The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

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A Time to Laugh

March 31, 2014 / / 0 Comments
“There is a time for everything… a time to weep and a time to laugh.” ~Ecclesiastes 3
I wish I could take credit for the potency of the “fruit of the vine” we shared around our Lord’s table here at Central yesterday morning. I wish I had set it all up ahead of time. I wish I had made the right phone calls and contacted the right people, even shown up here on Saturday night to supervise the filling of the cups.
The plan was to spend the morning together considering the power of the resurrection. And, boy, did we! The powerful video from the dedication ceremonies of the Alara school reminded us of the power of our God who gives brand new life to more than 300 African orphans in a situation most people gave up for dead about five years ago. Jim Killingsworth’s powerful testimony reminded us of the power of our God who restores and heals, who brings joy and peace to his people walking through a dark desert. John T. Langley’s powerful words at the table connected us to faithful communion prayers from 1,800 years ago, reminding us of the power of our God to crush Satan and destroy all evil in the resurrection of Jesus.
The powerful grape juice — “powerful” may be an understatement — reminded us…. Hmmm. What did that juice remind us of?
How about this: the power of our God who saves us and changes us and bonds us together and empowers us to do his will despite our terribly feeble and inadequate efforts.
What a great reminder yesterday that even our best endeavors and our hardest tries always fall short. What a testimony to the grace of our God who loves us and takes care of us despite our continual missteps. What a powerful witness to our own humanity and to God’s amazing patience and faithfulness to us all.
One of our more clever young men in the youth group texted me as soon as the assembly was over, “It was either the wine or the sermon, but one made me sleepy.” Funny guy. Somebody else emailed me this morning, “Do we need to raise the traditional Church of Christ ‘Age of Accountability’ to twenty-one?” Good.
Yeah, that was strong stuff we were passing out yesterday. No, it wasn’t an intentional thing to be used as a sermon illustration. No, it wasn’t connected to “4 Amarillo.” It was a mistake. We’ve discovered the cause of the mistake and are taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
In the meantime, enjoy the jokes and the laughs, re-live the animated expressions on the faces around you yesterday, and remember that none of us is perfect. But we belong to a powerful, powerful, powerful God who is.
Peace,
Allan

The Kingdom Beyond

March 26, 2014 / / 0 Comments

“It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts: it is beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is the Lord’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.

No sermon says all that should be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the Church’s mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything. That is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted knowing they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that affects far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very, very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the Master Builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future that is not our own.”

~Oscar Romero

Great Power for Us

March 18, 2014 / / 0 Comments

“…his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” ~Ephesians 1:19-23

Scripture goes out of its way, the apostle Paul goes to great lengths, to explain to us disciples just how much power we have in Christ Jesus, our risen and coming Lord. Christianity is a religion about power. Eternal power. Dynamic power. Powerful power. It’s like Paul pulls out his college Thesaurus, the one his parents gave him that weekend he was accepted into Gamaliel’s school, and conjures up every possible word for power — rule, authority, power, dominion, title — and says Christ is more powerful than all of it. Come on, Paul seems to be saying, just try to think of the most powerful thing in the universe. Now multiply that by ten billion. And Christ is still more powerful! Every power that’s ever been and ever will be, every title that’s ever been given and ever will be, every government, every political structure, every economic system, every industrial complex, every biological reality, every financial authority, every historical rule, Christ dominates it! Every single power that has ever existed and will ever come about, real or imagined, human or spiritual, temporal or eternal — – they are all subject to our Lord!

And we don’t get it. If we do, it seems to be only in the logical, cerebral sense, not in the practical application sense.

No wonder this is the focus of Paul’s great prayer that opens up his letter to the churches around Ephesus. I want you to know this power, Paul prays. I want you to understand it, to grasp it, to really own the mind-blowing truth that the exact same Holy Spirit power that brought Jesus out the grave to reign at the right hand of God is the exact same power we all have in us and at our disposal as his disciples.

The New Testament doesn’t really go into deep discussions about the powers and power structures of the world except to remind us that they are all in subjection to our King. Paul doesn’t seem worried about the powers at all. He shows little interest in them, other than to say, “They’re all defeated in Christ Jesus!” Sometimes he mentions that the victory was won at the cross. Other times he claims it happened on that Sunday morning at the garden tomb. But he doesn’t overly concern himself with what’s happening in Rome or in the local city hall. Christ reigns! Jesus is Lord!

So, if this is true…

(and it is!)

Jesus is the winner. And if we’re in Christ, we don’t need to worry about the powers. We don’t worry about what’s happening in Austin or Washington D.C. or Moscow. We don’t worry about what’s happening in Afghanistan or Iran or in downtown Amarillo. Those powers have already all been defeated, they just don’t know it yet.

