We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
What are you hoping for in 2011?
The radical life is often described as total abandonment to God. This translates into the notion that God does not want us to use our minds, hearts, imaginations, and wills, but instead to close everything down, withdraw, and let go. Get out of the way and take no responsibilities are assumed to be truly and ultimately spiritual. It goes something like this: the more we attempt to be zeroes, the more spiritual we are; we either adopt being zeroes or we’re not spiritual. Denial and rejection of ourselves, it is often said, will illuminate the path toward Christian spirituality. The aim is to banish tension from the Christian life and find harmony with God. In other words, tension is unspiritual and resolution is spiritual. To put it mildly, this is an impoverished notion of Christian spirituality. Many Christians fall prey to the assumption that attempting to be a zero is a more holy or spiritual direction for the Christian life. For some reason, this point of view sounds extremely attractive, even spiritual.
The major problem with this either/or orientation is its presentation of an idealism that, in the end, leads us to an unspiritual resolution. The tyranny of false options, as expressed in an either/or configuration of this kind, is devastating. Living spirituality is simply not like that. In spite of brokenness, God redeems and sanctifies us. He wants us to use our minds, hearts, imaginations, and wills in a creative and sanctified manner that sufficiently affirms and demonstrates that God is there, that we are God’s children, and that this is God’s world.
And that’s the radical life.
Finding a truthful dwelling in the middle of polarized extremes is a fitting place to be; it’s often the space where life is to be found. Extreme positions usually only produce further extremes and that’s why they are merely referents for themselves, inevitably pointing to an ideology of death. Fear not the middle voice, which speaks softly, yet with rigor and passion.
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
Does God change due to human/outside influence?
The irony of sin. We are sinners all, but Christians sometimes major on this so strongly that they fall into the sin of pride in the act of confession. Notions of superiority and righteousness can pervade the recognition that we all sin. That’s it, that’s who we are – full stop - sinners. There is, however, a radical difference between being sinners and being Christians who are redeemed and therefore no longer slaves to sin. For this to take place we have to turn to Christ and accept the offer of salvation that has been brought about through his birth, ministry, death, and resurrection. Once done, we are then freed from the slavery of sin and enslaved to righteousness. This is indeed an ongoing process, but it is nevertheless a reality that all too often is overlooked. Having put on Christ means we have an entirely new orientation that is to be lived redemptively with and for others. While we won’t be perfect, we are called to live in the light of our destiny, which is in the present and the future to image the crucified and risen One.
Living spirituality is a web of truths that flow out of and back into being in community with God. Take personal evaluation as one of these. Surely, this dimension is interconnected with many others, and is desirable and necessary for developing a deeper interface with God. Our tendencies usually run along these lines. Either we focus way too much on the personal - God and ME, or we ignore it all together – God and THEM. Living the spiritual life – living spirituality, falters without insightful assessment of the past, present, and future, but it is equally impoverished without a personal us in the picture. So goes the tension of life with God, as we work out the varying degrees of community that are appropriate for each context.
Here’s my short take on the question raised at ZigZag Café yesterday. Prayer is first of all a response to an invitation from the God who is there. This God speaks through divine communicative action in creation, Scripture, covenant, Israel, the prophets, and ultimately the crucified―risen one, and summons us to enter into a dialogue with the Wholly Other. Prayer, as response, is personal, intentional, not exhaustive, live, planned or unplanned, verbal communication with the living God. Prayer requires language – God speaking and us hearing and us speaking and God hearing. Dual agency implicates dialogical interaction. To pray as Jesus did to God his father is an action that freely brings us more deeply into community with the Author of life and love sublime, in order that this reality and truth might be lived out into the world through us in redemptive ways.
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
What is prayer?
At Destinee Media we focus on the content of our books, but also try to ask questions concerning the book as a media. One of our aims is to challenge our own perception of how a book works. Design plays a significant role: “Can a less obvious typeface help the reader to better engage with the material?” or, “Can a book cover work as a visual interpretation of Biblical themes in contemporary culture?”
I’d like to invite you to take an excursion into the theological, philosophical, and hermeneutical tension, woven into Scripture and the Christian life. After reflection, please share you're thoughts on the book design for: Living Reflections. Does it suggest a clash of perspectives, or something of the reality of being in community with God, each other, and the world, or Darkness, Conflict, Strength, Peace? What themes do you discover?
Let me know what you think:
The virtual silence of God is deafening. It may go on for days, weeks, months, or even years. But then speaking comes, like precious gold, in its splendor and value, it enriches and orients us. Yet cycles of disorientation re-appear and we again find ourselves seemingly deaf to the sounds of action performed within the economy of light, shrouded in darkness. Awaiting the orchestration of reorientation calls for patient listening, for the Divine will surely be heard from soon on a coming horizon.
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
The God of the Old Testament is described as being a jealous God in EX 20:5. Is this a fitting description for the God of the world?
Recent relational theological trends tend to identify all too closely divine and human emotions. Be it love or jealousy, the notion is that if we’re this or that way, then God must be. My term for this new direction in theology today is relationalism. There is a deep and somewhat understandable desire to have a God like us, yet this longing may create a god of our own making. It seems to me that we frequently make it up as we go along and in so doing shape God into our own image. The biblical God is the Creator and Redeemer, not fickle, but faithful. God, therefore, is utterly unique and does what God does for the realization of covenant fulfillment. This God is neither weak, nor vulnerable, but an agent of power who through his own commanding passion will bring about love and justice for his people and the whole world.
Renewal in these days of December, a friend wrote recently, is a desirable phenomenon. Yes, indeed, and especially during the last moments of the year, which mark the end of one period of time and the beginning of another. Being renewed is connected to a variety of dynamics, not least to the hearing of the communicative action of God in time. To receive the Voice opens us up to embrace living spirituality in the present, as we develop a realistic retrospective of the past and a viable vision for the future. In experiencing a time of reflection here and now, where renewal can break through into the whole of our lives, we find a trajectory of interaction that has the theological force to shape our destiny.
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
Do you think language needs to be redeemed?
Time for Change
The Western world is facing a crisis of trust. Corruption in governments, institutions, banks, and corporations, have made us wary, and rightly so. Countries, whole countries are bankrupt and currencies gradually, on an international scale, becoming increasingly worthless. The credibility of belief in what appeared stable and safe is shattered. Hope for the present and future seems to be on the margins, and slowly, but surely is fading away. As the edifice of idolatry collapses, there’s no better time in recent history for the gospel to have an impact than now. Ironically, the church is ill-fitted at this defining moment to contribute to a necessary change. Conversely, God is definitely able to actively communicate through Christians, Word, and Spirit the viability and truth of new ways of doing culture, economics, government, and debt, that redemptively far outstrips our present lamentable state of being and living.
If you’re interested in buying Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today, now is the time. www.amazon.com on 29.11 has my book discounted a whopping 43% off at $11.42 instead of $19.99. This book might make an excellent Christmas present for someone you know and love.
