Bp. Zac Niringiye at CCA - pt. 2

Today’s teaching was a continuation of pt. 1 : exploring the question of why we (the church) so consistently miss the point, why there is such a disconnect between what we read (Colossians 1:15ff) and what we experience.

Which was the real Jesus? The Jesus the disciples lived with for three years - or the Jesus they met on the road to Emmaus? The disciples thought they knew Jesus, but the Jesus they knew was a Messiah they had constructed from a false narrative. Consequently, they missed the real Jesus. The real Jesus is the crucified Jesus - the disciples missed this Jesus because of their own expectations.

The disciple’s primary narrative was a “power narrative” - the messiah would come to conquer, liberate Israel, make Israel the center of power (as in King David’s day).

Power (and the “Power Narrative) is about two things:

1. Security
2. Significance

The critical factor that delivers Security and Significance is relationship. Hope is central to life. But upon what is hope built? For the disciples, hope was built upon a power narrative that would put them at the center.

Two contrasting events:

1. The Tower of Babel - This was a power center, where the whole world would gather. (Power)
2. Pentecost - This was a scattering event, sending out God’s blessing. (Blessing)

“We love to be at the center. This is not American. This is human.”

The Power Narrative is a false narrative. “The only narrative that God has given the universe is the crucified Christ. This is the only authentic Christ.” Jesus makes this case on the road to Emmaus by questioning, “Did he not have to suffer.”

The cross is another power narrative of sorts - but it is not you and I at the center.

What do we see at the Cross?

• God is love. How did God show love? John 3:16, 1 John 4:7, Romans 5 - While we were sinners, Christ died.
• God is Justice. At the cross, our brutality, injustice, and evil are displayed. The freeing of Barabbas and condemning of Jesus is a drama that illustrates the point - the guilty (you and I) are set free while God absorbs evil into himself in punishment. “At the cross, Jesus drinks to the dregs the cup of Evil.
  What is painful to God is the estrangement that is caused by sin/evil. There is nothing worse than separation from God. This is hell. Jesus entered hell on the cross. “Why hast thou forsaken me?” The Trinitarian community suffered a tear - an estrangement at the cross.
  Yet this is bigger than substitutionary atonement because this event is bigger than Jewish history. The curtain of the Temple is torn in two (a tearing of Jewish history), but also the sky goes dark (a tearing of the cosmos).

Reflection on the movie “Rabbit-Proof Fence” - Bp. Zac said upon seeing this, he wept. “Where is God? Where is God?!” There are so many evil things done in the name of Jesus. From this place of grieving, “God showed me Jesus on the cross.” Jesus asks a question on the cross for which he gets no answer (”Why…?“). “There is something about God, the cross, and this world.”

3 things about the cross:

1. The cross is the climax of the incarnation. The crucified Christ is all God has given us - the clue to God is the cross.
2. The cross is the location of reconciliation. Reconciliation is not a fruit of the Gospel. Reconciliation is the Gospel.
3. The cross is given as a model of discipleship. Philippians 3:10ff. This describes a pilgrimage in the cross. We are ‘being saved’. The Gospel is suffering with those who suffer - making this choice freely to participate in their suffering to embody reconciliation (the Gospel).

Close:

2 Corinthians 12 - Paul prays to have his ‘thorn’ taken away 3 times. Paul is normal - he does what we would do. If this is from the devil, surely God wants to remove it from us. So Paul prays for it to be removed. This is what ‘makes sense’. But God’s response is, “My Grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness.”

We think that being safe and cared for (security and significance) are most important. But this is our own ‘Power Narrative’ - we are at the center of that prayer. But everything is for Christ (and not about us). (Col. 1)

“It is not about you. It is about you knowing (Phil. 3).”

“The only thing that scares me is that I could lose my faith - because we think we know God, so we have no hunger to know God. We can lose our faith by thinking we already know God.”

Bp. Zac Niringiye at CCA

Some thoughts from Bp. Zac at Christ Church Anglican during Tuesday’s lunchtime teaching.

