Those who attended the Willow Creek GLobal Leadership Summit this year were treated to a stunning piece of poetry in music and video this year. “A Thousand Questions”
This video follows the journey of a filmmaker—an “everyperson”—who is on a journey of discovery. It’s done in music video style, largely with scenes and visual metaphors cut to match the pre-existing soundtrack.
The audience has a “behind-the-scenes” view of a film being assembled—and part of the visual strength is the sheer number of assets that the filmmaker has collected—countless images, interviews, journeys, and travels.
Click on the image below to play the video in YouTube
Script: Greg Ferguson @ 2008 Greg Ferguson
Original Score: Jay McNeill @ 2008 suitcasemusic. All Rights Reserved
Produced by Dave Schwarz Video @ 2008 Willow Creek Association
My HR colleague at work has just taken the staff through a process of dealing with bullying and other unethical behaviour. Unfortunately I missed the session because of illness. But I still have the notes from last year.
It’s interesting that a church organisation needs to provide this kind of training every year. However, from my experience, it’s vital that we have strategies for dealing with abusive behaviour rather than pretending it doesn’t exist, or throwing our hands up in despair and putting up with it.
A lot of the principles we have developed as an organisation (The Uniting Church in Australia) are based on this passage from Matthew 18: 15-20, in which Jesus gives very practical instructions for confrontation and reconciliation.
If another believer sins against you, go privately and point out the offense. If the other person listens and confesses it, you have won that person back. But if you are unsuccessful, take one or two others with you and go back again, so that everything you say may be confirmed by two or three witnesses. If the person still refuses to listen, take your case to the church. Then if he or she won’t accept the church’s decision, treat that person as a pagan or a corrupt tax collector.
“I tell you the truth, whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven, and whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.
“I also tell you this: If two of you agree here on earth concerning anything you ask, my Father in heaven will do it for you. For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.”
So how is my behaviour being affected by Jesus’ words?
First, I’ve learnt that confronting someone for the first time, no matter how petty, is best done in the context of a private conversation, in which amends can be made and face can be saved. The fear of public humiliation makes it very difficult to achieve any change in behaviour without lasting shame and resentment.
I still remember as an eleven year old on a school camp being hauled over the coals in front of 60 of my peers for leaving a half eaten sandwich in my drawer. Oh, the shame, the shame, of being made a public example without any means of making things better!
However it’s no easy thing to confront a bully face to face when you suspect that your words will be ignored or set against you in return. I’ve learnt that agreeing to meet together in a neutral space makes a huge difference. In retrospect, I’ve also learned that it could be helpful to have a tape recorder ready at a moment’s notice!
I went through mediation with a colleague some years ago, as we discovered we were undermining each other. We clearly needed to sort things out if we were both going to be effective in our roles. We found someone who was skilled enough in mediation. In fact, two people. One to document and one to facilitate. As painful as it was, I highly value that morning when the two of us shared our stories, our experiences and values, and sought to find ways to understand the best way to work with each other.
Sometimes, more serious interventions are needed. I think of Edwin Friedman’s fable, The Friendly Forest. A tiger approaches the residents of a forest about coming to live with them. They are mostly quite excited - they’ve never had a tiger before. The lamb is not so sure. However they form a covenant in which the tiger must accept all the other residents of the forest. The lamb discovers however that despite not being eaten, the tiger is engaging in threatening behaviour that becomes unbearable for her. She tells the other residents that she must now leave. Some of her friends in the forest wonder what she’s doing to provoke the tiger. Others say she needs to just accept that tigers are by nature threatening and get used to it.
The lamb thought there was something wrong with the notion that an agreement is equal when the invasive creature agrees to be less invasive and the invaded one agrees to tolerate some invasiveness.
One of the animals, not concerned about being politically correct, suggests that there is only one way for a lamb and a tiger to coexist in the forest. Cage the tiger.
There is a time for corporate confrontation, in which unacceptable behaviour is named, along with consequences.
So how do we treat pagans and corrupt tax collectors? How did Jesus treat them? I suspect that it might involve starting all over again.
A rich man once had a manager to take care of his business. But he was told that his manager was wasting money. So the rich man called him in and said, “What is this I hear about you? Tell me what you have done! You are no longer going to work for me.”
The manager said to himself, “What shall I do now that my master is going to fire me? I can’t dig ditches, and I’m ashamed to beg. 4I know what I’ll do, so that people will welcome me into their homes after I’ve lost my job.”
Then one by one he called in the people who were in debt to his master. He asked the first one, “How much do you owe my master?”
“A hundred barrels of olive oil,” the man answered.
So the manager said, “Take your bill and sit down and quickly write `fifty’.”
The manager asked someone else who was in debt to his master, “How much do you owe?”
“A thousand bushels of wheat,” the man replied. The manager said, “Take your bill and write eight hundred.”
The master praised his dishonest manager for looking out for himself so well. That’s how it is! The people of this world look out for themselves better than the people who belong to the light.
My disciples, I tell you to use wicked wealth to make friends for yourselves. Then when it is gone, you will be welcomed into an eternal home. Anyone who can be trusted in little matters can also be trusted in important matters. But anyone who is dishonest in little matters will be dishonest in important matters. If you cannot be trusted with this wicked wealth, who will trust you with true wealth? And if you cannot be trusted with what belongs to someone else, who will give you something that will be your own? You cannot be the slave of two masters. You will like one more than the other or be more loyal to one than to the other. You cannot serve God and money.