Forging our way forward, following in the footsteps of Christ, is no simple task. We can be thankful that God has promised to be with us and that the Spirit is in our midst directing our pathways. Still, there is uncertainty and disorientation - these don’t disappear - but are salient reminders of what is real within the evolving process of transformation towards our ultimate destiny of imaging the crucified and risen One.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
What are you thankful to God for?
AN ENDORSEMENT FOR LIVING REFLECTIONS - MY SOON TO BE RELEASED NEW BOOK.
“Living Reflections is an extremely accessible introduction to some key questions facing anyone who wants to interpret Scripture theologically and with reasoned integrity. Greg, the Director of Swiss L'Abri, engages with theological, philosophical and hermeneutical dilemmas that are of the utmost importance for both academy and church. What is more, he makes complex issues into user-friendly discussions for both student and pastor, empowering the reader to grasp their significance for our times. The reader is not only led through the issues of foundationalism, authorial intention, the relation between history and text, the place of language and how to approach the parables of Jesus, but done so with the companionship of Dr Laughery's own mentor, Paul Ricoeur. This is a great introduction to hermeneutics, and to seeing how the thinking of one scholar, Ricoeur, can enhance the reader's appreciation and insight into a myriad of problems.”
Graham McFarlane, Senior Lecturer in Systematic Theology, London School of Theology.
ABOUT LIVING REFECTIONS
The patron saints of reductionism and polarization in contemporary Christian thought frequently dominate disputes over language, philosophy, theology, interpretation, and their interaction. Living Reflections moves in a different direction. It establishes a space for dialogue, mediates one-sided extremes, and offers a hermeneutic of relation and distinction, which depicts a new vision for engaging with these contested issues. Challenging and insightful, it invokes a perceptive wisdom going beyond modernist and postmodernist perspectives, affirming the tension-filled and organic character of Christian truth.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
While there is a place for suspicion in our lives, it can often dominate and control our engagements with self, other, world, and God. When this happens, suspicion is functioning as a call to itself, and therefore one of the major idols of our times Yes, I can hear you saying, “But suspicion is what makes it all happen.” Does it really? We sometimes assume that suspicion keeps us safe and provides us with a space to dwell, without having to commit or needing to participate in something that might threaten the status quo. Yet, this is far from the truth, as the beingness of trust pervades our essence and identity. As a result, breaking through the walls of suspicion, which condemn us to be unknown and unloved, is a revolutionary invitation that marks us out for the economy of gift, where the desire to be known and loved is understood, applauded, and welcomed.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
There is a place in living Christian spirituality for being responsible. God wants us to care for what has been given and to accomplish what we can in its midst. Don’t fear doing something well – to the best of your ability – as if God would somehow be against this. Go for it! And if you get there, forget about being arrogant, but by all means do enjoy the moment and appreciate God’s applause.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
Why do Christians tend to be detached from culture?
AN ENDORSEMENT FOR LIVING REFLECTIONS - MY SOON TO BE RELEASED NEW BOOK.
"Continuing in the spirit of Francis Schaeffer, but with more careful scholarly acumen, Greg Laughery shows how and why philosophical reflection is important for Christian witness. This is philosophical wisdom in service to the Word."
James K.A. Smith, Professor of Philosophy, Calvin College.
ABOUT LIVING REFECTIONS
The patron saints of reductionism and polarization in contemporary Christian thought frequently dominate disputes over language, philosophy, theology, interpretation, and their interaction. Living Reflections moves in a different direction. It establishes a space for dialogue, mediates one-sided extremes, and offers a hermeneutic of relation and distinction, which depicts a new vision for engaging with these contested issues. Challenging and insightful, it invokes a perceptive wisdom going beyond modernist and postmodernist perspectives, affirming the tension-filled and organic character of Christian truth.
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Stepping out of the shadows and into the light can be a risky move. Fear and trembling may accompany our exposure, but God’s divine communicative action in text and world illumines the long and winding path that leads to life. Loving God results in being known by the tri-agency of Father, Son, and Spirit, which becomes true knowledge and therefore opens up possibilities for living spirituality in the drama of a community that has no end.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Paul’s statement to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 12:3) that no one speaking by the Spirit of God can say, ‘Jesus is cursed,’ and no can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit, is radical stuff. True, in most situations today anyone can say what they will, but that’s not the point here. These early Christians, some who came out of pagan contexts, would have been politically cautious about calling anyone other than the Emperor, “Lord,” as may be the case in some political environments in the present. The apostle wants to re-enforce that Spirit activities are not pagan communicative acts, but are to result in the proclamation that ‘Jesus is Lord’ in spite of Roman or Jewish claims otherwise. Furthermore, Paul is aiming to shift the focus onto the Lordship of Jesus and away from the Corinthian fascination with the manifestations of gifts. Even legitimate expressions of gifts may inadvertently direct attention away from their true aim or goal - proclaiming Jesus as Lord, and the building up of others.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
What is love?
AN ENDORSEMENT FOR LIVING REFLECTIONS - MY SOON TO BE RELEASED NEW BOOK.
"For those wondering what Francis Schaeffer might say about postmodernity and contemporary disputes over language, philosophy, and interpretation, this collection of essays by a third generation staff member of the Swiss L'Abri may provide the answer. Greg Laughery's book runs the gamut of contemporary hermeneutics, using Paul Ricoeur as his sparring partner in each of its five chapters. Here is no despising of the intellect, but a probing reflection on the nature of Christian thought and biblical interpretation. Schaeffer can rest easy: the community at L'Abri continues to ask the right preliminary questions."
Kevin Vanhoozer, Blanchard Professor of Theology, Wheaton College.
ABOUT LIVING REFECTIONS
The patron saints of reductionism and polarization in contemporary Christian thought frequently dominate disputes over language, philosophy, theology, interpretation, and their interaction. Living Reflections moves in a different direction. It establishes a space for dialogue, mediates one-sided extremes, and offers a hermeneutic of relation and distinction, which depicts a new vision for engaging with these contested issues. Challenging and insightful, it invokes a perceptive wisdom going beyond modernist and postmodernist perspectives, affirming the tension-filled and organic character of Christian truth.
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Forecasts of the demise of Christianity in the West are pervasive, and for my part, I think largely accurate. There are many changes needed to correct this trajectory, but one important shift that is essential is for Christians to wake up to the importance of having a thoughtful faith. Thinking is not poison and ideas are important to wrestle with in a credible manner, whether we are engaging another Christian or not. A respectful listening to and learning from others will enhance our integrity, while not necessarily meaning that we have to agree with conclusions that are not fitting with truth and love. Escapism and ignorance are not representative of the living God, who calls us to connect with the world and others for their own sakes, and to participate in shinning light into dark places and to bringing sufficient explanations into the theater of death.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Sacrifices on the altars of resolution rob us of the sacred. Conversely, slices of tension permeate our space, provoking thought and raising questions. God has communicated sufficient information, but there is much that is open to discovery. Embrace the tension and wait for the day of the Lord, when we shall see face to face and know as we are known.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
Someone mentioned to me the other day that our options in life are to be self-obsessed or God obsessed. What do you think about this?
