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NATIONAL HOMEBOY NETWORK GATHERS IN LOS ANGELES
National Homeboy Network gathers in Los Angeles by Justin Coleman and Charles RotramelLast month, more than 50 programs representing 18 states and seven nations gathered in Los Angeles to learn, network, and plan how to help disaffected youth and young people leaving gangs. Homeboy Industries was the host and creator of the network. Homeboy Industries is the largest gang intervention non-profit in the United States. Homeboy has been a place where “hope has an address” for hundreds of former gang members in Los Angeles for the last 25 years. Homeboy is a sign of God’s grace active in the life of a community where the gospel is lived more so than spoken. There is a quote often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi which says, “Preach always. If necessary, use words.” In all the communities of faith that we have been privileged to visit or be a part of, Homeboy sits at the top of the list as one that embodies St. Francis’ quote robustly.
Father Boyle's remarksFather Greg Boyle made an opening speech that contained amazing language as he spoke about the young people he works with. Here are some of the highlights:
"Stop trying to reach them. The real question is can you be reached by them. We don't try to convince them to change."
"We wait on them to decide to change. Ours is a God who waits, so who are we not to."
"What we are about as a movement is not to save people. It is to enter into this exquisite mutuality. We are reached as we reach people. And the soul feels its worth."
"Love is the answer. Community is the location. Tenderness is the methodology."
"Love is the only thing that works. It's the only thing worth doing. It's the only thing that fights the degenerating sense if nobody-ness.”
Programs to keep an eye on
There were many amazing programs represented at the gathering. Programs that were given special mention during the gathering were:
Empowered Youth from Miami, which reaches youth in the juvenile justice system and connects them to social enterprises, including a food truck.
Community Initiative to Reduce Violence in Glasgow, Scotland, which is a program run by the Scottish Police to engage youth in activities and job training programs in exchange for a reduction in violence.
Brotherhood Brew is a social enterprise run by young men in St. Paul, Minnesota that operates a coffee and beverage service for churches and offices.
The Cardinal Ballers, who are students from John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio who play basketball in the juvenile detention center three times a week and are thinking now they are called to start a formal program.
GRASP is a street outreach program in Denver, Colorado run by former gang members who are working to help others leave the gang life. We also met folks from London, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and the US Virgin Islands who are starting up efforts to work with gang affected youth in their communities.
Houston reVision from Houston, which intervenes in the lives of at risk and gang affected youth throughout Harris County who are between the ages of 12 and 17. By building community between positive adults and at risk youth, reVision provides direct alternatives to help youth change their lives, develop positive life skills, and prepare for promising futures.
Next steps
There was great excitement from the attendees of the gathering about what comes next. Because there were representatives from several countries, Father Boyle declared that the network will henceforth be called the Global Homeboy Network. Initial thoughts about how to organize this network are still forming, but there was some discussion about having a set of principles that organizations would sign on to, modeled on the United Nations' Business for Peace. The formation of a Global Homeboy Network advisory board was also discussed. Another conference will certainly take place next year.
What we learned
The two major takeaways that we had from the conference were:
1. A movement is emerging around the world to connect disaffected youth with their communities. Instead of continuing to incarcerate and dismiss these youth, people in cities and towns around the world are coming together to reach out to these youth and to give them hope.
2. Social enterprise does not have to be large scale. We met several programs that are running very small businesses that employ youth and create modest income streams into their organizations. The coffee program in Minnesota was probably the most notable. Most programs see social enterprise as an integral part of intervention work with disaffected youth, teaching them job skills and entrepreneurship.
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NOAH'S ARK ECUMENISM AND HOLY GHOST POWER
Noah's ark ecumenism and Holy Ghost power by Clifton StringerBefore suffering on the cross, Jesus prayed for us. He said, "I pray they will be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. I pray that they also will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me" (Jn. 17:21 CEB).
My friend Eric, the pastor of Servant Church in Austin, Texas, once told me that ecumenism has got to be a grassroots thing now. The time is past for waiting for theologians from various Christian bodies to work out everything statically on paper. Christian unity has got to happen dynamically through shared response to the Holy Spirit: in the neighborhood, neighbor to neighbor, pastor to pastor, Christian disciple to Christian disciple. Though I am a theology geek with ecumenical interests, and though I still pray and have hope that the Holy Spirit will bring visible organic unity to the churches, including at an institutional level, my mind has changed. I agree with Eric now.
At the end of his retirement celebration lecture, Methodist theologian Stanley Hauerwas was fielding questions. One came from a Catholic student from Milan, asking about work for Christian unity. Hauerwas' reply: "God is making our past differences less interesting, in a way that we're going to need one another for having any future."
Similarly, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove of Rutba House writes in his foreword to Longing For Spring: A New Vision of Wesleyan Community that, whereas we Christians used to be divided into neat little safe separate streams, the river has been rising. The streams are becoming united:
In the latter half of the 20th century, as the last vestiges of Christendom slipped away, many Christians have found themselves caught up in a current that defies conventional wisdom. I certainly have. Trying to make sense of the Scripture verses I'd memorized in the King James Version, I got to know a Catholic sister who worked with addicts in inner-city Philadelphia. An Episcopalian professor introduced me to monastic wisdom, and I started learning from Benedictines. I ended up studying at a Methodist seminary (Lord, have mercy). The landscape is indeed changing.
Wilson-Hartgrove writes that what we have now might be called "Noah's ark ecumenism": "Sharing a space with all God's critters ain't always easy, but it sure beats the alternative."
Given the rising waters on which the church floats, how might we do Christian unity practically? What kinds of opportunities should we keep our eyes open for in order to respond to the Holy Spirit?
A few thoughts come to my mind — please contribute your own ideas and experiences below.
