One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave-girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, "These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation." She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, "I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her." And it came out that very hour. But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, "These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe." The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. (Acts 16:16-22)
Okay so I have given a much larger selection than has been my custom. I just couldn’t see cutting this one short – there is too much to unpack in this text as a complete story.
Funny highlight: Paul heals someone out of annoyance!
Disturbing trend: Fickle crowds turn from wonder to malice.
Familiar message: Following Jesus isn’t easy or popular.
Typical Witness: A slave-girl… the least powerful person in town.
Easy Out: “customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt”
Truth and Consequence: Messing with people’s money is a quick way to beating.
Each of these makes for an intriguing devotional on its own… at this point you are probably able to complete my thoughts for me. In fact it’s something of a good exercise – take each of these thoughts and start to mine it for nuggets. What do you see there? How does it relate to your own life and situation? What are the questions you find yourself wanting to ask about your (our) journey of discipleship?
You might say I’m trying the easy way out of my job today and pushing it off on you… then again, you might say (and I will!) that this is the best way I can do my job. Have fun, and let me (let all of us) know what you are seeing…
Inspiring God,
As we journey together let our community be a crossroads for a network of journeys where each of our paths cross and enrich our shared lives together. Stir us, inspire us, and send us out transformed and transforming.
Amen.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Monday, October 18, 2010
October 18: Exposed Roots
NEWS ALERT! We interrupt our normal program journeying as disciples through the Acts of the Apostles to bring you the following reflection thoughts. Please stay tuned following this alert for your regularly scheduled program (okay so I’m never really regular with our little devotional reflections, you needn’t remind me).
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Last Friday I was having a new television service installed and for a while had the television turned on to a station I wasn’t paying any attention to as the installer was trying to figure out a problem with the phones. When he left the room I allowed my attention to turn to the television show that had come on, Ask This Old House. It is a program about restoring old homes and it was near the end of the program and there was a landscape specialist looking at the yard of the house. He got really animated and frustrated as he showed us trees that had developed what he called “Mulch Volcanoes”.
“Mulch Volcanoes”, he explained, are what happen when every season some grounds crew (or naïve homeowner) comes out and just dumps a fresh load of mulch around a tree and moves on. The mound of mulch rises up the trunk of the tree and begins to suffocate it. Similarly this sometimes just happens when a tree is planted too deep in the ground. The problem is this: even roots need to breathe. Trees have what is called a root flare, where the roots begin to branch out from the trunk and spread out into the soil. This root flare is supposed to be partly exposed to the air to allow them to breathe. (For information and visual aids: http://www.dirtdoctor.com/organic/garden/view_question/id/484/ ). A healthy tree has a nicely exposed base where the roots start to spread out into the ground.
When we allow these roots to be buried they will actually send out secondary root systems to travel up towards the top of the soil in order to get air, and these secondary root systems will actually suffocate and kill a tree. In the case of the television show I was watching it was actually too late to save many of the trees in the yard. They had strangled the life out of themselves.
At this point I went back to what I was doing helping the installer get out of my house as quickly as possible… and I thought I had learned a bit of trivia that was intriguing but not overly important in my life. (Out of laziness all of my trees have nicely exposed root flare!)
Then on Sunday morning as I was sifting thoughts through my mind it hit me – hit me in a moment of prophetic vision similar to Ezekiel being shown the river flowing from the temple to give life to the world (Ezekiel 47, the text Katie preached so powerfully – and prophetically – from on Sunday).
How many of us have covered up our root flare? How many of us have been scared to let our roots be exposed? How many of us are strangling the life out of ourselves?
Our faith has roots, and is our roots.
Our faith has a story from which we come, from which we are living, and towards which we are headed. Our lives are anchored and rooted… or we hope they are, in soil that is some mixture of our families, our culture, our vocation, our own sense of moral agency… a whole mix of things really. Our lives are also rooted in our faith – scriptural narratives, religious tradition and our own experience of the living Christ. And these roots are watered by the river of the Holy Spirit that is ever flowing, ever deepening, ever expanding to bring life to the world.
But if we continually insist on covering up our roots – for well meaning reasons even – then we are strangling ourselves and we are risking not being fruitful… maybe even spiritual and emotional death.
As a community of disciples we need to help one another gingerly and carefully unearth our “root flare”. We need to encourage each other be vulnerable enough to expose the soil in which we are rooted. We need to breathe in, and breathe out, our life giving faith - sharing what it is we have seen and heard.
