Author Archive for Rod White

Today is Martin of Tours Day

Published
by
Rod White
on November 11, 2008
in Community, Dialogue and Peace
. 1 Comment

I have received a lot of inspiration from our ancestors in the faith this year. Our community in the Spirit of Jesus stretches beyond our own experience, into the past and into eternity. So I dare recommend to you Martin of Tours, today — since Veterans Day is also the “saints day” of the patron saint of France and of soldiers. What’s more, Martin of Tours is one of the mentors of my beloved Celtic church with whom I have been traveling all year.

Martin was co-opted by the first French kings as their saintly champion. His intervention from heaven was credited for Frankish military victories 100s of years after he was dead. Nonsense. Martin of Tours would best be known as the patron saint of EX-soldiers.

As a teenager Martin became a Christian even though it was a risky thing to do. Being a follower of Jesus was a distinctly odd thing to do in what the Roman Empire called Gaul, at the time. It was a particularly odd thing to do in his military family. He was supposed to be like John McCain and become a soldier like his father and grandfather, so he did. But he was a Christian, first.

One day he was at the gates of the city of Amiens with his soldiers and Martin met a scantily dressed beggar. He impulsively cut his own military cloak in half and shared it with the man. That night he dreamed of Jesus wearing the half-cloak he had given away. He heard Jesus say to the angels: “Here is Martin, the Roman soldier who is not baptized; he has clad me.” (see Matthew 25!) Here’s how El Greco painted the scene 1200 years later.

Before long Martin went out and got baptized. He was 18. He served in the military for another two years until, just before a battle in 336, he decided that his faith prohibited him from fighting. He said, “I am a soldier of Christ. I cannot fight.” He was charged with cowardice and jailed, but in response to the charge, he volunteered to go unarmed to the front of the troops. His superiors planned to take him up on the offer, but before they could, the invaders sued for peace, the battle never occurred, and Martin was released.

He went on to become a leader in the church, but not before he went off to be a hermit in the style of the radicals of the Egyptian desert. Like them, Martin did not want to see his faith totally co-opted by the powers that be. Christianity in Gaul was quickly becoming an arm of the state, as Emperor Constantine made it an official religion of the empire and began constructing church buildings that looked just like Romans law courts.

Martin’s biographers described the life of the community he founded, which was so influential on the Celtic Church, like this:. “Many also of the brethren had, in the same manner, fashioned retreats for themselves, but most of them had formed these out of the rock of the overhanging mountain, hollowed into caves. There were altogether eighty disciples, who were being disciplined after the example of the saintly master. No one there had anything which was called his own; all things were possessed in common. It was not allowed either to buy or to sell anything, as is the custom among most monks. No art was practiced there, except that of transcribers, and even this was assigned to the brethren of younger years, while the elders spent their time in prayer. Rarely did any one of them go beyond the cell, unless when they assembled at the place of prayer. They all took their food together, after the hour of fasting was past. No one used wine, except when illness compelled them to do so. Most of them were clothed in garments of camels’ hair. Any dress approaching to softness was there deemed criminal, and this must be thought the more remarkable, because many among them were such as are deemed of noble rank.”

Apart from the camel hair, we have a lot in common with our ancestors in the faith from Gaul. I like to emulate passionate people who have imitated Jesus. Let’s keep up the good faith and good work! As a result, we can make some Spirit-inspired history of our own.

Large and Small

Published
by
Rod White
on October 14, 2008
in Community, Dialogue, Planning and Resources
. 2 Comments

I was sitting around the big table with the CoHOp Core Team last night. Maybe you don’t know that Jason’s dad donated a bunch of his old office furniture and we now have a big wooden table (like a board room scene from Bruce Ward’s skyscraper!) in the “mezzanine“ level of Broad and Washington. Only our “power center” has 7-foot ceilings and a sprinkler pipe at 6 foot three running through it.

Liz had put up the poster of the 5-year imaginations that people had graffitied during the Discerning Retreat on one wall of the room. Dan looked at it at one point and said something like, “We apparently don’t think of ourselves as a small, marginalized church fighting the man anymore.” There are so many big ideas on the paper it threatens to topple the wall! People have big ideas for what they apparently now think is our big network. A congregation budding in Camden seems to have put them over the edge into a new way of seeing Circle of Hope.