1. Pray together
There is nothing more basic to experiencing and pursuing Christian unity than finding opportunities to pray together. Pope John Paul II taught this in Ut Unum Sint, and it blew my mind when I first read it since it made perfect sense theologically and resonated with my experience. I first became convinced of the importance of Christian unity by living in an intentional Christian community (made up of Methodists, Catholics, Baptists, a Nazarene and even a Presbyterian) where we prayed together nightly. The spiritual unity and catholicity we enjoyed living in that house has continued to be both a sign for me of the goodness and joy of Christian unity, while it has also made Christian divisions more painful.
Is there a way you can pray with other Christians in a way that crosses denominational lines? If you're a pastor, is there a pastor's meeting in your county or city? Or should you start one? While a pastor in the Texas Hill Country, I was blessed to be in a county where there was a weekly prayer meeting to which all the pastors in the county were invited. The prayer meetings let us enjoy spiritual unity and also get to know one another, which opened doors for further cooperation.
2. Work together
A second way Christians of different types can seek and manifest full unity is to pursue kingdom work together. This can look like many different things, and will vary depending on what your church's neighborhood/county/city is like. But certainly collaborating on service projects and social justice work makes sense. In some contexts, putting on evangelistic events together makes sense. In the Texas Hill Country, football is a big deal, so the various churches would collaborate on 5th Quarter parties after the football games. Also, there was usually collaboration on an Easter sunrise service for the community. (This took place in the unfortunately dry lake-bed.)
The above two ways we can seek Christian unity — prayer and work — are actually the Benedictine motto: ora et labora. Both are ways we respond to and participate in the work of the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit can start with one and bring us to the other. South of Boston, Massachusetts two Protestant pastors attended a Taizé prayer service at the local Catholic parish. After that prayer time, the two Protestant pastors contacted the Catholic priest about their congregations collaborating on social justice work. Go Holy Spirit!
Speaking of Taizé...
3. Follow the Way of Brother Roger of Taize
Brother Roger was a young French Calvinist pastor who wanted to be a monk and felt convinced of the importance of Christian unity and human peace. Some people who feel those kinds of urges for Christian unity leave the church of their birth and baptism and become Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, seeking to join a visibly 'universal' church. Not Brother Roger. He started an ecumenical monastic order in Taizé, France. Today 100,000 young people each year, from all across the globe and all denominations (including Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox), go on pilgrimage there. This has resulted in the community's distinctive "Taizé music" being used in churches around the world.
Not that we'll all start ecumenical monasteries in Taizé, France, Austin, TX, or Springfield, __. Though that's not a bad way to go either. But in what does the ecumenism of Brother Roger consist? It consists, first of all, in the love the Holy Spirit pours into our hearts (c.f. Rom. 5:5). Second, it consists in drinking from others' spiritual wells, without forsaking the unity we have in Christ with the baptized people who raised us and baptized us.
Drinking from others' spiritual wells is rather easy these days thanks to the interwebs and book series like Classics of Western Spirituality. (Though this book is still the best.)
One surprising thing about Brother Roger was that he was given Holy Communion by two different popes — John Paul II and Benedict XVI — yet never "left" the Calvinist communion that raised him or "became" Roman Catholic. Rather, Brother Roger pursued a Christ-like way of love for all his neighbors and Christians of all types and traditions. He once said, "I found my identity as a Christian by reconciling within myself the faith of my origins and the mystery of the Catholic faith, without breaking communion with anyone." Read all about it in this interesting interview from after Brother Roger's death.
This spiritual and interior and prayerful and practical ecumenism of Brother Roger works. He was able to be and provide a space of hospitality for seekers and disciples the world over. Following his path probably will not put us all in communion with each other during many of our lives (though even that is not beyond the Holy Spirit's power!) Yet we see in Brother Roger a way that is a real way, and it is a Christ-like way, and it may be our way.
So: Let's all pray for Holy Ghost Power!
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WHY THIS PASTOR LOVES ‘LEFT BEHIND’
Why this pastor loves ‘Left Behind’ by Chad HoltzOn October 3rd, the remake of the hit series, "Left Behind," will hit theaters. Even with Nicholas Cage playing the starring role I couldn’t be more excited about this movie hitting the big screen in a big way.
Many of my colleagues disagree, at least according to the many bits flying across my newsfeed. They are concerned that this movie portrays an inaccurate depiction of the Second Coming of Christ and the events surrounding it. They are worried that it promotes a theology of “escapism” and they argue that since rapture theology is relatively new (it came into being in the 1800’s) it should be suspect. I highly recommend reading Randall Hardman’s recent article “Why Left Behind should be... left behind” for a succinct review of rapture theology and why you should be suspicious of movies which interpret the “last days” the way "Left Behind" does.
I believe Hardman is most likely right in his interpretation of the various texts about eschatology (a study of the end of things), but I disagree with the conclusion which implies that those who embrace this theology also embrace escapism as a solution to the problems of this world. I think this is wrong for two reasons. One, it’s impossible to know this with any kind of certainty (does every person who believes in rapture theology run from the problems of this world?) and second, escape is not necessarily a bad thing.
If it’s true that the majority of American Christians believe in some sort of rapture theology (N.T. Wright calls it the American Obsession, and rightly so) then it would stand to reason that the majority of Christians in America refuse to deal with the problems or messiness in our world today and choose instead to sit on their hands and wait for the trumpet to sound. I can’t know the same people everyone else knows, but those I know don’t seem to fall neatly into these, or any, categories. I know folks who think the Left Behind books are gospel and are ruthlessly engaged in the problems of society, working hard to alleviate the suffering of their neighbors. I know folks who think "Left Behind" should be left behind and yet seem to do very little in the way of transforming the world.
Three years ago, when I was a broken man with a life spiraling out of control due to sexual addiction and a new student at live-in program for addicts like me, I overheard an argument between two fellow addicts about how the end of the world will take place. One was a staunch pre-millennialist and the other a post-millennialist, and both felt that the other’s position compromised the other’s life with God in some way. I, on the other hand, am a staunch pan-millennialist (it will all pan out in the end) and couldn’t help but to roll my eyes as I listened to this argument unfold. And then the absurdity of it all hit me: Here we are, men broken through sexual addiction and have in various ways ruined our lives and the lives of others, causing immeasurable pain in ourselves and in the world we live, and our views on how the end of the world will occur — pre, post, pan, whatever — did little if anything to save us.