It is risky work. It is healing work. It is participating in God’s transformative mission.
What reasons do find yourself giving for “covering up” your roots?
Who do you trust to help you unearth the rich and deep roots of your faith and life?
How might you help others to find such healing in their lives?
Revealing God,
You came to us to show us the roots of who you are – in the flesh. Help us to live similarly exposed lives. Remind us to constantly breath in, and out, your life giving Spirit.
Amen.
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Last Friday I was having a new television service installed and for a while had the television turned on to a station I wasn’t paying any attention to as the installer was trying to figure out a problem with the phones. When he left the room I allowed my attention to turn to the television show that had come on, Ask This Old House. It is a program about restoring old homes and it was near the end of the program and there was a landscape specialist looking at the yard of the house. He got really animated and frustrated as he showed us trees that had developed what he called “Mulch Volcanoes”.
“Mulch Volcanoes”, he explained, are what happen when every season some grounds crew (or naïve homeowner) comes out and just dumps a fresh load of mulch around a tree and moves on. The mound of mulch rises up the trunk of the tree and begins to suffocate it. Similarly this sometimes just happens when a tree is planted too deep in the ground. The problem is this: even roots need to breathe. Trees have what is called a root flare, where the roots begin to branch out from the trunk and spread out into the soil. This root flare is supposed to be partly exposed to the air to allow them to breathe. (For information and visual aids: http://www.dirtdoctor.com/organic/garden/view_question/id/484/ ). A healthy tree has a nicely exposed base where the roots start to spread out into the ground.
When we allow these roots to be buried they will actually send out secondary root systems to travel up towards the top of the soil in order to get air, and these secondary root systems will actually suffocate and kill a tree. In the case of the television show I was watching it was actually too late to save many of the trees in the yard. They had strangled the life out of themselves.
At this point I went back to what I was doing helping the installer get out of my house as quickly as possible… and I thought I had learned a bit of trivia that was intriguing but not overly important in my life. (Out of laziness all of my trees have nicely exposed root flare!)
Then on Sunday morning as I was sifting thoughts through my mind it hit me – hit me in a moment of prophetic vision similar to Ezekiel being shown the river flowing from the temple to give life to the world (Ezekiel 47, the text Katie preached so powerfully – and prophetically – from on Sunday).
How many of us have covered up our root flare? How many of us have been scared to let our roots be exposed? How many of us are strangling the life out of ourselves?
Our faith has roots, and is our roots.
Our faith has a story from which we come, from which we are living, and towards which we are headed. Our lives are anchored and rooted… or we hope they are, in soil that is some mixture of our families, our culture, our vocation, our own sense of moral agency… a whole mix of things really. Our lives are also rooted in our faith – scriptural narratives, religious tradition and our own experience of the living Christ. And these roots are watered by the river of the Holy Spirit that is ever flowing, ever deepening, ever expanding to bring life to the world.
But if we continually insist on covering up our roots – for well meaning reasons even – then we are strangling ourselves and we are risking not being fruitful… maybe even spiritual and emotional death.
As a community of disciples we need to help one another gingerly and carefully unearth our “root flare”. We need to encourage each other be vulnerable enough to expose the soil in which we are rooted. We need to breathe in, and breathe out, our life giving faith - sharing what it is we have seen and heard.
It is risky work. It is healing work. It is participating in God’s transformative mission.
What reasons do find yourself giving for “covering up” your roots?
Who do you trust to help you unearth the rich and deep roots of your faith and life?
How might you help others to find such healing in their lives?
Revealing God,
You came to us to show us the roots of who you are – in the flesh. Help us to live similarly exposed lives. Remind us to constantly breath in, and out, your life giving Spirit.
Amen.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
October 13: Contextual Theology
Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him; and he took him and had him circumcised because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. (Acts 16:3)
So let me just start off by saying that one of the reasons I really enjoy writing these devotionals/reflections is that it gets me looking at scripture differently. Sifting through the text line after line for small nuggets that might illuminate a conversation on discipleship has helped me to see things I have previously just read over and never noticed. This particular verse just jumped out at me as all kinds of craziness – I swear that somehow I have never read it before… though I’m sure I have several times.
Paul… circumcises????