Framework:
Why do we not get it? Why is there such a dissonance between what we read about Jesus in Scripture and what we see in ourselves? As a start, how do our experiences stack up with Colossians 1:15-20?

Story:
Luke 24:13-35: Jesus appears to Cleopas and his ‘friend’ on the road to Emmaus. They cannot recognize Jesus because their dominating story of a liberating messiah ended at the crucifixion. The possibility of resurrection had never occurred to them. They had a crisis of imagination - they couldn’t conceive of what God was doing because they were so focused on what they ‘knew’ God was doing and what the messiah should be. “We had hoped…” are the three words that, for Bp. Zac, reveal this tragic posture. They could not see the real messiah because of their story.

But Jesus says, “How foolish you are…” Jesus then reads them the Scriptures they already know but illuminates them by giving them a different framing story so they can see what the actual messiah had accomplished. Jesus re-frames the narrative.

Reflection:
“It is time to engage with our foolishness. Is it possible that when we are sitting in church, we are worshiping a Jesus of our own making?”

Bp. Zac has a friend who calls our love of religion “Christianism.”

So what are some of the foolishness-es of this culture?

1. Christianity as a religion - All western missions has been built on the idea of ‘exporting’ the ‘goods’ of religion. In Africa, it used to be the three “C’s” of missions: Christianity, Commerce, & Civilization.

2. Compartmentalization - Christianity being placed alongside other disciplines as if it were a separate subject. Part of this is Dualism: sacred/secular, minister/layperson, sacred/secular space. This is all ‘religiousness’. We have convinced ourselves that Jesus must be a Christian. We claim him as ours - but this is a mistake.

3. The ‘ME’ narrative - We make ourselves the most important concern. We ask “What is God’s will for me?” and think that is a very spiritual thing to ask. But we should ask, “What is God’s will? (period)” We say, “Prayer changes things.” But who is praying? We are! So we are still putting ourselves at the center.

4. Consumerism - God is not for us. We (and everything else) are for God. (Col. 1).

Some additional thoughts:
“God is doing amazing things! We don’t see them because He is not doing them in church!”

“Seek discomfort. Idols only work in familiar space because they are created by you to work in that space. When you leave familiarity, you notice God.”

“Evangelism is not doing God a favor. We can’t know God unless we do evangelism. Jesus said, ‘I have many sheep who are not of this flock.’ Evangelism, then, is about finding our brethren.”

The Future Shape

“I have come to the conclusion that the powerful, those at the center, must begin to realize that the future shape of things does not belong to them. The future shape of things is on the periphery. The future shape of things is not in Jerusalem, but outside. It is Nazareth. It is Antioch.”

–Zac Niringiye, interview

Sunday Echo-Remix 05-11-2008

This is a Sunday Echo-Remix - an opportunity to stay in conversation about the content of our Vox Dei Community weekly Sunday worship gathering.

The article that shaped our conversation around Luke 6:12-19 is available here.

Our little lives are small, human lives. But in the eyes of the One who calls us the beloved, we are great - greater than the years we have. We will bear fruits, fruits that you and I will not see on this earth but in which we can trust.

Solitude, community, ministry - these disciplines help us live a fruitful life. Remain in Jesus; he remains in you. You will bear many fruits, you will have great joy, and your joy will be complete.

–Henri Nouwen

The Lanyard

The Lanyard
by Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Declaration

We believe and trust in God the Father Almighty.
We believe and trust in Jesus Christ His Son.
We believe and trust in the Holy Spirit.
We believe and trust in the Three in One.

-from Celtic Daily Prayer

Aimee Mann - Save Me

Aimee Mann fan?  Yes.

Eddy Arnold

Eddy Arnold died yesterday. Great, great, great voice. Maybe even a better writer. “You Don’t Know Me” is one of my all time favorite songs and though you may think Ray Charles’ version is definitive - I’m partial to Eddy Arnold’s.  Here’s another great one:

Our Task

“Our task in the present…is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.”

