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Saturday, 06 February 2010 04:32 |
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by Mike Todd
(See the back story here.)
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I walked away, disoriented and staggering under the weight of what had just happened.
"Go sell everything you have, then give the proceeds to the poor."
What? How could I be expected to do this? Why would I be expected to do it? How could this Jesus be serious?
The day started off with such promise. I began the morning meeting with my bookkeeper. Together we went over the accounts, and things looked very good. The harvest this year had been exceptional, and with my extensive land holdings my financial position is very, very strong.
Leaving that meeting, I stopped to speak with some friends in the marketplace. We all agreed that the harvest had been a good one, and our conversation was animated and lighthearted, full of laughter. I did note, silently, that one or two of my friends had been a little too happy. Money can do strange things to people, and I silently thanked God that my wealth had not gone to my head.
For my entire life I have kept the Law meticulously, and I still read Torah regularly. And despite my ever-expanding business interests I have refused to cut corners on my observance of the Sabbath. How could I? I work hard, I keep the Law, and clearly God has rewarded me for my faithfulness.
Or so I thought.
And why shouldn't I have thought this way? It is not as if I am greedy. I am generous, and I always give when I am asked. Despite my growing success and wealth, I have tried my best to be humble. I have noticed with discomfort that as my fortune grew, people started to make more of a fuss over me at Temple. Still, I refuse to take the places of prominence they offer me when I attend.
And then I heard about this Jesus character. Clearly this man has been sent from God, a prophet you might say. Some even suggest that he could be the messiah we have waited so long for. I first heard him speak a few weeks ago, teaching the people, and he was intriguing. He seems to have no formal education, yet he knows the Scriptures better than any Pharisee. He speaks with such authority. His teaching is hard though, and many have dismissed him out of hand, or have abandoned him after a short while.
I was not deterred. I knew this man brought great wisdom and I wanted more. Despite all my success, all my wealth, I am not content. There has to be more to life than this. I have felt this for some time, but when I heard Jesus speak, that yearning welled up in my soul and I just could not take it any longer.
Imagine then how thrilled I was when I saw Jesus in the street this morning. It seemed like we were meant to speak together, because there were none of the usual crowds around him, just a few close friends. Here was my chance, and I could hardy contain myself as I approached this simple, extraordinary man.
And then...
That encounter had only been a few, short minutes ago, and now I don't think life will ever be the same.
Everything is in ruins.
Sell everything? All I have is a gift from God, isn't it?
Isn't it?
| Mike splits his time between Linwood House Ministries, blogging, a little construction work, and hanging out with the whatever - our little faith community where we are trying to figure out what it means to be apprentices of Jesus Christ. He is currently working on a Masters at Regent College. Him and his wife live in community in a place called the Delta House. He blogs at miketodd.typepad.com |
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Wednesday, 03 February 2010 18:44 |
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by Len Hjalmarson
In his seminal work “Liberating the Church” (1983) Howard Snyder reminded us that our word "ecology" is related to the Greek word "oikos" (house) and oikonomia (economy). The whole world is God's household, and his ordering of it is his economy.
Snyder writes that, “Fundamentally, the Universe is not ordered logically,, psychologically, nor sociologically, but ecologically.” (50) Synder goes on to connect God’s rule to shalom, an embracing metaphor. He continues,
Will we opt for technology or ecology? This is not an either-or choice, but a question of dominant models. Will we view the world essentially as a machine or as a garden? Will we see the earth as a factory or as a home? Will we opt for technology or ecology? This is not an either-or choice but a question of dominant models… If the controlling reality is technosystem, mechanistic technology takes over and life suffers from being squeezed into the “clockwork orange” habitat for which it was
never meant…. (43)
The word "economy" is important in the New Testament. Occurring in Eph.1:10, it describes God's plan for all creation. Christ is seated "in the heavenlies;" He is Lord of all. The Church is called to manifest the first fruits of a plan of reconciliation which extends to all creation, for "the whole earth is full of His glory." Redemption includes the liberation of creation from its bondage to futility (Ro.8:19-22). The Jesus follower, receiving the inheritance of the Spirit and promised the world, is set free to let go of the drive for wealth and power: set free to serve.