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
The church needs to get out of buildings and into the streets. Repent> Protest> Rage against the machine. Cultural masquerades of the rhetoric of individualism have fooled many, but alas the ideology of the prevailing system of stamping, numbering, and coding, rules under the clever disguise of freedom. It is time for ideologies and rhetoric to be resisted and overthrown. Too long, oh Lord, too long. While dancing around in arena of death, we have squandered truth and love, and made them fools to be sneered at and ignored. Too long, oh Lord, too long. Give us renewed vision and strength to see redemption lived, and flowing into the byways and passages; the theater of life. May we contribute to and enhance the credibility of the gospel as “good news” for all humanity.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
The Western church has further impoverished itself by ignoring or excluding the artist, musician, and poet. These creative people have a whole lot to teach us about Christ, culture, and living spirituality. Let’s make every effort to invite and welcome these players into our communities and to open our horizons to their insights. We desperately need fresh perspectives that will enrich and illuminate the path ahead. Being closed minded is not a Christian virtue.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
Does God want us to be nobodies and nothings?
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
The being of God needs to be configured from what God does. God speaks, reveals, and relates. These three dimensions of what God does are partially, though not exhaustively, connected to who God is. God is a massive figure who has a purpose, not primarily an essence. This purpose is renewal, which will ultimately unfold and develop in the world and humanity until the moment when God breaks through, and becomes entirely present.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Seems to me we’re living in a post-trust world. When the major trust identities in a culture are shattered, there is little left to promote confidence. Since we have no where else to turn, it must be time for renewal.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
One person lacks an experience of God and believes in God in spite of this. Another person lacks an experience of God and because of this does not believe in God. How significant should experience be when it comes to belief or unbelief in God?
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
AN ENDORSEMENT FOR MY SOON TO BE RELEASED NEW BOOK.
"Living Reflections, written by Gregory J. Laughery the Director of the L'Abri Fellowship in Switzerland, is a worthy contribution to contemporary Christian thought in the tradition of cultural engagement championed by Francis Schaeffer, co-founder (with his wife Edith) of L'Abri. Laughery deals with a number of key issues from contemporary Christian philosophy, hermeneutics, and Biblical scholarship, moving seamlessly from philosophy to theology and back. The book is notable for its engagement with both "continental" and "analytic" philosophy, and also for the good sense and balance the author shows in dealing with a number of contested issues."
C. Stephen Evans, University Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, Baylor University.
ABOUT LIVING RELECTIONS
The patron saints of reductionism and polarization in contemporary Christian thought frequently dominate disputes over language, philosophy, theology, interpretation, and their interaction. Living Reflections moves in a different direction. It establishes a space for dialogue, mediates one-sided extremes, and offers a hermeneutic of relation and distinction, which depicts a new vision for engaging with these contested issues. Challenging and insightful, it invokes a perceptive wisdom going beyond modernist and postmodernist perspectives, affirming the tension-filled and organic character of Christian truth.
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
On the global register the financial picture is bleak. There is no better moment than now to set in motion an economy of gift, which goes far beyond the economy of exchange. The notion of exchange dominates our cultures and influences all we do and say. While there is some validity to and place for exchange, it is not, as it pretends, the end of the story. Let’s beat back this omniscient narrator, through a grace and generousity that is linked into God’s economy of superabundance.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
The ZigZag Café
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
Do you think that ethics has a sufficient basis without God?
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Believers can experience high levels of anxiety, either as a result of complications in their own lives, or by taking on the burdens of others. But peace with God is not configured by sensations or a masked by anxiety. This possibility comes about through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ becoming our own. Living “as if” means that our lives are determined by the future, which has broken into the present, shattering the notion that the present is the sole referent for itself.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Our lives are so cluttered with debris that it’s harder and harder to think. It’s almost as if there is a conspiracy to prevent us from thinking about anything at all. Being zombies and robots – that’s it – that’s what it’s all about. Don’t bother attempting to reverse the flow. Beware! Thinking may do some serious collateral damage to us all.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
If you think that we have a choice to believe or not believe in God before believing, and then we come to belief, do we still have a choice to believe or not believe after having done so?
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Ontology, epistemology, and ethics are blended and nuanced as nowhere else, in a Christian perspective of the self, other, and world, resulting in truer selfhood. A self that begins with self, which we all do, is a trajectory of orientation, but a self that attempts to end with the self is a violation of self. That is, the self lacks the capacity to be a truer self if the self does not have a divine source or informer of being, knowledge, and morality beyond oneself, as all human others at some point, are selves.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Feeling at peace with something may not be a reliable source of confirmation that this is what you should do, or what God wants you to do. To feel this way or that is an important factor to take into consideration when deciding something, but it is wide open to duplicity. Making decisions and commitments anchored in theological truths, however, is a more sure and trustworthy guide for following in the footsteps of the crucified and risen One.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
Do we have an explanation for the origin of evil?
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Drawing conclusions from one perspective can be reductionistic. Christians want to recognize that reality has to be viewed with the eyes of a multiplicity of intricate angles and variable vistas. Whether climbing a high Alpine mountain or walking through a city, much of what we perceive will need to be enacted through skillful attention to detail that may first escape us. Looking again, perhaps, should be a key feature of the Christian worldview, which is founded on the complex character of the creator God.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
The way knowledge operates in our lives is often tricky. That is, some claim to not know much, but they have a trenchant critique of those around them who, in their eyes, do not measure up. Further, they sometimes assert exactly what God is doing in their own lives and in the world. Such contradictions show that those who say they know little is a foil for the manipulative power play of having a God like knowledge that is wielded like a sword and stabbed into the flesh of anyone willing to listen to the propaganda. Knowledge is important and we want to be as honest and theologically accurate as possible concerning what we know. When we are not, it can lead to serious misunderstandings of God, self, other, and world.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
In the next part of the story, beginning in 2:1, we read that Jesus becomes embroiled in a number of controversies. The aim of the narrator, at this stage, is to give readers a deeper glimpse into who Jesus is, how his actions manifest the arrival of God’s kingdom, and why these dimensions of his identity and mission create conflict that will inevitably threaten his life.
So far in the story we have read that Jesus is God’s son with whom he is pleased, that Jesus proclaims something new is happening – the time has come, that he went about proclaiming the gospel, that he invited people to follow him and that he taught, healed, and cast out unclean spirits.
We left off last time with the specific healing of the man with a skin disease in 1:40-45. Notice the result of this cleansing is that Jesus could not openly enter towns as the news about him was spreading – He is forced outside of daily life – away from people, yet in spite of this they came to him. After Jesus’ strong warning to the healed man to not tell anyone – but go show the priest and offer sacrifices – was ignored, at least to some extent, the narrator prepares us for the rising conflicts that will follow.
