“…altogether there were about twelve of them.” (Acts 19:7)
Let me say it again… I love little, almost throw away, comments that hold potentially rich and deep material. There is absolutely no reason to need to add this little detail about there being twelve of them. Paul has met a group of disciples who were missing an important part of faith (in this case a small little thing called the Holy Spirit). He teaches them about Jesus, baptizes them, and they begin to feel the empowerment of the Holy Spirit (they break out speaking in tongues and stuff… you know the ordinary run of the mill Christian happenings). It doesn’t really matter how many of them there are… and yet the author decides as a parting thought to throw in this comment. “…altogether there were about twelve of them.”
Now immediately we hear the number twelve and we ought to have little antennae go up at this (if you were born without them, substitute a light bulb on your head… or a little vocal, “Aha!” will do.) Twelve? I’ve come across that number before… and certainly twelve disciples. Apparently there is something to this whole twelve disciples thing.
Throughout Paul’s teaching and preaching he is constantly coming across these little packs of people, starting community churches, and engaging people on the road. They are all people that are “following the way of Jesus”. Some of them know that they are – and Paul affirms them. Some don’t realize they are doing so – and Paul gives them a name for themselves and points them towards Jesus. But what stays consistent is that there are groups of people dotted all over the first century landscape that are traveling together in faith.
Today it seems we are headed in two different directions from that beginning. We head towards personal spirituality where there is no “church” or community to tell us what to believe. Or we head towards mega-churches where there lots of people are doing lots of good things together. What we don’t find much of (though they do exist) is little groups of “followers” dotting the twenty-first century landscape journeying together in faith.
Is this a problem?
I’m not sure. I do not know that it HAS to be a problem. But I also wonder if it isn’t symptomatic of a problem… and I’m not alone. There are a growing number of people who are asking that same questions in many different and exciting ways. But let me imagine just one possibility for today.
In a world where the way of Jesus is often unpopular and challenging, moving smaller (to the individual alone) or the larger (to the mega-church) are both ways of hiding. We are trying to hide our lives away from Jesus and from truly following in the “Jesus way”. Alone in our spirituality there is no-one to tell us that our life is not lining up consistently with our faith. And lost in the crowds of mega-church we can blend in anonymously. On the other hand, with just twelve people? That is the kind of class where you actually have to do your reading, you have to come prepared to participate, you have to go out on a limb and show yourselves. Just 12? That requires active and participatory discipleship.
Have you found yourself trying to hide? To blend into the crowd?
What do you find most challenging about really living in the way of Jesus?
Do you have your group of twelve who are helping you, as you help them, on the journey?
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
Jan 24: Building up the Body of Christ
“After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome.” (Acts 18:1-2)
“After staying there for a considerable time, Paul said farewell to the believers and sailed for Syria, accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila.” (Acts 18:18)
“Apollos began to speak boldly in the synagogue; but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained the Way of God to him more accurately.” (Acts 18:26)
I think it’s easy to decide that Acts is about Paul. (He does tend to dominate the landscape a bit!) However it’s a disservice to discipleship and the scriptural witness to miss other very important people in the story. The Bible is absolutely full of “extras”. People whose names are sometimes known (like Priscilla and Aquila) and often not (like the Syrophoenician woman). Who do memorable acts (like a thief defending Jesus on the cross) and some that we hardly even notice (like a women bathing Jesus feet long before he will turn around and do the same for his disciples).
My point is this: it’s easy to think that disciples are the people with their names in neon lights. The larger than life personalities… the great missionaries… the spiritual gurus… the natural healers… the keen intellects… the extroverts… the people brimming with charisma and quick tongues… the people whose actions directly cause cataclysmic change in the world… the archetypes of faithfulness (never mind that such as these don’t have a list of failings as well).
We all know Abraham, Moses and David. We know Peter, Paul and the many Johns. But this is not the beginning and end to an understanding of discipleship. Where are any of these people without the Priscillas and Aquilas of the world? Paul plants churches… but who nurtures and cares for them?
You do.
We do.
Priscilla and Aquila are mentioned in total six times. Three times in Acts. Three times in the collective letters of Paul (the end chapters of Romans, 1 Corinthians, and 2 Timothy). They could look like minor characters – they never speak in the text and their actions are most behind the scenes. And yet we know from these other references that they are known to Christians in far spread places, they “risked their necks for my (Paul’s) life,” and they lead a church out of their own home. We known that when other (more charismatic) figures fall a bit astray from following in the way of Jesus that they are there to pull aside and explain the Way of God more accurately.