This is Paul we are talking about… Paul who spends a significant amount of time saying that Gentiles do not need to be circumcised and that circumcision is nothing. Spend some time in Galatians and you will see just how clear he is about his stance on not doing circumcision. You will also see that he promotes another case where such was pointedly not required:
But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. (Gal 2:3)
Many scholars will tell you that a point is made two verses earlier from where we began in Acts today to note that Timothy is half Jew (through his mother) and half Gentile (through his Greek father) and so he is of Jewish descent but not a Jew because he is uncircumcised. The conjecture on this strange inconsistency from Paul is that he circumcises Timothy to ease tension with Jewish Christians and make Timothy more acceptable to them.
This doesn’t hold water with me at all. (By the way I spent over an hour researching this little inconsistency… I even dragged Tom in on the fun!) Again look to Galatians where Paul not only holds Peter (referred to as Cephas by Paul) to account for hypocrisy but does so in very accusing and public language. His problem with Peter was doing something that was wrong in order (get this), to please the concerns of Jewish Christians.
But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. (Gal 2:11-12)
Paul has no patience with doing anything for the wrong reasons – and he seems to think placating people and crowds is a wrong reason. Paul’s faith and trust in God and reliance that only the Gospel is important is unyielding in his life. And while I’m quite willing to think that Paul has some serious faults (and perhaps a fair bit of competitive bias against Peter) I just can’t imagine a person this sure of his convictions would waffle in randomness…. something else must be going on, and something important.
And this got me to two things. The first is a potential answer. Scholar Walter Kaiser reminds us that there is a difference between forcing a gentile to adopt Jewish ways and saying she/he needs to be circumcised to be saved, and healing the torn identity of a half-Jew.
Titus (in Galatians) was a Gentile = do not circumcise.
Timothy (in Acts) was a half-Jew living as unaccepted by either tradition of his lineage = circumcise.
To force Titus to be circumsized was to say he and his faith was incomplete without it (which is radically not true for Paul). But to offer the same to Timothy is to offering healing and wholeness to a person who has never full lived his own identity. The circumsicion here is not about Chrsitian faith but Timothy's own particular identity.
This approach to the inconsistency seems like it’s on to something… and what it’s on to makes my day complete! Don’t you just love when God seems to have arranged your day (little known to you) to have the same subject come up over and over again in different guises?
Yesterday’s subject (this is when I was doing all that thinking) the subject was essential tenets; call them fundamentals of faith. What do we name as things everyone has to believe or has to do? And the traditional answer in our reformed/Presbyterian tradition is not to name them. That we just can’t offer unconditional answers to that question. It would be nice… but they just aren’t there.
Jesus doesn’t come close to saying here is what are orthodox beliefs (right beliefs) and you have to believe them or else! The closest you come is probably the Sermon on the Mount and the beatitudes… and perhaps the one I’m most likely to choose:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength… and You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:30-31)
Neither of these however makes all our decisions clear. Neither of these are answers, as much as they provoke questions. How do we love? Who is our neighbor? What does all your strength look like in my daily life?
And this is discipleship… living the questions. Paul is certain circumcision is unnecessary for Christian faith – but even he recognizes that context matters. One rule does not rule over all people in all times. And so Paul does something that appears radically inconsistent… and yet for Paul – who has problems with everything – it wasn’t a problem at all. Because in that place and at that time it is what makes senses to the Gospel message Paul carries. And Paul won’t be governed by rules… but by the Gospel that is Jesus Christ and the freedom that faith in Christ offers the world. It offers healing to those whose identity is torn; it offers reconciliation that brings divided groups (Jews and Gentiles, woman and men, poor and rich) together, it tears down dividing walls of hostility.
And how do we do that? …by discipleship that seeks to live in the questions!
Where are you offering healing to the torn?
How do you bring divided groups together?
What walls of hostility have you built in your heart?
Reconciling God,
Give us the power to trust in you enough to forego building walls and setting rules. Help us to live in the here and now – seeing the light of Christ and the good news in our midst and participating in the healing and building up of the body of Christ. Amen.
So let me just start off by saying that one of the reasons I really enjoy writing these devotionals/reflections is that it gets me looking at scripture differently. Sifting through the text line after line for small nuggets that might illuminate a conversation on discipleship has helped me to see things I have previously just read over and never noticed. This particular verse just jumped out at me as all kinds of craziness – I swear that somehow I have never read it before… though I’m sure I have several times.
Paul… circumcises????