Luke 16: 1 - 13
What? I can imagine the disciples of Jesus struggling with this story. Is Jesus suggesting we learn to be dishonest with other people’s money? And yet we know from Jesus sayings about honesty and reliability with small things that he’s not heading us in that direction. Why has he set us up with this dissonant tale of a crook?
David Buttrick, in his book, “Speaking Parables”, opens up his interpretation of this parable by exposing our tendency to divide the world into good and bad people. We generally think we’re part of the virtuous side, with terrorists, thieves and murderers on the bad side. And yet the reality is that we’re living with mixed motives in a society that continually places us in compromising situations.
William R. Herzog II, in his book Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed, places the manager, or steward, in the awkward position of making money for his boss through charging high interest rates. The debts of goods (olive oil and wheat) would have concealed mark-ups that paid for the life of luxury enjoyed by the property owner. Those renting their land to make a living for themselves were being forced to struggle to make ends meet, and would have resented the manager in his debt-collecting role. The pressure from landowner and lessees is perhaps what leads to this man contemplating the inevitability of a long slow death through hard labour (digging ditches) or poverty (begging).
So what is it that the manager does that connects with the Kingdom of God? I believe it’s something to do with restorative justice - the capacity to build relationships and systems that bring people together in ways that are better for all. The struggling farmers have had their debt reduced, though they would still be carrying a burden of interest. The landowner’s reputation for fairness was being restored in the eyes of his lessees. And the manager has his relationship with both restored, perhaps enough to keep his job.
Even though the whole system is dishonest, including the role of the manager, we’re seeing here the capacity to find a way to live in it that is just and wise. The manager may be dishonest but he’s also shrewd, astute, sharp, on the ball, perceptive, insightful, clever, cunning, sharp witted and canny. In short, the man is exercising the skills of entrepreneur.
In my work as Vision for Mission Advocate I’ve seen some good examples of relationship-building enterprise that fulfill what I think Jesus is on about here. Like Marty Richards, a guy in Brisbane who has developed EPM - Ethical Pest Management, building an income-generating business that is good news for Ali, an Afghan refugee who has come onto the staff. Marty’s currently developing a coffee roastery and cart business that will provide an income for other refugees who are struggling to make a new start in Brisbane. Coffee addicts from Brisbane are being asked to pay good money for a fair trade product that directly supports the reshaping of Brisbane’s economy around fairness for refugees. What he needs now is a group of investors who will take the risk with him, learning to use their money for the good of the community of forgotten people.
I also think of Sister Helen Prejean, the Catholic nun behind the story, Dead Man Walking. Helen, in her interview with Andrew Denton on Monday night, (Enough Rope, ABC), talked about the audacity of forgiving prisoners who had been condemned to death for the horrific crimes. Understandably, some of the families of the victims felt that the prisoners on death row did not deserve to have a confessor or spiritual support person. But Helen described justice as being about restoration rather than retribution. The capacity to address the pain and suffering experienced by victims and their families was essential for bringing humanity back into the dehumanizing prison system that makes people invisible. Offering forgiveness on God’s behalf, and on behalf of families who were not necessarily in a place to do so, was bringing a sense of restorative justice into the system of retribution symbolised by capital punishment.
Last week I watched Debbie Morris, the author of Forgiving the Dead Man Walking, speak on a video called Life Stories. Rob Harley from New Zealand interviewed Debbie, sharing with us her story of being one of the victims behind the story of the Dead Man Walking book and movie. Debbie’s capacity to forgive required not just a sense of good will but also clear thinking and a plan that would take her beyond her own needs for recovery. Her publication of the book, and the seminars that she runs, have become a way for her to build restorative justice that goes way beyond the original injustice.
So what will we do with this parable?
Personally, I’m committed to taking seriously Jesus’ direct teaching on faithfulness and honesty with small things and big things. I note however that Jesus is challenging us to go beyond reliability and integrity. He’s challenging us to consider ways in which our stewardship of money and property (for a limited only) can be used to build relationships. Yes, we live in a society that is focused on a user-pays system. We’re used to paying interest on our mortgages, and getting interest on our investments. But Jesus challenges us to develop social enterprises that subvert those assumptions. As we keep our eyes open for the normally invisible people in our networks, let’s pool our learning to carry out our cunning plans.
The apostles came back and told Jesus everything they had done. He then took them with him to the village of Bethsaida, where they could be alone. But a lot of people found out about this and followed him. Jesus welcomed them. He spoke to them about God’s kingdom and healed everyone who was sick.
Late in the afternoon the twelve apostles came to Jesus and said, “Send the crowd to the villages and farms around here. They need to find a place to stay and something to eat. There is nothing in this place. It is like a desert!” Jesus answered, “You give them something to eat.”
But they replied, “We have only five small loaves of bread and two fish. If we are going to feed all these people, we will have to go and buy food.” There were about five thousand men in the crowd. Jesus said to his disciples, “Have the people sit in groups of fifty.” They did this, and all the people sat down. Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish. He looked up toward heaven and blessed the food. Then he broke the bread and fish and handed them to his disciples to give to the people. Everyone ate all they wanted. What was left over filled twelve baskets.