They are essential for the health and depth and vitality of the church. They are essential to fostering discipleship.
How are you helping by being a foundation of discipleship?
In what ways are you (named and unnamed) building up the Body of Christ?
Does overall picture of your life help others understand the way of Jesus Christ?
“After staying there for a considerable time, Paul said farewell to the believers and sailed for Syria, accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila.” (Acts 18:18)
“Apollos began to speak boldly in the synagogue; but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained the Way of God to him more accurately.” (Acts 18:26)
I think it’s easy to decide that Acts is about Paul. (He does tend to dominate the landscape a bit!) However it’s a disservice to discipleship and the scriptural witness to miss other very important people in the story. The Bible is absolutely full of “extras”. People whose names are sometimes known (like Priscilla and Aquila) and often not (like the Syrophoenician woman). Who do memorable acts (like a thief defending Jesus on the cross) and some that we hardly even notice (like a women bathing Jesus feet long before he will turn around and do the same for his disciples).
My point is this: it’s easy to think that disciples are the people with their names in neon lights. The larger than life personalities… the great missionaries… the spiritual gurus… the natural healers… the keen intellects… the extroverts… the people brimming with charisma and quick tongues… the people whose actions directly cause cataclysmic change in the world… the archetypes of faithfulness (never mind that such as these don’t have a list of failings as well).
We all know Abraham, Moses and David. We know Peter, Paul and the many Johns. But this is not the beginning and end to an understanding of discipleship. Where are any of these people without the Priscillas and Aquilas of the world? Paul plants churches… but who nurtures and cares for them?
You do.
We do.
Priscilla and Aquila are mentioned in total six times. Three times in Acts. Three times in the collective letters of Paul (the end chapters of Romans, 1 Corinthians, and 2 Timothy). They could look like minor characters – they never speak in the text and their actions are most behind the scenes. And yet we know from these other references that they are known to Christians in far spread places, they “risked their necks for my (Paul’s) life,” and they lead a church out of their own home. We known that when other (more charismatic) figures fall a bit astray from following in the way of Jesus that they are there to pull aside and explain the Way of God more accurately.
They are essential for the health and depth and vitality of the church. They are essential to fostering discipleship.
How are you helping by being a foundation of discipleship?
In what ways are you (named and unnamed) building up the Body of Christ?
Does overall picture of your life help others understand the way of Jesus Christ?
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
November 9: Upside Down
And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three sabbath days argued with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, "This is the Messiah, Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you." Acts 17:2-3
Throughout the remainder of this chapter there is a sense of newness. That Paul and the apostles are talking about something new… and it both intrigues and irritates Jews and Gentiles alike. When the newness seems to get out of hand the followers of the way of Jesus Christ are spoken about as, “These people who have been turning the world upside down.” (Acts 17:6)
Of course they haven’t done this at all – all they have done is pointed out what Jesus did. The crowds are right about what has happened, it’s just that they are blaming the wrong people – they should be blaming Jesus. I think this is why it is interesting that what Paul is talking about is why the Messiah needed to suffer and die and rise from the dead.
Sadly the text only tells us that this is what he is teaching, it doesn’t actually tell us his answer. Conjecturing on why Jesus had to die, and how that death offered salvation to the world is a favorite past time of theologians – but none of us really has an answer, and I’m prone to think that there isn’t any one answer but lots of reasons. However today let me play with one reason that interests me and seems to relate to all this newness and world-turned-upside-downness that is happening in this chapter of Acts.
We all have an idea of who God is. We all have some particular desires about how God will act in our life, and how God will be in relationship to us. That is to say, each of us knows how we wish to be saved. And I think in many ways that we limit who God really is by only conceiving of God as we wish to – only hearing God say what we want to hear – only being willing to see God at work in ways that we like.
Jesus knew this… and thus Jesus knew that he was never going to be able to save us from ourselves… until our God died (or our limited, and limiting, notion of who God is and what God does is taken away from us). It is only when our conception of salvation dies, that we can become open to true salvation. It is only when we give up putting God in the box we would like God to be in that we can be open to a relationship with God as God really is. That’s wordy I know, but I hope you are following me because I think it’s of vital importance.