Our greatest issue as Christians is not a hardened view of the end of times but hardened hearts that have lost sight of what it means to be obedient to our Lord. A person who believes in the rapture and has a heart right with God will take seriously Christ’s command to love God (which means many things not least of which is to love justice) and to love one’s neighbor (which means many things not least of which being willing suffer alongside them and seek to alleviate their pain). If you are not doing these things then you may want to stop wondering about how this world will come to an end and start wondering whether or not you will have a place in the next.
Hardman writes that, “Rapture-based theology teaches us to think and hope for an escape from this world, not endurance to persevere in it.” For billions of people on this planet an escape from this world and the torture, starvation, abuse, neglect, genocide, war, disease, addiction, and more that they experience every day of their existence isn’t such a bad thing for which to hope! As I sit here in my comfortable house drinking my delicious coffee and contemplating what I’m going to eat at three different times (maybe four) today, who am I to snuff out the only hope the majority of the world is holding on to? And who am I to suggest that they are somehow lacking in their ability to “endure and persevere”? Enduring another day is all they know how to do! I get upset when my pizza at Little Caesars isn’t both hot and ready when I walk in the door, so who am I to tell the Christian family being butchered in Syria that if they believe in the rapture they are placing their hope in fairy tales and thus forgetting how to bear the cross of this life?
Again, as with everything else, how I live this life has less to do with how I believe the end of the world will occur and everything to do with the posture of my heart. Am I loving God and loving my neighbor? Am I loving my neighbor if their only hope is that one day God will whisk them away to a place where there will be no more pain, no more death, no more tears and I crush that hope? By the way, that last bit is our hope as believers in Jesus Christ and can, in and of itself, produce an escapism mentality in anyone if your heart isn’t right, regardless of how you think we get to that place.
I love that as a Methodist pastor I don’t have to put all my eggs in the first and last chapters of the Bible. It is enough for us Methodists to say that God created it all and that God will redeem it all. How God did it then, and how God will do it then, I am OK with calling a mystery, trusting that all the pages between those chapters reveal a God who is good and just. The moment, however, that I humbly confess that I do not know how the end of the world will take place is the moment I must also humbly confess that the "Left Behind" interpretation could be one of a myriad of possibilities. I cannot attack it with any certainty when I am not certain of how it will happen. I’m grateful for it in that regard, that it gets me thinking about something I all too easily forget — that this world is not my final home, and one day Jesus is coming to rescue his bride. I hope on that day I am found worshiping the King of Kings and not critiquing the way in which he chooses to redeem his Kingdom.
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STOP WHINING, AND GROW UP
Stop whining, and grow up by Tom Ehrich / Religion News Service(RNS) The southbound Acela from New York Penn Station could go faster.
If the roadbed were smoother, if the stops weren’t so frequent — you know, the usual if-onlys. But it is what it is. And it’s fine.
Penn Station could be cleaner, less disorderly, less like a cattle pen. But for the busiest train station in North America, serving 600,000 rail passengers a day, it does fine.
I can think of many things that could be better, from Congress to professional football to taxicabs. But on the whole, things work OK. Why, then, so much whining about things not working?
Yes, I know that we only make progress when creative people see problems and try to solve them. I also know that the shortcoming that mildly annoys me is a major source of suffering for someone else.
But it seems to me we have become a whining culture. We feel a pinch and whine about it. We hear someone saying words we disapprove, and we whine about it. A politician falls short, an underpaid customer service agent takes too long, our Wi-Fi network runs slowly, the new smartphone isn’t 100 percent perfect, and we whine about it. When did we decide we were entitled to perfection?
Whining is the tool of the powerless. Children, for example, feel helpless, so they whine, hoping parents will be irritated enough to give them their way. But the powerful whine, too, as when politicians track their press clippings or well-paid managers complain about rank-and-file wages. How many people with good jobs and adequate paychecks whine about stress and long hours?
Some situations, of course, are oppressive and justify complaint. But it’s hard to sort those out for attention when we are whining about everything. The whining of the haves, for example, drowns out the legitimate complaints of the have-nots. Listen to the mega-wealthy whine about capital gains taxes and estate taxes while people just beyond their walls are suffering for lack of income, nutrition and hope.
Whining is a form of narcissism. Whining makes me the center of everything. I hear this constantly in the religious world. Worshippers whine about the length of a sermon without appreciating the effort put into it and the possibility that someone else is benefiting. Older constituents whine about children, conveniently forgetting that their children once made noise in church. Message: It’s all about me.
What’s the answer to whining? Maturity, for one thing. It’s time for a lot of people to grow up and stop behaving like children. Also, a perspective leading to gratitude. Many people don’t see how good they have it and, therefore, feel no gratitude, just deprivation. One reason giving to churches has plummeted is a prevailing attitude of not enough.
I think we need to “stiffen our spines.” Not in the phony whining-driven rituals of macho gun toting, but in the gumption that accepts challenge and endures not getting one’s way.
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5 REAL FEARS OF GROWING OLDER
5 real fears of growing older by Ron EdmondsonI remember the first night in my own house. New wife. Mortgage payment to make each month.
I felt responsible — more than I ever had in my life.
And honestly, there was a part of me afraid. It wasn’t a boogie man kind of fear. I’ve never been one to be that kind of afraid very much.
It was a revering kind of fear. An awe of the weight of the responsibility. The enormity of the demand in front of me.
I wanted to be a good husband. Be a provider. Protect my home. Pay for it. Keep a roof over our head.
And the night we brought a baby into our house. — wow — having grown up most of my life without a father in the picture, I certainly wanted to be a good dad.