It’s a radical picture that has been hammered into us in the past few years by NT Wright, Brian McLaren, William Cavanaugh, James KA Smith, and the list goes on. It feels like we are finally escaping the dualism of sacred/secular, spirit/body, social/spiritual.
The ordering of God's house extends to all creation. The Christian's role, then, is to be an "oikonomos," a steward in God's house, extending the kingdom by incarnating Jesus' loving Presence. The exegesis of Psalm 8 in Hebrews 2 makes Christ the archetype for human dominion over nature. In the Old Testament Psalm the point is made that the world is in humankinds' care.
In Hebrews, Christ is identified as the Word of God through whom all things were created. In Col.1:15-17 He “upholds all things.” Christians are called to participate in Christ's role as sustainer of creation.
This sense of connection to the land recalls many voices from the Old Testament. "Land" is the fourth most frequent occurring noun in the OT, becoming a more dominant theme than even "covenant." Elmer Martens points out that land has four theological dimensions: as promise, gift, blessing, and in relation to a specific life-style (God’s Design).
From Mt. Sinai had come these words: "When you come into the land which I shall give you, the land shall keep a sabbath unto the LORD" (Lv.25:2). The text which follows points up two purposes: a religious one--to witness to God's ownership; and a humanitarian one--that the poor of the people may eat.
Martens points out that land, Yahweh, and Israel were bound together in covenant. Richard Austin in his book, Hope for the Land, (1988) wrote that those who manage land are "tempted to create a sabbathless society in which land is never rested, debts are never cancelled, slaves are never released . . .and all of life can be reduced to a smoothly functioning machine. The powerful must resist this temptation, stop managing, and relax in openness to their community; then concerns for equity, justice, and mercy may come to the fore.”
And all this relates strongly to the vision we have been sold of “the good life,” the gospel of Empire. Brazilians destroy massive tracts of Amazonia because it somehow represents for them the hope of a prosperous future. The forests of British Columbia and Washington fall for similar reasons. Overfishing, toxic waste and the irretrievable loss of one hundred species a day: the welfare of the entire world hinges upon the land, but somehow the more immediate concerns about jobs and profits take precedence. In the words of a great native American, Chief Seathl, we "kidnap the earth from our children."
Land, then, is more than acreage or territory. It is a theological symbol. I love that we are coming to the place where habitat and habitus may again merge. In The Solace of Fierce Landscapes Belden Lane describes the intimate connection between spirit and place. Belden writes that this connection,
“..is hard to grasp for those of us living in a post-Enlightenment technological society. Landscape and spirituality are not, for us, inevitably interwoven. We experience no inescapable link between our “place” and our way of conceiving the holy, between habitat and habitus, where one lives and how one practices a habit of being. Our concern is simply to move quickly (and freely) as possible from one place to another. We are bereft of rituals of entry that allow us to participate fully in the places we inhabit.
“Without a habitus - particularly one that is drawn, at least in part, from the rhythm of the land around us - our habitat ceases to be a living partner in the pursuit of common wholeness. We become alienated from an environment that seems indifferent, even hostile. Habitat turns into scenery, inconsequential background. Habitus is reduced to a nonsacramental, individualistic quest for transcendent experience. We lose any sense of being formed in community, particularly in a tradition that allows us to act unconsciously, with ease and delight, out of a deep sense of what is natural to us and to our “milieu.” We are, in short, a people without “habit,” with no common custom, place, or dress to lend us shared meaning.”
Land, place, habitus -- land is real and spatially definable. In modernity we privileged the Universal over the particular. It’s taking some time to unlearn this worldview and recover a shalom reality. Habitus points to the wholeness and value of life in this world. Quality of life is all-embracing: relating to Yahweh, neighbor, and the environment. Shalom embraces all these meanings. The promise of land and all that it signifies keeps God's design firmly rooted in the world, in theincarnation itself, and leads us to see the wholeness of the call to discipleship, an ecology of God’s design.
| Len is a writer, pastor, student and software developer living in Kelowna, BC, in the heart of the vineyards and orchards of the Okanagan valley. He is a regional representative for RESONATE. He is a co-editor of Voices of the Virtual World: Participative Technology and the Ekklesial Revolution. He is currently involved in co-editing Fresh and ReFresh: Church Planting and Urban Mission in Post-Christendom Canada. He is the father of two teenage girls, married to Betty, an RN who works with women in transition. They also care for a Siamese cat who thinks she is God. He blogs at nextreformation.com |
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Monday, 01 February 2010 20:15 |
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by Peter Rollins
Paul the apostle famously wrote, ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’.
