Call to Worship for Pentecost

One:  God will not leave you alone, without comfort, without defence

All: Holy Spirit come in comfort and defence

 

One: God will not leave you alone, weak and wordless

All: Holy Spirit come in the power of love, open our mouths in confidence

 

One: God will not leave you alone, in the delusions of tribal superiority

All: Holy Spirit come in truth to reconcile us with one another and our enemies

 

One: Thanks be to God who gets under our skin and into our mind

All: In the liveliness of the creative Spirit of Jesus

One: Amen

 

Missionaries of the Name

John 17:6-19

This section is entitled “Jesus prays for his disciples” … It’s not as if John or the writer of John’s gospel was taking notes at the time… this is a kind of summary of John’s memory of the prayers of Jesus… and it’s like we have a window into it through the filter of the deep theological reflection of the writer of John’s gospel

I want to pick up on 3 key moments in this prayer… what I think are the 3 key elements to the prayer: (i) what Jesus has done for them and why therefore he prays for them in particular, namely (ii) for their protection (iii) for their unity

(i) The Name

We jump in at verse 6 where Jesus identifies the one’s he is praying for:

I have made your name known to those you gave me from the world

At first glance that appears to be an odd thing to say – partly because it appears to be trivial. “I told them your name”. We in the modern world say, so what? A rose by any other name smells just as sweet doesn’t it? How does a name matter? People often say that about religions – they all worship the same God, they just use different names. So what? Why don’t we just join together into a big melting pot and ignore the names. But to a Hebrew mind names are much more than that. “Name” is often a synonym for something like ‘identity’. So if we translate it “I have let them know your identity” it is beginning to get a little more interesting…there’s something much more profound at stake than Jesus just dropping another name into the mix.

You see not only is the concept of ‘name’ much broader than our modern concept, but the name of God in particular comes with a lot of baggage in Jesus’ world. It is surrounded by a kind of sacred fear – this is a part of cultural air they breathed in 2^nd temple Judaism of Jesus time. Let me give you a bit of background

Everything about the Judaism of Jesus day was shaped by the exile (it was the great crisis that formed them, it was like the holocaust for contemporary Jews) and there were various ways that prophets and leaders of Israel responded to that crisis. One way, and probably the dominant way, was to say that the exile was God’s punishment for Israel’s sins and their challenge now was to rebuild the temple better than before, do their worship better than before, keep their purity codes more strictly than before… and part of this was the kind of fear associated even with uttering the name of God. The holy letters YHWH that we pronounce as Yahweh, (anglicised as Jehovah) were regarded as unutterable. So often rather than uttering the name, Jews often said the Hebrew words like adonai, or simply ‘the name’ (ha-shem), blessed be ha-shem, ha-shem be with you. And this is where we begin to see that Jesus messed with the name. Where Jews might describe God with lofty titles like Father of the Universe. No one addressed God directly as Abba (father or daddy) – a term of affection and closeness and respect all wrapped up in one. Jesus’ Abba was not a God of vengeance but a provider of good things, even for God’s enemies. In messing with the name Jesus was messing with the identity of God, and when you mess with the identity of God you mess with the way people live in the world.

To put it another way when you introduce a God who gives (to good and evil alike regardless) into a system of exchange, a fear-based system of exchange in which the old god/s have all the power, nothing can ever be the same again.

I have made your name known to those you gave me from the world.

(ii) Protection

These are now the bearers of Jesus’ revolution… and so Jesus prays for their protection. That’s the second key point of his prayer v11ff

Holy Father protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one as, we are one… I have given them your word and the world has hated them, because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from evil … sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.

Jesus (like all of us) has been given just one life, and one group of friends. It is to them that he has shown the identity of God (both in his language and teaching) and in his life of obedience. So its for them that he prays… not because he doesn’t care about the world… look at the Lord’s prayer, he prays for the world… but here he prays for his friends who are the bearers of ‘the name’ and of Jesus’ revolution. And because it’s revolutionary they will upset the rest of the world even though they act for the world. They will be hated as Jesus was hated… But what kind of protection does Jesus pray for them? This is important. Does he pray that they will not suffer, get sick with cancer or heart problems or die? Does he pray that they will not run out of money or their buildings will not fall down? Not at all.

Does he pray that they will be isolated in little enclaves away from the evil world. No, quite the opposite, he specifically prays that they are not taken out of the world.

His prayer is quite specific that they be protected, not from suffering but from evil… and that by means of sanctification. He even says protect them ‘in your name that you have given me’. In other words what will protect them is the very name they bear witness to. The threat that Jesus sees coming from a world that doesn’t know the identity of God and operates out of other names, the threat is not so much an external or physical threat, but a threat to the very character of their witness. The threat is to the integrity of their witness.