I was organising a young adults conference a few years ago - not 5000 people but more like 200 people. We sat down in small groups around tables to share in a Pacific Island style communion service. When I asked one of my colleagues if he’d like to help celebrate communion with me, he replied, “I need to be a consumer tonight, Duncan.” He’d been pouring himself out as a leader and felt he needed to sit with a group rather than be ‘up front’. That got me thinking.
I’m grappling like many others, with the effects of consumerism on everyday life as well as the culture of the church. In the 1980s we learnt to focus on the cultural preferences of emerging generations, the Baby Boomers and their predecessors, providing options and programs and recognisable links with entertainment culture. At the time we were vaguely aware of the dangers of pandering to consumerism. It certainly became more acute when people expressed their disappointment when their favourite worship or sermon menu wasn’t served up.
When I communicate with workshops and conferences I make an effort to find visual hooks (metaphorically speaking) that help people stay connected. That’s where my interest in television and print advertising came from. But at the same time I’m trying to unlearn the art of dazzle by screen and up-front leadership (not needed in lounge rooms), aiming for a lifestyle that is not driven by branding, impressing or acquiring consumerism.
Here in this narrative I find a reminder about being a different kind of consumer - a consumer who shares resources in community. This is not about consumer preferences. It’s about making do with what we have and learning to make it go further. Resources that might normally be used only in a nuclear family setting now used to go beyond that. That might have some connection to the question I had when putting on dinner for tonight. I found the value pack of chicken was enough to feed 8 or 9 people, not just the five people expected home tonight.
This Sunday coming is celebrated as Corpus Christi in some parts of the church. There’s a connection with Jesus’ body experienced in the eucharist. But there’s also a connection with becoming Jesus’ body as we share with one another. And, back to the experience of my colleague, there’s the connection with the blessing of receiving from others the blessing of God. Often, since that time, I’ve gone and joined the queue for communion after blessing the elements and giving them to the servers.
12 I have much more to say to you, but right now it would be more than you could understand. 13 The Spirit shows what is true and will come and guide you into the full truth. The Spirit doesn’t speak on his own. He will tell you only what he has heard from me, and he will let you know what is going to happen. 14 The Spirit will bring glory to me by taking my message and telling it to you. 15 Everything that the Father has is mine. That is why I have said that the Spirit takes my message and tells it to you.
It’s Trinity Sunday this weekend - the Sunday after Pentecost is celebrated. I’ve been asked to preach at my local church, tying in my work on the missional church. I’ll be preaching from John 16:12-15 in which Jesus talks about being sent by the Father, and sending us the Holy Spirit. The Father sends the Son. The Father and the Son send the Spirit. The Father, Son and Spirit sends us into the world. So how do we send?
I thought this might be an opportunity to expand on the theme of ‘Missio Dei’ - the missional nature of the Triune God.
“Missio Dei” is Latin for the mission of God. Over the last sixty years there’s been a lot of discussion among missionaries and church leaders about mission belonging to God, not just the church. God is actively involved in the world - a missionary God.
Jügen Moltmann, a German theologian, wrote in his 1977 book, “The Church in the Power of the Spirit”, “It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church”.
So how does all this affect anyone? Or is it just some theology for professional theologians to enjoy?
Getting our focus on the mission of God helps us rethink what mission is about. God’s mission in the world is a lot more than the 33 years of Jesus’ life. It’s certainly involves a lot more than the last moments of his life, death and resurrection. If we take seriously God’s involvement with the whole of creation we’ll be looking to take part in that. If we believe that God is still active in the world today through the Holy Spirit, beyond the church, we’ll be looking for signs of that and joining in. Is God involved in the passionate movement around the world to address global climate change?
Entering into the mission of God helps us realise the importance of relationship building. Jesus in the Gospels talks about being sent and sending in the context of relationships of confidence, trust and transparency. Mission for Jesus was not just about projects that needed to be completed. It was about who he had come from, who he was going to. I work with a team of mission planners who ask the ‘who questions’. Our first two questions, before looking at strategies, are “Who Will Go?” and “To Whom Will We Go?” Maybe we also need to encourage the question, “Who sends us?”
Missional communities need missional leadership provided by people who can commission and resource community members. In my work for Vision for Mission, in the Uniting Church in Australia, I’ve become involved with ‘U-Turn’, a resourcing movement designed to kick-start small missional groups. We’re encouraging people to start small groups that involve at least three people from outside, meeting at least eight times a year. Vision for Mission is providing $100 per group that starts in Queensland. We’re putting the funding directly into the accounts of local congregations so that they can be part of the commissioning. It’s a risk I know. Some Church councils may not get the point of some of the groups and slow up the process. But the process of sending, commissioning, is transformative in itself. It means that local groups of people are reflect the missional nature of God, sending and being sent.
Here are the first two questions put together for our missional planning process:
Who Will Go?
Who are we? What is our capacity to engage the community around us? Where are our energy levels? How motivated are we to engage in mission? What are the physical, human, spiritual, property and financial resources we have at our disposal? Identify local champions who will drive the mission process.
To Whom Will We Go?