This verse brings us to the heart of what can be called “Paul’s universalism”. In theological terms this universalism has been understood in two dominant ways. In the first it is argued that Paul is claiming that, compared to being a Christian, all these other differences have no meaning.
All other differences are thus subsumed under the one supreme difference: that of Christians and non-Christians. It is because of this that Christianity was originally baptised as the Universal religion par excellence. Whereas religions such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism are particularistic (having a belief system that acknowledges the place of those outside their system), Christianity seeks global dominance: the only important distinction being whether you confess Christ or not.
Hence Christianity has been critiqued for exhibiting a totalising narrative that condemns those who do not embrace it to eternal death.
In contrast others interpret Paul’s universalism as referring, not to the limited scope of salvation, but rather to its operative reach. Here it is claimed that Paul is saying that all these other distinctions will eventually be subsumed into Christ. In this way Christianity is viewed as universal insomuch as its soteriological power reaches everything and everybody. At the end of the day everyone will come to see that the Christian religion was right after all.
However both these positions fail to inscribe the very difference between “Christian” and “non-Christian” into the distinction Paul makes. What both these positions agree upon is that Paul held there to be one primary identity that trumps all the others, an identity that is superior to all other identities.
What I would like to suggest, following Slavoj Žižek, is that these two positions fail to go far enough in their arguments.
Instead of raising one concrete identity above and beyond all the others should we not follow this logic to the end and place the very distinction between “Christian” and “non-Christian” alongside all the others?
In other words, when we identify as followers of Christ we are not laying down all our other identities (republican or democrat, rich or poor, gay or straight) in order to affirm only one as truly important. Rather we lay down every identity, enacting what, in theology, is called kenosis. This is where we partake in Christ who became nothing, divesting himself of everything to become a servant.
Here we do not lay down our identity only to pick up our new identity in Christ. Rather it is in laying down all our identities that we directly identify with Christ.
In this Pauline approach something truly new and beautiful arises in a world defined by who we are and what we do. Here the fundamental antagonism is not located between various distinctions but rather between those who lay all distinctions down and those who hold onto them. Christianity marks the opening of a movement where the only insiders are the outsiders, the ones without position or location.
In the economy of the world our identity is vital. What we do, what we earn, what we have accomplished. In the kingdom economy all of this is what Paul called shit (skubala).
Within the church we are to engage in a radical subtraction by which we see through these identities (no longer allowing them to define the scope and limitations of our world). In this move we lose everything, and in that moment discover our souls.
| Peter has a number of things we could identify him with, but for the sake of congruency we're going to assume he considers it all skubala (shit). He blogs at peterrollins.net |
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Friday, 29 January 2010 15:58 |
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by Dan Sheffield
Ordering my house…
A couple of years ago I visited my local art gallery (AG of Hamilton). I sat on a bench in front of Tom Thomson’s, The Birch Grove, for an extended time. And here I am still thinking about/remembering that space. Growing up I lived in Thomson’s northern Ontario. In the trees, in the wind, on the rocks; a bold, stark, beautiful, silent, throbbing world. Sitting in front of that painting I felt myself in that space. I also felt myself absorbing the artistry of Thomson’s vision, and his creative hand. My first vision of my life was as an artist. My first drawings were of comic-book heroes (easy to copy) -- and trees.
Then the city, noise, people, buildings, books, cinema, concrete, steel, more people, church, programs, meetings, more and more people…
Ok, so I’m an introvert, who is nurtured by trees and rocks…
Ok, so I’m a Canadian, who is nurtured by the geographic span of this land…
These are deep-rooted images and values that have shaped who I am.
But still the pace of my life and the people around me are moving at a rate that leads me to question how my walk with Jesus needs to be re-ordered to allow for restorative ‘space’ in my life. I’m thinking that ‘re-ordering the normal order of things to better reflect the order of the kingdom of God’ needs to include less people, less meetings, less programs, less ‘church’, less noise. Does kicking back at the darkness include saying ‘no’ to too many hockey lessons and practices, to too many coffee meetings, to too much time on the PS3, to too much Jon & Kate plus 8, to too much extra-curricular everything?