So when we wonder whether your own individual life is at threat…, or whether our parish life is going down the gurgler, Jesus is praying for our protection. Not that we won’t die or suffer, but that we will do so with integrity, in the name, that in all of this we will maintain the integrity of the name. Father protect the integrity of their witness to your name…. “so that they may be one”.

(iii) Unity

That’s the third thing that looms large in Jesus prayer – unity. And it’s not an added extra. It’s not like Jesus prays that the integrity of their witness is protected and as a bonus or alongside that, that they may be one. As if, for Christianity, truth and unity could be separated. If anything their unity is part of the purpose of it all. And the reason is simple. The name of God is a unifying name. Jesus’ Abba is one who reconciles enemies. Jesus says “that they may all be one as you Father are in me and I am in you”. In other words God is in God’s very nature a unity of relationship. If the church is not united then its witness lacks integrity. Truth is not protected where unity is lost.

So here’s a question for you (when you look at the church down the ages, when you look at our church): Did Jesus prayer fail? Was he not in tune with the Spirit of God? Was it not answered? Some would say that the disunity of the church is just apparent, that somewhere in heaven or in the eternal world of forms there exists an invisible eternal united church. That might be one answer, but I think it merely avoids the question.

Alternatively, what if the church is renewed everywhere a community learns to forgive one another?… What if the church and its unity is a process of reconciliation that happens in time? What if the prayer of Jesus is constantly being answered and constantly being undone as well?

But let’s come back to us here. What does unity actually mean in practice? Do we have unity in our parish?

I think if we’re honest, we know we have some grief, possibly some anger, simmering away we have a certain amount disagreement (I shouldn’t overstate that).

Some say Coastal Unity was always a mistake and we were pushed into it. Others say it is great and the only way to be united is to all be together on Sunday. Some are just sad that they will be losing their church in the St Clair area. Some say, the quicker the better, cause we desperately need to save money. Some say Caversham people are different. Some at Caversham say the same about St Clair… and both about Green Island etc. Some don’t say it, they just think it.

Do we have unity in our parish? Perhaps more importantly. Does unity mean a lack of conflict? I suspect anyone who’s lived in a family knows that unity isn’t about lack of conflict but how you deal with it. It all comes back to what I mentioned before… a process of reconciliation in time. How we deal with our grief and our anger and our disagreements. It’s easy to be united against certain people…that’s how the world works…But Jesus prays that we are protected from that world and are made into a people united in love for others, especially for the ones with whom we disagree. And in doing so, we don’t just become a holy huddle… in the very act of reconciliation we bear witness to the name.

I never really liked the name Coastal Unity… it reminded me of an insurance company when I first heard it. But the fact is we’ve enshrined this business of unity in our name. It’s not a simple fact, it’s a process. It’s for the sake of the world. Jesus prays for our unity.

The Eunuch and the Two Voices (sermon)

Acts 8:26-40

The distance from Ethiopia to Jerusalem was over two and a half thousand kilometres. Something like travelling from Dunedin to Auckland and back. And that’s just getting to Jerusalem! … by chariot! So the Eunuch in our story had a lot of time to read the prophet Isaiah, not to mention the Torah (Jewish Law).

Taking this story at face value, the Eunuch would have found some material in the prophet Isaiah which would interest him personally. For instance in Isaiah 56:3-5 he would have read this:

Do not let the foreigner joined to the LORD say, ‘The LORD will surely separate me from his people’; and do not let the eunuch say, ‘I am just a dry tree.’ For thus says the LORD: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.

That phrase ‘cut off’ was probably quite a powerful image for a Eunuch! Do you hear the connection with the passage he was actually reading – about a mysterious figure who Isaiah presents as God’s way of redeeming his people (God’s suffering servant)? Let me read it again:

“By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future generation? For he was cut off from the land of the living”

A eunuch, without the possibility of offspring, marginalized for his abnormal sexuality, knows (on many levels) the experience of being cut off.

The fact that he had travelled 2500 kms by chariot to worship God in Jerusalem suggests he knew not just the writing of the prophet Isaiah but also the Torah (Law) in Deuteronomy 23:1, where he could hardly have failed to notice this passage

“No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the LORD.”

So there’s a little bit of tension between Deuteronomy and Isaiah. The Old Testament is not simple. It’s a self-critical tradition. There’s an argument going on, for example between the prophets and parts of the Torah

Jesus is the same… he’s part of the argument going on over many generations. He reads and uses the Old Testament, but he uses it critically. You have heard it said ‘an eye for an eye’… but I say to you? Jesus is not a fundamentalist. The interesting question which I want to look at in a minute is HOW did he read the OT critically?