And if, as Paul writes, the church really is the fullness of Christ, then we don’t have to worry that we’re missing out on something. We don’t have to concern ourselves with other disciplines or traditions from the other side of the globe, with formulas or superstitions from down the street, or with secret knowledge or unrevealed mysteries from another realm. We’re not missing anything. In Christ Jesus, we have everything!

No wonder Paul prays that we would grasp it.

“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know…!” ~Ephesians 1:18

Now, what would happen if we really believed all that? The gates of hell tremble at the thought.

Peace,

Allan

Sinners Behaving Politically

March 11, 2014 / / 0 Comments

I’m returning one more time to the interview in Christian Century with Jennifer McBride, the author of a soon-to-be-released book on the role of God’s Church in the world. The book is called “The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness.” McBride tackles the question of the Church’s grand mission and the misunderstandings about the methods for achieving the divine task. It seems to be mainly about rejecting the ways of the world and embracing the ways of our Lord.

Toward the end of the interview, David Heim asks McBride her views on the American church’s involvement in state and national politics. Some critics have pointed out recently that the Church has lost its Christian witness to our culture because our increasing identity as a political movement or a political organization affiliated with one particular party is turning off a lot of people. I, for one, would agree with a lot of that criticism. I always cringe when Christians are all lumped in together with a certain political group whose views and methods might actually contradict the clear teachings of Scripture. As would be expected by now, McBride says she’s not so much concerned with the Church having a political voice, but with how the Church exercises that voice:

“Christian faith is inherently public or political because it concerns how we order our lives in relation to the good of others — in relation to neighbors, strangers, and enemies. Discipleship is about following Jesus, who embodies the reign of God; it is about living into God’s social order ‘on earth as it is in heaven.'”

Part of the problem, according to McBride, is that our churches are too preoccupied with the Sunday morning worship hour instead of how they are engaging those around them with the Gospel. “The identity and function of congregations,” she says, “traditionally revolves around what seems to me to be a narrow understanding of worship, the worship itself or a particular worship style.” A church full of continuously confessing and repenting sinners will, instead, take more seriously its identity and mission as the Body of Christ in the world.

And, she brings up Bonhoeffer again. McBride points to Bonhoeffer’s understanding that the Gospel of Jesus is to be lived out in our communities in concrete ways. Christology and Ecclesiology should not be abstract or unapproachable to the average Christian. But at the same time, a lot of social justice efforts and political movements completely ignore the rich resources of thinking theologically about the Church’s role in the world as the embodiment of Christ Jesus and the proclamation of his Kingdom come. That flattens our Christian faith and reduces feeding the poor and digging wells to nothing more than good deeds. When the faith of the Church is narrowed down to merely ethics like this, it is violently stripped of its power to transform lives.

Yes, the Church is a political organization. But its polity is modeled on the Kingdom of God, its citizens belong to heaven, and its Lord is King Jesus. Yes, we engage the world and its own political beliefs and systems and practices. But we do it in ways that reflect our Lord’s life and his direction for ours. We don’t hate or insult or do anything by force; we love and encourage and humbly invite. But, we do engage. We do act. We do care.

As McBride says in her book, true Christianity “encourages and fosters love for this life in all its complexity. Christians cannot offer a redemptive public witness if they don’t genuinely love living in this world with all its joy and sorrow.” To quote Bonhoeffer one last time: “It is only when one loves life and the earth so much that without them everything seems to be over that one may believe in the resurrection and the new world.”

Peace,

Allan

The Witness of Sinners

February 26, 2014 / / 1 Comment

I’m returning today to the interview in Christian Century with Jennifer McBride, the author of a soon-to-be-released book on the role of God’s Church in the world. The book is called “The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness.” McBride tackles the question of the Church’s grand mission and the misunderstandings about the methods for achieving the divine task. To me, her theology is all about rejecting the ways of the world and embracing the ways of our Lord. It’s not unlike Eugene Peterson’s “The Jesus Way,” which has had a significant influence on my own thinking and growing.

About a third of the way into the article, David Heim asks McBride why the cross of Christ and Christ’s sufferings for sinners, while at the very core of the Church’s faith and theology, is not a part of the Church’s witness. Her reply:

“In white North American Christianity, the cross tends to function as a symbol for Jesus taking on my individual sin and forgiving me. It refers, in other words, to a central claim in a doctrinal system rather than to a way of life, a way of being in the world based on conformation to the incarnate and crucified Christ.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that witness to Christ is conformation to Christ; it is the Church taking the shape of Jesus in public life. Bonhoeffer takes literally Paul’s claim that the Church is “the body of Christ — the physical manifestation of Jesus in the world — so in order to witness to Christ faithfully, the Church must mirror Jesus’ own public presence.