Some time later, Jesus returns from outside places, to Capernaum, seemingly without detection. Much of the excitement about his teaching and manifestations of power may have subsided in the outside places and it is time to re-inaugurate the mission in Capernaum.
Jesus was heard and heard to be in the house, most likely of Simon and Andrew. Interest in Jesus again flourished. He is portrayed, as we might imagine in a one room chalet situated on a small road with hordes of people inside a three to five meter space, and outside cluttering around the door and flowing out into the narrow street. Jesus was speaking the word to the crowd, mostly likely in this context, the good news of the KOG being near – the time of God’s rule had arrived in a radically new way.
Just then, arriving on the scene are a group of men carrying a paralytic on a mat. All the people crowding around made it difficult for the group to get through and bring this person to Jesus. As excavations of Capernaum show, many houses had outside stairs leading up to flat roofs. These men, as it were, took the roof off – imagine again that small chalet and some people on the roof taking off tiles to be able to lower someone down to Jesus. Obviously, this group knew what they were doing on the thatched and mud sealed roof in Capernaum. They dug through, who knows what Jesus and the crowd thought of all this, much less the owner – were they looking up wondering about the roof caving in, or had Jesus just continued speaking the word? Such curious details are of no interest to the narrator. What happens next is why the story is told and slotted in at this point of the story.
When Jesus, from the narrator’s perspective, sees their faith, as expressed on the narrative level through their actions of taking the roof off, he responds. Manifestations of Jesus healing power had already been in evidence and these people clearly have faith that he will heal again. Jesus pronouncement – “child, your sins are forgiven,” may seem slightly or even awfully strange to us. Original hearers no doubt would have been less perplexed. In both OT and NT contexts, physical healing is sometimes connected to the forgiveness of sin. However, this is not always the case throughout biblical literature. In our context, the forgiveness proclaimed by Jesus raised issues for the scribes who quietly question his right prerogative to perform such an act.
The questions posed here are probably to be understood as a silent accusation of blasphemy. To claim to do forgiveness or to do forgiveness for God would have carried the charge of desecrating the oneness of YHWH. Who does Jesus think he is?
To be continued next Friday.
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We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
With the dramatic rise of the explanatory power of science in our times, is there any place left for God?
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
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For anyone who buys 2 copies of this book off Amazon.com or anywhere else, and sends proof of purchase to greg dot laughery at gmail dot com along with your name, address, and phone number, I will send you a free copy. Or, if you purchase 5 copies you will receive 2 for free. What to do with extra copies? Practice the economy of gift - give them away to family, friends, and church.
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Night sweats, sleeplessly lying, in the quiet of the dawn. Light, oh precious light, breaking through the long hours of darkness, inviting; enacting; discerning; vision. Seeing, once again, provides a glimmer of hope that is treasured in a moment of being, knowing, and believing.
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Special OFFER – FOR THE REST OF SEPTEMBER 2010.
For anyone who buys 2 copies of this book off Amazon.com or anywhere else, and sends proof of purchase to greg dot laughery at gmail dot com along with your name, address, and phone number, I will send you a free copy. Or, if you purchase 5 copies you will receive 2 for free. What to do with extra copies? Practice the economy of gift - give them away to family, friends, and church.
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It may be relationally risky to follow in the footsteps of Christ. We pray, dear Lord, for strength, patience, and wisdom to stay on the path of truth and love, as we live as children of light in this world of darkness.
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SEE LAST FRIDAY'S POST: WASTING AWAY ! THEN READ THIS
A prevalent term used by many today when referring to Western culture is post-Christian, and in my estimation many churches are contributing to making this the case.
But what does PC mean? Stuart Murray, in his book, Post-Christian: Church and Mission in a Strange New World, 2004, 6, defines it this way: “Post-Christian is the culture that emerges as the Christian faith loses coherence within a society that has been definitively shaped by the Christian story, and as the institutions that have been developed to express Christian convictions decline in influence.”
Generally speaking, this is a pretty accurate description. Not only therefore, do we find ourselves in a post-modern world, but increasingly in a post-Christian one. However, this may not be an all together negative assessment if we consider what is being referred to as Christian here is a response to what is frequently inauthentic, trite, and superficial, which makes the expression of the faith closer to pretending, than to the real thing.
Most of us, I would argue, would have some serious questions about the trends and rhythms of twentieth and twenty-first century Christianity and its ability to have a credible impact on our lives or Western culture. Might we be living in times where what we have known as church and state are falling apart? And if so, where are we to find our way towards renewal and hope - something new and living - which can emerge out of the ashes?
If the Western church and culture are to begin to recover from the staggering blows they have by and large brought upon themselves, I believe that one of the crucial elements in recovery will have to be a diligent living out the Scriptures. We could add to this a number of other realities, including being in deep community with God, the power of the Holy Spirit, and that Christ is Lord of all of life, but let’s focus on Scripture.
Reading, studying, and appropriating the truths encoded in the biblical text are essential to Christian existence, and having an impact on culture. One problem today tends to be, if we read Scripture at all, our reading habits often control the text, which inevitably prevents it from reading us. Stephen Fowl and Gregory Jones in their fine book Reading in Communion point out: “Christian communities must be aware of the possibilities of interpreting Scripture in such a way that it supports rather than subverts corrupt and sinful practices. We need to learn to read the Scriptures over against ourselves rather than simply for ourselves.”
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
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FOR THE REST OF SEPTEMBER 2010.
For anyone who buys 2 copies of this book off Amazon.com or anywhere else, and sends proof of purchase to greg dot laughery at gmail dot com along with your name, address, and phone number, I will send you a free copy. Or, if you purchase 5 copies you will receive 2 for free. What to do with extra copies? Practice the economy of gift - give them away to family, friends, and church.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
How would you go about communicating to someone who centers everything on the way one feels that basing our faith in God on feelings alone is problematic? And if you disagree that this would be a problem, please say why.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Special OFFER –
FOR THE REST OF SEPTEMBER 2010.
For anyone who buys 2 copies of this book off Amazon.com or anywhere else, and sends proof of purchase to greg dot laughery at gmail dot com along with your name, address, and phone number, I will send you a free copy. Or, if you purchase 4 copies you will receive 2 for free. What to do with extra copies? Practice the economy of gift - give them away to family, friends, and churches.
Read the Book – Find the Rhythm
Standards of measure have to be discovered, questioned, and assessed. Contraband finds its way into our lives and as it does, we can often end up living by a false standard. Illegitimate guilt and condemnation are unfaithful resources that keep us bound to the legalities of measuring up, which brings death, not life. We are called to live by the Spirit, as the law has already been fulfilled in the Crucified and Risen One.