Well, honestly, let’s not bust any buttons being real big, yet. We’re not that big. We may be more capable than we ever imagined we would be, but the average car dealership has a yearly income greater than our whole network’s. So let’s be as excited about ourselves as we should be. Romans 12 says: “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. …In Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us.” We are no more and no less than God has made us. We have our gifts to bring to the cause according to the grace received. We’re big, but no bigger than we are given to be.

I keep trying to tell people that they don’t need to be dismayed about getting larger as a network. We will always be small, too. We committed ourselves to a vision for how to be the church from the beginning — we always expected to be a network of congregations that each grew to about 200 people and then multiplied. We have always wanted to live face-to-face. We’ll probably keep finding inventive ways to keep that going.

Right now we are on the edge of figuring out how to be both a network of some size: three congregations that are face to face, and a network of cells and mission teams that share an organic life together. I hope you are up for the challenge, because it is pretty weird. A lot of us don’t have a feel for it, yet — even many people among the many, many people who lead our community in Christ.

The fact that we don’t get how we work sometimes surprises me. I think what we are doing is just common, biblical sense. It seems like what the first believers did in Acts. The Celtic church organized in a similar way. John Wesley basically lead the first Methodists to do what we do. All sorts of people movements all over the world look a lot like us (only better organized!). What is the big deal?  From what I understand, people have some fears born of where they used to live. For one thing, they don’t want to be some mega-whatever. I kind of missed the mega-church thing, but a lot of us didn’t. So we equate that big, American dinosaur with being irrelevant and anonymous in the body — the pastor on a jumbotron, some ideology taking over, professionals doing everything and finding warm bodies to fuel their programs. No one wants to be big like that. Similarly, but from the opposite direction, a lot of us have come from nowhere, wandering around alone or in a little pod of leftovers from the youth group and we are glad to get in a cell where we can be authentic. We don’t want to lose that.

For the most part, most of us didn’t care much about church structure before Circle of Hope got to be who we are and we still don’t care — so we are content to be whatever part we end up being as God leads us along. That’s what I’m glad we are doing — letting God lead us along.

We are listening to God and staying creative. We want to extend the Kingdom – that may force us to organize for larger. We want to live in the Kingdom – that will definitely force us to stay small. This year our big goals have powered us into being a more effective network. Since we accomplished our goals – planted the beginnings of another congregation, hired Liz to invent good administration, hired Jeremiah to give gravity to generating compassion, made some network offices, even – we’ve got a new look that people are noticing.

I’m not sure what all that new energy will come to. But one thing I’m happy about is this: finding ways to handle the opportunities of being larger has freed the pastors and Cell Leader Coordinators to spend better attention on being small – caring for our cells and the congregations they form. Our 46 brave Cell Leaders are leading the charge for transformation where it will always happen best: person to person in living room or coffee shop, (or maybe even huddled in the mezzanine on Broad St.), with Jesus in the midst.

Elisha

Published
by
Rod White
on September 15, 2008
in Community, Dialogue and Planning
. 1 Comment

It is good to be back from my sabbatical, my summer of pilgrimage. Last Thursday, the “Mutts” comic in the Inquirer had the dog thinking, “Sometimes the best part of going for a walk is coming home.” I can relate to that dog.

But, unlike the dog, I don’t feel like having a bite of home-cooked Alpo and taking a nap. Much the contrary, I have already been flooding my friends with new ideas and recharged convictions. I’m eager to see what God will do next.

Just this morning, the reading from Celtic Daily Prayer, which many people have begun to use with me, led me to 2 Kings 2:11-14 which describes a lot of what I feel.

As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elisha saw this and cried out, “My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel!” And Elisha saw him no more. Then he took hold of his own clothes and tore them apart.
He picked up the cloak that had fallen from Elijah and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. Then he took the cloak that had fallen from him and struck the water with it. “Where now is the LORD, the God of Elijah?” he asked. When he struck the water, it divided to the right and to the left, and he crossed over.