I want to do a bit of a side trip for a moment to try and give us some perspective on this issue. It’s not a new issue. You can see the NT writers grappling with it as they write. This was their bible…

How do you make sense of the Old Testament? Are there bits you take more seriously than others? Are there things you struggle with? …At a recent Café Service (when I asked this) a couple of things emerged… (i) firstly the mythological character of the early part of Genesis and the perceived clash with faith and evolution, and (ii) secondly the moral problem of the way in which God is portrayed as a violent warrior in parts (commanding genocide of men women and children).

Let me give you the two minute, brutally condensed version of how we have dealt with this issue, the history of Christian interpretation of the OT (condensed from Michael Hardin’s condensed version), then go on to suggest how the story of the Ethiopian Eunuch points us in the direction of a solution to the problem of the OT. Fasten your seatbelts!

If we go beyond the NT itself into the 2^nd century, the first person really take the issue on was a guy call Marcion. His solution was simple. Get rid of it. Chop the Bible down the middle. The NT was from God the OT wasn’t. The church rejected that solution (it didn’t fit with how Jesus or the NT treated the OT). As the second century wore on and Greek philosophy shaped the way people thought, they started to look below the surface for the hidden spiritual meanings and truths (allegory) that were the eternal word of God, that way they could disregard the awkward bits. Things were seen of symbolic importance rather than literal. We might call this the ‘slicing approach’ rather than the ‘dicing’ of Marcion. By the end of theRoman Empire and the time of Augustine the general idea was that the OT and the NT should be treated as a single integrate entity, with slicing for spiritual meaning as a key solution to problem bits. Slicing dominated but dicing wasn’t gone for good.

Jump over middle ages, jump over Luther and Calvin – to modern versions of slicers and dicers.

Modern dicing probably started with the Anabaptists (peace church sensitive to the contrast between Jesus and OT) said, like Marcion, we are followers of Jesus, it doesn’t matter if the OT says something different about God, because basically when God became incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth, he changed his mind. So in practice they were a bit like Marcion, they diced the bible down the middle. So we keep the OT but we ignore it in practice.

A modern version of this is very big in Americaat the moment. It’s called Dispensationalism. They dice the bible up into lots of little segments where God operates according to different systems – Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Church, Tribulation post rapture, and so on. So that’s the modern version of dicers

The modern version of slicers is probably evangelicalism. They look for spiritual truths that can be distinguished from merely cultural practices – you may have come across this with Paul telling women to wear head-coverings (cultural not spiritual).

I wonder which approach you relate best to. Do you just ignore the OT altogether? Do you dice the bible up? Or do you slice it into layers? Or perhaps you have no problem with the God who commands genocide?

Today I want to suggest that there is another way! What’s more (although I won’t argue it fully today) it’s the way Jesus read the OT and you can see it in today’s passage also.

You might recall that in the resurrection stories we read a few Sundays ago, the first thing Jesus does on the road to Emmaus, at the table with his two fellow travellers and in the upper room is to show them how to read the scriptures (OT) and each time the key is the same… he showed to them that “the Messiah must suffer”… Anyone know where in the OT he got that vision of God’s messiah and God’s future from? (Second Isaiah – suffering servant)

Let me throw a theory at you to take away and think about in relation to the OT… Jesus didn’t reject the OT, he took it very seriously, and so did the writers of the NT, but what he did and what they did, was pick up on one strand within it, making it the key to everything. That’s the first part of the theory. Second part is this: there are two voices that are heard in the OT – the voice of the winner/conquerer and the voice of the victim/loser.

In the ancient world, in all of mythology if you lose it is the will of the Gods – the perspective of the winner remains. In that respect its like history-writing. The gods of ancient myth are violent. The gods justify the violence of the winners. Religion is about doing a deal with the gods, sacrificing to appease their wrath…  Something completely new emerges for the first time in the Hebrew scriptures, not only does it become self-critical literature, but for the first time the voice of the victim is heard, there is a critique of violence. Remember Cain and Abel (the blood of Abel cries out from the ground – Cain guilty but protected)…. Joseph the innocent victim who forgives… the Psalms the lone voice (sometimes seeking vengeance sometimes not)… Job (a victim who stands up to his persecutors, in an argument about the nature of God). But ultimately, not only is the voice of the victim heard but in second Isaiah we see God’s identification with the victim profoundly captured in this figure of God’s coming redeemer, the servant who suffers at the hands of the people for their sake. This is where Jesus sees his calling. This is why Jesus refuses to be a warrior.