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We should outright repent for our inappropriate polarizations. Among the many that plague us, take the mind and heart dualism as an example. Some Christians say all that matters is the heart, while others focus solely on the mind. Yet, the developing of a Christian heart is as relevant as promoting a Christian mind. Gravitating towards God requires both, and a whole lot more – namely, all of who we are.
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There have been a myriad of books recently released concerning the church in the Western world. While coming from different perspectives, they share one thing in common: the church is in trouble. I would assume that there are a few of us reading this who are facing serious questions about the condition and function of the church. The diminishing church in the West today is often front page news. As the mighty notions of church, science, and state meta-narratives inevitably begin to corrode and ultimately collapse, is the church going to disappear from the scene?
To focus briefly on this for a moment, it’s no secret that many European churches are being sold off to developers and art galleries. Only a small amount of people attend church in many of the countries of a new and progressive Europe. If this decline continues, some statistics show, church membership by 2030, will all but disappear in many Western nations.
If we consider the United States, there is no question about it still having some big churches, yet the impact of the church on mainstream culture continues its downward spiral towards irrelevance. No doubt there are lots of church buildings – someone recently told me of a Texas church that is undertaking a new $47 million, or something like that, building project – and if I can hazard a guess, there will probably be a new bowling alley and health club included, so that believers don’t have to mess around with those unbeliever types, when indulging in these activities.
Often, not always, this type of situation perpetuates a disembodied Christian faith, which has been gutted and emptied of truth and love. Buildings and activities take precedence over people, and when that happens we’re destined for serious problems.
STAY TUNED FOR MORE ON THIS NEXT FRIDAY
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The cross and resurrection of Christ are what we are to gravitate towards and be grafted into when it comes to Living Spirituality.
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We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
Is asking yourself the question, “what would Jesus do” appropriate?
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Not loving yourself is taking matters into your own hands and being your own bad authority, as opposed to the exercise of good authority given in creation and salvation. Loving yourself is accepting God’s authority to identify, describe, and configure who one is, and then to live in the truth of this.
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There are many forms of being self-centered, but I want to highlight two. We are probably all familiar with the first. A person who says, “I am proud, arrogant, and selfish,” we usually understand as self-centered and therefore unspiritual. The second, however, may be less evident. A person who says “I am nothing, a zero, and empty,” we should also understand as self-centered and unspiritual. Why? Capital ‘I’ is at the center of not only the first, but equally the second! Humans are not capital “I’s” but creatures – images of God. We have a creational mandate from God to achieve and accomplish things, but not to think too highly of ourselves in doing so. This holds true for Christians. God wants us to be productive toward the other and in the world. When we are, we should notice that we are loving God, hence this will enhance spirituality. The arrogant and the nothings need to re-center the flow. Living a fine tension between confidence and humility in loving God is one of our spiritual callings that has unfortunately gone too far astray.
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The narrator summarizes in 1:39 explaining that what Jesus had suggested took place. He went throughout Galilee proclaiming the good news of his mission, and in the narrator’s understanding, driving out demons.
In his travels, Jesus receives a man with skin disease, which makes him unclean (1:40-45). No doubt such people were in outside places away from people and normal daily activities. The man urgently begs Jesus to cleanse him and the story wants to highlight that rumors about Jesus were making their way, even to such remote places and disconnected people.
The narrator first explains Jesus’ response - he was moved deeply by this man; his circumstances, social situation, and degraded condition. Next, he touches the man and courageously pronounces – “I am willing – Be clean.” To touch this man was to ignore laws of ritual purity, while also risking contamination by the sickness. Neither prevents Jesus from granting the request and the man at once is cleansed. Intriguingly, Jesus immediately sends him off with a forceful expression of anger.
Perhaps, considering Jesus’ words in verse 44, this man already mentioned he was out to portray Jesus in a manner that he did not appreciate and to pay no attention to the necessary legislation that would confirm his cleanliness. Jesus scolds the cleansed man. He is not to say anything about his cleansing. Ironically, he is instructed to obey ritual legislation, to show the priest, and to offer sacrifices. Jesus’ concern here seems to be for the man, not for the law per se. He knows that following these legal obligations will be the only way that this man can move from outside places back into the daily activities of living a normal life. The needed testimony to the priestly orders will be the sacrifices and the cleansed man himself, but Jesus is aware this will spark a fair amount of controversy and questions regarding his mission and the inauguration of a salvific power that goes far beyond legislation. Given the narrator’s next comment, we can’t be sure if the man actually went to Jerusalem, the only place to offer sacrifices, or showed himself to a priest.
What is clear is that he surely disobeyed the first command of Jesus – not to spread the news around about being cleansed. The unfortunate effect of this, as Jesus seems well aware, is that it begins to create a negative impact on the Galilean mission. The picture we’re left with at the end of chapter 1 is that Jesus is now forced to an outside place and away from towns and villages. The misunderstanding crowds and the growing opposition of the authorities are increasingly complicating matters and conflict is increasing. Who Jesus really was and what he was really doing are being put in jeopardy. Yet, as John the Baptist previously, a stream of people now came to him in the outside place far from everyday life. Outsiders continue to show the way inside, though not always with an appropriate recognition of the in-breaking KOG, or he who was inaugurating it.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
Do you think marriage or celibacy is a higher spiritual calling?
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
We can be enormously thankful that our spirituality and living in community with God have no connection whatsoever with a particular social status – single or married, rich or poor, doctor or plumber, even female or male. There seems to be a tremendous amount of anxiety about such matters. I’m not sure why, when God could care less. The invitation is to: “Come as you are.” To change social status is fine, but this is never required by God.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
If we do not inhabit the gospel story, first in imagination, and then in action, we will be unable to live it.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
Why is the search for a community life so intriguingly popular today, and what do you see as the value and purpose of Christian community?
Special OFFER – FOR THE REST OF AUGUST 2010.
For anyone who buys 3 copies of this book off Amazon.com or anywhere else, and sends proof of purchase to greg dot laughery at gmail dot com along with your name, address, and phone number, I will send you a free copy. Or, if you purchase 5 copies you will receive 2 for free. What to do with extra copies? Practice the economy of gift - give them away to family, friends, and church.
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Today is crystal clear. It appears there is nothing between sun, sky, and us. God is there. Such a lucid glimpse in nature gives hope for a future seeing that will be even more pristine in the new world to come. For the moment though, we know that tomorrow may bring thick and blustery fog, which will block visibility, leaving us longing for a renewing vision, where illumination will again be perceptible to earthly eyes.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Special OFFER – FOR THE REST OF AUGUST 2010.
For anyone who buys 3 copies of this book off Amazon.com or anywhere else, and sends proof of purchase to greg dot laughery at gmail dot com along with your name, address, and phone number, I will send you a free copy. Or, if you purchase 5 copies you will receive 2 for free. What to do with extra copies? Practice the economy of gift - give them away to family, friends, and church.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
There is no worse testimony than when Christians miss defining moments in the history of the Christian faith. Too much gets trashed and the next generation spends most of its time digging its way out of the wreckage. I believe we are now facing a hugely significant issue that will mark the faith for years to come: science and theology. Unless we are willing to engage with new data and seriously consider our interpretations afresh, there is a danger of leaving behind us the powerful shadow of being ignorant and arrogant.