Those were normal fears of the entry into manhood. I’m sure women feel similar fears.
Those fears are long gone. I haven’t felt them in years. We’ve kept the house. Actually had several over the years. Praise God. God blessed me as a dad. I have two pretty good children. (Actually they are excellent — seriously — two of the best men I know.) God has been so good to us.
But, fears are back — in a different kind of way. Again, not a boogie man kind of fear. I don’t fear as in a worry sense. I wouldn’t even use the word “afraid” as I would use the word “fear.” I hope that makes sense. Probably not — but it does to me.
It’s a feeling of reverence. Of seriousness. Of responsibility.
Granted, age is relative. To someone who died too young I would be an old man. Blessed with years. And to some who live long I’m still a very young man. My grandfather lived to be a 101 years old. I’ve got some days in front of me.
But those fears, as a 50 year old, are so unique.
Here are 5 real fears of a 50 year old:
I will leave something undone. I don’t want to miss anything God has for me to do. I realize time is drawing shorter. There’s still so much left with the calling he has placed on my life. I don’t want to miss any of it.
I will start to fear change. I’ve never been resistant to change. I love it. Most of my life has been shaped by leaps of faith. I don’t want that to stop. I know change supposedly gets more difficult to accept with age. I want to defy those odds — take risks — willing to live with great moves of faith.
I won’t be prepared. I’m not afraid of death. Quite the contrary. I know my future eternity is secure. That’s a great feeling. A great comfort and hope. But, chances are, I will leave people behind someday. Will I have prepared them for my exit? Will I have invested well, have my paperwork and life in order, to limit any burden potential for my children?
They won’t remember. Of course, many will “remember” who I was — a father, a husband, a friend, a pastor — it’s hard to forget the significant people in our life. But will they remember the right things and will what they remember add to the quality of their life? Will the words they recall be filled with wisdom and be life-giving? Will my lasting influence make their life better?
Not finishing strong. Cheryl’s father used to say, “I don’t want my body to outlast my mind.” I understand that more now. I want to be productive every moment of my life. I know men decades older than me who can still outwork and out-think me. I want to finish like that. Of course, we can’t control that. We can play a part — and I’m more careful what I eat and that I exercise — but so many things are out of our control. I feel the weight of that.
There.
How is that for gut honesty?
Why post it? Well, somehow, it feels better to put it in writing. I suspect — because of human nature — I’m not alone in some of these fears.
I will still teach that one of Christ’s most dominant commands is “Don’t be afraid”.
But, maybe too it’s a challenge to myself to do everything in my power to avoid these fears from becoming reality. To live even more intentionally with my life. And, trust God for the sufficiency of his grace for where — for whatever reason — I am unable to do so.
Ron Edmondson blogs at RonEdmondson.com.
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LIFE IS A MAZE
Life is a maze by LinC (Living in Christ) Tiffany ManningThe action/adventure movie "The Maze Runner" is based on a best-selling young adult novel. This movie tells the story of a group of teenagers who are trying to figure out how to solve the Maze, a labyrinth full of creatures designed to kill them. After trying to solve the Maze for two years, the youth begin to lose hope. When protagonist Thomas comes on the scene, he emerges as a leader due to his persistence and refusal to accept the established belief that spending a night in the Maze leads to death. After developing and executing a strategy that keeps him alive in the confusing web of pathways, Thomas comes out a hero and restores hope to the community as they carry on to find a solution to the Maze.
Keep on keeping on
Many teenagers today feel like their lives are a maze. With the twists and turns they encounter at school, in extracurricular activities, and from their peers and family, just surviving the day can cause even the strongest adolescent to want to give up. Some youth become so overwhelmed by the expectations of others that they simply shut down, both emotionally and physically. Youth leaders are charged with bringing hope to a generation of teenagers who are heavy-laden. We can encourage them to keep trying so they can conquer the struggles of everyday life and move on to accomplish their dreams.
Never Give Up
Like Thomas, when we show perseverance, we will emerge as leaders in our church and community. When we fully trust in a God who promises never to leave us or forsake us, we have no reason to give up because the God of the universe is on our side. God will give us the strength we need to carry on, even when we run up against challenging times. With continuous prayer and a strong faith, we are able to work through the trials of this life and one day rise victorious to receive our heavenly reward.
Question of the Day: In what area of your life do you feel like giving up?
Focal Scriptures: Genesis 32:22-32; Luke 18:1-8; 2 Timothy 2:1-13
For a complete lesson on this topic visit LinC here!
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MONKY BUSINESS: CHURCH GROWTH AND/OR NEW MONASTICISM
Monky business: Church growth and/or new monasticism by Clifton StringerLet no one say, brethren, that in our times there are no combats for martyrs. For our peace has its martyrs also. - Abbot Smaragdus of Verdun, 9th century
Some of our brothers and sisters in Christ are being martyred by ISIS these days. Let us pray for them tenderly, and also for their persecutors. We find ourselves unavoidably, uncomfortably, and in a terrified way reminded about Christ's call to us to embrace our cross. Surely Jesus didn't mean when he said that that some of us would be murdered by the likes of ISIS! Such ugliness is hard to countenance in our churches, where we want things to be nice. It makes plain the shallowness with which we throw around the words of Jesus, who says, "Take up your cross and follow me." How often do I too-casually quote Bonhoeffer: "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."
Yet, for all this discomfort we rightly feel, Jesus' call to carry the cross does not just extend to those Christians surrounded by the threat of physical violence.
Abbot Smaragdus above reminds us of this. (Wasn't it worth clicking on this post just to get to read his name? Feel free to say it out loud. How fun was that?) Monasticism has arisen among Christians to explore deeply what it looks like to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, in spiritual worship. After all, what can radically carrying the cross look like in peaceful, plentiful, prosperous (even consumerist bohemian) places? Where is a Christian wisdom for spiritually thriving in the U.S.A.?