This is Paul we are talking about… Paul who spends a significant amount of time saying that Gentiles do not need to be circumcised and that circumcision is nothing. Spend some time in Galatians and you will see just how clear he is about his stance on not doing circumcision. You will also see that he promotes another case where such was pointedly not required:
But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. (Gal 2:3)
Many scholars will tell you that a point is made two verses earlier from where we began in Acts today to note that Timothy is half Jew (through his mother) and half Gentile (through his Greek father) and so he is of Jewish descent but not a Jew because he is uncircumcised. The conjecture on this strange inconsistency from Paul is that he circumcises Timothy to ease tension with Jewish Christians and make Timothy more acceptable to them.
This doesn’t hold water with me at all. (By the way I spent over an hour researching this little inconsistency… I even dragged Tom in on the fun!) Again look to Galatians where Paul not only holds Peter (referred to as Cephas by Paul) to account for hypocrisy but does so in very accusing and public language. His problem with Peter was doing something that was wrong in order (get this), to please the concerns of Jewish Christians.
But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. (Gal 2:11-12)
Paul has no patience with doing anything for the wrong reasons – and he seems to think placating people and crowds is a wrong reason. Paul’s faith and trust in God and reliance that only the Gospel is important is unyielding in his life. And while I’m quite willing to think that Paul has some serious faults (and perhaps a fair bit of competitive bias against Peter) I just can’t imagine a person this sure of his convictions would waffle in randomness…. something else must be going on, and something important.
And this got me to two things. The first is a potential answer. Scholar Walter Kaiser reminds us that there is a difference between forcing a gentile to adopt Jewish ways and saying she/he needs to be circumcised to be saved, and healing the torn identity of a half-Jew.
Titus (in Galatians) was a Gentile = do not circumcise.
Timothy (in Acts) was a half-Jew living as unaccepted by either tradition of his lineage = circumcise.
To force Titus to be circumsized was to say he and his faith was incomplete without it (which is radically not true for Paul). But to offer the same to Timothy is to offering healing and wholeness to a person who has never full lived his own identity. The circumsicion here is not about Chrsitian faith but Timothy's own particular identity.
This approach to the inconsistency seems like it’s on to something… and what it’s on to makes my day complete! Don’t you just love when God seems to have arranged your day (little known to you) to have the same subject come up over and over again in different guises?
Yesterday’s subject (this is when I was doing all that thinking) the subject was essential tenets; call them fundamentals of faith. What do we name as things everyone has to believe or has to do? And the traditional answer in our reformed/Presbyterian tradition is not to name them. That we just can’t offer unconditional answers to that question. It would be nice… but they just aren’t there.
Jesus doesn’t come close to saying here is what are orthodox beliefs (right beliefs) and you have to believe them or else! The closest you come is probably the Sermon on the Mount and the beatitudes… and perhaps the one I’m most likely to choose:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength… and You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:30-31)
Neither of these however makes all our decisions clear. Neither of these are answers, as much as they provoke questions. How do we love? Who is our neighbor? What does all your strength look like in my daily life?
And this is discipleship… living the questions. Paul is certain circumcision is unnecessary for Christian faith – but even he recognizes that context matters. One rule does not rule over all people in all times. And so Paul does something that appears radically inconsistent… and yet for Paul – who has problems with everything – it wasn’t a problem at all. Because in that place and at that time it is what makes senses to the Gospel message Paul carries. And Paul won’t be governed by rules… but by the Gospel that is Jesus Christ and the freedom that faith in Christ offers the world. It offers healing to those whose identity is torn; it offers reconciliation that brings divided groups (Jews and Gentiles, woman and men, poor and rich) together, it tears down dividing walls of hostility.
And how do we do that? …by discipleship that seeks to live in the questions!
Where are you offering healing to the torn?
How do you bring divided groups together?
What walls of hostility have you built in your heart?
Reconciling God,
Give us the power to trust in you enough to forego building walls and setting rules. Help us to live in the here and now – seeing the light of Christ and the good news in our midst and participating in the healing and building up of the body of Christ. Amen.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
October 7: Two or Three are Gathered
After some days Paul said to Barnabas, "Come, let us return and visit the believers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord and see how they are doing." Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark. But Paul decided not to take with them one who had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not accompanied them in the work. The disagreement became so sharp that they parted company; Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus. But Paul chose Silas and set out, the believers commending him to the grace of the Lord. (Acts 15:36-40)
We all realize that disagreements happen. And if you think churches (or missionary efforts in this case) splitting apart is new… well, its not! But what really grabs the focus of my attention in this passage is the how it ends. Conflict splits the two of them… and Barnabas grabs Mark and goes one way while Paul grabs Silas and goes another direction. (Of interesting side note… say good-bye to Barnabas because they never reunite and he does not appear again in the Book of Acts.)
