Let’s define “gift” in terms of an unconditional act or representation of respect and love for a living being or beings from another or others without expectation of something or some act in return.

- – -

Time flies…or is it that we forget to cherish moments as they come and go?  There are moments when time stands still, when the heavens open up into eternal moments of transcendent love…but it takes an intentional effort to recognize moments as such.  Life is a real gift – something that should mean something – and yet we embody a take-for-granted attitude throughout our lives (especially when we are young and feel invincible) that renders our lives an ephemeral aberration, thinking about immediate satisfaction and self-preservation, rather than about what gift-living is all about.  We are because we were gifted with life.  What do we do with what we are given?  The stories vary.  What should we do with what we are given?  Perhaps we ourselves should give and give until our lives are extinguished and we give back what was initially given.

As Christmas ends for the season, I have iterated and reiterated to the children I teach during the week that Christmas is about giving rather than getting – a familiar phrase to many which sounds simple enough.  But our culture is so “capitalized” and “democratized” and “evolutionized” that these very culturally created ideas underlie our epistemology, our conversations without our awareness of them – clandestine walls that limit thought and action.  Some preach giving while culture and others preach taking.  Who do we believe?  Might I suggest that reality, that a meaningful life, is a gift-giving life rather than a gift-taking life.

Why do we admire figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Ghandi, Jesus, Muhammad, Mother Teresa, Buddha, William Wilberforce, and many others?  Do we admire people or remember people and respect people for what they take or what they give?  Do our possessions, things that we have taken or been given render our lives more meaning that the things and actions we give to others?

As a New Year’s resolution, may we all see through this lens: life as a gift.  Discover meaning in every moment that is given to you and share yourself and your gifts with the world expecting nothing in return.  When it comes time for you to give your life back,, even though this is very idealistic, may the world remember you as a giver of life rather than a taker.

On that note, I encourage you to see Avatar in movie theaters.

Excerpts drawn from “Lord, Teach Us” – William H. Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas

What is The Lord’s Prayer we pray on Sundays?

“It is the Lord’s prayer.  We, who are accustomed to thinking of prayer as a good strategy for getting what we want (“The family who prays together stays together” ) and an appropriate opening for football games and important civic meetings, may be surprised that we must be taught to pray.  This prayer is not for getting what we want but rather for bending our wants toward what God wants.  This is the Lord’s Prayer, prayer “in Jesus’ name,” which means that this prayer, unlike some other modes of prayer, is distinctively related to the one who teaches us to pray.  This prayer is the enactment of the story of a God who called a people into existence through Jesus.  In praying this prayer we become the people God has called us to be in Jesus.” (p.19)

“The Lord’s Prayer is a lifelong act of bending our lives toward God in the way that God has offered–”thy will be done, thy kingdom come.”  We have quite enough teaching in the various modes of achieving our will in this world.  We build our kingdoms all over the world and the wreckage is all around us.” (p.22)

“Our Father” – this prayer is meant to be said with others in community as friends:

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command you.  I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.  You dd not choose me but I chose you.  And I appointed you to go and bear fruit.” (John 15:3-16)

“Our Father” – Why Father?

“We say, “Our Father.”  In calling God Father we are speaking first and foremost about Jesus’ relationship to God, not our own.  that is to say, God is called Father because we have come to know Jesus as the Son.  “Father” and “Son” is the way we have been taught to name a certain relationship within the inner life of God.  The important thing is not that these two terms are of the male gender, for Christians have always believed that God is greater than any human conceptions of gender.  What is important is that these names attempt to describe the familial relationship that is part of God’s own life.  We can’t say “Father” without remembering the Son; we can never know the Father unless the Son reveals the Father to us.” (p.29-30)

“So when we pray, “Our Father,” we are in a decisive way challenging the status  of the family as it is known in our culture.  For those who learn to pray like this, our first family is not our biological family but those who have taught us to pray, “Our Father.”" (p.32).

“Hallowed be your name.”

