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Month: March 2009 (Page 2 of 3)

Reversing Fortunes

March 20, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Reversal of Fortunes“Remember that in your lifetime you received good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.” ~Luke 16:25

Jesus tells his story about the rich man and Lazarus to illustrate several points, among them that the things God considers of value are not recorded with numbers and dollar signs. But I’m particularly interested in the reversal of fortunes theme that appears to be synonymous with the coming of the Kingdom of God.

“The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.” ~Matthew 11:5

The roles of the rich man and Lazarus are reversed.

The rich man is very wealthy. He lives in a home with a gate and wears purple, an outward sign of great luxury. He dresses in fine linen, a description of his fancy underwear. Lazarus, by contrast, has nothing. He lies at the gate, begging, full of sores, unclean, and starving. His situation is as tragic as the rich man’s is sumptuous.

But now their fortunes are reversed. And it’s a permanent situation.

Isn’t this exactly what God through Christ has done for us? He has turned our lives completely around. He has totally reversed our fortunes. Permanently.

“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins…But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgression — it is by grace you have been saved.” ~Ephesians 2:1-5

Peace,

Allan

Missionaries At The Table

March 19, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Missionaries at the TableMarch is Missions Month here at Legacy. One hundred percent of our foreign and local missions budget for 2009 is funded by a special offering on March 29. And we’re spending the entire month gearing up for that. Talking about it. Preaching about it. Praying about it. Studying it. The mission of our God and the call of his Church: to take up the mission to seek and save the lost. We’re bringing up our own missionaries to speak to us on Sunday morninings. We’re hooking up via the miracle of the internet skype with David and Olivia Nelson in Ukraine and Corey and Emily Mullins in Australia to be with us in our assemblies. This past week 22 individuals and families from Legacy have signed up to take short-term missions trips with the Let’s Start Talking program.

 While considering the proclamation aspect of what we do together at the Lord’s Supper each Sunday (see yesterday’s post, “Proclaim the Lord’s Death”), it seems that communion time is also a missionary event.

The death of Christ concerns many more than just a few chosen and believing people. Jesus died for all. He died for all those who are weak, all those who are sinners, all those who are right now enemies of God. Christ does not delay his death for us and for all until the moment when we and others are converted and added to his flock. The Lamb of God carries all the sins of the whole world.

This is another thing we proclaim together at the table. In sharing the communion meal that celebrates the Christ, we testify to the promises of God that he loves all creatures, not just those now present at the table. We declare that Jesus died for all and that all are invited to answer his call to repentance and salvation and a restored relationship with the Creator through him. So the Lord’s table is a missionary event. A missionary action.

Markus Barth, again, from Rediscovering the Lord’s Supper:

“Proclaiming the death of Christ forbids an individual and egotistic, antisocial and particularistic celebration of the eucharist. The Lord’s table is an occasion for and a center of evangelism rather than a selfish search for peace of the soul or joyful private satisfaction.”

Communion time is not primarily a time for God to speak to us or for the clergy — preachers, elders, presiders, etc., — to speak to us. At Christ’s table it is the congregation of believers that is authorized and enabled to speak. We are all together heralds of the Good News. During communion we’re all gospel preachers. At the table we declare to all the world that God’s work embraces all of humanity and that the number of God’s people is not yet complete.

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Carrie-Anne’s picks are in. She’s taking Duke. Aggies and Horns are one-and-done. If you want to watch them play, you have to watch today.

Peace,

Allan

Proclaim The Lord's Death

March 18, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Proclaim the Lord’s Death

“Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” ~1 Corinthians 11:26

What happens when somebody dies? How do we feel? How do we act? What do we do?

We may be sad because of the loss or we may feel a sense of joy because of a prospective inheritance. In the case of a particularly tragic death, we may feel fear mixed with love. The death of a great poet or artist may result in feelings of deep respect. When an innocent person dies we may react with protests or vows of revenge. The convictions and deeds of a great leader may be so confirmed and endorsed upon his death that they actually radiate to later generations. People may celebrate the death of a tyrant by dancing on his grave.

Death can mean many things. And many can be our responses.

But none of those above mentioned actions and reactions express exactly what Paul means when he says “proclaim the Lord’s death.”

For Paul, the death of Christ was and is good news. It’s great news! And it is to be proclaimed with great joy.

When Paul describes the death of our Lord as a sacrifice, he’s telling us that the crucifixion is God’s greatest gift to humanity. “He who did not spare his own Son , but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement” (Romans 3:25).

“Proclaim the Lord’s death.”