Look locally for specific people groups and subcultures. Know and understand your target community in terms of demographic, and community needs and resources. Who are the gatekeepers and stakeholders in this community? What social/justice/spiritual needs and opportunities are there? What will frustrate or prevent us reaching our target group? How will our community change over the next 2-5-10 years? What is our purpose in going?
Every society has its purity laws. Germany has hundreds of years of purity laws in relation to the production and promotion of beers. The “Reinheitsgebot” law was introduced in Bavaria in the 16th century BCE to restrict the ingredients to water, barley and hops, thus preventing brewers from using the wheat and rye needed for production of bread. With Pasteur’s research into bacteria in the 19th century it was realised that yeast was also an ingredient. The “Reinheitsgebot” law was enforced throughout Germany with unification laws in 1871, leading to the disappearance of local brewing traditions using spices, cherries and other distinctive flavours.
Most purity laws are not written down like the Reinheitsgebot. I think about the purity laws that come into play when I do the laundry each week. I keep the colours and whites in different loads. Underwear and socks, for some reason, don’t get put next to the tea towels and handkerchiefs on the clothes line! There’s nothing written down anywhere that I’ve seen and the fact that I’ve noticed this is probably due to my time on Maori marae where these kinds of customs are spoken about openly with reference to the tapu (holy or sacred) nature of the head.
Peter had no shortage of written laws to tell him what was pure and what wasn’t. Leviticus is stacked with instructions on ways of avoiding mixing and matching. And he knew that Gentiles who broke those laws did not go together with Jews who kept the laws. And yet here’s an experience that challenges Peter’s assumptions about who’s in and who’s out. He had a blind spot. He needed a visual metaphor to help him prepare for the inevitable experience of meeting people who didn’t fit his neat diagrams of in and out, clean and impure.
Peter Reports to the Church in Jerusalem
(1) The apostles and the followers in Judea heard that Gentiles had accepted God’s message. (2) So when Peter came to Jerusalem, some of the Jewish followers started arguing with him. They wanted Gentile followers to be circumcised, and (3) they said, “You stayed in the homes of Gentiles, and you even ate with them!”
(4) Then Peter told them exactly what had happened:
(5) I was in the town of Joppa and was praying when I fell sound asleep and had a vision. I saw heaven open, and something like a huge sheet held by its four corners came down to me. (6) When I looked in it, I saw animals, wild beasts, snakes, and birds. (7) I heard a voice saying to me, “Peter, get up! Kill these and eat them.”
(8) But I said, “Lord, I can’t do that! I’ve never taken a bite of anything that is unclean and not fit to eat.” (9) The voice from heaven spoke to me again, “When God says that something can be used for food, don’t say it isn’t fit to eat.” (10) This happened three times before it was all taken back into heaven.
(11) Suddenly three men from Caesarea stood in front of the house where I was staying. (12) The Holy Spirit told me to go with them and not to worry. Then six of the Lord’s followers went with me to the home of a man (13) who told us that an angel had appeared to him. The angel had ordered him to send to Joppa for someone named Simon Peter. (14) Then Peter would tell him how he and everyone in his house could be saved.
(15) After I started speaking, the Holy Spirit was given to them, just as the Spirit had been given to us at the beginning. (16) I remembered that the Lord had said, “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” (17) God gave those Gentiles the same gift that he gave us when we put our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So how could I have gone against God?
(18) When they heard Peter say this, they stopped arguing and started praising God. They said, “God has now let Gentiles turn to him, and he has given life to them!”
Acts 11: 1-18 (Contemporary English Version)
Like Peter, I’m a recovering purist. I’ve certainly had a few blind spots over time. I remember talking with a fellow student at school about how you’d know if a girl was a Christian or not. He suggested that if she smoked cigarettes that would reduce the odds. I was inclined to agree with him. A Christian teacher overheard the conversation and challenged our blind spot. It took a long time for me to work through that. I was helped to deal with that by a Dutch ministry colleague who pointed out that the Christian taboo against smoking was culturally conditioned. In the Netherlands, he explained, this would be a nonsense. Likewise the taboos against drinking beer wine and spirits.
The house church I’m connected to is starting a series tonight on ‘Generous Orthodoxy’, the book written by Brian McLaren. Brian challenges the polarization found in the church in which people find it hard to recognize God’s work in those with differing practices and beliefs. Maybe we’ll be confronted with a few visions like that experienced by Peter, challenging us to connect with people we’ve thought to be off-limits.
In the inspiring movie Molokai about the true story of Father Damian, a missionary priest to a Leper Colony of Hawaii, there is a powerful scene (actually there are heaps - this is just one of them), where Father Damian goes into a liquor house to bring back a young girl who has been helping him. As Father Damian berates the crowd for turning to despair and alcohol the crowd jeers and brings forth one of the most horribly disfigured lepers (the actor in this scene is a real leper who lives in the modern leper colony at Molokai) hoping that Father Damian will be repulsed. Instead Father Damian lets the leper kiss him and then cradles him in his arms while speaking words of love, an act which brings an awed silence to the room. This scene (in fact the whole movie) to me is a lived out example of the words
Your Kingdom come
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
For in the story of Molokai we have the story of a man, Father Damian, who has found life through the gift of Jesus. In response, Father Damian seeks to live out the truth of his new life - that he belongs to heaven not earth. So where ever he goes, he tries to live, struggle and pray in a way which seeks to bring the reality of heaven to the earth which he walks. So in this scene, we have Father Damian confronted by a hideously disfigured leper, and Father Damian responds not in the way of the world with horror and pity, but as a citizen of heaven. He does not see a leper but a child of God who has been alienated and isolated from love and compassion, and in heaven, there is no place for alienation - only love. So Father Damian lives out the Kingdom of his God and reaches out to hug and to love - to cross over the bridge of alienation to make real the love of God to one of God’s children.
