The Gospel answers the problem of racism not when it is reduced to a merely personal post-life entry pass to heaven or distorted into a socio-political program, but when its totally believed, receiving Jesus who comprehensively forgives the unimaginable & makes family of foes.
This new humanity is freely justified by faith and called into a new community that sheds the old world identities for a new union with God & one another. It is why salvation isn’t separated from the church, nor from works to show God’s love & justice in this broken world.
Whatever may be the Ephesus we are “in” and call home, we are first “in Christ” and committed to his throne. Repudiating racism and ethnic pride isn’t wokism, it’s Gospel living. We celebrate the uniqueness of peoples and this because of our new unity in Jesus.
“Welcome one another as God has welcomed you” (Romans 15) is the essence of this reality. This is the Hospitality of the Kingdom, shocking to all who imagine the King’s table might only have seats for a few or for those similar to themselves. It is the King’s ungated neighborhood
Jesus’ Kingdom has always been scandalous. He eats with sinners, undoes shame, heals the children of “outsiders”, turns an outcast woman in an outcast culture into an evangelist of the first order. He dies on a symbol of torture & state power to free us from the gravest chains.
He still overturns tables but does it now by setting one, inviting you and I to take a seat and receive the feast he offers. Together. It’s a scandal. It’s a miracle. We need it.
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So you’ve come to Leviticus in your yearly reading of Scripture. You’re tempted to skip it & go straight to Psalms. You can’t get into washing kidneys & measuring grain for offerings. I get it. But don’t stop. The Day of Atonement is here. “Love your neighbor” is here.
“Be holy as I am holy” is here. The Year of Jubilee is here. The right ordering of worship we call “liturgy” is here. The roots of so much of the Gospels, Hebrews, & Revelation are sunk down deep in this soil. There are so many gifts presented here in -for us - oddly shaped boxes
Sometimes the very weirdness of the Bible is just what we need. It’s a reminder to us that we are priestly people, exile people, never fully at home in this age; that, yes, there is a proper strangeness to our worship & lives. There is nothing “usual about this Cross-Shaped Faith
For many years I've silently prayed over the fragments that fall from the bread I break when I lead in the Lord's Supper. I gently gather them saying, "Lord, see the broken, scattered sheep of your flock and bring them together in your house." This prayer seems so needed now.
The upheaval of the past many months of pandemic shut-downs, isolation, fear, death, political polarization & violence, racial tension, and ecclesial moral failure has added to the pressure on people to scatter from the church rather than gathers as the priestly people of God.
It has escalated the excarnation of the Body of Christ. Yes, we can do great online work, but we have to do more, offering not simply live-stream worship but more online help to all who are struggling. So many tools can be developed. We cannot neglect however...
If you read only one book this year on the Christian's engagement in the political sphere I'd recommend @DTKoyzis excellent 'Political Visions & Illusions' (IVP Academic). The chapter on Nationalism offers a superb historical overview of the ideology...
...& the dangers Christians face by embracing a particular form of "nationalism with more evident Old Testament associations (by) Applying reference to biblical Israel to...contemporary American polity..." Koyzis notes four errors central to this approach.
1. Promises intended for the Body of Christ applied to the nation (this leads to the mass confusion we see in the 'Patriot' approach to church & worship) 2. Cultural norms of God's people applied to a past idealized period in the nation's history, norms that must be recovered.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere
in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
Love divine, all loves excelling,
joy of heav’n, to earth come down,
fix in us thy humble dwelling,
all thy faithful mercies crown.
Jesus, thou art all compassion,
pure, unbounded love thou art.
Visit us with thy salvation;
enter ev'ry trembling heart.
Breathe, O breathe thy loving Spirit
into ev’ry troubled breast.
Let us all in thee inherit,
let us find the promised rest.
Take away the love of sinning;
Alpha and Omega be.
End of faith, as its beginning,
set our hearts at liberty.
Come, Almighty, to deliver,
let us all thy life receive.
Suddenly return, and never,
nevermore they temples leave.
Thee we would be always blessing,
serve thee as thy hosts above,
pray, and praise thee without ceasing,
glory in thy perfect love.
Imagine the theologically orthodox, world-renown communicator, & respected leader in Christian circles - and a sexual predator- still going. Imagine being a leader aware of that situation and turning a blind eye to the abuse & malpractice.
Add in the inexcusable alliance of the Church with conspiracy theories & violence, racism, the abuse & exploitation of children, the misogynistic disregard of women, xenophobia, & the sheer materialism of the entertainment-celebrity wing of the Evangelical Industrial complex...
And it’s enough to make lukewarm Laodicea look like a red hot revival. Americanized Church isn’t in need of a reset or a revival - if revival just means bigger crowds for more of the same. No. It needs a Christian burial in sure & certain hope of the resurrection. I believe...