When we examine Jesus’ public presence we see that his whole way of being in the world was marked by the cross; he took “the form of a sinner” in his life and in his death in order to be in solidarity with fellow human beings. It is by being in solidarity with sinners that Jesus brings about reconciliation. This is not a picture of Jesus that churches often emphasize.”

(I knew I liked her for some reason. I think this book probably borrows heavily from Bonhoeffer.)

If Jesus redeems the world in the form of a sinner, then the Church must join God in this reconciliation ministry by taking that same form. We are not standard-bearers of a superior morality, we are sinners. All of us. We are not this world’s judges, we are sinners. All of us. Somewhere over the past 50 years or so, the Church began to understand faithful Christian witness as duking it out with the world over morality. This seems to be the exact opposite of the ways of our Christ. Jesus never presented himself as a perfect human being. He took the form of a condemned sinner.

Yes, I believe individual Christians and God’s Church as a whole should have and take strong positions on abortion and war and food stamps and immigration. But it’s our disposition as sinners, it’s our humility and grace as sinners, that should inform and give shape to those positions. It’s our commitment to Christ-likeness that should run through our attempts to promote those positions.

McBride argues for an abiding spirit of confession and repentance:

“By confession of sin, I mean a pattern of speaking that acknowledges Christians’ inherent entanglement with society’s structural sin and our complicity in specific injustice. By repentance, I mean concrete social and political activity that arises from the church community taking responsibility for that sin.

Political activity that stems from a felt need to repent is my answer to the question of how a witness can be at once bold and humble. It is bold because it takes a stand on particular issues affecting the welfare of other human beings. It is humble because it points fingers away from others and toward itself.”

This increasingly anti-institution, anti-authority, and anti-religion age is turned off by most displays of authority, superiority, and judgment. Well, duh! I think the world has always been mostly turned off by those things. No wonder the Church is struggling right now to captivate the unsaved with Christ’s salvation. We’re not giving them the meek and lowly Christ; we’re giving them some kind of pushy know-it-all who stands above the world instead of with it.

We are a people in need of constant conversion, in need of daily, if not hourly, change. Engaging the world as redeemed sinners, very much aware and open about our sinfulness, seems to be a much better way to go.

Peace,

Allan

Where Were You?

February 25, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Where were you 25 years ago today? When you first heard the news of the great tragedy, where were you? What were you doing? Who were you with? On that Black Friday, February 25, 1989, when Jerry Wayne bought the Cowboys and fired Tom Landry, where were you and what were you doing? I was a senior broadcasting major at Oklahoma Christian College, in my last semester, sitting in my apartment after lunch, getting ready for a 2:00 class. A roommate and great friend of mine, Mike Osburn, was the first to deliver the news. He told me: Tom Landry has been fired. And I didn’t believe him. Mike had heard about it while passing through the student center after lunch. Somebody had heard it on the radio. And I didn’t believe him. We didn’t have cable on the TV in our on-campus apartment. Besides, even if we did, ESPN was brand new and showing Australian Rules Football seemingly around the clock. There were no sports radio stations in Oklahoma City. No internet. So I called my mom, long distance, on a land-line phone, to confirm the information. She told me that KRLD was reporting the same news and that a press conference was happening at around 5:00.

Ah, yes. “Socks and jocks.” Oklahoma City television didn’t run that press conference live like they did on both radio and TV in Dallas. I only saw the highlights at 6:00 and 10:00. Tex Schramm sitting in a folding chair in a back corner of the stage. The introduction of Jimmy Johnson. The bumbling and stumbling explanations of the botched firing of the only coach the Cowboys had ever had.

To help you reflect on your own feelings and emotions relating to that horrible day, I’ve included a couple of links here to some pretty good reading material. First, Tim Cowlishaw, the excellent Dallas Morning News columnist, has written a piece about Jerry Wayne’s recent apology for firing Landry. Cowlishaw makes the point that Jones has apologized for the wrong thing. He should apologize to Cowboys fans for his performance as the team’s general manager. But, alas, that apology, the only one that would count, is never going to come. Cowlishaw’s column is here.

John Henry has written an interesting time-line piece for the Star-Telegram that highlights all the highs and lows of Jerry’s ownership of the Cowboys. It’s lengthy, but it provides lots of reminders of just what a mess this franchise has become with Jones at the top. You can find it here.

To commemorate the occasion, why don’t you make a couple of really horrible decisions today at work, and then film a commercial for Papa John’s Pizza.

Peace,

Allan

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