I found a good text to help flesh this out (I was just reading it this morning, honest):
‘teach me how to live, Yahweh. Lead me along the right path… I am confident I will see Yahweh’s goodness while I am here in the land of the living. Wait patiently for Yahweh. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for Yahweh.’ [Psalm 27]
So next week I am going to Sri Lanka for 2 weeks where I will be with people, talking about buildings, programs, challenges, having lots of meetings, and more and more people…
Then when I come back I am spending three days at a little hermit’s cottage on a farm close to lots of trees, reordering and restoring.
I really like the idea of hanging out with Jesus during his regular prayer retreats in the Judean wilderness; you notice he ordered his life that way. Then he would come back and dive into the noise, people, meetings and parties. He had a way of ordering his life that nurtured his soul and gave him resources for his encounters with people, and systems, and injustice. I’d like to keep that kingdom economy going in the rhythms of my life.
| Dan serves The Free Methodist Church in Canada as Director of Global and Intercultural Ministries. He also works as International Urban Ministry Facilitator for Free Methodist World Missions (FMWM). He has a Masters in Religious Education from McMaster University (2001) and a B.A. in Biblical Studies from Providence College (1988). Him and his wife, Kathy, lived as missionaries in South Africa, working in multicultural church planting and community development from 1994 to 1999. They have a daughter Jamila and a son Jared. He blogs at sheffield.typepad.com |
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Wednesday, 27 January 2010 20:17 |
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by Elle Pyke
I often think I would be a fabulous first century Jew.
Oh, I am sure I would have missed the Messiah, and likley thought the disciples had lost some marbles, but oh, would I have been a great Jew. I think I would have welcomed the rules of Juadism, the Torah and the Talmud, so I had an answer for every scenrio, and a law to ensure I followed them. I have a slight addiction to rules, regulations and routines and though I work to rid myself of them, rules often rear their ugly head and I smile sweetly embracing them with loving and comfortable arms. When it comes to the idea of Kingdom Economy, I wish I had a nice long scroll to spell out my next steps and ensure I was doing the right thing.
See, the ugly rules again.
Perhaps my Jewish brothers and sisters don't see their faith as simple as I have presented it and I by no stretch of the imagination mean to offend their rich and textured faith. As a Christ-follower, believing the Messiah has come, I find myself in the realm of grace instead of law and often I find that grace confusing.
I wish someone would just tell me what to buy. Give me some rules, give me some guidelines and let me know when I have stepped out too far. Tell me what car to buy, where to shop, and how much to spend on concerts. And of course, my fallen nature would love the list, so not only could I judge myself, but then I could judge others.
Do you ever feel that way, or am I alone?
I want to bask in the glory of grace and the freedom that Christ gives, but when it comes to money and my relationship to it, I wish I had some more guidelines. My spirit resonates with those who live in community, surviving with very little possessions and engaging the lower income communities they usually live in. My spirit also resonates with those who have children and families and own modest homes, but intentionally live on less to enjoy radical generosity. There is something so enticing about a community of faith that loves the orphan and the widow, that doesn't just serve the poor, but the poor are among them and are family.
But how those beautiful expressions of faith effect my life when I am at the checkout, sometimes gets lost in translation.
Perhaps that is the whole point of journeying with Christ and working out our faith with fear and trembling. Perhaps it is walking the fine balance of living in this world, but not being of it and walking the counter cultural way of Christ in our cities and towns. Perhaps not having all the answers facilitates conferences like this upcoming one, causing us to meet together to ignite imagination and creativity in searching how we might reorient our finances to really serve the Kingdom of Christ and not just pay it lip service.
I don't suspect I will get that scroll of "Kingdom Economy" rules anytime soon, but perhaps I should be more concerned with the scroll of grace that is being written on my heart and the beauty of the journey with Christ as He walks with me in and out of bank account. I don't always like surprises, but maybe Jesus asks us to work out our relationship to his Kingdom economy because He is looking to bring about a surprising result, with more beauty and truth then rules could ever create.
So as I hang in the balance, between my want for those ugly rules and my attraction to radical grace, I do what I can to be faithful to what I know. And as always, hoping that next time the rules come knocking, I don't answer the door.
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