Your Kingdom come
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
We pray these lines every week, but do we know what we are committing ourselves to? Do we recognise the foolishness of what we pray? To pray these lines is to say
“I am committing my life to a struggle with this world and its powers where I refuse to accept the world as it is now. I will not rest until this world and my life is in obedience to God’s will”
This of course will never happen in our life, or indeed in any time until God renews the whole of creation through the coming again of Jesus. So why bother? Why would we commit ourselves to something that we know cannot happen? Why not compromise?
Compromise. This is in fact what Western Christianity has done. We have said that we have no faith in what Jesus taught us to pray, so we settle for being comfortable with the world (what can we do anyway?) and put our attention into adding a few people here and there to our local churches.
And why would we do it when we know that we won’t fix the world? Why? Because of love. Because in Jesus God first loved us. Because to love Jesus is to necessarily love our neighbour. We don’t do this because it may or may not work in our lifetime. We don’t do it because it is or isn’t practical. We do it because God loves us, and through his love in our lives how can we not love those around us, those who share this world with us?
Your Kingdom come
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Your Kingdom come. There have been times in my life when I have caught a glimpse, tasted - just for a moment- that Kingdom that Jesus spoke of. It has been in those times when my eyes have been opened, my heart stretched when I have seen or experienced some amazing act of God’s kindness and grace to me or someone else. Those times when I have read the words of Jesus and known in my heart that HE is my home, my beginning and my end, when the words that I read become more than words but a living picture of reality - not the reality I know - but the TRUE reality - that is of heaven - of God’s Kingdom, here but masked and hidden, breaking out in patches of mystery in my world. It is this Kingdom that has come and claimed my life in Jesus. For he is the reality of God’s Kingdom. Jesus is the one who has lived out those words. In Jesus God’s will was done on earth as in heaven for the first (and only) time in history. When we see Jesus, we see God’s Kingdom in action.
Your Kingdom come
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
So to pray these words is to pray for that reality that Jesus proclaimed to be reality now - the reality where there is Good News for the poor, release for captives, sight for blind, freedom for the oppressed, healing for the sick, forgiveness of sins, salvation for the lost, healing for the hurt and sick. It is to pray for that place that we know as heaven, to become reality now. No more pain or sorrow.
For this indeed is God’s will.
And it is God’s will for earth as well as heaven.
This is the Good News that Jesus proclaimed. God does not just care about our soul - but our bodies and lives as well. God wants to redeem ALL of us, ALL of this world. This means that ALL violence, poverty, abuse, environmental degradation, injustice, lies, deception, greed, SIN is against God’s will. This means that God will call to account ALL Governments, corporations, institutions, churches as well as individual people on whether they acted in accordance or opposition to God’s will. There is no out clause. No place where Governments, institutions, corporations, churches are exempted from this because ‘it is not practical’.
It is not practical. How many times has this been used to nullify the will of God?
Honesty? Not practical in politics.
Care of the poor? Not practical for economics.
Justice? Not practical for corporations.
Caring for the environment? Not practical for our country.
Living out God’s will? Not practical for our churches.
Well, whether we like it or not, whether it is supposedly ‘practical’ or not, Jesus has taught us this prayer, and to pray it, is to be called to live it.
So to pray it is a call to Live, Struggle, Pray. LIVE
First and foremost we are to live according to the truth of who we really are. That is that it is no longer us that live, but Christ that lives in us. We are to live not as citizens of this world, but as citizens of heaven, who through our very lives show what God’s will is.
But this is not primarily a call about being individuals - it is a call for us to live as community - as church in a way that witnesses to God’s Kingdom. To be a people who when we meet forgive sins, tell the truth, look after the sick, care for the poor, break down racial barriers, love each other and BE through the Spirit what God has called us to be.
STRUGGLE
And as God’s people we are called to struggle with this world we live in, with its ‘powers and authorities’ (Governments, corporations, religious institutions etc…). We are called to struggle with them, to remind them who is their God whether they acknowledge it or not, and to call them to be not what is ‘practical’ according to this world, but to be what God wills them to be for the sake of God’s world. We are called to enter into a holy struggle of love for this world and all its people, for God loved this world that he gave his only son Jesus that the world might know him and believe in him and find life.
PRAY
Lastly we are called to enter into prayer for this world. To pray the Lord’s Prayer as our life and our words. To lift up our world and our lives to the One to whom we belong, knowing that this is God’s Kingdom, God’s will, and that this is ultimately God’s work, we are just God’s children who want to please our Father by being a part of what he is already doing through his Spirit.
Amen.