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Continuing in 1:14-45. The first things that happen are connected to the daily activities of walking and fishing. The province of Galilee, in contrast to the small confines of Nazareth, will be the setting of much of the story up to chapter 8. This location is where Jesus was to find a more Jewish audience, which would have some link with this proclamation of the KOG.
Seeing Simon and Andrew fishing, Jesus invites them to come along – to follow behind him to become fishers of men and women. Immediately they follow. Two others, sons of Zebedee this time, are called by Jesus and follow him at once. These first disciples will begin to form a core in a group of people through whom aspects of God’s rule will eventually become manifest. The quick rhythm of these occurrences of discipleship may indicate a previous awareness of, or even encounter with Jesus, but the narrator gives us little to go on, in order perhaps, to highlight the persuasive authority of the coming One.
The scene, with Jesus and the disciples, now shifts to Capernaum, Sabbath, and synagogue. Jesus, likely to have been known by synagogue leaders, which most Jewish first century readers would easily assume, is teaching in the synagogue. As Jesus begins to teach, his words astound the people, who acknowledge his authority over that of their typical theological influences. At this very moment, in the normal part of daily life in a synagogue meeting, a man possessed by an unclean evil spirit yells two questions and makes a statement: “What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the Holy One of God.”
Opposition is announced here straight off – the unclean spirit assumes that Jesus’ presence means he has a mission of destroying such spirits, and acknowledges what readers, but not yet characters in the story already know: Jesus is the Holy One of God.
In an expression of God’s rule that will manifest itself in the story several times from here on out, Jesus exorcises this unclean spirit with a powerful command that both silences the spirit and brings it under control. Jesus’ order to the spirit is obeyed and the spirit is ripped out of the man with shaking and a scream. It appears, at least from the narrator’s point of view, that Jesus’ aim is to silence the unclean spirit, not destroy it. Again, in response to such a manifestation, the people are astonished. Jesus’ power over unclean-evil spirits is remarkable, and as readers we know that this is a demonstration of who Jesus is in the context of the arriving KOG.
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We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
What do you find the most mysterious about the Christian life?
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Special OFFER – FOR THE REST OF AUGUST 2010.
For anyone who buys 3 copies of this book off Amazon.com or anywhere else, and sends proof of purchase to greg dot laughery at gmail dot com along with your name, address, and phone number, I will send you a free copy. Or, if you purchase 5 copies you will receive 2 for free. What to do with extra copies? Practice the economy of gift - give them away to family, friends, and church.
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Searching for better interpretations of God, Scripture, the world, and ourselves is a life long task and joy. This doesn’t mean that in and through our probing investigations, we stand or kneel nowhere. That is simply not a credible possibility. Taking a view as a conscious choice is both valid and instructive when based on interpretative sufficiency, though this is to be done with a tensional configuration of confidence and humility in dialogue.
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Charity and hospitality are fading attributes. Restoring these two features of a Christian confession should be a goal that persistently dominates our sacred calling as those who follow in the footsteps of the crucified and risen One.
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As the story proper begins (1 :14-45), the narrator will shed greater light on Jesus’ mission and identity. Concerned to bring the reader into story time, there is no development of John’s arrest at this point, simply because he is no longer in the picture. Forging ahead quickly, the narrator highlights that Jesus takes on the role as the central character and that this will underscore both a contrast and continuity with the Baptist.
In contrast to John, remember he was outside daily life and everyday matters, Jesus will associate with others in their day by day affairs. Reversing the flow, he will go to the people in towns, villages, and cities proclaiming the good news about God, which he himself is bringing, and is.
In continuity with John, Jesus is both proclaiming and calling people to repent. For the first time in the story he now speaks- Jesus suggests, in a narrative liaison with the prologue, that the fulfillment of prophetic pronouncements have reached their goal -the time has come - something new in the light of the old has arrived. Jesus’ way of saying this is, the KOG has come near. The coming near is an indication of timing. That is, the KOG has now entered the scene of humanity in a new way.
The subject of the KOG has been much discussed in books and commentaries. Let’s just think of the phrase as God’s rule and all that this can imply. To do so is to make room for the polyphonic character of the term, rather than reducing it to a single referent or meaning. Jesus’ statement is saturated with the notion that God is fulfilling the promise that his long awaited rule is now present, yet still awaits completion. Another helpful way to envision the KOG is as a symbol in tension – past, present, future – already and not yet – arrived and not complete. It aims to evoke a whole constellation of thoughts, feelings, observations, and imaginary processes associated with God ruling in word, deed, and action. A fair bit of the story we’re hearing in Mark’s gospel is an expression of this symbol in tension, as it cuts a pathway through a thicket of conflicts, reversals, and antagonisms connected to Jesus’ actions and his teaching.
The following words of Jesus – repent and believe the good news emphasize two things: first the need to change our ways – reverse our direction, and second, to trust in and be committed to the good news, as it will now unfold in the story from here on out. While readers may be expecting some cataclysmic event, as the KOG has come near, the story of Jesus in Galilee, takes a surprising turn. God’s rule is going to manifest itself in some unexpected ways that may surprise us.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
When and in what circumstances would you ever consider a lack of knowledge as advantageous?
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Sometimes we become so overwhelmed with the state of the world that we lose hope that anything can really change, but change can and does come. Surely, there is much that has to be addressed on the global and local stage; economic blackmail, social chaos, and political subterfuge to mention just a few. Standing for justice and the gift mark us out as those who believe in a God of hope who reveals that it should be different, but the cost is high in that we cannot accept the status quo. Battered around by the current flow of disillusion has the tendency to strip from us a vision of a better future, yet this very emotion is a confirmation that we refuse to accept the present, and in so doing, we make an alliance with the crucified and risen One who led the way.
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Being and knowledge given. What a sensible perspective. The given precedes being and knowledge, as the One who gives stands apart from and is prior to all else. This theological consideration has strong implications for philosophy and the whole of life. That is, ontology and epistemology cannot go it alone, as both are preceded by a life of giveness, which has to begin to be recognized for what it is.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
I think it's harder and harder today to hold to any measure of exclusivity. Yet, if this is the essence of plurality, as I would argue, is it indispensable for Christians to maintain?
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
The Genesis creation drama is transhistorical in that it has the capacity to break out of its immediate cultural context, without denying or effacing it, and to continue to show itself as a story that carries a temporal mark that is fitting for any time. The founding narrative in Genesis—this story of beginnings, sets out a theological, historical, and literary redescription of the world which stands in stark polemical contrast to other ancient Near Eastern portrayals of creation, as well as to contemporary forms of naturalism. Spirituality, as far as Christianity is concerned, begins with creation and therefore must find its place within it.