To do that during the Lord’s Supper means that we are to express the pleasure and the joy that come as a result of the crucifixion. To proclaim means to announce publicly and clearly — not to whisper or remain silent — what has happened because of Jesus’ death and the meaning of that death. The table is an occasion and a practical form for showing and confessing that Jesus’ death is totally different from a natural event, a criminal act, or a tragic loss. It is not a reason or a place to cry or moan.

Markus Barth, from his 1988 work Rediscovering the Lord’s Supper:

“Those celebrating the Lord’s Supper know the pain and shame, the horror and scandal, of Christ’s death. However, they rejoice in the crucifixion and praise the slaughtered Lamb because God has raised from the dead the crucified Son and has accepted his intercession by enthroning him at God’s right hand. In Paul’s theology, as much as in the message of John, Hebrews, First Peter, and Revelation, the Crucified is always the raised and living Christ. The one who rules the Church and the world and who will come again is the crucified Christ. Through Christ alone the godless are justified and reconciled, saved and given peace. We have abundant reason to rejoice in Christ’s death and to praise the slaughtered yet living Lamb.”

To proclaim at the table is to do so with joy and gratitude. Love for God and gratitude for the sacrifice of his Son doesn’t exclude amazement and holy fear. That’s certainly part of it. But celebration and great joy that the Lord has come and that the lost have been found and that the dead are now alive expresses the real essence of the intent and mood of Christ’s meal. The Lord’s Supper is a meal of joy and thanksgiving, a eucharist, where we proclaim with one voice what Jesus’ willing sacrifice means for the world.

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March MadnessFor the record, Carley and Valerie have selected UConn, Whitney has picked OU (she’s very conflicted right now), and I’ve got Louisville winning the national championship. My Final Four is Louisville, Memphis, Carolina, and Duke with the Cardinals outlasting the Blue Devils for the title in Detroit. Carrie-Anne hasn’t given us her bracket yet. She has 24 hours.

Peace,

Allan

A New Sign

March 17, 2009 / / 0 Comments

MarchMadnessIs it unethical — is it wrong — to organize a college basketball pool among the ministers and staff? Wouldn’t that be a lot of fun? Would anybody in the church freak out?

We’re all filling out our brackets as a family tonight at Stanglin Manor. Not for money. Nobody plays for cash. It’s all about pride. This is the fifth or sixth year now the whole family has followed the tournament with picks on the line. And I’ve won every single year. Except last year. Whitney won the contest last year. And she’s been talking smack now ever since Sunday. Revenge is mine, I will repay.

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A New SignDo you think the Church still views its God-given mission as presenting and proclaiming an alternative lifestyle? Something better. Something higher. Something radically different. Something you can’t find anywhere else on this planet. Something you can only find inside a community of faith. Something that only belongs to children of God and followers of the Christ. Something real. Ultimately real. Eternal. Otherworldly. Belonging to another reality. The real reality.

Shouldn’t we be proclaiming and living something that can’t be purchased atA New Sign Wal-Mart or consumed at Chuck-E-Cheese or experienced at a Multiplex Movie Theater? And, if so, doesn’t that mean our means — our methods of this proclamation and living — should also be otherworldly and radically different? Christ-like, not earth-like. The Jesus Way, not the American Way.

From Resident Aliens, by Hauerwas and Willimon:

The most interesting, creative, political solutions we Christians have to offer our troubled society are not new laws, advice to Congress, or increased funding for social programs — although we may find ourselves supporting such national efforts. The most creative social strategy we have to offer is the Church. Here we show the world a manner of life the world can never achieve through social coercion or governmental action. We serve the world by showing it something that it is not, namely, a place where God is forming a family out of strangers.

A New SignThe Christian faith recognizes that we are violent, fearful, frightened creatures who cannot reason or will our way out of our mortality. So the gospel begins, not with the assertion that we are violent, fearful, frightened creatures, but with the pledge that, if we offer ourselves to a truthful story and the community formed by listening to and enacting that story in the Church, we will be transformed into people more significant than we could ever have been on our own.

As Barth says, “The Church exists to set up in the world a new sign which is radically dissimilar to the world’s own manner and which contradicts it in a way which is full of promise.”

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I’ve added a new link to the blogrole on the right hand side of this page. It’s Made In The Streets, the great work of Charles and Darlene Coulston in Nairobi, Kenya. They’ve been working with abandoned and orphaned and run-away children there for 15 years, reaching out to them with the love and mercy of God in Christ, showing them and living with them this citizen-of-heaven reality that is so radically different from the other, seen and temporary, “reality” all around them. You’ll be blessed by visiting their site.

