting or self-defined; it is always, 'as Christ loved us.'...

[But] then there is this.  Every detail in the practice of love and worship is susceptible to perversion and sacrilege.  There are no flu shots against sin.  There are many more ways to sin against love than by going to bed with Bathsheba.  There are many more ways to sin against worship than by dancing around a golden calf...

"Christian maturity [marital maturity] is not a matter of doing more for God; it is God doing more in and through us.  Immaturity is noisy with anxiety-fueled self-importance.  Maturity is quietly content to pursue a life of obedient humility...

"We do not become mature on our own.  Maturity...can be accomplished only in relationship with others, named/known others...    

'Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ' (Eph. 5:21).  Both parts of the sentence...are radically countercultural, but only when they are combined. Separated, they lose potency.

" 'Be subject to one another.'  Maturity is not analogous to a body building regimen in which we lift weights to build our muscles to the max, and then periodically stand before a mirror to examine our progress.  Maturity is not a solitary state; it is relational.  Maturity does not come about by making the most of ourselves by ourselves; it is making the most of personal relationships.  We don't do that by becoming stronger than the other, overpowering him or her, dominating either emotionally or physically.  We don't impose ourselves.  We enter into another person's life sharing both weakness and strength.  We enter the life of another, but we don't force the entrance.  Mutuality is always involved in 'be subject'/'submit.'

"Americans are not used to this.  We are raised in an aggressively competitive culture.  We measure ourselves over against one another, be it in educational learning, athletic competition, salary, popularity, fashion, appearance, or performance.  Competition is bred into us from the cradle.  When we evaluate the people around us as winners and losers, we reflect this.

"There are many settings in which this competitive spirit brings out the best in us.  But there are just as many, maybe more, when it brings out the worse.  And the one setting in which it often brings out the very worst in us is the family.  If family members are in competition with one another--husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters--intimacy is insidiously undermined.  We can achieve maturity in families only by being 'subject to one another.'  But it doesn't come easy.  Competitive skills are far easier to come by than submission skills... " 'Out of reverence for Christ' is the companion phrase to 'be subject to one another,' and provides the working conditions apart from which 'be subject' cannot flourish.  Without reverence for Christ, it is highly unlikely that 'be subject to one another' will happen in either household or workplace.  Without 'reverence for Christ,' the counsel 'be subject' reduces us to doormats.

"...Of the several relationships that Paul names in household and workplace, it is marriage of husband and wife that he deals with most extensively.  No other relation that we enter into is more complex and difficult and demanding, or more fulfilling and pleasurable and satisfying...

"...Marriage and church are both composed of relationships that are a bold assault on the individualism in both society and church--the sin of individualism, the sin of wanting to have my own way with God, my own way with my spouse, my own way with my children.  If maturity, growing up in Christ, insists above all on relationships--relationships of trust and adoration with God, relationships of righteousness and love with one another--observing and meditating on what takes place in marriage is an excellent way to acquire the insights and develop the habits of heart that parallel what takes place in the church."

[Eugene Peterson, from his book, Practice Resurrection, various parts from pgs. 213-214]

[aliteralmess]

Throughout the Bible, this warning comes often...To be seriously considered once again.

“In Jesus’ day, the temple had become a nationalistic symbol that served only to divide Israel from the nations [particularly from the ruling nation, Rome, in authority in the very land that was the original promised land for the Hebrew people]. And the court intended for the Gentiles to worship in had been taken over as a trading post.  

“Jeremiah 7 says we should not keep claiming we have the temple of the Lord when we need to amend our ways and truly execute justice with each other, not oppress the alien, the orphan or the widow, or shed innocent blood and go after other gods.  The temple is functioning as a cover up for injustice [at that point]…If we continue to practice injustice while claiming God is on our side, because we have the temple (or we have the church), God will destroy the temple (or the church) and cast us out of sight.”

From Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context, Glen Stassen & David Gushee, p. 348-349

*After the resurrection of Christ and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (and following), it is made very clear that any humans believing and claiming to have this same Holy Spirit become the temple of God. The temple, no longer found in one specific place where all people groups might come to understand and know Yahweh, is now to be found all over the world and amidst every tribe, tongue, and nation. This “temple-people” is known as the Church universal. And it is given the same responsibility to fulfill the role of the original Temple; to be representatives of the Kingdom of God for the sake of the nations. This, in order that any and all may know of the just, merciful, gracious, self-sacrficing King of all the cosmos; known most explicitly in the person of Jesus. Never is any individual or corporate representative of this Kingdom called to tie its ethics or witness to the attitudes, ways, or actions of any geo-political nation state or particular ethnicity/culture/race. When that happens it is no longer representing the Kingdom of God for the nations; rather, it becomes a representative and tool of nation-states over and against the Kingdom of God and the very people he desires to be reached. The Scriptures over and over declare, at that point, the Spirit no longer resides in/with the temple. The representatives of the Church throughout the world must pay attention to who and what exactly we are now representing.

*Above photo by Stewart Harvey

[aliteralmess]

Remarkably Relevant Still Today ...Painfully So.

Excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail" "I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: 'Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother.' In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: 'Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern.' And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular. "I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: 'What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?' " "Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists. "There was a time when the church was very powerful--in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being 'disturbers of the peace' and 'outside agitators.' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were 'a colony of heaven,' called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be 'astronomically intimidated.' By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. "Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent--and often even vocal--sanction of things as they are. "But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century."

[aliteralmess]

Watching

Sitting in America

the sense of disregard rampant and alive would that we thought and wondered or cared

Sitting in America McDonald’s land my home sipping modest coffee observing modest life sweet diversity but broken

Sitting in America the nation of your placement of this life whose country is displacement there or here sojourning

Sitting in America land of the (I’m) right and the (your) wrong cynical fear masked in words words of nothing words of

Sitting in America forlorn in my, our, its (the) state of the soul defeat in victory laughter of one whose name is lie.

Sitting in America beauty in multiplicity of faces—disfigurement in voices sitting in the milieu watching exhausted.

Copyright, R.D. Messer

Image: Original piece, “America, As Is″ © Anna Messer, 2017

[aliteralmess]

Hope you can join us February 3rd, 7:30pm at the Regas Building Gathering Place for our next PubTalk! 

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A few thoughts to consider, from The Belhar Confession, on why this topic is not only relevant but vital:

“We believe that unity is, therefore, both a gift and an obligation for the church of Jesus Christ...

“...that this unity must become visible so that the world may believe that separation, enmity and hatred between people and groups is sin which Christ has already conquered, and accordingly that anything which threatens this unity may have no place in the church and must be resisted...

“Therefore, we reject any doctrine which absolutizes...the sinful separation of people that...hinders or breaks the visible and active unity of the church, or even leads to the establishment of a separate church formation...

“[we also reject any doctrine]...which explicitly or implicitly maintains that descent or any other human or social factor should be a consideration in determining membership of the church.

“We believe that the church as the possession of God must stand where the Lord stands, namely against injustice and with the wronged; that in following Christ the church must witness against all the powerful and privileged who selfishly seek their own interests and thus control and harm others.”

-From the Belhar Confession, born out of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.  First drafted in 1982 by the Dutch Reformed Mission Church it was formally adopted in 1986.  The Prologue notes that “It addresses three key issues of concern to all churches: unity of the church and unity among all people, reconciliation within church and society, and God’s justice.”