Q’s for reflection
1. When have been times that you have glimpsed the Kingdom of God?
2. Why do Christians so often let Governments, corporations etc.. of being obedient to Jesus’ teachings by saying ‘It is not practical’?
3. What is a situation in your own life where you could live out God’s will and so demonstrate God’s love to others?
4. What is an issue in this world that you can remind the relevant Governments, corporations etc.. of who is their God and how they should act?
An excerpt from the Marilyn Manson fansite webpage …
Join the Marilyn Manson Family
And become a most unholy missionary for AntiChrist Superstar
“The righteous father wears the yellowest grin.”
Lo, as you walk through the valley of the shadow cast by a god who promises mercy and forgiveness but delivers none, will you fear or be feared? Marilyn Manson’s Church of AntiChrist Superstar would like to make that decision an easy one for you to make… Become a missionary for AntiChrist Superstar: Join the Marilyn Manson Family and ensure the salvation of your immortal soul. You will belong to an elite group of individuals who are strong and prepared enough to withstand and retaliate against the terrible tortures which will befall all who have not accepted AntiChrist Superstar into their hearts and heads with complete and utter reverence. Believe in AntiChrist Superstar, Our Lord and Savior, and you shall be saved!Loose your ancestral stanchions. Children, you shall no longer bow your heads in shame and self-repression…. be FREE! You shall no longer falter under the weight of the pious and the guilt they would heap upon you for living your life as you see fit. You shall no longer feel alone and unwanted: you are WANTED here…. you BELONG here…. WE are your Family now….
http://www.dewn.com/mm/member.htm
Does the quote above disgust you?
So it should, the preying on young people’s alienation to join a wierd cult is sickening - especially when it is done cynically just to boost cd sales to earn money for the above so-called ‘artist’.
However, disgusting as the above maybe, we can learn something from this.
You shall no longer feel alone and unwanted: you are WANTED here…. you BELONG here…. WE are your Family now….
The above quote from the website is meant to create a sub-culture of young people whose allegiance is NOT to their family, or peers, or country or economy, or culture - but to radically re-create these people with a new identity in a new culture - a new family (however sick that ‘family’ may be).
Because this example is so anti what we take to be acceptable and right, it actually serves to give us a window into what it would have meant for early Christians to pray these words:
OUR FATHER WHO IS IN HEAVEN, HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME;
For the first stanza of this the most well known prayer in the world is in fact a statement similar in intent (though obviously wholly different in content) to the intent of the Manson website - that is to create a people with a new identity that radically disconnects them with their old way of being and changes them into members of a NEW family with a entirely different way of life to what they are used to.
We are so used to Christianity being an accepted part of our western world that we take for granted that we can be loyal to both God and our culture, our country, our economics and our family. However this is a lie.
The early Christians knew that to pray this first stanza of the Lord’s prayer meant that their only obedience was to God, and that to the rest of the world they were ‘aliens and strangers’.
To pray this prayer was to radically re-create their identity in a new community - the community of Jesus.
Because of this - the early followers of Jesus were treated by their societies/families with reactions similar to what we have to the Manson website.
If we are to learn what it truly means to pray this Prayer that Jesus taught we must start with the understanding that what it calls us to is a fundamental break, a disconnection with this world and what it tells us we must be to be good citizens. We must learn that the first line calls into question our very allegiances which we are told must be foremost in our lives - our western civilization, our countries - even our very families.
With this opening line, Jesus was showing his disciples - you are part of a new family now - a radically different family to anything the world has seen before, and the rest of the prayer goes on to show just how this new family is to live and how it is different.
Let’s take a more detailed look at this first stanza
OUR - the very first word reminds of the fact that we are first and foremost people of a community - not individual believers. In our society we are so used to thinking of faith as a personal, private matter - but here there is no ‘My Father’ it is only ‘OUR Father’. To be a follower of Jesus is to necessarily belong to a new family - a new community. But who is the ‘OUR’ referring to? First and foremost it is Jesus. For Jesus is the one who prays and fulfills this prayer - when we pray OUR we are are referring to our and Jesus Father - Jesus father is our father, so we are brothers and sisters to Jesus. Secondly, we then become brothers and sisters to whoever else prays this prayer (it is estimated that 2 BILLION people worldwide prayed this prayer last Easter sunday!). So we pray OUR we cannot help but be reminded that we are first and foremost not individual believers, but brothers and sisters of Jesus who are joined to other brothers and sisters of Jesus
FATHER - It was common in Jewish prayers for God to be reffered to formally as Father in Hebrew, but standing behind this FATHER is not the formal Hebrew, but the Aramiac term ‘abba‘ - ‘daddy!’ So with this second word we are not being invited into a formal structured family arangement, but into an intimate relationship. The person we are addressing in this prayer is like a daddy to us. With this comes the sense of a relationship of itimacy and childhood innocence - Jesus tells us that we must become like children to enter the kIngdom and this can be seen to here have connotations of the innocent, all-trusting relationship that should exist (but tragically so often doesn’t) between a dad and a child. The child depends completely and fully on the dad, the child seeks to make the dad happy, the child knows that they are loved unconditionally (though they have no idea what the word means!). To address God as our daddy is to be invited into a intimate and personal relationship.