-Tom Wright, Surprised by Hope

Pentecost

This Sunday is Pentecost.

“Pentecost was originally an Old Testament festival, since the time of Josephus calculated as beginning on the fiftieth day after the beginning of Passover. In the Christian calendar, it falls on the seventh Sunday after Easter. It was called the Feast of Weeks (Shavuot), and in the Old Testament was originally an agricultural festival celebrating and giving thanks for the “first fruits” of the early spring harvest (Lev 23, Exod 23, 34).

By the early New Testament period, it had gradually lost its association with agriculture and became associated with the celebration of God’s creation of His people and their religious history. By the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, the festival focused exclusively on God’s gracious gift of Torah (the “Law”) on Mount Sinai. It continues to be celebrated in this manner in modern Judaism.

While there are other references to Pentecost in the New Testament (e.g. 1 Cor 16:8), it is most significant in Acts 2 and the familiar scene of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on those in the “upper room.” The New Testament writers associate the events of Acts 2 with Pentecost, and relate it to the prophecies of Joel 2 and promises of Jesus (Acts 1:8). In both, the emphasis is on a empowerment through the Holy Spirit to enable the people of God to witness to Jesus the Christ.”

Next Sunday

Our text for Sunday is Luke 6:12-19.

12 One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. 13 When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: 14 Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, 15 Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, 16 Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor

17 He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coastal region around Tyre and Sidon, 18 who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by evil spirits were cured, 19 and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.

Liturgy for Evangelicals

“The liturgy, from beginning to end, is not about meeting our needs. The liturgy is about God. It’s not even about God-as-the-fulfiller-of-our-need-for-spiritual-meaning. It’s about God as he is himself: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is not about our blessedness but his. The liturgy immediately signals that our needs are not nearly as relevant as we imagine. There is something infinitely more worthy of our attention—something, someone, who lies outside the self.”

–Mark Galli, A Deeper Relevance

This Christianity Today article articulates some deeply important ideas that make sense of some of what you see at our Vox Dei Community Sunday gatherings.

Sunday Echo-Remix 05-04-2008

This is a Sunday Echo-Remix - an opportunity to stay in conversation about the content of our Vox Dei Community weekly Sunday worship gathering.

Yesterday we looked at the first part of Luke 6 - two episodes that are coupled by conflict between the Jesus party and the Pharisees (along with the teachers of the Law, and in Matthew’s Gospel the Herodians).

Of course, it is the Pharisees and Herodians who eventually conspire to do away with Jesus. Luke is a master storyteller – and he’s using a foreshadowing of sorts here to tell us what is to come in the conflict between Jesus and his opponents. The Pharisees have gone from passive observers, curious to find out what Jesus is doing in the middle of ch. 5, to being fully locked into a posture that indicates the future role they will play in having Jesus indicted and condemned.

The word for this type of foreshadowing is prolepsis. Prolepsis comes from Greek. “Pro” means “before”; “Lep” is the root meaning “to take” – the original Greek word prolepsis means literally “to anticipate.”

As a literary device, prolepsis means to talk about a future state as if it were already so.

“When mom gets home, you are in trouble.”
Stranded on an island – seeing a ship on the horizon, “I’m saved!”
On death row, they say someone is a “dead-man walking.”
Chiefs game in the third quarter, we say, “This game is over.”

I’m interested in using the term ‘prolepsis’ in a poetic way. I think ‘prolepsis’ is what we see with the Pharisees in this passage. They are ‘proleptically’ indicating their future action by their present posture. What then can we learn from the idea of exploring how our future action or future state is determined by our present postures? How does what we do or think now indicate what will be true of us at a future time?

Men in Ministry

This is too good - HT: Eugene Cho & JtRP

10 reasons why men should not be ordained for ministry

10. A man’s place is in the army.

9. The pastoral duties of men who have children might distract them from the responsibility of being a parent.

8. The physique of men indicates that they are more suited to such tasks as chopping down trees and wrestling mountain lions. It would be “unnatural” for them to do ministerial tasks.