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The conversations that became 'The New Monasticism' were going on when I began seminary in 2004. Some of the key players were on the scene in Durham, NC. I lived in an intentional Christian community, then about 15 years running, called the Iredell House. (That's the name of the street — there is no Saint Iredell — yet!) At Iredell House we discussed whether we were part of the New Monasticism, and decided that we probably were not. A lot of the "12 marks of a new monasticism" did not seem to map onto our community life and vision, though we did keep Night Prayer together and share meals. The curious things is one of the authors of the "12 marks" lived in our community!
I also kept the New Monasticism at arm's length for two other reasons:
1. Pride - I did not want to jump on a new hip developing bandwagon, even if it was saying wise holy smart stuff. How sad.
2. Usefulness - I was sort-of, haltingly, pretty sure that whatever I was doing in seminary had to do with becoming a pastor in a United Methodist Church in Texas afterward. (I was right about that!) I didn't see how harboring new monastic aspirations could be squared with life in the UM itinerant system.
I won't claim the nasty pride has been fully overcome -- though thinking Christianly about the fact that you will die helps — but the second worry has been overcome with time. It has been overcome by a continuing attraction to the allure and beauty of all things monastic. It has been overcome by the slow and persistent realization that the spiritual formation I received by living at Iredell House and praying the Liturgy of the Hours is something that I need to continue if I am to sustain a life of prayer. So I pray the Liturgy of the Hours very fragmentarily and imperfectly! It has been overcome by the goodness I see in the church's historic monastic traditions, and in the goodness I see in New Monastic experiments. One of my favorite quotations comes from St. Francis. For Franciscans I think it captures something of the Apostolic Life they are called to live, while for me it captures a way of trying to live as a praying person in the midst of family, church community, and schoolwork. "The world is my monastery, my body is my cell, and my soul is the hermit within." Those words help me to think about a sane way of being as a husband, as a dad, as a pastor, as a scholar. Really, I think, as an anything. In the monastery, life is shaped around liturgical praise and prayer. St. Francis' words help me remember to try to keep the liturgy going internally, whatever else I'm doing.
Here are some church growth lessons we can learn from the New Monasticism. (Remember that when speaking of "church growth" you should think of Eph. 3:14-4:16, not only of Matt. 28:16-20.)
1. New Monasticism reminds us that the local church can be revitalized, not by numerical church growth, but by praying with, loving, and forgiving one another with intentionality. This is growing up in Christ. We're called to make disciples of all nations, and that means the church should grow numerically. Yet how many local churches live depressed and in a rut because of the way occasional new faces seldom seem to stick around? New Monasticism, as a sign of communal holy love, shows us a biblical way of growth which, by God's Spirit, may spill over into numerical growth. Or maybe not. God knows. But it sure beats living anxious and depressed.
2. New Monasticism reminds non-Roman Catholic and non-Orthodox Christians that we need to actually figure out how to get some straight up monasticism going. Speaking as a United Methodist: We need some monks and nuns and friars. Did you know that there is a Methodist-Benedictine monastery called St. Brigid of Kildare? May it flourish, and may others spring up. Monasticism provides the Church with a kind of vitality and vibrancy that is unique. God be praised, God gives some people an all-or-nothing mentality about pursuing God and believing the Gospel. If we can't offer those folks straight up monasticism — if we can't welcome and manifest such radical diversity — we have nothing much to offer them. One of my dear friends left the Christian faith and later died in a stupid and tragic way. He had grown up evangelical. After leaving Christianity, he told me: "Growing up, I always felt like Christianity for me should be an all or nothing thing. In high school I wanted to become a monk." Of course, his church, like most Protestant churches, would have nothing really to recommend to someone saying and feeling something like that. But that need not be. Check out what Greg Peters says about all this.
I'll say a little more on this point. We badly need some folks to embrace a disciplined celibacy. But we can also imagine monastic communities open to married non-celibates, and perhaps even singles looking to marry. John Michael Talbot (in addition to growing a great beard and making great church music!) has a monastic community going in which some of the members are married. His book The Universal Monk: The Way of the New Monastics contains a lot of wisdom, including how his community does this.
3. New Monasticism reminds us that evangelism can happen kenotically. How exciting! A contemplative and prayerful stance towards life can really be evangelism. Read Elaine Heath's books The Mystic Way of Evangelism and Missional. Monastic. Mainline and (with Scott Kisker) Longing for Spring. Or, O my goodness, this one on Phoebe Palmer, which I can't wait to read.
Here's a video of Elaine Heath teaching us about a little bit of this stuff. She's pretty much a rock star.
Last, here are a few parting shots from Methodist super-theologian Stanley Hauerwas, from his retirement celebration lecture. Some of Hauerwas' students started my beloved Iredell House back in the day. (WAIT — Is Saint Iredell REALLY Stanley Hauerwas???!!!) During my first semester at Duke Divinity, I became aware of the Oxford Movement through Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua while drinking deeply of Hauerwas' wisdom. The parallels seemed obvious: Hauerwas' polemical virtue-practices ecclesiology = Newman's anti-Erastian apostolicity = Hey Let's Renew The Church Y'all.
"You don't have to be who they want you to be. You can be a monk." - Stanley Hauerwas, on the Church's perpetual challenge to biological family.
"To be formed by the Psalms is to learn to pray with Jesus." - Stanley Hauerwas, on going to Morning Prayer, even though he often doesn't feel like praying.
"God is making our past differences less interesting, in a way that we're going to need one another for having any future." - Stanley Hauerwas, when asked by a Roman Catholic from Milan about how to work for the unity of Christians today.
"Every graduate student is different." - Stanley Hauerwas, saying something that encourages me in the strange land of graduate theological study!
*The quotation from Abbot Smaragdus comes from C. H. Lawrence, "Medieval Monasticism: Forms of religious life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages," (London: Longman, 1984), 3.