So Jesus had to die… that God might come to life. We become saved when the small notions of God that we cling to are replaced with the awesome mystery of the God who really is. And when that God lives – and lives in our lives… our worlds are turned upside down.
What ways are you putting God in a box and limiting your openness to the activity of God in your life?
How are you practicing listening to the God who really is, rather than just telling God who you want God to be?
What does it mean for you as an individual and the church as a whole to be open to having our world turned upside down?
God of mystery,
You are always doing a new thing in our midst. Help us to keep open to your Spirit that is always urging us in new directions. Give us the strength to boldly move into your upside down future. Amen.
Throughout the remainder of this chapter there is a sense of newness. That Paul and the apostles are talking about something new… and it both intrigues and irritates Jews and Gentiles alike. When the newness seems to get out of hand the followers of the way of Jesus Christ are spoken about as, “These people who have been turning the world upside down.” (Acts 17:6)
Of course they haven’t done this at all – all they have done is pointed out what Jesus did. The crowds are right about what has happened, it’s just that they are blaming the wrong people – they should be blaming Jesus. I think this is why it is interesting that what Paul is talking about is why the Messiah needed to suffer and die and rise from the dead.
Sadly the text only tells us that this is what he is teaching, it doesn’t actually tell us his answer. Conjecturing on why Jesus had to die, and how that death offered salvation to the world is a favorite past time of theologians – but none of us really has an answer, and I’m prone to think that there isn’t any one answer but lots of reasons. However today let me play with one reason that interests me and seems to relate to all this newness and world-turned-upside-downness that is happening in this chapter of Acts.
We all have an idea of who God is. We all have some particular desires about how God will act in our life, and how God will be in relationship to us. That is to say, each of us knows how we wish to be saved. And I think in many ways that we limit who God really is by only conceiving of God as we wish to – only hearing God say what we want to hear – only being willing to see God at work in ways that we like.
Jesus knew this… and thus Jesus knew that he was never going to be able to save us from ourselves… until our God died (or our limited, and limiting, notion of who God is and what God does is taken away from us). It is only when our conception of salvation dies, that we can become open to true salvation. It is only when we give up putting God in the box we would like God to be in that we can be open to a relationship with God as God really is. That’s wordy I know, but I hope you are following me because I think it’s of vital importance.
So Jesus had to die… that God might come to life. We become saved when the small notions of God that we cling to are replaced with the awesome mystery of the God who really is. And when that God lives – and lives in our lives… our worlds are turned upside down.
What ways are you putting God in a box and limiting your openness to the activity of God in your life?
How are you practicing listening to the God who really is, rather than just telling God who you want God to be?
What does it mean for you as an individual and the church as a whole to be open to having our world turned upside down?
God of mystery,
You are always doing a new thing in our midst. Help us to keep open to your Spirit that is always urging us in new directions. Give us the strength to boldly move into your upside down future. Amen.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
November 4: Cornerstone
After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. (Acts 16:23-25)
How often have you seen a movie or television show have a character end up in prison only to sit there dejected and hopeless, singing in almost monotone voice, “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, nobody knows my sorrow?”
It is one of those songs that I associate with despair. Despair is more than sorrow or trouble… despair is a complete lack of hope, it is the loss of life. Soren Kierkegaard calls despair the sickness unto death, and considers it actually worse than death itself.
So why do I reflect on this now? Because this is not the song Paul and Silas are singing – they are singing hymns to God… and whatever they are singing everyone WANTS to listen to (even in the middle of the night).
I imagine we all have visuals of characters and people in jail that go a different route – that are filled with anger and rage and ready to strike out at anyone who comes near them. Anger and rage may just be very similar to despair – because they aren’t a way towards life and hope and they are as destructive to the person who is consumed by them as they are to the object of their hate.
Paul and Silas do not hate, in fact a few verses later they will stop the guard from killing himself.
And of course we all have seen lots of shows and movies about prison breaks, there was even a television show called Prison Break. Here there are daring and intricate plots to escape the cell that holds the person. Paul and Silas do not break out of prison. In fact when the jail cells are rocked open in the earthquake a point is made (in saving the guard from killing himself) that they are all still there. Not only has Paul and Silas not left, everyone is sitting in their cells – not running!
Despair… Fight… Flight… these are response we know and expect in moments of great adversity. We lose hope. We strike out. We run from reality.