The idea of Elijah’s cloak/mantle moves me for two main reasons, right now:.

1) I am so grateful to the people who took up my “mantle” while I was away: Nate, Tracey, Ben, and Nathan, in particular. And the staff needed to do so much of what I would normally do: Joshua, Liz, Jeremiah, Kristen, Amanda. They did very well, don’t you think?

2) I am excited to know that God will be present in what is next. Elisha is freaked out about Elijah’s strange, wonderful and powerful departure. He’s left with the cloak Elijah had thrown around him earlier as a symbol of Elisha’s future as an agent of transformation and truth in Israel. But Elisha hadn’t really worn it yet, and he hadn’t moved into what is next.

When he struck the Jordan, maybe he was throwing the cloak away in frustration or fear. I doubt that, but the result might have been the same, anyway. Maybe he was striking the water as a test to see if God would show up for him when he used the “magic cloak” pulsing with Elijah’s prophet power. I doubt that too, but the result might have been the same. I think he struck the water with an honest cry of anguish and loss, “Where are you now, God?” God was in Elijah, but that was the past. “Are you here, now?” The result was very exciting.

While on my pilgrimage, I saw a LOT of where God HAS been. The more I learned about the Celts and felt the power of the places they made holy, the more impressed and inspired I became. I think they responded to their era in many of the ways we need to respond to ours, too. I am ready to strike the water and see where God is.

What will happen in the new buildings on Frankford? What will happen in Camden? What will happen as Broad and Washington moves into a new era, as our neighborhood keeps changing around us, as we learn to use the amazing capacity we have built up over many years, and as the next disaster arrives to test us? What will Circle Thrift, Circle Counseling, and all the other mission teams of Circle Venture do? What will Shalom House and all the other intentional communities create? What will all the Cell Leaders cause through their amazing disciple making and pastoring? What will God do with my next fifteen years? I am excited to find out.

Parenting As A Village

Published
by
Rod White
on August 20, 2008
in Community, Dialogue and Family
. 0 Comments

This isn’t a word to parents, only. But that is where it focuses.

For parents the word is: Parenting should not be done alone.
For all of us it is: life (and life in Christ, in particular) is hard and we need each other.

Bible teaching about this:
John in 1 John: “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers and sisters. Anyone who does not love remains in death…. This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in them? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” (2:14,16-19, edited for inclusion)

Interpretation for the subject at hand:
1. Loving our new family in Christ is a sign that we are alive in Christ. There is no life outside the new community centered on Jesus. The central command to each member of this new family is to love each other in the same manner Jesus loved you.
2. John says we should apply this truth by sharing material needs. I am saying that we should apply it by sharing in the parenting of children and, what’s more, by sharing in the ongoing development we all are undergoing that was (of course) not completed by our birth parents.
3. John is talking about sharing something one has with one who needs it. Some of us are obviously gifted to attend to children and those people have built some vibrant community among Circle of Hope parents. Some of us may have less of that. But I would say the vast majority of us have enough maturity in Christ to have some basic human parental instincts activated, whether we are 18 or 48. We should care for young people as a village and we should care for the needy child in each other, too.

Marilyn Heins (common sense parenting author) says: “We need to change some of our attitudes. Right now most of us feel that it is wrong to interfere when we see bad parenting because we revere individuality and respect the rights of the family. But we have to find ways to help each other. Helping neighbors used to be the American way. We need to invent the equivalent of a barn-raising when a neighboring family is in trouble.”

I think a lot of us have the aversion Dr. Heins is talking about. We don’t go far enough to really help each other parent because we are protecting the parent’s rights and relying on their personal responsibility. For instance, when a child seems out of control to us at the PM, we are very hesitant to help the parent do their work. When a safari jeep drives up to a herd of elephants, the mother elephants circle their young. We could at least do that. Instead, we defer to the parent (even if they are out of ear shot).

An overwhelmed single parent might show up with rambunctious kids in tow, looking for something. We’d likely to be very nice to them and even empathetic. But when it came to helping them with their six year old bouncing off the walls, we’d be very cautious, like we’d be accused of child abuse if we had a relationship with the child. By the time we got over our fear, the kid would have grown up and grown up outside a Christian village. And as a result, they would have been taught individualism by the adults who protected that concept at the cost of love.