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HOW TO LOSE A WEEK (AND NOT LOSE IT ALL)
How to lose a week (and not lose it all) by Chad BrooksOK, listeners. It’s time to get into the big stuff. Not the easy, entry-level time management, but the stuff of practitioners and productivity evangelists. This episode is about how to lose a work week and not lose your sanity. From time to time we all have to do it. The very fear of this is probably one of the reasons people in ministry don’t sabbath well. We are scared to be out of town because of all the work we might get behind on.
The ListLife Hacks of the Rich and Famous: Journl
I especially love the idea of rhythm and routine. It helps out tremendously when you are willing to delegate the tiny decisions to the same thing, habit or practice.
The New Habit Challenge: Make a Better To Do List: Rachel Gillett
This is a great blog post. Just making a to do list isn’t enough. Here is how to make the list actually work for you. I really like the idea of knocking out what you absolutely hate-but then building the momentum to get through the day.
How To Lose a Week (and not lose it all)
1. Know what you do. This is wear a routine of weekly reviews plus a great template practice comes in handy. You can easily look at what you are regularly getting done so you can plan out your attack.
2. What can you NOT do? Everyone has those tasks they think are absolutely essential. Let’s seriously think how many of those can’t get dropped or put off for the next week.
3. What can YOU not do? This is a perfect time to start delegating. Try to hand off a task to someone just to see how well it goes. You might be able to teach them something as well as teach yourself something.
4. What can you work ahead on? Having a production calendar and a preaching calendar are essential. When you know for a few weeks you are going out of town you can slowly work towards creating some time margin.
5. Can you squeeze in a little time while you are gone? What about an hour in the morning or missing a session of the conference. If you plan to give yourself a brief moment of time you can take care of the absolute essentials or put out any fires.
6. Plan your reentry. Think about what your first day might look like. Give yourself the space to actually accomplish what absolutely needs to get done that first day back.
Resources Mentioned:
The 4-Hour Work Week
The War of Art
Remember to sign up for the Productive Pastor Insider List. Get a great free productivity resource and the inside scoop every other Friday.
Listen: Stitcher RSS Direct Download iTunes
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PEOPLE WHO CHANGE THE WORLD NEVER GIVE UP
People who change the world never give up by Joseph YooA couple of years ago, through the Lewis Fellows Program, we got to spend two hours picking Rev. Adam Hamilton's brain at the Church of the Resurrection asking him questions on preaching, leadership, church administration, and so forth. Someone asked him, "What's one piece of advice that you would give us young pastors?" After taking a moment to think, he responded, "Don't give up. People who change the world never give up."
Then he began to share a time when about 800 people left the church at once. Most of the pastors in our group had never been part of a church of 800. Adam shared how difficult that season was. It wasn't just the occasional attendees who left the church. There were also leaders. People who were there from the beginning. Friends. People he trusted and loved. The thought of quitting entered his mind many times. But with the help of his wife's nudging, he didn't quit. And God has continued to do great things through him and COR. So his advice for us was to "never give up."
I remember hearing that thinking, "That's it?" I mean, this was Adam Hamilton. I expected something... deeper. I could've come up with the advice "Don't give up." We hear it every year during the ESPY season (award show for sports on ESPN) from that powerful speech that Coach Jim Valvano gave, "Don't give up. Don't ever give up."
But it's amazing that of all the pastors we've met through Lewis Fellows Program, of all the things we've learned, the one thing I remember ever so clearly is Hamilton's advice, "Don't give up. People who change the world never give up."
It also reminds me how the most profound thing can be the simplest of things.
Whether people know it or not, ministry can be draining. The thoughts of washing one's hands clean of a ministry and walking away is often entertained in the minds of many pastors and church leaders. Though we may experience many "wins" in our ministry, for some reason it's easier to focus on the "losses", the negatives, the complaints, the criticisms. We can hear nine wonderfully affirming comments and one negative one and for some reason, our minds and hearts dwell on that one negative comment. And it can be as superfluous as, "Your tie didn't match your shirt today, but it wasn't that distracting."
I'm inclined to believe that all pastors have thought of giving up at least once. And for some reason, I feel ashamed even thinking about the times I've thought about giving up. But we're not alone. The Bible shows leaders who were discouraged enough that they wanted to quit. Moses thought about quitting. As did Elijah. I'm sure David entertained the thoughts of running away during his reign.
Of course there might be times when God is calling us to move on, to step away, to step down. But in the seasons where I've felt dejected and discouraged with the desire to quit, I usually thought about making that decision without praying or conversing with God about it. Most of the time, it was something like, "I quit, and God please help me find another place to go." I'm thankful that I never acted upon those feelings because, looking back, God wasn't quite done with me.
I don't know what season of life or ministry you may be experiencing as you read these words. But I hope that you know that as much faith you may have in God, God has more faith in you. I believe that you are called to your ministry because God believes that you are the best partner possible for that ministry. My prayer for those who are discouraged in ministry is that you have the strength and courage not to fixate on all the negative comments flowing your way, but rather that your eyes and hearts are fixed upon Jesus — the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.
If God is calling you to go, may you have the courage to heed God's call. If God is telling you to stay, may you have the courage and the strength to persevere as you stay. But take heart. God is for you and with you.
And "don't give up. People who changed the world never give up."
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TENSIONS AT EPISCOPAL CHURCH’S OLDEST SEMINARY REFLECT LARGER CRISIS IN FUTURE OF THEOLOGY SCHOOLS
Tensions at Episcopal Church's oldest seminary reflect larger crisis by Sarah Pulliam Bailey / Religion News ServiceNEW YORK (RNS) Several faculty members at the Episcopal Church’s oldest seminary are battling with the school’s leadership, although neither side agrees whether they quit, were fired or staged a walkout.
General Theological Seminary in Manhattan is the only seminary overseen by the national church. Last week, eight faculty decided to stop teaching classes, attend official seminary meetings or attend chapel services until they could sit down with the Board of Trustees.