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Freed for life in a new community with the one who was, is, and will always be, is a startling experience. Broken and enslaved to dying, moment by moment, brings sadness and lament. Renewal shatters the well worn grooves of non-existence, overcoming the threat of terror that so quietly, yet powerfully aims at the grave.
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But there is more here for us as readers of the prologue in the gospel of Mark. We have what seems to be another confirmation. Previously, there was a voice calling in the wilderness/desert, this time it is a voice from heaven. A voice linkage takes place on the level of hope and fulfillment. God is speaking from outside places that go beyond the norm of everyday life. Heaven and wilderness/ desert voices are confirmatory voices that readers need to hear about as we are moved further inside the narrative world, which in a startling and shocking way, begins to transform and change our own world.
God’s voiced proclamation assures readers that Jesus is the real thing – the beloved authentic Son promised from the times of the OT in whom God is now pleased. These OT images (focus Isaiah 42:1-4 and Psalm 2:7) give readers a striking portrayal of Jesus as the unique son of God who will carry forward God’s promise of a Messiah-servant-being who would bring the long awaited Kingdom of God. Instantly, after this voiced confirmation by God, the Spirit drives Jesus away from one wilderness and into another – to an outside place further away from daily life and everyday contexts, and the flow of crowds coming to John. The role of Jesus is portrayed as entirely passive in the narrator’s recounting. The active verbs in this scene refer to the Spirit and the angels. The narrator offers readers a privileged insight into the outside – to beyond the norms of human affairs in order to show the role of a personal and performative dimension of the Spirit in Jesus’ mission of facing conflict, and a power battle that is not entirely played out in daily life situations. Intriguingly, the vivid and striking verb ekballo—drive out—for the Spirit’s action is used some fifty times in this narrative, most often, as we shall see later, when Jesus drives out demons. This verb usually connotes motions of conservation or resistance, but the narrator chooses to leave any such overt suggestions out of the picture. What is portrayed more clearly is that the authentic unique Son of God faces this time of conflict through the initiative of the Spirit. Whatever testing experience Jesus goes through in this outside place, its overall impact is positive with respect to the unfolding mission of God in these new times. Jesus again receives confirmation as God’s authentic Son. The protagonist Satan, the adversary, tests Jesus in the outside wilderness place for a period, likely here reminiscent of the previous period of Israel’s testing in the outside places—wilderness prior to entering the Promised Land.
The narrator makes very little of this encounter and the testing connected to it. No sense of victory or defeat – winner or loser. The mention of wild animals may reinforce the picture of an outside place and Israel’s wanderings in the wilderness where God’s people are protected from vicious animals, much as Jesus may have now been through the aid of angels.
The focus here seems to be to heighten the drama as the baptized and baptizing Son of God – the coming One is thrust into heavy conflict in a hostile environment that threatens, yet cannot stop God’s unfolding mission to Israel and to the whole world through his Son.
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Longing for glistening reds and flows of blue sky in permanence – sunrise and sunset – the earth caught in the rhythm of turning and time. Light it up, oh God, and break the rhythm, so that all will be able to see you.
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Lord God, we call out to you for wisdom, strength, and patience. Help us know how to love more deeply, to be courageous when so much that is wrong with us and with the world appears to be out of control, and to have endurance in serving others as we look forward to and await the glorious renewal of all things.
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The prologue of the gospel of Mark continues in verses 9-11 with Jesus’ arrival on the scene. The narrator points out to the readers that Jesus comes out of Nazareth in Galilee to be baptized by John ‘in those days’ – a highly Semitic way of saying, this is someone and something entirely new – who is not from Jerusalem. God is doing a new thing and ironically Jesus, in contrast to the Jewish crowds flowing out of Jerusalem and Judea, arrives from Galilee. The coming One enters the prologue and paradoxically is baptized by John with water, perhaps the narrator’s way of highlighting Jesus’ aligning himself with the people of God and the transfer, for the reader, from one trajectory in the OT to what God was doing now in Jesus. The coming One – Jesus – after baptism reception has a vision of a tear in heaven, no doubt reminiscent for the narrator, of many OT pictures that portray God as opening heaven to descend and be with his people. The drama of tearing open heaven is a powerful way of revealing that something surprising is about to take place.
Just then Jesus sees the Spirit descending to or upon him, which from the narrative perspective, is a confirmation of the fulfillment of the times as Jesus is more and more clearly identified as the long awaited Messiah of God who would be saturated with God’s Spirit and anointed, empowered, and equipped by the Spirit for the task at hand. There does not seem to be, as far as I know, any particular hidden significance as to why the narrator uses the imagery of a dove. Doves, at the time, don’t carry any symbolic or theological overtones, so it is probably best to take this as a way of saying that Jesus saw the invisible Spirit in the visible form of a dove, which represents a confirmation for readers as to who he is as the Christ.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
ZZC will be closed for vacation until the 5th of August. I’m looking forward to renewing the conversation and dialogue then.
For now – Bonjour.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Living in a post-trust culture means that cynicism and apathy reign. So many people are infected with an overdose of suspicion, which amounts to being caught up in the cycle of the same. Suspicion produces suspicion, which produces more suspicion. While it is true that it is sometimes appropriate to be suspicious, it is even more important to realize that trust is always primary. That is, God has created humans in such a way that they can’t escape trust. Problem is that we trust and are suspicious of the wrong things and this is where we need direction. A dialogue of trust and suspicion will be instructive, yet it is insufficient to produce sustainable insight as to which is which. Therefore, if we want to break out of the cycle of unknowing who and what to trust and where and why to be suspicious, I suggest that we turn to God as the One who can enter into the dialogue and provide a helpful illumination that will lead to discernment and a new possibility of beginning to live the dialogue in a more accurate and appropriate manner.
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Finding an original is like looking for the first pair of Levis or the first aspirin. God is the only Being, so it seems to me, who is capable of originality. But what is breathtaking is that out of what precedes us, we can produce something new. Sedimentation therefore shrouds who we are and what we do, yet innovation persists to contribute to life in discovering more and more what can be, from what already is.
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The next picture in the prologue portrayed for the reader is the actual coming of John in the wilderness/desert. His role is messenger and his voice is to prepare the way of the Lord, as was mentioned previously. Just as quickly as the narrator moved readers back in God’s story, we are now again in the moving forward mode.
John is baptizing and proclaiming that in the light of what God is doing, Jewish people are to repent in order for the release from sin to take place. This is the time in the wilderness/desert. The location, where John is proclaiming and baptizing is shockingly, out and away from ordinary daily life, hence he’s in the wilderness/desert, and separate from others, and Jerusalem and its ideologies. Repentance without sacrifice in Israel was unheard of, yet John goes against the status quo, and this is truly a sign of hope and fulfillment to all who were present. Apparently, John’s message – repent – and prophetic activity, at least in the eyes of the narrator, stirred up a fair amount of intrigue and interest. Jews flowed out into the wilderness, confessed, and were baptized.