I’m throwing out more points than I am fully exploring, I know. But I hope they cause us to take a look at just how often we are willing to leave each other by the side of the road, needy and even hurting because we don’t think we have the right to be involved. Some of us are pushy, but most of us are just afraid of possibly being considered pushy. Some of us violate boundaries too much, but most of us are lounging behind boundaries to love, feeling like what is happening to our brothers and sisters is none of our business.

I think John tells us that loving our brothers and sisters, and their children IS our business. If we don’t lay down our lives for each other, we are not even alive. Parents and children living in the megalopolis need each other and they need the whole community to care about what they are doing. They have the main role to raise their children, they get to do it the way they do it, but they can’t and shouldn’t do it alone.

Hope

Published
by
Rod White
on July 15, 2008
in Community, Dialogue and Uncategorized
. 6 Comments

I have been enjoying the latest work of N.T. Wright called , Surprised By Hope, Rethinking, Heaven, the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church. I recommend it to you.

He does a lot to clarify our thinking about what is really going to happen at the end of time. He does a good job at undermining the BAD thinking that has crept into Christianity from other philosophies and religions that does not fit with the revelation in scripture of what we’re looking forward to.

For instance, here is a quote: “The resurrection, both of Jesus and then in the future of his people, is the foundation of the Christian stance of allegiance to a different king, a different Lord. Death is the last weapon of the tyrant, and the point of the resurrection, despite much misunderstanding, is that death has been defeated. Resurrection is not the redescription of death; it is its overthrow and, with that, the overthrow of those whose power depends on it. Despite the sneers and slurs of some contemporary scholars, it was those who believed in the bodily resurrection who were burned at the stake and thrown to the lions. Resurrection was never a way of settling down and becoming respectable; the Pharisees could have told you that. It was the Gnostics, who translated the language of resurrection into a private spirituality and a dualistic cosmology, thereby more or less altering its meaning into its opposite, who escaped persecution. Which emperor would have sleepless nights worrying that his subjects were reading the Gospel of Thomas? Resurrection was always bound to get you into trouble, and it regularly did.”

There may be some thoughts in that quote that are new to you. But I pass it on to encourage you to think things through about your future hope. A couple of years ago, The DaVinci Code again popularized the ideas of the Gnostic “gospels” that got some followers thinking, a long time ago, that they were a spirit trapped in a body and that their spirit would be freed at death to go to heaven where they would be like angels. When we sing, “This world is not my home,” we can take it too far! We are the beloved creatures of our Creator. God will restore our home and will bring those who love him back to live with him, just like he raised Jesus. I’m not sure how it will all work, but we could be sitting on the porch with Andrea in a restored Fishtown one fine day. I’m looking forward to that.

Pilgrimage

Published
by
Rod White
on June 12, 2008
in Community, Dialogue and Planning
. 1 Comment

It’s been about a month now, that I have been on sabbatical. Thanks again for sending me. The long sabbath feels good. I’m resting, I’m healthier, and I’ve learned and loved a lot. The long sabbath is a good thing that should make me better able to return to what God has given me to do — it is hard to know what to do if one doesn’t do, too.

Now Gwen and I are about ready to take off on our month-long pilgrimage to commune with the missionary monks of the 4th-9th centuries, along with some other striking Christian examples from the past and present, in Ireland and the United Kingdom.

The other day I was going over the itinerary I had planned for us, cleaning up the final details, and I discovered that the room I thought I had booked in Winchester (the beginning of the famous road to Canterbury) was actually about a hundred miles away in Aylesford! Hmmm. I began to wonder how many other connections had been missed!

The mistake was easy to correct. I got a further room in Winchester and asked the brethren in Aylesford to let me come for one night, not two. As it turns out, unbeknownst to me (they say things like that over there, I’m already beginning to talk like Reepicheep), the Aylesford Priory, where I had booked the mistaken room, is actually a traditional stopping place for pilgrims on the way from Winchester to Canterbury. And that is just what I intend to be!