“All creation is meant to hallow the name of God.  We must learn the melody of adoration.  In learning the Lord’s Prayer, we are learning to hallow the name of God, rightly to praise God.  Everything that is exists to praise God’s good name.  This praise is constitutive of who we are.  None of us therefore lives unto ourselves.  None of us us, “just a man,” or “only one woman,” or “merely an accountant.”  In praying “Our Father,” each of us is being commandeered by God, each f us is watching our fate transformed into God’s good destiny.  We are counting for something in the larger scheme of things, enjoying ourselves being caught up in a larger adventure than the merely private or purely personal, joining our voices with those of all creatures in praising a Holy God who stoops to us, who enjoys our praise, who delights even to hear our songs.  The prayer teaches us, in all that we do, to hallow the name of God and, in so doing, we discover our true being” (p.43-44)…”We live as we pray” (p.49)

“Your kingdom come.” – a message of hope

“Christianity is forever mixing religion and politics.  Jesus is, as the prayer portrays, very “political.”  To the credit of the rulers of this world, they at least had the good sense to look at Jesus and see that, in him, they were in big trouble.  Matthew says that when Jesus was born, the moment King Herod heard about it, he called together his political advisors and was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him (Matthew 2:3).  Herod had been in office long enough to know a threat to his rule when he saw one.  Herod knew that, in this baby at Bethlehem, everything his kingdom was built upon was in mortal peril.  So Herod responded in the way rulers usually respond: violence.  Herod called out the army and they massacred all the Jewish boy babies (Matthew 2:13-18)–alas only one of many attempts by governments to rid themselves of Jewish challenges to their power.  In praying, “Your kingdom come,” we are in a power struggle that can become violent because the kingdoms of the world rarely give up power without a fight.”

“To say, “Your kingdom come” is to be willing to become part of the rather weird gathering of strange people, often people whom the world regards as outsiders, who are now on the inside with Jesus.” (p.55)

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:3-5)

“Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” – a message of patience.

“We modern American people are so accustomed to thinking of life as choice or chance.  Life is what I do and decide or else life is a roulette wheel of sheer luck.  Is that why we often feel so helpless and hopeless?  If life is all up to us, then we know enough about ourselves and our brothers and sisters to know we are doomed.  A terrible paralysis comes from thinking that it’s all up to us.  If the fate of the world, the outcome of the future is solely of my doing, or even yours, then–a good freshman course in the history of Western civilization should convince us that we are without hope.  No wonder we feel frail and fearful before the bomb, AIDS, the ecological crisis, thinning ozone, or even the department of motor vehicles–it’s all choice or chance…We’re not talking about the silly notion that everything that happens, everything you do, occurs because God planned it that way.  We’re talking about the amazing resilience of God’s purposes.  God’s intent for the world isn’t stumped by our plans.  God’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (p.63-64)

“To pray, “Your will be done” is to recognize that prayer is about achieving God’s will, not our will.  Jesus fervently prayed to be delivered from arrest and death in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:39).  Jesus got “no” for an answer to his prayer…The ending of all truly Christian prayer is the same that Jesus prayed in Gethsemane: Not my will but yours be done.” (p.69)

Check back later for more updates.

They took the body down from the cross and one of the few rich men among the first Christians obtained permission to bury it in a rock tomb in his garden; the Romans setting a military guard lest there should be some riot and attempt to recover the body.  There was once more a natural symbolism in these natural proceedings; it was well that the tomb should be sealed with all the secrecy of ancient eastern sepulture and guarded by the authority of the Caesars.  For in that second cavern the whole of that great and glorious humanity which we call antiquity was gathered up and covered over; and in that place it was buried.  It was the end of a very great thing called human history; the history that was merely human.  The mythologies and the philosophies were buried there, the gods and the heroes and the sages.  In the great Roman phrase, they had lived.  But as they could only live, so they could only die; and they were dead.

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away.  In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night.  What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a  semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.

As Christians near and far seek to spread the Word of God to the world, it is important to engage people from various cultures and belief systems.  These videos may not represent cultures or people at large, but they do contain various opinions about God, Jesus, Truth and the Church that many others share.  These are people of our world who we are called to be faces of grace to.  Let’s hear what they have to say and critically think about and pray about the future of the church.

These videos are ones used by the Truth Project that is sponsored by Focus on the Family.

***Note and Disclosure: These video clips do contain a bit of language that have been “bleeped* out

God

Jesus

The Church

Truth

 

I really enjoy cartoons as most of you know who I serve on committees with.  My reports usually contain a few.

Tuesday, February 24 at 7:30pm was the first meeting of the Wednesday Church Subcommittee and after our first meeting I am truly excited for Wednesday Nights in the future.  There is now a faithful backbone to the program with people who care about a mid-week program at the church.  Thank you for all of your hardwork to those on the committee, and for those in the church look for upcoming announcements as to new WCN happenings and events!!

Cheers!

