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David Cassidy

22 Apr, 9 tweets, 2 min read

The Church's mission is not to confront the world and its powers, especially in a menacing tone dripping with hubris, but rather to invite the world to the banquet of the Kingdom. We are ambassadors and announce the good news of Jesus that answers the sad news of human brokenness

The world may refuse the invitation & even hate the Church, but the Church's response to this would still be love - to seek to make friends of those who call themselves the Church's enemies (we do not call them that). After all, God's grace makes friends & family of his foes.

The Gospel is respectfully announced in words backed by the example of deeds and humility expressed through neighbor love shared from a posture of service. Love must be visible to bear witness. It is the bridge over which truth crosses the rivers of skepticism & cynicism.

Worship One. Love all. We do both because we are the objects of never-failing mercy that flows from the heart of Jesus. Both are a response to the grace that sought, found, forgave, and reconciled us to God and one another. That love launches us into service for all.

Paul was brought before the political powers of his day - in chains. He came before them to boldly and humbly make Christ known to them in hopes of seeing those very people come to a living faith in the promised Messiah. He did not come seeking access for himself to their power..

but rather to offer to them access by faith into the grace of God that would transform them and grant them a place before the throne of God above. We are humbly unimpressed by the thrones of emperors precisely because our hearts are captured by the throne of grace.

The notion that Christian engagement with the culture begins and ends with political power and access is little more than a very clever lie. We have dual citizenship on earth and in heaven and cry with Paul, "I'm a Roman!" when we see an injustice that must be addressed...

...but also "Our citizenship is in heaven" when it comes to the advance of Christ's Kingdom in the world. The mission of the Church is not to make America or any other nation 'great' but rather to make the saving name of Jesus known to everyone we know everywhere we go.

We really must seek to 'Make Christianity Christian again' by repenting of our prideful addiction to power (among other addictions!), asking God to reform and renew the Church and her witness in our world.

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More from @DPCassidyTKC

David Cassidy

@DPCassidyTKC

27 Mar

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.

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David Cassidy

@DPCassidyTKC

23 Feb

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

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David Cassidy

@DPCassidyTKC

21 Feb

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...

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David Cassidy

@DPCassidyTKC

15 Feb

@DTKoyzis

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.

Read 6 tweets

David Cassidy

@DPCassidyTKC

14 Feb

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.

Read 4 tweets

David Cassidy

@DPCassidyTKC

14 Feb

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.

Read 5 tweets

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