A further element of this interest, and no doubt important to the narrator, was to recount to readers John’s appearance and his diet. These set out to confirm and highlight John’s prophetic role and may even further underline his Elijah connections in the statement, more specifically, of his proclamation. John affirms that the one coming after him has a strength and worth far greater than his own. John’s baptism was a water rite, but the coming one – the stronger one – will saturate Israel with the Holy Spirit in preparation for the incoming eschatological drama. The movement here appears to be from ceremonial washing, which even John indicates is not sufficient, to being a new people of God in light of the fulfillment of the coming One and the front-loaded OT allusions connected to Spirit activities, when God brought an end to the exile and inaugurated the new exodus in the Kingdom of God.
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We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
What is preaching for and do you think it is still valid today?
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Uncovering hidden commitments preventing belief in God is a challenge. Recognition of being already committed, if not to God, to someone or something has the ability to empower choice. Excuses for unfaith abound and are often, though not always, buried in the recesses of the undiscovered. When these are exposed, we begin to be freed from the unidentifiable controllers that block belief and enabled to decide on a new direction, or remain in the cycle of the same. Thankfully, God is not a God who lies in waiting, but one who opens possibilities for exposure, choice, change, and transformation, far surpassing that which was covered.
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Notions of the possible should illumine our lives. God is the God of the possible. Think of creation. Reflect on humanity. Ponder the incarnation. Envision heaven and earth renewed. Strangely and mysteriously incomprehensible all, but we can know sufficiently and find ourselves known intimately. Being here and there is a wonder of imaginary ontology and representing the incomprehensible on the face of the earth.
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What is the gospel – this good news in Marks prologue (1:1-13)? One of the features of good news in the prologue is Jesus’ arrival as Messiah - it is he who was prophesied to create a new exodus, to liberate Israel from exile, and to establish the Kingdom of God in a world dominated by the forces and powers of evil.
To confirm the newness of what God is doing in this good news, the narrator first of all moves readers of the prologue backwards – reversing the flow. In the impending drama of this story, there had been an assurance in what was already announced that this new time would arrive – the famous day – the long awaited moment – when One would come to mark out the fulfillment of this promise. The time of preparing for the coming of the Lord to liberate his people had now taken place and Christians were, and still are, invited to embrace and embody this thrilling occasion.
The narrator selects well known OT texts that are a key to the gospel’s arrival—a conflation of Malachi 3:1, Exodus 23:20 and Isaiah 40:3 appear under the heading, “As it has been written in Isaiah.” The mention of Isaiah may be due to the aim of the narrator to underscore the prophetic character of three lines now converging in time.
The first line streams from the life of Israel’s Exodus and the direction received during wanderings in the wilderness/desert. The second line evokes, at the end of the OT, one who will come and judge Israel for its sinful ways. And the third line highlights, at the end of Israel’s exile, that God would come to release his people. This streaming, evoking and highlighting are configured in this potent manner to suggest that a new exodus, in the shattering of Israel’s exile, is now going to happen.
The uploading of this picture sets out the development of what is to follow in the prologue, but it also is of considerable importance for the unfolding of the story of the gospel of Jesus Christ as recounted in Mark.
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We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
How would you respond to someone who says, “there is no need for progression in sanctification, as all we have to do in the here and now is live in Christ and we're sanctified” ?
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Finding out more about our unidentifiable commitments is impossible to accomplish on our own. It requires openness to people and things like an - other, a story, a film, a work of art, or the natural world. Any of these can potentially tell us more about what we may be unknowingly committed to. Once exposed, such commitments become identifiable and we can then discern whether they are appropriate or inappropriate as to who we are and how we live. Raising awareness may be dangerous for our inapt commitments, as it may challenge us to change what previously was functioning, albeit unconsciously, as an unspiritual and destructive power mechanism in our lives.
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In the midst of catastrophic destructions of the natural world, lamentable economies, and ruinous governmental policies, necessary reform seems far from being a priority on the environmental, financial, and political agendas. Maybe we just don’t like bad news and once it arises, we do everything we can to ignore it. God is not pleased by the folly of our times. Confession, rooted in the foolishness of God expressed in Christ crucified, is a first step in moving to fresh and innovative directions. Embrace the good news of God’s kingdom, and help bring its resources into the whole of life.
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One of the salient features of the twenty-first century is that we are living in post-Christian times. Christianity seems to be losing its traction, coherence, and credibility. Many of our churches have become corporations run by the principles of good marketing skills and consumerism, where the founding stories of our faith are distorted beyond recognition and used as manipulative tools to maintain the status quo of profit for profit’s sake.
Southern Baptist Convention President Frank Page in his book The Incredible Shrinking Church says that half of the thousands of SB churches will no longer exist in 2030, and his estimation probably holds true for many other denominations. Page cites several reasons for this demise including, lower birth rates, changing demographics, and cultures increasingly hostile to the Christian faith. And we might add an internal disintegration, where our love and unity have been replaced by judgment and separation, which in turn raises significant questions about the authenticity of our faith, or perhaps more extremely, why we should even bother to hold onto it at all.
While these reasons help explain our drift towards the post-Christian, I believe there is another key that contributes to the decline. We have not handled Scripture well. There has been a tendency to read the biblical text with a make it up as we go along methodology. The perversion of Scripture, to the degree that we can hardly recognize it as God’s word, has severe consequences when it comes to accurately reading culture, nature, the self, and the other.
To open the text of Scripture means to engage it more deeply, which will hopefully allow it to speak to us in fresh ways, and in so doing to direct us towards a recapturing of the credibility of the Christian faith, perhaps for ourselves, but also for a world that is in desperate need of the message of the gospel; the good news of the Kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus: truth, love, justice, and salvation for both rich and poor.
The Markan prologue opens with these interesting words – “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” The narrator wants readers to know that something is now about to happen that hasn’t taken place before. This story of Jesus Christ, his identity, mission, and revelation will point us in that direction.
The aim here is to alert readers straight off that something new is going to take place. Neither Matthew, nor Luke is self-referred as ‘gospel.’ Consequently, the narrator here is likely to be embarking on a new literary adventure, which may nevertheless fit loosely into the context of Jesus/Greco-Roman biography. Yet, what is new? The genitive construction, ‘gospel of Jesus Christ’ immediately raises a query. Should readers take this to be suggesting that Jesus Christ is this gospel or a proclaimer of it? To set off the prologue, it seems likely that we have a touch of purposeful ambiguity that encourages readers not to choose – Jesus Christ is both the proclaimer of and the content of this gospel. We should not always assume that ambiguity in biblical stories is negative, as it may in fact enhance meaning, rather than detract from it. What is important to realize is this: planned ambiguity of this sort, when it occurs, will help readers to envision truths in light of both-and – Jesus Christ is both proclaimer and content of the gospel, rather than either one or the other.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