I suppose the trip just may go that way. I can’t control things too well. I don’t know everything. I can’t do everything right. And the destination is still better than I expected. It is always like this: “In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps” (Proverbs 16:9). Of course, I don’t think I am a robot waiting for God to activate me by remote control! But I do think I explore far too little of how God determines the steps of a person who isn’t quite sure where the journey is going to end up. I need to trust God first and ask questions later. I want to know more about how to walk by faith, not just by sight. That’s pilgrimage and that’s life.

I’ll tell you about things via my MySpace blog from here and there. I hope you’ll look in from time to time. But we’ll probably be just as connected if we are both on our journeys, listening and looking for God, seeing what the Lord has next and receiving it, expected or not — even suffering or not, with hope.

We’re off to see…

Published
by
Rod White
on May 12, 2008
in Community, Dialogue and Uncategorized
. 1 Comment

I’m having the embarrassing realization again that I can often connect meaningful times in my life with some scene from the Wizard of Oz. My sister and I watched that movie every year of our childhood and basically memorized it, chapter and verse, like it was the “Letter of Dorothy Gale to the White Children.” It happened again as I was sitting with my able summer understudies, Nate, Tracey and Ben, a few nights ago teaching them a few arcane details that make up some of my work as pastor.

You may not have seen the movie, but there is a scene in which the Wizard is making a speech before he takes off in his balloon with Dorothy for Kansas. He encourages the people of the Emerald City that he is sure they will be well cared for by the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion, by virtue of their great gifts. Dorothy gets out to retrieve Toto, the balloon’s handlers lose control and the Wizard begins to take off. Dorothy screams “Come back!” But the Wizard says, “I can’t come back. I don’t know how it works! Goodbye folks!”

Here I go on my pilgrimage. I don’t know how it works. Goodbye folks!

I’m not really scared too much. After all, my balloon basically dropped in Philly just a few years ago, and that had a very pleasant result. So I like the idea of taking off and seeing what God has in mind. In truth, on pilgrimage is the luxurious way we Christians get to live all the time — and the ultimate destination is guaranteed to be nice. A deliberate pilgrimage is a disciplined way to take hold of that nice and trust it.

So I am regarding the four months you have granted me for sabbatical as a long pilgrimage. I’ll be on a trip. We may run into each other, maybe even in Glasgow, more likely on Kelly Drive (I’ll be the one looking like I am out for a walk even though I think I am jogging). In the middle of the time, Gwen and I will be on an actual pilgrimage to commune with the missionary monks of the 3-700’s in Ireland, Scotland, England and one day in Wales. I’m not sure what is going to happen. I hope to wake up every day eager to see where God is in the midst of where I have arrived now. I will have the great luxury of time and solitude to find out. I am very grateful.

Please take care of the Emerald City while I am gone, or, if you prefer, Kansas. Wherever we go, our Heart’s Desire is in our own back yard.

(If you have ten minutes, I found another person who has traveled with Dorothy through the last few years and wondered about how anyone in Iraq is going to get home.)

What’s with all the gambling?

Published
by
Rod White
on April 17, 2008
in Action, Community and Dialogue
. 1 Comment

In a radio commentary, I heard our economy described as millions of people sitting by their computers “placing bets” as they decide to buy or sell stocks and “investment products.” Robert Reich, the economist, is concerned about just how ignorant we are about all this. He says, for instance, “Hedge funds have been operating huge financial casinos without having to disclose what they’re betting on, or why.” The big players who lead our country, usually behind the scenes, certainly not elected by us, are basically big gamblers. I’ve heard people say that the U.S. economy is no longer based on actually doing anything (we’ve outsourced that to the Chinese). It is just about making virtual bets. The proliferation of illegal gambling, and the rush by the states to operate every form of casino and lottery may be the most obvious, but least-considered, example of what kind of economy we are creating and, more interesting to me (and Jesus, I think), what kind of people the economy is creating.