And the truth is there are other voices in the OT (Joshua, Judges, parts of the Torah, Kings Chronicles, Ezekiel etc) and in the midst of this, material about a pagan warrior God,  the voice of the victim begins to be heard, the non-violent God begins to be seen.

Which leads us back to today’s reading… just as the risen Jesus clearly looks to Isaiah for the roots of his ministry, so today, in this fascinating story of the Eunuch, of someone grappling with understanding the OT (while riding along in his chariot), it’s the suffering servant of Isaiah that provides the clue… and we read “and starting with this scripture he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus”.

Let’s put ourselves in the Eunuch’s shoes for a minute: Let’s imagine you are someone of abnormal sexual status in the community, a curiousity…You read the scriptures and in them you hear two voices… one tells you (Deuteronomy) you can have no part in the house of God… another tells you (Isaiah) that you could have a place of dignity among the people of God. The fundamentalist approach is no help to the Eunuch. The slicing and the dicing is no use to the Eunuch. But if Philip comes alongside his chariot and helps him see the voice of the victim from the message of Isaiah (rather than Deuteronomy) and in that whole strand I described, the voice of the God who identifies with history’s victims, then he will discover the voice of a non-violent God who becomes himself the forgiving victim in the person of Jesus. I want to suggest that that is what Philip does and that is why the Eunuch hears good news, stops his chariot and is baptised into a new way of life.

The Good Shepherd and His Enemies (sermon)

Psalm 23      John 10: 11-18          1 John 3: 18-24

I wrote this sermon on Anzac Day morning. It certainly helps to focus the mind on what it means for us today to follow the good shepherd.

 

Our readings are all about leadership in different ways… the beloved psalm of the shepherd, The Lord is my Shepherd… is about the leadership of God. God is likened to a shepherd and the psalmist is likened to a sheep in the flock.

 

In John’s gospel Jesus takes up the same theme and says “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” In other words for John’s gospel the leadership of God is understood to be played out in the life of Jesus, particularly in his death.

 

And then in the letter of 1 John the theme of leadership flips over and we see its outcome in what we might call “followership”. “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.”

 

You hear this business of ‘laying down one’s life’ and of ‘sacrifice’ at Anzac Day. So what I want to do today is ask ‘what does the leadership of God look like when Jesus takes up its mantel?’ and secondly when we go back to the Old Testament, to Psalm 23, what does that look like when seen through the eyes of Jesus.

 

So what does the leadership of God look like if it is demonstrated by Jesus?

I want to suggest that the answer to this question is quite straightforward. Following Jesus might not be straightforward, but the answer to this question is straightforward. Jesus leads by laying down his life, not just for his friends and disciples but also for his enemies, even for the ones who are crucifying him. While on the cross he repeats over and over (the Greek is in the continuous tense)… Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing. Father forgive them and so on. Jesus says in today’s reading I have other sheep, not disciples in my flock. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd (enemies and friends)

 

You might remember, a few Sundays ago at Easter we looked at how the resurrection assures us that God is like Jesus… we talked about how Jesus nearly got killed on his first sermon in Nazareth when he dared to suggest that God would not come in vengeance on Israel’s enemies, but had a place for those enemies. I mentioned that in the three places in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) that Jesus talks about God directly he talks of a God who gives unconditionally, rain on the just and the unjust (good and evil), who gives good gifts and finally Jesus declares. You have heard it said ‘an eye for an eye’, but I say to you love your enemies and do good to those who persecute you… Be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful.

That’s the Jesus revolution. That’s Jesus’ way of taking up the mantel of divine leadership. God is like Jesus…so God loves his enemies

It is quite clear that the flock for which Jesus gives his life includes his enemies. Jesus dies for his friends and his enemies.

 

Here’s a question for Anzac Day: When two countries go to war and both believe that God is with them… which side is believing in the God of Jesus Christ?

 

Let’s hold that question and think back to Psalm 23 but now with Jesus as the good shepherd. In particular there’s a line in it which mentions enemies. Anyone remember?

 “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”

When you hear that line where do you imagine the enemies? Do you imagine them looking on hungrily while God gives special favours to the psalm writer?

How would Jesus read that Psalm? in particular that image of the table?

Is it possible that the enemies are actually present at the table? Is it possible that the leadership of God, as it is played out and lived out by Jesus… even today provides hospitality for enemies? That God provides a place for people to sit down at table with their enemies? Is it possible that God provides a table where people who would otherwise not meet together, who would otherwise have nothing to do with each other, would get to know one another?