Tim

On February 9, 2009, John Tolson and his wife Punkie were the guest speakers for our Valentine’s Dinner and spoke on marriage and relationships.  John is the new Dallas Cowboys chaplain and speaks on this topic and others nationally.  Enjoy a few video clips from both of them:

Christmas Thoughts and Observations and Possibilities:

Many of us will be gathering around our fire places snug in the comfort of our own dwellings this Christmas, sipping a cup of hot cocoa or hot coffee allowing the steam to enlighten our senses while we exhale our worries and woes. Family comes from far away places we may have only seen in our imaginations. Stockings and socks are hung expectantly and decoratively on mantles. There are whispers and secrets that ride on the wind of gleeful expectation. And of course we cannot forget the vast quantities of peoples old and young, dark and light, poor and rich, who congregate at churches across the world during the holidays – some because it is proper to do, some with the excitement of children, some to escape the cold, and some with no recollection of why. Children talk of Santa Clause and Father Christmas, relishing in the mystery of the fantastic that promises. Adults speak fondly of “time off,” grudgingly shrugging off holiday expectations, at least for a moment in their minds. Shoppers push at the seams of the economic arena buying gifts written on lists and at the last minute adding a few more. And to what end do these details point? What is the common bond in Christmas?

“What is Christmas all about,” I hear Charlie Brown bellowing into the winter air. It is the celebration of a birth as told in the Christian Bible says Linus’. But is that specific definition the general consensus?

* * *

Christmas is a celebration of a birth.

* * *

When you look down the aisles of shopping malls, or the aisles in churches, or the aisles of movie theaters and you notice that many people are not talking about the birth of a child as the reason for the season you may internally resound the same cry as Charlie Brown if you cling to the “Christian” understanding of Christmas. The two terms “Christian” and “Christmas” share the same root after all. Perhaps the root of the internal struggle to correlate the two terms is in the evolution of meaning. Have you wondered why dictionaries are updated, encyclopedias change, languages change over time? Languages attempt to encapsulate meaning so that when an essay or poem is read, when someone has a conversation with another, meaning is conveyed by delivery and content. But the more we communicate and read and use language the more we realize the inevitable organic nature with which language is used and understood. It is because of this fluidity that standardized tests are criticized since they assume the static meanings of words and phrases which can naturally never be static. Communication – words and phrases, languages – evolves as times and peoples change. Read an article from the New York Times and compare it to a poem by Walt Whitman and compare that to a sermon by Jonathan Edwards and note how words and phrases look the same but carry very different meanings.

“Christ” and “Christmas” visually and orally have the same root, but as cultures have changed and time has passed, the connotations of the two have drifted apart. What once was sacred was adopted by the secular to the point where now the two can hardly be separated. Both share a similar understanding of a common thread of what was once “Christ”-mas. And this common-thread definition is mentioned above: Christmas as “a celebration of a birth.” The definition sounds traditionally Christian, but the ambiguity of the term “birth” provides for a much more general understanding of Christmas. The birth is not a specific birth, but rather a capsule of possible meanings waiting to break free.

We live in a culture of unifying generality and to generality we turn to in this season. Generality here is in response to the postmodern concern for rising plurality and ambiguity in the world and declining claims to Truth or static understandings. Christmas may have originally been a specific holiday for a specific birth of a specific child, but in a world of multiple specificities and multiple categories and multiple truths, people turn to generalities to unite themselves. And to put it boldly, many people consider the message of the gospel a specific one in a global world. In a global world specificity means exclusivity and exclusivity throws up red flags for people. Some people are included and others not. Christmas is still a celebration of a birth for the majority outside of the Christian religion, just not a specific birth like it once was. This is not to deny that many followers of Christ still hold fast to the specificity of Christmas, but that Christmas itself has broken out of its specificity.

All around the industrialized world Christmas has become a celebration of new birth, of a new beginning, of unity. All of these once Christian themes with a specific locus now operate as unifying themes but without the locus of the Christ figure. Christ is replaced with new presents, time off from work and school which presents a new attitude, Christmas bonuses create new opportunity to spend, and time with family and friends present an existential sense of newness and belonging. By the time the New Year comes around the “Holiday of new beginning” comes full circle. Christmas rips the masses from the norm of everyday and opens up possibilities for the future. On the verge of New Year’s day, the celebrations on the Eve have become the climactic event to the end of the year holiday celebrating possibilities for the future. Detached from the Christian message of transformation in Christ, people turn to the transforming message of the New Year’s resolution. The end of December has become a celebration of Western-Christian values under the once sacred name of “Christmas.” And perhaps this is what frustrates those like Charlie Brown – the plurality and ambiguity and the evolution of words and meanings and thoughts with changing times, places, and people. People still look for a specific reason for the season when the season transcends any specificity.