David Reich in Boston College Magazine teaches: “From the turn of the 20th century until the middle 1960s, all U.S. states prohibited gambling, with the famous exception of Nevada. Today, of course, gambling is everywhere—in all states save Utah and Hawaii. Forty-two states run their own lotteries, which in 2006 sold $52 billion worth of tickets; most states host Indian-run casinos or bingo halls; and 13 states allow, and tax, commercial casinos, with Massachusetts poised to become the 14th.”

Christians used to be dead set against gambling. We went with George Washington, who was fond of quoting the French proverb: “Gambling is the child of avarice (greed), the brother of iniquity and the father of mischief.” But somehow the monster escaped its cage, began defining how we do business, and normalized greed as “sport” organized for profit by a “gaming industry.” Our prophetic voice about all this seems very confused. On the one hand most Christians seem to have given up the idea that things can be wrong and have adopted the society’s “ethic of tolerance” that argues that people should be left alone unless their activities harm others. On the other hand we have also believed the sales pitch that argues that gambling meets acceptable criteria under our more faithful “ethic of sacrifice,” which holds that people may have to give up rights for the common good. We seem to think the end justifies the means, since the proceeds of state-run gambling are often designated for education or senior citizens, or something else the state knows we want but won’t tax us to fund. Maybe we just don’t want to say anything because we’ll end up needing to talk to the Catholics about bingo.

But I at least want to shine this little light on gambling in our little blog. Because I think people, in general, are in danger of being reduced to taking fake risks when real risks are necessary. We are being trained to play a virtual game with our lives when we need to find joy in really living. From giant hedge funds making money out of placing the right bets on which way the index numbers will go, to the guy in the neighborhood who buys a lottery ticket every day, from making the Native Americans the nation’s casino owners to putting two casinos on our waterfront, we’re surrounded. We not only need to wake up and swim against the tide before it sweeps us away; we need to find our prophetic voice and at least say, “No!” (as in casiNO! perhaps).

Ending our personal poker games and feeling guilty about a rare trip to Atlantic City is not what I am talking about when I say, “prophetic.” We have something real to bring into an era in which people are being reduced to false hope and virtual risk. When we get something for nothing we tend to become the nothing traded for it. I think we should keep calling people to be real, to offer something of value to the world, to gain something to give, and not be looped into feeding the greed monster in yet another way.

Looking toward Good Friday

Published
by
Rod White
on March 11, 2008
in Community and Dialogue
. 1 Comment

The Cell Leaders got into some important theology a couple of weeks ago at their monthly meeting. I thought you all might like to hear some bits that would help you participate in the ongoing dialogue.

During Lent, we focus on the death and resurrection of Jesus, on the central days in history that change everything and change us. But sometimes our understanding of what Jesus is doing on the cross is a bit hazy. Our lack of clarity isn’t that surprising, since there are a lot of ways to look at what He’s doing, and God’s ways are a bit beyond explaining succinctly. It takes prayer, study and dialogue to see by faith. At our meeting we helped various explanations of the crucifixion “make friends.” They don’t really need to compete. I suggested that the following approach might provide a “tent” in which al the major explanations based on the revelation in the Bible might live in harmony. See what you think.

On the cross God is doing battle to defeat sin, death, hell and the devil (the “powers”). God is rescuing us. Jesus Christ entered into human misery and wickedness to liberate us from them. That’s good news. The work of Jesus on the cross is not so much the application of a rational or systematic theory as it is the source of good news. When we share the communion meal and remember the Lord’s death, we connect with a story about God’s victory over the powers and humanity’s liberation from bondage. We are part of an ongoing story of showing up the powers for who they are through acts of forgiveness and selfless love.

Some key scripture about this includes:

Colossians 2:13-15 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

2 Corinthians 5:4-5 For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

When Jesus dies, evil does all it can and God does all God can. God takes all the evil from political, social, cultural, personal, moral, religious and spiritual angles all rolled into one, rides it into destruction and despair, exhausts its power and rises from the victory to let loose new creation, new covenant, freedom, forgiveness, and hope. This is the story written in the gospels, not the theory written in the gospels.