NB. to refer to God as FATHER is in no way to claim that God has a male Gender - God’s FATHERHOOD is not like human fatherhood and encompasses the qualities of human motherhood (nurturing, forming, truth telling etc …)
WHO IS IN HEAVEN - but here we are reminded that the person that we are invited into this intimate relationship with is no ordinary person. This FATHER resides in heaven - is wholly different to who we are. This FATHER who we are invited into relationship with is none other than the LORD of history and creation. This reminds us that the new family that we belong to is no ordinary family. It is not a family that belongs to this world - rather it is a family whose head lives in heaven. It is a family whose only true home is heaven - the Kingdom of our God. To belong to this family is to belong to a family whose strength cuts through every other allegiance. This family is constituted in heaven, and nothing in this world can claim to have a stronger or higher hold on us. To claim allegiance to the family whose Father is in heaven is to claim a bond that nothing else can break - not angels, powers, principlaities or even death.
HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME - and this is not a relationship to be entered into lightly. Even though it is a relationship of intimacy, it must also be a relationship of awe - to know God as HOLY - that is different/separate to us. The only true consitution of this relationship can be in our worship and adoration of our FATHER as we declare his hallowedness (holiness). To then worship our Father as holy is to recognise that we too must holy, and for us to be holy means that we must be obedient to the calling and command of our Father (and his command … ‘this is my son [JESUS] - LISTEN to him!’).
You shall no longer feel alone and unwanted: you are WANTED here…. you BELONG here…. WE are your Family now….
To pray this first stanza then is to recognise WHO is our true family, and WHO we truly belong to and WHERE we truly belong.
To pray OUR FATHER, WHO IS IN HEAVEN - HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME
is to say I belong to a NEW family - my TRUE father lives in heaven and I am his child. He is holy and I must be like him. This is my true - my only allegiance. I belong not to this world, to its governments, idols and powers - I belong only to my daddy in heaven and first and foremost I will seek to make him happy.
AMEN
Q’s for reflection
How much of our faith reflects MY rather than OUR FATHER?
What can we do to be a people who are a people of OUR FATHER rather than MY FATHER?
What is the balance between awe and intimacy with OUR FATHER - how do we maintain both aspects?
How can we be a people who are HOLY that is set-apart yet at the same time live the radical genrosity and inclusive love of Jesus for the outcasts/the lost?
In what ways does the world seek to undermine our true and only allegiance to OUR FATHER? How can we recognise and fight against these attempts to compromise us?
April 1st - April Fool’s Day - a fitting day to be telling the story of Palm Sunday - of Jesus entry into Jerusalem.
Here is a King - who rides on a borrowed donkey, cheered into the power centre of Israel and Judaism but a motley collection of fisherman, women, children, tax collectors, publicans, prostitutes, ex-lepers, ex-demoniacs, samaritans and cripples. What a joke - what a fool!
Here is a King of Fools - but one who is not afraid to upset people. Here is a King of Fools who comes into Jerusalem on a donkey - from the Mount of Olives the place where the Messiah was supposed to come from (Zech 14:4) and riding a donkey - as the Messiah would do (Zech 9:9-10), whose disciples acclaim him with the words of a Psalm (Ps 118:26) adding the word ‘King!’ instead if ‘he’. Here is a King whose procession also mocks those of the conquerors and Ceasers
“Then all the Jews together greeted Alexander with one voice and surrounded him… [then] he gave his hand to the high priest and, with the Jews running beside him, entered the city. Then he went up to the temple where he sacrificed to God under the direction of the high priest” (Josephus)
Here is a King of Fools who has just told a parable about a greedy blood thirsty King who went away - telling the story of Herod’s rise to power in response to those who were anticipating the immediate coming of the Kingdom of God.
Here is a King of Fools who through the telling of the parable, his staged entrance into Jerusalem taking on attributes of both the Messiah and a conquering Ceaser mocks the rich and powerful of his day - no wonder the Pharisees take offence!
But here is a King whose coming would be acclaimed by the very stones if people did not shout it.
Here is a King who turned out to be the cornerstone that the builders rejected (Ps 118:22)
Here is a King who in his mockery of the powerful showed who he was King for - not for them!
Here was a King who rejoiced in being the King of Fools - the King of the poor, the helpless, the outcast, those who no-one else would be King for.
Here was a King who came to seek out and to save the lost.
Here is a King for those who gladly call themselves fools for his sake and his kingdom’s.
There once was a Christian Businessman, wealthy, well liked, respected and full of integrity.
One day he heard that Bishop Tutu was coming to town. As he had influence he was able to organise a meeting with the Bishop.
‘Bishop’, he said, ‘I seek to be a good Christian and dedicate my life to the LORD, but I find that my Spirit is at unease, What do you think I need to do’.
The Bishop looked at him, liked him and said ‘there i sone more thing you need to do, sell your business and come with me to Africa and use your money in service of the poor’.
The businessman thought long and hard about this, but refused for he had worked hard to build his business.
And that day there was sorrow in heaven.
Elsewhere Bono was stopping off on the Gold Coast. There there was a man who owned a poker machine business and was ruputed to have links to the underworld. When he heard Bono was in town he wanted to see him for had heard about his work for the poor of the world. However when he was at the airport, the body guards kept him at a distance, so he jumped up and down , ran around in circles and tried to catch Bono’s attention by yelling ‘Love your work!’. When Bono saw him, he went over to him and said ‘mate, tonight I am coming to your place - so get all your friends and let’s have a party!’