If that were the case we would call it “The Table of the Good Shepherd” or “The Table of the Lord”…. If God did that it wouldn’t be some kind of ritual occasion where we sat in the privacy of our own spiritual isolation and contemplated the welfare of our souls and our future in heaven. No! It would be a gathering where people of all different kinds were drawn together by the death of the shepherd who gives his life for the sheep.  It would be a meal where gay people meet with straight people, where muslim terrorists meet with CEOs of casinos, where Jews meet with Gentiles, where liberals meet with conservatives, where people who like old buildings meet with people who couldn’t care less about buildings….

When we debate war and violence at times like Anzac Day people like to imagine a scenario, where they are convinced that there is no solution but violence, where the only way to respond to violence is violently, where their enemies are not really human… that they have to train up an army who are psychologically prepared to regard their enemies as not really human (US army practice). The standard wisdom tells us that enemies would never respond to an invitation to dinner.

In other words following Jesus is our calling only if we can imagine how it will work! If we can’t imagine how it will work, we need to find our own wisdom, which usually involves meeting violence with violence… as if that will work.

Not long after 9-11 a little traditional church in Tennesee called Heartsong Church, learnt that a Mosque and Cultural Centre was being built adjacent to them. Can you imagine the protest that created? Actually, the pastor Steve Stone and his congregation put up a large sign which read “Heartsong Church welcomes Memphis Islamic Centre to the Neighbourhood”

The Muslim leaders were floored. They’d been hoping that their arrival might be ignored. They never imagined they’d be welcomed.

While the building was under construction members of the Muslim community used Heartsong Church for Ramadan prayer services. Heartsong’s community barbecues served halal meat. And according to Pastor Stone the two congregations were planning joint efforts to feed the homeless and tutor local children.

In 2010 Pastor Stone got a call from a group of Muslims in a small town in Kashmir, Pakistan. They said they had been watching CNN when a segment on Heartsong Church was aired. Afterward, one of the community’s leaders said to those who were gathered: “God just spoke to us through this man.” Another said: “How can we kill these people?” A third man went straight to the local Christian church and proceeded to clean it, inside and out.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies…

I wonder who in your street would be least likely to be invited to a meal at your place?

Imagine if a ‘mission formation group’ had their principle purpose to create opportunities for hospitality in their local neighbourhood… to create a neighbourhood, where previously there had just been houses where people sleep in.

Imagine if Jesus was the good shepherd preparing tables in our neighbourhood… because there was followership in your neighbourhood.

Imagine the Table of the Lord!

Thanks be to God!

 

 

 

 

The (In)visibility of the Church without shunning

In a marvellous essay (which I must say more about some time) Jonathan  Sauder wondered why there are still Mennonites and Swiss Brethren but no Marpeckites. I cannot do justice to his analysis here, however, I was struck by his comment because it linked well with my own recent essay on ecclesiology in which I address the nature of the church’s (in)visibility. Here is Sauder:

“So back to the question of the short-lived Marpeckian tradition. Longevity of the type referred to in “my words shall never pass away” is a very different type of longevity from that of an institution. This longevity of the subversive message of Jesus about God and us is very real but is as untraceable with the tools of the “human sciences” as is any other work of the Spirit. It is untraceable precisely because it is benevolently subversive of any oppression of God’s human children by fallen powers. Fallen powers are those that had originally served the purpose of shielding unregenerate people from chaos but have now imposed a new order and false sacred zone of their own.”

You can find this essay entitled “Must There Be Shunning? Tradition, Mimesis, and Resacralization in Historic Peace Church Orthopraxy” in Peace Be With You: Christ’s Benediction Amid Violent Empires (Pennsylvania: Cascadia Publishing House, 2010), p. 263-288.

God in the hands of Angry Sinners (a review)

I’m feeling quite invigorated to see my interpretative intuitions vindicated by a fine article by David B Miller with the above (wonderful) title. It is subtitled “The Misdiagnosis of Wrath and Ephesians 2” (in Peace Be With You: Christ’s Benediction Amid Violent Empires, ed. Sharon L. Baker and Michael Hardin, (Pennsylvania: Cascadia Publishing House, 2010), pp. 234-242). What Miller’s title does is highlight how much the famous phrase by Jonathan Edwards stands in stark contrast to the gospel narrative. If Miller is right (of course he is!) than yet another pillar of ‘penal substitution’ is revealed to be one more of the pagan illusions that have held western Christianity captive for so many centuries.