What doesn’t happen in this ending?
Neither one goes off alone.
They part ways and even distance themselves from each other, but they do not go alone… which continues a trend of discipleship – it’s a group activity.
In this day and age I will hardly be the first to tell you that many of us think we can go it alone. We all have reasons – rationalizations - but whatever they are, it adds up to my own sense of spirituality (and maybe even study and prayer) apart from anyone other than God.
“I’m not religious, I’m spiritual.”
“It’s between me and God.”
Here is the problem… its not. Paul is as close to a lone wolf as we get in the New Testament and yet he always has someone with him and despite numerous disagreements and differences with the “main church” in Jerusalem he always maintains connection with them. (See Galatians 1 and 2 for examples.) Discipleship just isn’t done alone. Jesus called 12 and sent 70… but even then he sent them in pairs. And of course there is much quoted, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." (Mat 18:20)
We just can’t do this alone. We need people to hold us accountable, to affirm and support us, to give us companionship. I recently watched a great video from ted.com on where good ideas come from. (Here is a shorter, slightly more fun, version of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPFU) by Steven Johnson. His research suggests that the idea of the lone genius having a Eureka moment (like Isaac Newton being hit on the head with an apple and grasping the idea of gravity) is mostly a false notion. In fact he tells us, good ideas come from people networking together in ways that their individual hunches can collide together and create good ideas. Discipleship is no different.
We need to collide with one another… theologically, spiritually, socially, fiscally, emotionally… and just about any other –ally besides physically! Discipleship just isn’t between you and God, and its only spiritual. It’s a group project!
What are you trying to keep between only you and God?
Who are you pairing with in your journey?
In what ways are you networking your hunches with others?
Gathering God,
You call us out of individuality to a corporate journey. Help us network and collide with one another that our shared energy and thought may witness good ideas - and good news - to the world. Amen.
We all realize that disagreements happen. And if you think churches (or missionary efforts in this case) splitting apart is new… well, its not! But what really grabs the focus of my attention in this passage is the how it ends. Conflict splits the two of them… and Barnabas grabs Mark and goes one way while Paul grabs Silas and goes another direction. (Of interesting side note… say good-bye to Barnabas because they never reunite and he does not appear again in the Book of Acts.)
What doesn’t happen in this ending?
Neither one goes off alone.
They part ways and even distance themselves from each other, but they do not go alone… which continues a trend of discipleship – it’s a group activity.
In this day and age I will hardly be the first to tell you that many of us think we can go it alone. We all have reasons – rationalizations - but whatever they are, it adds up to my own sense of spirituality (and maybe even study and prayer) apart from anyone other than God.
“I’m not religious, I’m spiritual.”
“It’s between me and God.”
Here is the problem… its not. Paul is as close to a lone wolf as we get in the New Testament and yet he always has someone with him and despite numerous disagreements and differences with the “main church” in Jerusalem he always maintains connection with them. (See Galatians 1 and 2 for examples.) Discipleship just isn’t done alone. Jesus called 12 and sent 70… but even then he sent them in pairs. And of course there is much quoted, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." (Mat 18:20)
We just can’t do this alone. We need people to hold us accountable, to affirm and support us, to give us companionship. I recently watched a great video from ted.com on where good ideas come from. (Here is a shorter, slightly more fun, version of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPFU) by Steven Johnson. His research suggests that the idea of the lone genius having a Eureka moment (like Isaac Newton being hit on the head with an apple and grasping the idea of gravity) is mostly a false notion. In fact he tells us, good ideas come from people networking together in ways that their individual hunches can collide together and create good ideas. Discipleship is no different.
We need to collide with one another… theologically, spiritually, socially, fiscally, emotionally… and just about any other –ally besides physically! Discipleship just isn’t between you and God, and its only spiritual. It’s a group project!
What are you trying to keep between only you and God?
Who are you pairing with in your journey?
In what ways are you networking your hunches with others?
Gathering God,
You call us out of individuality to a corporate journey. Help us network and collide with one another that our shared energy and thought may witness good ideas - and good news - to the world. Amen.
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