Should this worry Christians? Should it worry Christians that there are other understandings of “Christmas” out there? Should it worry Christians that linguistic meaning changes, that interpretation varies when human beings are thrown into the mix? Should it worry Christians that attendance in pews are declining in the West?

Quite emphatically, I will say, “NO.” 1) To “worry” is a term that assumes a certain lack of faith in God. 2) As Christians we affirm the dynamic and mysterious existence of a divine being who chooses to reveal herself as he chooses to reveal himself. Scripture attests and serves as witness to how God acts in history and to the dynamic being that God is, but as Christians we must admit that no one has a claim to certain Truth with a capital “T.” The capacity of an individual to fully understand the person and work of the divine does not exist. What does exist is the conversation and discernment among human beings to ascertain truth. One such tool utilized for Wesleyans is the Wesleyan Quadrilateral as a tool for ascertaining the divine will. A person or group must use his or her reason, experience, tradition, and Scripture to ascertain the will of God. Here I am not suggesting that this is a foolproof avenue for ascertaining truth, but it does provide a checks-and-balances system that groups can use to make decisions in the Church. What this brings into play is that individuals’ reason, experience, traditions, and interpretations of Scripture vary. Human beings are individual parts that make up one body. This very point was emphasized and re-emphasized during the Presbyterian Stewardship month.

As Christians let us admit to ourselves that we do not always know what God has in store for us, that we do not always know what the will of God is or what form it might take in what person or event. It is in this self-emptying and opening up of possibilities that God can enter in and do God’s will. When we as Christians become so closed-minded in thinking that we have God more figured out than the person next to us then we fool ourselves. However, when you can turn to people at work and at home and at church and admit that God works in mysterious ways and you can embrace the mystery of the gospel then perhaps you might realize that God reveals God’s self even outside the walls of churches in Mosques, or Buddhist temples, in shopping malls, in movie theaters, in different cultures and in very different places. Perhaps if we hold on to the Christian locus of Christmas in the Christ figure, but acknowledge the other interpretations of Christmas as possible avenues through which Christ might be working, then maybe, just maybe, the church, or rather than gospel, might become appealing once again, ringing truth to the people.

This Christmas, let us celebrate the paradox of Christ as both specific and general, Christmas as both specific and general, and the mystery of how Christ chooses to act in the world. Let the Spirit break us from our comfort and our certainty and so that God can speak afresh to the world. Amen.

“Slaves, accept the authority of your masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle but also those who are harsh.  Forit is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly.  If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval.  For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.

“He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.”

When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.  He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.  For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shephered and guardian of your souls.” – 1 Peter 2:18-25

1 Peter tends to be highly neglected and avoided by pastors and biblical scholars alike due to some of its statements that ring controversial to a pluralistic biblical audience.  One of these statements comes in verses 18 and 19 in the form of slaves obeying masters and accepting authority.  And one of the primary reasons for this controversy is a historio-cultural assumption that this biblical passage promotes slavery.  Taken into context however, 1 Peter is not a letter addressing slavery, nor is slavery its primary subject, but rather living the gospel and spreading the gospel in the midst of suffering and in the midst of slavery and persecution.  If you are a person in this sort of context where slavery and persecution is your reality, how do you live the gospel of Jesus Christ.  This is the aim of 1 Peter.  And with this in mind the common pitfall and controversy melts into nothingness.

In an apocalyptic time the author of 1 Peter (perhaps the apostle Peter) is under the assumption that the return of Christ is immanent and soon.  There is no time on earth to change the things on the earth because Christ is coming.  Live the gospel and teach others to do so.  This is primary.

What does this tell us about the mission of the church or rather about what mission is?  Mission is the spreading of the gospel of Christ where we are.  We are to endure suffering because of the gospel because Christ suffered.  1 Peter does not dictate that we fight back the authorities of the world, but that we endure for the sake of the gospel like Christ endured — Christ who suffered and was marginalized his whole life because of his radical activity and thought; Christ who died because of it.

So when we gaze over the horizon of our national battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere throughout the world, how are we fulfilling our gospel-mission warranted by 1 Peter?

American strategy seems to bank more on the words from Saruman from Lord of the Rings, “We need only remove those who oppose us.”  And if you need reminding, Saruman was a bad guy.  This kind of strategy has been around for a long while and roots in the idea of self-preservation.  But in the pluralistic and ambiguous world in which we live, this kind of idea has no merit.  Or perhaps it does in a firmly clutching capitalistic economy…to be discussed at another time.

Scripture helps relate man’s selfishness of environment

By: Darin Knepper

Posted: 2/7/08

The Christian faith tells us to take care of our environment.