From a Girardian perspective it is obvious that ‘children of wrath’ held rich opportunities for a metaphor of the human condition as seen in the light of Christ’s death, however some exegetical work was required to be done to subvert the traditional western reading in terms of objects of divine wrath, and Miller does the work.

Taking a lead from Leslie Mitton (who baulks at following through with a minority reading), Miller notes that ‘children of wrath’ can be seen as a construction similar to ‘sons of disobedience’ referring to the human condition rather than the wrath of God. And in this context makes good sense in terms of the powers that Christ has conquered in his death and resurrection (chap 1). Moreover, Miller contends that if the passage is read in its primary context of the letter to the Ephesians in which the work of salvation is primarily an act of peacemaking (chapt2) then the anthropological reading fits much better. What’s more the dramatic turn in the following verse “But God who is rich in mercy” does not indicate an about-turn in a bipolar God, but a contrast between God’s action in Christ and those he came to liberate. The cross is God’s response to human wrath. To quote Miller: ‘there is no need for a legal fiction to describe the cross. The remedy matches the need’ (p. 239). After all if Jesus is to be believed (in one of the three passages in the synoptic gospels he talks directly about God) God has always been ‘rich in mercy’ (Luke 6:36).

To highlight the relevance of this article to the life of the church as it rediscovers the centrality of ‘peace’ to salvation, I will finish this review with a quote from Miller’s article. Here he is commenting on the impact of Jonathan-Edwards-like images of God’s relation to humanity:

“Edwards’ locating of the problem of wrath in God rather than in humanity allows for the easy separation of Christian ethics from soteriology. One may in this model easily claim to be reconciled to God (I.e. freed from God’s wrath), while simultaneously dismissing the commands of Jesus to love one’s enemies. One can claim to be saved by the blood of the lamb, while preparing to shed the blood of one’s fellow human beings. If, however, the cross stands as remedy not to God’s wrath but to our own, then such separation is untenable. To deny Christ’s remedy to our wrath is to deny the saving power of the cross.” (p. 241)

Critical Conversations: Michael Polanyi and Christian Theology [Kindle Edition]

Several years ago (I’ve forgotton how many now) I wrote an essay entitled ‘Science Meets Violence: An anthropological comparison of the anthropology of Michael Polanyi and Rene Girard” which has been included in the newly published volume Critical Conversations: Michael Polanyi and Christian Theology. If this interests you you can check it out at Amazon

Amazon.com: Critical Conversations: Michael Polanyi and Christian Theology eBook: Murray Rae: Kindle Store

Buy This Book! Watch these DVDs! (a review, in praise of “The Jesus Driven Life”)

Famous biblical scholar Walter Wink described Michael Hardin’s book, The Jesus Driven Life as a “magisterial synthesis of much that can be known about Jesus and the early centuries of Christianity and their continuing relevance for today”. I must admit I was a little sceptical at first when I read such high praise. And when I started reading from an academic perspective I found some of the quirky colloquial turns of phrase a little off-putting. However, two things quickly became clear and drew me into the book, firstly it was not intended primarily for an academic audience and secondly it drew on an enormous range of scholarly material with rich insight and coherence. Wink is right, Michael Hardin has something revolutionary to offer the church.

 

Recently I have been making my way through his teaching DVD series (based on the book) with an eye to a useful resource for my ministry. It is a key tool for Michael’s organisation, Preaching Peace (www.preachingpeace.org). With each DVD I have become progressively more excited about the value of the series. The DVDs will, I suspect, reach a wider audience and be much more accessible than the book. Michael is a man with a mission and preaches/teaches with both intensity and clarity, and a pace that is easily grasped. To do this he draws on his enormous knowledge of the biblical tradition in its original languages and history. He is also startlingly well read in the early church and patristic literature. He knows the reformation writers and more recent theology well and holds this together with scientific and anthropological theory from Rene Girard. Although originally from a Catholic and then a fundamentalist background, Michael knows and understands critical theory and indeed a wide breadth of scholarship. In short, for someone so dedicated to preaching the gospel and doing theology and ethics at a local community level with lay-people he is an astonishingly bright guy.