7. Man was created before woman, obviously as a prototype. Thus, they represent an experiment rather than the crowning achievement of creation.

6. Men are too emotional to be priests or pastors. Their conduct at football and basketball games demonstrates this.

5. Some men are handsome, and this will distract women worshipers.

4. Pastors need to nurture their congregations. But this is not a traditional male role. Throughout history, women have been recognized as not only more skilled than men at nurturing, but also more fervently attracted to it. This makes them the obvious choice for ordination.

3. Men are prone to violence. No really masculine man wants to settle disputes except by fighting about them. Thus they would be poor role models as well as dangerously unstable in positions of leadership.

2. The New Testament tells us that Jesus was betrayed by a man. His lack of faith and ensuing punishment remind us of the subordinated position that all men should take.

1. Men can still be involved in church activities, even without being ordained. They can sweep sidewalks, repair the church roof, and perhaps even lead the song service on Father’s Day. By confining themselves to such traditional male roles, they can still be vitally important in the life of the church.

Certainty 2

“All the promises we make
From the cradle to the grave
When all I want is you.”

-U2

Certainty

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

-Mark Twain

A Better Question

Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?”

-Luke 6:9

Orthodoxy

Paul’s got a good one on his experience at an Orthodox Christian gathering:

One of the many critiques that Protestants have had of both the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches is our perception that each religion is focused upon a doctrine of works righteousness. I am no expert in either tradition but I’ll let the Paschal sermon of St. John Chrysostom, read every year, speak for itself. Chrysostom (4th Century AD) means “golden-throat” and he was one of the greatest preachers the church has known. These words are proclaimed to everyone at the Pascha:

If any man be devout and loveth God, let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast! If any man be a wise servant, let him rejoicing enter into the joy of his Lord.

If any have laboured long in fasting, let him how receive his recompense. If any have wrought from the first hour, let him today receive his just reward. If any have come at the third hour, let him with thankfulness keep the feast. If any have arrived at the sixth hour, let him have no misgivings; Because he shall in nowise be deprived therefore. If any have delayed until the ninth hour, let him draw near, fearing nothing. And if any have tarried even until the eleventh hour, let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness.

For the Lord, who is jealous of his honour, will accept the last even as the first. He giveth rest unto him who cometh at the eleventh hour, even as unto him who hath wrought from the first hour.

Believe in ME

My friend Beth sent this today - so appropriate for several conversations I’ve been in recently. Thanks, Beth!

THE GRACIOUSNESS OF UNCERTAINTY
by Oswald Chambers

“It doth not yet appear what we shall be.” 1 John 3:2

Naturally, we are inclined to be so mathematical and calculating that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing. We imagine that we have to reach some end, but that is not the nature of spiritual life. The nature of spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainty, consequently we do not make our nests anywhere. Common sense says - “Well, supposing I were in that condition . . .” We cannot suppose ourselves in any condition we have never been in. Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life: gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness, it should be rather an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God. Immediately we abandon to God, and do the duty that lies nearest, He packs our life with surprises all the time. When we become advocates of a creed, something dies; we do not believe God, we only believe our belief about Him. Jesus said, “Except ye become as little children.” Spiritual life is the life of a child. We are not uncertain of God, but uncertain of what He is going to do next. If we are only certain in our beliefs, we get dignified and severe and have the ban of finality about our views; but when we are rightly related to God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectancy.

“Believe also in Me,” said Jesus, not - “Believe certain things about Me.” Leave the whole thing to Him, it is gloriously uncertain how He will come in, but He will come. Remain loyal to Him.

Nouwen on Jesus

“Jesus was a revolutionary, who did not become an extremist, since he did not offer an ideology, but Himself. He was also a mystic, who did not use his intimate relationship with God to avoid the social evils of his time, but shocked his milieu to the point of being executed as a rebel.”

-Henri Nouwen