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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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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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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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:
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
Special OFFER – UNTIL THE END 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
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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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
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
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.
READ THE BOOK - FIND THE RHYTHM
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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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
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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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
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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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:
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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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
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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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
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