God’s plan to rescue the world from evil was not a secret from people with eyes to see. In Isaiah’s prophecy the wisdom flowered into a very graphic description of the Suffering Servant who was to come. Jesus is that Servant, who was destined to bear evil, sin, and sickness. He was wounded by it; he absorbed it. As Paul says: in Jesus, death is swallowed up in victory; through our relationship with Jesus, our mortality is swallowed up by life.

At the last Supper Jesus tells his disciples how the messianic battle is going to be won – by losing it. On the cross, God turns the other cheek and loves His enemies. On the cross, God brings in the kingdom; the future enters the present. Through the work of Jesus we learn that the ultimate enemy is not Rome or some other earthly power, but the evil behind the human arrogance and violence. On the cross God rescues His people from evil itself and from the oppression and collusion that enslaves them. Like the Jewish Temple tried to be, Jesus actually is the place where heaven and earth meet; He is the place where God’s future and the present meet; He is the place where God celebrates the kingdom’s triumph over the kingdoms of this world by refusing to join in their spiral of self-absorption and violence.

Through the work of Jesus, the Creator takes responsibility for what has happened in creation. Jesus bears the weight on his shoulders and forgives it. When we pray “deliver us from evil,” a central means to that end is forgiveness. When we forgive, we release others from the burden of our anger and its consequences. When we forgive, we also release ourselves from the burden of what they did to us and the bitterness that will cripple us and poison the relationship. What exhausts and defeats evil is God’s implacable forgiveness. Desmond Tutu wrote a book called “No Future without Forgiveness” – this is true for Philadelphia, true for us, and true for God. As He is dying, God forgives his killers; He releases the world from guilt and He releases himself from the burden of wrath toward a world gone wrong. It isn’t that evil is over, but the future has entered the present, so creation can go forward as redeemed humans (always the God-ordained stewards of the planet) can reflect His image, heal, restore and put the world right under God’s rule.

As we go through Holy Week next week, there will be ample opportunity to enter the story – the fulcral story of Jesus and our own story of relating to Him and entering our own suffering servanthood. God bless us with the presence of the future and a deep realization of our freedom and forgiveness.

It’s Always Something

Published
by
Rod White
on February 12, 2008
in Dialogue, Peace and Uncategorized
. 2 Comments

Now people are afraid of the Chinese. They are outdoing the U.S. in business, bailing out our banks. And pretty soon all of the millions of newly-able consumers of South Asia will be driving around some tiny car and polluting everything to high heaven! It scares people.

But the poor Chinese! They had a record snowfall in January which meant that everyone trying to get home for the New Year festivities (around February 7) was messed up. Not least of the problems was the fact that government-controlled electricity prices created a disincentive for electricity producers to bear the cost of rising coal prices, so they just stopped producing, contributing to the cause of the power outage in Guangzhou that stranded hundreds of thousands factory workers who were trying to get back home to spend what little holiday they got. To top it all off, there is a pork shortage (60+% of Chinese protein comes from pork, and it is integral to what mom makes for New Years)! The government had to open up the pork reserve (yes, they store frozen pork in case of emergency) to keep from having another Tiananmen Square episode.

It’s always something. The Chinese are scared, too. It is not like things are working great over there. There is always something to be afraid of.

Lately, I seem to have talked to a lot of people who are feeling a lot of fear. I think the climate of our country since 9/11 has contributed a huge amount to our sense of being threatened by unknown forces. Maybe the U.S. is just catching up a little with what the rest of the world has been facing all along. Regardless, we’re feeling it.

There are political, economic and relational things that can be done to add to our sense of safety. But let’s be Christians about it. We should know that all those solutions are not enough. And we already know that the best we could hope for has already been given as a gift.

1 John 4:18 “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.”

Luke 12:6-7 “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”

Maybe if we all sat down for 30 seconds upon reading those truths again and let God tell us whether he really means it or not, we could cause a fear-reduction in the climate. Give it a try and see if it does anything for you. Ask Him. “Do you love me or not? Are we OK?” And make sure to ask, “Am I worth something to you? Do you really mean it when it says you look after me?” When I am most afraid, it is usually helpful to get my feet replanted in Jesus before something else tries to rip the rug out from under me. It’s always something.