 
As I said earlier, Michael is a man with a mission and the centre of that mission is the rediscovery of the gospel of peace, or to be more pointed, the centrality of peace and non-violence to the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is broadly-speaking the focus of Preaching Peace, which he co-founded. This overarching mission divides up into several aspects which become clear in the DVDs. Let me list some of them:

• He is intent on furthering a project, associated with the names of Barth and Bonhoeffer, which seeks to re-centre faith on Jesus and re-centre our way of reading scripture on Jesus. This is a project that remains, in spite of the verbosity of the former of these two theologians, significantly incomplete. This is also an Anabaptist project and thus he is synthesising Barthian and Anabaptist hermeneutics.
• He is challenging at its roots the dominant evangelical account of salvation and Christianity. The title of the book (with its play on Rick Warren’s “The Purpose Driven Life”) indicates Michael’s determination to offer an alternative way of reading the Bible to that which informs evangelicalism and fundamentalism. It begins with the interesting claim that (a) Jesus is the Word and starting-point of our faith and (b) Jesus had his own distinctive way of reading his bible (hermeneutic). His boldness in taking this trajectory to its logical conclusion is invigorating.
• He is calling the peace churches (aka the Anabaptist movement) back to its radical roots and away from any tendency to slide into the dominant evangelical mode of religion. To this end he asserts and defends the view that not only are we called to follow Jesus in reconciling non-violence, but God is (in Godself) non-violent. If there is any incipient Marcionism in the peace churches, he offers them a way of re-reading their Old Testament in the critical light of Jesus.
• He seeks to gain a broad-based audience for the anthropological understanding of Rene Girard which enables and opens up the more radical possibilities often unnoticed within the witness of scripture.
• He also seeks to gain a broad-based audience for the best of recent scholarship from the New Perspective on Paul, thus integrating a large theological vision with significant recent developments in Biblical Studies.

I could go into more detail, since there is plenty of room in 32 half-hour teaching sessions to engage a wide range of issues, including the perspectives of Augustine, Anselm, Irenaeus, Calvin, Luther and much more.

For me this project has galvanised my theological education to date in a way that is hard to do justice to in a brief space. Michael’s influences are similar to my own. I too have had my eyes opened by Barth, Girard and the Anabaptist movement (in particular John Howard Yoder). Not only does he tie things together for me with a boldness that I have hitherto shrunk back from, I also find myself learning lots of new things along the way. So I warmly recommend the work of Michael Hardin to any brave enough to engage it – especially to ministers and pastors who seek an alternative to the sterile traditions of evangelicalism and progressivism which do battle like twin gladiators in the current cultural landscape of America and elsewhere

Reasons NOT to be a Christian

Last week I was listening to the radio and heard a snippet from an interview of someone who was an expert in stained glass windows. He was talking about theChristchurchcathedral. That’s as much as I heard of the background to the interview. However, at the point I turned on the radio the interviewer asked him whether he was religious himself, or a Christian. He replied something like this. “No, I’m not. The reason is simple. I can’t be a Christian. I enjoy life too much. I want to live a full rounded life.”

I thought it was an interesting response which spoke volumes about his perception of Christianity as a religion of people with a lot of taboos… things they didn’t do. On the one hand the interviewee seemed to understand that there would be a cost to being a follower of Jesus. On the other hand he seemed to have a distorted view of what that cost was. I got the impression that he saw it as a kind of ‘purity’ that avoided certain aspects of life. In other words his view was the kind of view Jesus spent all his time deconstructing. Isn’t it funny how the current perception of Christianity has so little to do with Jesus? Perhaps it’s because most of Christianity has little to do with Jesus.

Imagine if the man on the radio had said, “No I can’t be a Christian. I like my comfort too much and don’t want to become vulnerable with the poor, or commit myself to non-violence.” That’s the kind of response that would have brought a bitter-sweet smile to my face as I drove home listening to the radio. It’s the reason I struggle to be a Christian.

Why is the resurrection of Jesus good news? (sermon)

Luke 24: 1-12, 36-49

Today we’ve been celebrating, singing bright songs, symbolising good things… saying things like ‘Christ is risen’ and ‘Death has been conquered’ and I suspect that many people when they hear those statements each Easter, if they’re not completely asleep by the time they hit the pew and immune to those familiar words, wonder at least two things… when they hear ‘Christ has risen’ they think something like… that’s nice for him 2000 years ago, but what has it got to do with us today? and when they hear ‘death has been conquered’ they think something like ‘I’m not sure I know what that means… how is death conquered? We still die don’t we? and I’m not sure what it’s got to do with heaven?’

So this week I set myself a task… to try and understand, and explain in ordinary words, the Christian answer to this question. Why is that event of the resurrection of Jesus good news for us today?

[gather thoughts – in simplest terms]

1. If the resurrection is true then… God is like Jesus…. and 2. If it is true then death loses its dominion over our lives.

Or better putting the two together…

If the resurrection is true and God is like Jesus… then death loses its dominion over our lives

In order not to simply repeat the problem of slogans we don’t really understand… let me try and unpack these statements:

Most people believed in some kind of afterlife… for Jews a resurrection from the dead at the end – with various accounts of what happened in the meantime. Belief in God or an afterlife was not Jesus’ provocative idea.