The dean and president, Kurt Dunkle, wrote a letter to students saying the Board of Trustees’ accepted the eight faculty members’ resignations. But faculty member Andrew Irving wrote to students saying the professors never suggested they would resign.
“We wish to underline that we have not resigned,” Irving wrote, suggesting the group sought legal counsel. “Our letters did not say that we would resign. We requested meetings with the Board.”
The Rev. Ellen Tillotson, an Episcopal priest in Connecticut and a GTS board member, wrote that it has become clear that the eight faculty have been planning a walkout.
“When offered such an ultimatum, what were we to do? No, they never used the word ‘resign,’” she wrote. “But over and over they said they were unable to continue to do their jobs unless we met unmeetable conditions.”
The school reported 10 full-time faculty in its 2013-2014 annual report to the Association of Theological Schools, the main accrediting body for more than 270 seminaries and graduate schools.
Calls placed to GTS were not returned Monday. Much of the debate has played out on social media and blogs, with occasional letters to the students.
The eight faculty are charging that Dunkle shared a student’s academic records with people who were not authorized to see them, which would violate federal academic privacy standards. The faculty also say he speaks in ways that have made women and some minority groups uncomfortable on several occasions.
In their earlier letter, the eight faculty laid out concerns with the school’s leadership.
“It is our view that that the President has repeatedly shown that he is unable to articulate sensitively and theologically the issues that are essential to the thriving of the Body of Christ in its great diversity,” the professors wrote in an open letter. “Moreover his failure to collaborate, or to respond to our concerns when articulated has resulted in a climate that many of us find to be fraught with conflict, fear, and anxiety.”
The tensions highlight an internal debate within the seminary over its future and a larger question of how seminaries should adapt to the changing culture. The Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge Massachusetts has also seen a battle erupted between its dean and faculty.
“There appears to be a profound lack of theological reflection in the process of change that the Dean has undertaken, which along with an impatience with relationship-building, that is strangely at odds with the mission of a seminary to form and prepare priests for mission in parish communities,” Andrew Gerns wrote in a post for Episcopal Cafe.
Dunkle has been trying to address the school’s longstanding financial problems by tightening up operations. Dunkle, who was previously a lawyer, graduated from GTS in 2004 and worked as a diocesan administrator and as a parish priest.
Of the Episcopal Church’s 10 seminaries, several are facing financial challenges. Bexley Hall Seminary in Ohio affiliated with Seabury-Western Seminary in Illinois to form Bexley Seabury in 2013.
In 2013-2014, GTS enrolled 70 students. In 2013-2014, the school had $10.6 million in expenditures and $27 million in investments, according to ATS. GTS had faced about $40 million of debt that they were attempting to pay down through property sales and redevelopment.
GTS focused their energies redesigning several buildings into the Desmond Tutu Conference Center in 2007, an effort that was supposed to bring hotel and conference revenue to the seminary. The anticipated revenue never materialized, and in 2012, the facility was sold to a developer.
The turmoil reflects a broader debate over the future direction of seminaries. Some seminaries are shifting away from the traditional three-year “residential” model to distance learning to save costs. Across denominations, many aspiring clergy will go to a local seminary for the bulk of their coursework before completing a degree a denominational seminary.
Seminaries with low-residency programs often don’t require students give up their full-time jobs to move to another city. The questions at Episcopal seminaries mirror larger issues at Protestant seminaries, said Jason Byassee, senior pastor of Boone United Methodist Church and a fellow in Theology & Leadership at Duke Divinity School.
“Can an incarnational faith be taught in a disembodied way?” he asked. “Online education isn’t necessarily disembodied, but that’s the question everyone is having to wrestle with.”
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MUSLIM SCHOLARS TELL ISLAMIC STATE: YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND ISLAM
Muslim scholars tell Islamic State: You don't understand Islam by Lauren Markoe / Religion News ServiceWASHINGTON (RNS) More than 120 Muslim scholars from around the world joined an open letter to the “fighters and followers” of the Islamic State, denouncing them as un-Islamic by using the most Islamic of terms.
Relying heavily on the Quran, the 18-page letter released Wednesday (Sept. 24) picks apart the extremist ideology of the militants who have left a wake of brutal death and destruction in their bid to establish a transnational Islamic state in Iraq and Syria.
Even translated into English, the letter will still sound alien to most Americans, said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, who released it in Washington with 10 other American Muslim religious and civil rights leaders.
“The letter is written in Arabic. It is using heavy classical religious texts and classical religious scholars that ISIS has used to mobilize young people to join its forces,” said Awad, using one of the acronyms for the group. “This letter is not meant for a liberal audience.”
Even mainstream Muslims, he said, may find it difficult to understand.
Awad said its aim is to offer a comprehensive Islamic refutation, “point-by-point,” to the philosophy of the Islamic State and the violence it has perpetrated. The letter’s authors include well-known religious and scholarly figures in the Muslim world, including Sheikh Shawqi Allam, the grand mufti of Egypt, and Sheikh Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, the mufti of Jerusalem and All Palestine.
A translated 24-point summary of the letter includes the following: “It is forbidden in Islam to torture”; “It is forbidden in Islam to attribute evil acts to God”; and “It is forbidden in Islam to declare people non-Muslims until he (or she) openly declares disbelief.”
This is not the first time Muslim leaders have joined to condemn the Islamic State. The chairman of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, Aiman Mazyek, for example, last week told the nation’s Muslims that they should speak out against the “terrorist and murderers” who fight for the Islamic State and who have dragged Islam “through the mud.”
But the Muslim leaders who endorsed Wednesday’s letter called it an unprecedented refutation of the Islamic State ideology from a collaboration of religious scholars. It is addressed to the group’s self-anointed leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, and “the fighters and followers of the self-declared ‘Islamic State.’”