Paul and Silas go a different route. They sing hymn and say prayers to God. They witness hope to the other prisoners and captivate them with their faith. They show love and grace to the guard and not only save his life but offer a new way of life to that guard’s entire family. And finally they push a confrontation with the very people who put them in jail in order to unmask that what was done was wrong, they don’t flee but their confrontation is not one of malice and hate.
Their actions are counter to all our instincts. Their actions are based in a very deep trust in God – more than I can imagine. Their actions are rooted in a hope that survives beatings, shackling, mocking… they have an abundant life that cannot be contained.
How do we get that life? Haven’t you ever met someone who so exuded grace and quiet peace and said to yourself – I want that! Here is the thing… you don’t just get “that”… you live it. You practice it – you let grace shape you so you can shape your life and the lives around you with grace.
You learn to allow sorrow – without falling into despair.
You learn to confront injustice – without resorting to anger and hate.
You learn trust God – without needing to flee adversity.
And you learn it all one small step at time… and until then – you sing.
What is causing you sorrow… anger… fear?
Have you spoken your grief, angst and anxiety to God… to a companion?
Do you trust that God is strong enough for you… with you in your pain… enabling you to have life?
God our Cornerstone,
It truly is you that holds our worlds together. So often we find ourselves too weak and helpless, and we move to despair. Remind us that you are not too weak to hold us up. Strengthen us to respond in trust and love to a world that too often stays in anger, hate and fear. Amen.
How often have you seen a movie or television show have a character end up in prison only to sit there dejected and hopeless, singing in almost monotone voice, “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, nobody knows my sorrow?”
It is one of those songs that I associate with despair. Despair is more than sorrow or trouble… despair is a complete lack of hope, it is the loss of life. Soren Kierkegaard calls despair the sickness unto death, and considers it actually worse than death itself.
So why do I reflect on this now? Because this is not the song Paul and Silas are singing – they are singing hymns to God… and whatever they are singing everyone WANTS to listen to (even in the middle of the night).
I imagine we all have visuals of characters and people in jail that go a different route – that are filled with anger and rage and ready to strike out at anyone who comes near them. Anger and rage may just be very similar to despair – because they aren’t a way towards life and hope and they are as destructive to the person who is consumed by them as they are to the object of their hate.
Paul and Silas do not hate, in fact a few verses later they will stop the guard from killing himself.
And of course we all have seen lots of shows and movies about prison breaks, there was even a television show called Prison Break. Here there are daring and intricate plots to escape the cell that holds the person. Paul and Silas do not break out of prison. In fact when the jail cells are rocked open in the earthquake a point is made (in saving the guard from killing himself) that they are all still there. Not only has Paul and Silas not left, everyone is sitting in their cells – not running!
Despair… Fight… Flight… these are response we know and expect in moments of great adversity. We lose hope. We strike out. We run from reality.
Paul and Silas go a different route. They sing hymn and say prayers to God. They witness hope to the other prisoners and captivate them with their faith. They show love and grace to the guard and not only save his life but offer a new way of life to that guard’s entire family. And finally they push a confrontation with the very people who put them in jail in order to unmask that what was done was wrong, they don’t flee but their confrontation is not one of malice and hate.
Their actions are counter to all our instincts. Their actions are based in a very deep trust in God – more than I can imagine. Their actions are rooted in a hope that survives beatings, shackling, mocking… they have an abundant life that cannot be contained.
How do we get that life? Haven’t you ever met someone who so exuded grace and quiet peace and said to yourself – I want that! Here is the thing… you don’t just get “that”… you live it. You practice it – you let grace shape you so you can shape your life and the lives around you with grace.
You learn to allow sorrow – without falling into despair.
You learn to confront injustice – without resorting to anger and hate.
You learn trust God – without needing to flee adversity.
And you learn it all one small step at time… and until then – you sing.
What is causing you sorrow… anger… fear?
Have you spoken your grief, angst and anxiety to God… to a companion?
Do you trust that God is strong enough for you… with you in your pain… enabling you to have life?
God our Cornerstone,
It truly is you that holds our worlds together. So often we find ourselves too weak and helpless, and we move to despair. Remind us that you are not too weak to hold us up. Strengthen us to respond in trust and love to a world that too often stays in anger, hate and fear. Amen.
Monday, October 25, 2010
October 25: Mining the Stories
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.
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 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).
**********************************************************************************
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.
**********************************************************************************
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.
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