Peace,

Allan

Called To Die

March 13, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Called To DieMy great friend Jim Gardner posted this on his blog a few days ago. Its very Bonhoefferesque. It reminds of the call of our Savior to follow him when he’s purposefully walking the path to Jerusalem and his horrible death. Deny yourself. Pick up your cross. Get in line behind me and follow me. It’s from a lecture given by Timothy Dolan, the recently appointed archbishop of New York.

“Maybe the greatest threat to the Church is not heresy, not dissent, not secularism, not even moral relativism, but this sanitized, feel-good, boutique, therapeutic spirituality that makes no demands, calls for no sacrifice, asks for no conversion, entails not battle against sin, but only soothes and affirms.” (“Church News,” Times-Dispatch, Richmond, VA, 2-25-09, A-10)

I wonder sometimes about the call of our Christ and whether or not that call is reflected by the practice in and of our churches. I worry sometimes that we’re not really calling our people to much more than showing up regularly for a spiritually-uplifting worship service, guaranteed to contain all the elements they enjoy in just the right order they expect.

Are we, like Christ and the Apostles, calling our people to grow? To change? To be continually converted? Are we calling our people to sacrifice? To give everything up for the sake of others? For the cross? Are we calling our people to faithfully eradicate sin? In our own lives? In our neighborhoods? To wipe out the sin in our churches?

Are we guilty of allowing a culture to develop in our churches in which, if things don’t go our way, we complain to the proper persons until we’re promised “I’ll look into that” or “Let me take care of that.”? Have we created, or at least fostered, a church culture that insists on our “rights,” within the congregational family and the broader community?

Our Lord calls us to die. To give away our lives for his sake. To be last.

Jesus bends over backward to make very clear he’s calling us OUT of our comfort zones, not to them.

I’m re-reading a great little work on the Lord’s Supper by Markus Barth, Rediscovering the Lord’s Supper. And right in the middle of this book he tackles this difficult call. Barth claims — my paraphrase — the Church of Christ ought to reflect the Christ of the Church.

“…Christ became weak, poor, despised, a scandal, and a foolishness to human reason, experience, and social standards, in order to come to those who are weak, poor, despised, who are considered scandalous or foolish, and who are treated as social outcasts. He came to them to be with them and to redeem them….As foolish, scandalous, and outcast as Christ is in relation to the world, so should Christ’s congregation be within the city.”

What changed? When and how did fitting in and looking good and being seen as successful in the eyes of the community become so important?

Wait. I’m on a new topic. Sorry.

The call to die. That’s the thought. Now, how do we do that as a church? Within our congregations and in our communities, how do we follow our Savior and die?

Peace,

Allan

Not A Speciality, Not An Option

March 11, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Breathing in PrayerPaul’s characterizations of the Church of God as a body — many different parts, many different gifts, one body — are dead on. Of course. We notice Church as Body theology in almost everything we do together. From singing in four-part harmony or celebrating the Lord’s Supper to pulling off a Give Away Day or a congregational potluck dinner, it takes many people with many different talents to form the Body.

But aren’t there some things that, as disciples of the Christ, are required of us all? Regardless of talent, regardless of ability, despite natural aversions or conditioned reluctance, aren’t there some things that must be an everyday part of the life of every child of God?

Prayer comes to mind.

I’m currently studying the Gospel with a young couple up here at the church building on Tuesday nights. They have almost no Bible background. They have very little, if any, knowledge of what God has done for them through Christ. But they’re hungry. They’re wide-eyed and curious. Responsive. They’re reading the Bible to each other, out loud, every evening. He reads two chapters to her, she reads two chapters to him. It’s beautiful. Powerful. And last night I asked them to begin and end every session in the Scriptures with prayer.

As we talked about the importance of prayer — the communion with God, the relationship, the speaking and listening — I struggled to articulate how huge it is. How vital. How demanding, yet how satisfying. How around-the-clock our prayers must be. It’s hard talking about prayer with someone who’s never done it. I was reminded of the words of Eugene Peterson from his latest book Tell It Slant.

“Prayer is not a subject of its own. Prayer is not a specialist activity. In a symphony orchestra some play the clarinet, some play the oboe, some play the violin, and some play the trombone. But in the Christian life it is not that way: we don’t have some who visit the sick, some who sing the hymns, some who read Scripture, some who give money, and some who pray. In the Christian life we do not choose aspects, get some instruction and training, and then specialize in what we like or feel we are good at (or avoid because we have no aptitude for it).

Prayer is not something we pull out of the web of revelation and incarnation and then sign on to be ‘prayer warriors.’ It is more along the analogy of breathing: if we are to live, we all have to do it. Although there are illnesses connected with breathing, there are no excellences. We don’t single out individuals and say, ‘She (or he) is a great breather.'”

Take a bunch of deep breaths today. Pray.

Peace,

Allan

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