At the party the man stood up and said ‘Tonight I will give half of everything I own to the poor, and if I have cheated people I will pay them back 4 times’.
And there was rejoicing in heaven, for Jesus came to seek out and save the lost.
Based on Luke 18:18-25 (Rich Ruler) & Luke 19:1-10 (Zacchaeus)
The story of Zacchaeus is told to us in Sunday school as a nice story about a man who no-one liked but Jesus found.
How is it that we continue to strip the Gospel of Jesus of any of its substance and meaning, and domesticate it so that no-one can take offense at it?
This story of Zacchaeus which follows close on the heals of the Rich Ruler is no nice story, but one that would have rocked the worldview of any pious Jew, and I would say rocks the world of us western Christians. These two stories are meant to be read together, and together they give us a view of what Luke saw that following Jesus really meant - particularly for the wealthy.
We know that Luke was particularly interested in what the Gospel of Jesus had to say about wealth, for there are more stories and teaching on wealth, money, mammon than in any other Gospel. Luke gives us the much forgotten about blessings and woes - blessed are the poor, woe to you rich! How we prefer Matthew’s version!
These two stories leave us in no doubt that Luke considered that what we do with our money is linked to our salvation!
I can hear now all the howls of protest - salvation is about faith not works. True but people who say this often emasculate what faith is and reduce it down to some nice vague feeling of trust in Jesus. Faith is trust, is belief - but to be real trust & belief must come with obedience. How can we say we trust and believe Jesus and then refuse to obey him?
These stories of two very different rich men show what Luke saw Jesus was teaching about discipleship and wealth.
First, just to highlight how scandalous these stories really are, let us look a brief comparison between them.
Ruler
Zacchaeus
Social elite
oucast
wealth is ok
wealth is ill-gotten
comes to Jesus
is unable to come to Jesus
comes seeking spiritual knowledge
just wants to see Jesus
comes respectably
makes a fool of himself
keeps commandments
breaks commandments
Questions Jesus
Jesus invites himself to dinner
Asked to give up money
Voluntarily gives up money
Refuses to follow Jesus
Finds salvation
Goes away sad
Rejoices
The Ruler would have been considered by Jewish society the model Jew - kept commandments, was a good person and his wealth showed that God had bestowed favour upon him.
While Zacchaeus is a comical character - short, a hated tax collector, someone not afraid to run and climb a tree (very undignified for Jewish man - only children run and climb trees). Zacchaeus was not only hated, but out of the bounds of good religious society. In those days, the way taxing worked is that Rome decided how much it wanted from a region (independent of how much the region actually made), and sold that tax contract to the chief tax collector. So the tax collector paid in advance the amount of tax due from a region. He would then sub-contract out amounts to other tax collectors. Obviously the aim of the tax collectors was to make a profit, so they would collect more than the amount required by Rome (this was legal and expected). What made tax collectors particularly hated, was not so much that they collected tax - but that they did it for the Romans, the hated invaders. This made them the worst sort of collaborators. Not only did thet collaborate with Rome, but they then made a profit out of taxes (of course many tax collectors abused the system and the expense of the Jews).
In both cases, Luke presents their response to Jesus - one refues Jesus call, the other doesn’t even need Jesus to tell him what to do! The strength of the difference between them is highlighted by Jesus pronouncement ‘TODAY, salvation has come to this house. Nowhere else in the Gospel (or any of the other Gospels) is this repeated where Jesus that salvation has come HERE and NOW to a person.
So what is the difference between them?
Ok first lets make sure we are clear what is NOT said. The Gospel story does NOT say
‘Zacchaeus trusted Jesus in his heart’
‘ The Rich man didn’t trust Jesus in his heart’
or ‘Zacchaeus believed in Jesus’ etc … etc …
Now of course it looks obvious that Zacchaeus DID respond our of some sense of belief and trust to Jesus, while the rruler doesn’t. But the point is that according to the story THE ONLY WAY TO TELL THE STATE OF THEIR FAITH WAS BY WHAT THEY DID WITH THEIR MONEY!
Bear fruit worthy of repentance (John the Baptist) Lk 3:8
The issue here is that Luke understands that there can be no repentance without the fruit of that repentance - that is a change in life
For wealthy people, Luke shows us that one of the singularly most important criteria is what we do with our wealth - NOT our attitude to it. Will our wealth be put in the service of God’s kingdom (Good News to the poor)? or will it remain OUR wealth and God just gets his bit - usually 10%.
There is no doubt that Luke understood, that to be a disciople of Jesus means putting EVERYTHING at Jesus dispoal. Including all our money. And that to follow the command of Jesus is to neccessarily put our wealth into service for the poor.
One last thing to finish.
If you are in a western country - then you are wealthy - no matter how much you have. You are richer than 90% of the world.
So the story of these two rich men is for us.
Which rich man will we be?
Who will put their wealth in service of the poor?
And how may will choose to ignore Jesus command to follow.
Duncan Macleod posts on life, faith and culture in Australia, drawing from his involvement in the creative industry, the Uniting Church, the blogosphere, generational research, the emerging church and life on the Gold Coast.