Jesus had this incredible, revolutionary conception of God… the God that Jesus believed in and trusted and obeyed, the God who shaped Jesus life to the very end was startlingly different from all of ancient religion. Many anthropologists would say that the common factor in ancient religion and often in modern religion too is a kind of principle of exchange ‘do ut des’ (I give in order to receive)… its also a principle of sacrifice… I give to the gods in order to receive good crops, good health, victory over my enemies, prosperity whatever.

Jesus doesn’t talk much directly about the nature of God… he tells a lot of picture stories (parables), but in the three gospels of Matthew Mark and Luke (leaving aside John for today, John’s a different kind of gospel) there are only three times Jesus talks directly about God. [This section inspired by Michael Hardin] Anyone like to hazard a guess as to what one of those three might be

• Matt 6: 25ff  Don’t worry abut the body, food, drink, look at the birds of the air… “If God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, you of little faith” (God is the provider… the giver for all creation)
• Luke 6: 32-36 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you… but love your enemies… and you will be children of the most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful just as your Father is merciful.” (God gives, not just physical creation, and not just like us who give to our friends, but God gives mercifully to enemies.)

• Luke 11: 9-13 “Ask and it will be given… If you who are evil give good gifts to your children, who much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit…” (God gives good gifts, like a Father)

• Best indirect indicator about God – dishing out forgiveness without sacrifice
• Classic example of nearly getting killed atNazarethfor portraying a God-without-vengeance for all people.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the day of the Lord’s favour…”

• Elimination of ‘the day of vengeance
• Particular stories of God’s relation to enemy pagans

Jesus has lived his life in obedience to this God… the one he called Abba… Jesus was shaped by this God, he went to his death in obedience to this God.

“The God who gives (even to enemies)”…translates in Jesus life into his Self-giving to his death. Jesus was like this God.

So what the resurrection does is put the Big Tick on all of this. God says ‘This man Jesus was onto something!’

So if Jesus was onto something, not just in his thinking but in his living, then when Jesus is raised from death… not only is Jesus like this very different God, but more importantly God is like Jesus. Are you with me on this?

God is like Jesus not because God tells us so in words but because he gives Jesus again in an act of forgiveness. It’s not that words drop out of the sky or something. To give Jesus back to his disciples…(not in vengeance for having abandoned him and failed completely to understand what he was on about but in restoration) is precisely to continue to be the God that Jesus knew him to be. The resurrection continues the life of God as it was in Jesus.

 

2. If the resurrection is true and God is like Jesus then death loses its dominion over our life. What does this mean?

If you think about it, everyone lives their life in a context, defined by birth and death. But death can have a different character for different people. Death is like the horizon of our life in time. And that horizon is not just out there in the future like an endpoint that we may or may not think about… our physical clock is ticking down from the day we are born. Things start to wear out. The tide is coming in on the island that is our conscious life.

Inasmuch as we think of our life as a kind of possession, we’re losing it! Death is as present to us as life is.

If God is not like Jesus, then there are basically two options for the character of death, and therefore for how it effects our life.

Firstly, if we are atheists, then outside of the horizon of our life is… nothing (as far as we as conscious human beings are concerned). Nothingness… is the tide that is coming in on our little island of life. Not just as an endpoint, but as a process that constantly effects us.

Secondly, if we are religionists, whether in Jesus time or today, we probably believe in a god out there, or something to which we must come to terms. And that god is not purely a giver of good things but also a taker. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, as Job put it. In which case we must offer some sacrifice, not usually first-born or fatted calf these days, but we will have to do a deal. And in order to do that deal we will have to start to think of our lives as, in some sense, our private property. For the religionist it’s our capital, that we can offer some of in a deal with the god who comes to us in death.

For the atheist and the religionist, death becomes a taking of our private property. Death, whether we consciously fear it or not, becomes a threat… this is the source of the dominion of death – and all the ways we need to secure this private property, secure our status, build a system of health which keeps us alive at all costs as long as possible… we could talk about the impact of this on so many levels couldn’t we?

But perhaps we now see how this Jesus revolution hangs together… The resurrection is the event in which something interrupts history and people are persuaded that God is like Jesus, not a threat to be feared but totally love, and the giver of life. And something has been given into history, we call it the Holy Spirit, in which people are given the courage to live as if God were like Jesus… to live like Jesus… to give in a way that is free from the dominion of death, as if our lives are not private property at all, but a gift to be given.