This may be a surprise to many, including Christians. Many prominent “Christians” have wedded their ostensible faith to other things: political parties, economic systems, cultures, sensuality – just about anything you can think of besides God. Some are up there in the limelight fighting for capitalism – and as we all know, environmentalism is the opposite of capitalism.

Co-opting Jesus for your pet cause is a very serious mistake with far-reaching consequences.

Many people see high-profile religious figures and they say, “You see that self-centered hubris? If Christianity were true, its adherents wouldn’t be that way.” And there’s the rub which causes many to turn their backs on the faith.

Jesus said there would be many who would invoke his name, and many of these would even appear to do good deeds. But at the end of time he will tell them, “I never knew you.” He said the tares and the wheat are tangled together in this age, but at the judgment, they will be separated. Until then, deception is the norm. This is the picture Christ painted of the future.

But let’s look briefly at the past, through the template of scripture, to see if it has something to say about our responsibility to the environment.

Noah was the first biblical environmentalist. He saved many species (including humans) from extinction by implementing God’s Endangered Species Act. The symbolism is very clear in this story. Regenerate man, represented by Noah, was commissioned by God to preserve and restore the environment after cataclysmic destruction, brought on by unregenerate man’s implacable selfishness.

The mechanism by which destruction came was different then, as there was no visible cause-and-effect linkage between selfishness and the great flood. Today, however, catastrophic destruction blooms directly upon our selfish over-consumption and pollution, and this ties our breach of duty inescapably to its consequences.

Looking back even earlier in the same book (Genesis), we are given the theological framework for understanding man’s relationship to the environment. Adam and Eve were ejected from the Garden of Eden, a beautiful, harmonious, and unspoiled natural paradise. They were outcasts because of their new, selfish nature.

That selfishness put them at odds with everything and everyone around them. It even put each person at odds with himself or herself. Post-Eden man was now at enmity with God. He was in conflict with others: Cain killed Abel. Man damaged and spoiled everything he touched with his selfishness, including his environment.

His new nature made him unfit for the place God had made him for – we read that it was Eden, but in the broader sense it means Earth. He was an “outsider” in spirit. This is the spiritual death God said would follow Adam’s act of rebellion. And the ultimate consummation of that “outcast” status is physical death. At that point, man’s status as an outsider is confirmed.

For long stretches of time, outcast-man languished in poverty. He was barely able to scratch out a living, and this was part of the curse God placed upon Adam. He would have to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, contending with an uncooperative environment.

This state of affairs helped keep man’s selfish nature in check – it kept him busy. It was actually in Adam’s best interest to inhabit a difficult world, considering Adam himself was a difficult creature.

However, at some point much later in history, a few perceptive aristocrats and enterprising merchants finally recognized the fact that man is, on the whole, a selfish creature. Instead of denying it, they decided to harness the competitive impulses (rooted in prideful desires to be higher and better than one’s neighbor). They found a way to make selfishness work for people and pull them collectively out of poverty.

Today we call it capitalism. It is an ugly system because it reflects who we truly are. It works better than communism because it acknowledges the truth of man’s identity as an “outsider.” He is only concerned about his own, atomistic interests and pursuits.

And this brings it all back to the rub we started out with. The spiritual outsider’s own interests often include being seen as an “insider.” Posing as an insider brings acclaim, but even better, it attracts the material rewards of goodwill from the community.

(A real insider also does good deeds, but his motivations are unselfish. He has been genuinely fitted back into God’s overall plan, as Noah was.)

Make no mistake: much good actually gets done because of selfish motives. This makes the tares hard to distinguish from the wheat, at least from a distance. But such cosmetics won’t prevent that bad nature from eventually finding an opportunity to bite us all in the back.

And now we are back to the environment again. Scriptures teach that man’s actions are presumptively bad. His systems are automatically suspect, because he is prone by his nature to inflict harm on all he comes into contact with. The big engine of capitalism has put humanity in motion like an unstoppable locomotive.

The momentum is going to run us right over the edge of environmental catastrophe.

Darin Knepper is a second-year law student. Reach him at darinknepper@dailynebraskan.com.

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© Copyright 2008 Daily Nebraskan

Finding Our Way Into the Future

These two articles were given at Princeton Theological Seminary in 2006 at the Youth Ministry Conference put on by the Institute for Youth Ministry.  These articles, as Douglas will tell you, do not directly have to do with youth, but rather trace the history of the church and where the church is going in the future.  The lectures are not short, but enlightening and very though-provoking as we seek to take the gospel into a rapidly changing world.  Peace.