But the words “Islamic State” are in quotes, and the Muslim leaders who released the letter asked people to stop using the term, arguing that it plays into the group’s unfounded logic that it is protecting Muslim lands from non-Muslims and is resurrecting the caliphate — a state governed by a Muslim leader that once controlled vast swaths of the Middle East.
“Please stop calling them the ‘Islamic State,’ because they are not a state and they are not a religion,” said Ahmed Bedier, a Muslim and the president of United Voices of America, a nonprofit that encourages minority groups to engage in civic life.
President Obama has made a similar point, referring to the Islamic State by one of its acronyms — “the group known as ISIL” — in his speech to the United Nations earlier Wednesday. In that speech, Obama also disconnected the group from Islam.
Enumerating its atrocities — the mass rape of women, the gunning down of children, the starvation of religious minorities — Obama concluded: “No God condones this terror.”
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EYEWITNESS
Eyewitness by Kevin Alton LinC (Living in Christ)On Saturday, August 9th, Michael Brown was confronted by a police officer regarding a convenience store robbery. Within minutes Michael had been shot dead by the officer. A confusing swirl of details emerged over the next few hours and days. It was determined that Michael was unarmed and that he allegedly reached for the officer’s gun. Michael was shot 6 times—4 times in the arm and twice in the head.
The grief of a life lost was nearly obscured by the events of the following days and weeks. Dozens of people were arrested in the streets of Ferguson. The police hit the streets prepared to take on an army, drawing concern and criticism from across the country.
Order was gradually restored, with much credit being given to the state patrol officers who walked with the protesters instead of digging in against them. Tensions remain high and, even as this article is published, all is not resolved.
A Christian Response
As Christians, how are we called to respond in these situations? What should our attitudes be? Should we respond at all? It’s a clichéd question at this point, but what would Jesus do in this scenario?
It’s important that we not simply set aside the reality of someone’s death in order to analytically assess this event from a sociological standpoint. It is equally important, however, that we recognize how response—both of the citizens of Ferguson and their police—escalated things into a critically dangerous situation. We may never fully know the details of the confrontation between Michael and the officer, but it’s hard not to assume that better responses within their interaction might easily have spared a life.
Today we’re going to spend some time probing the concept of responding well. Not taking sides, just exploring how our response to situations such as this can demonstrate our faith in Christ to the culture we’re helping to shape.
Question of the Day: When have you been so angry you couldn't think straight?
Focal Scriptures: Mark 11:15-18; Luke 6:27-31; John 8:3-11.
For a complete lesson on this topic visit LinC here!
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RELIGIOUS LEADERS TRY TO COPE WITH ISLAMIC STATE ATTACKS
Religious leaders try to cope with Islamic State attacks by Kathryn Marchocki / USA Today(RNS) Religious leaders agree the Islamic State — also known as ISIL or ISIS — must be stopped. Their struggle is how best to do it.
“As mainstream religious leaders of different faiths get together, it strengthens the voice of moderation,” said Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim advocacy group.
A group of mainstream Muslim scholars sought to strip the Iraqi and Syrian militants of any legitimacy under the cover of Islam in an open letter in Arabic issued Wednesday.
U.S. Christian leaders have also spoken out and say they hope to dissuade youth from joining the Islamic State ranks by developing an alternative world view that counters the group’s religious claims.
“To offer a different world view endorsed by religions, as well as governments, in the long term will go a long way to defeating its appeal to those who are looking to join them,” said Antonios S. Kireopoulos of the National Council of Churches. The council represents about 45 million Christians, from mainstream Protestants to “living peace” congregants.
Recent comments by Pope Francis about the conflict rocking the Middle East have left some religious leaders mixed about his intent.
The pontiff told reporters Aug. 18 that in “cases where there is unjust aggression, I can only say it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor.” He followed up, saying, “I emphasize the word: ‘stop.’ I’m not saying drop bombs, make war, but stop the aggressor.”
Some Christian leaders and theologians said they viewed Francis’ words as an endorsement of limited military action against the Islamic State.
At the very least, several leaders and scholars said, the pontiff did not rule out limited military force to defend innocent civilians in Iraq and Syria. The pope stressed any action should be an international effort.
“He clearly was invoking ‘just war’ tradition,” said Gerard F. Powers, professor at Notre Dame University’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. The tradition holds that war can only be waged as a last resort, have serious prospects of success and not create greater evils.
The Rev. James T. Bretzke, a moral theologian who teaches at Boston College’s School of Theology and Ministry, said he thought the pope was clear.
“He said, in this case, we can use military force to resist an unjust aggressor, Bretzke said. “He didn’t say wholesale war.”
“The pope did not support war,” countered Marie Dennis, co-president of Pax Christi International, a pacifist group that advocates diplomacy, humanitarian intervention, ceasefires and negotiation to reach lasting solutions.
“He is our peace pope, and there is no way I believe he is endorsing full military action,” said Nancy M. O’Byrne, former chair of the Archdiocese of St. Augustine’s justice and peace commission in Florida.
Like his predecessors, Pope Francis strongly opposed previous military interventions — including in Syria last year — because they didn’t meet the strict standards of the church’s “just war” tradition, church experts said.
What’s different now is the pope — and other Vatican officials — are attempting to draw world attention to the plight of innocent civilians facing mass murder, rape, crucifixions, beheadings, forced conversions to Islam and possible genocide, they said.
And while Pope Francis’ apparent call for intervention is rare, it is not new, Powers said.
In 1993 Pope John Paul II asked the world community to stop ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian conflict. His appeal resulted in international intervention, Powers said.
“We would agree that this kind of, as he called it, unjust aggression needs to stop or needs to be stopped. How you go about that the best way? That’s what we are all trying to figure out,” Kireopoulos said.
Jews would see the pope’s call as a “religious expression of the secular concept ‘duty to protect,’ also known as the obligation to defend innocent victims,” said Rabbi David Rosen, the American Jewish Committee’s International Director of Interreligious Affairs.
Rosen said there are many interreligious efforts to condemn violence done in the name of religion.
“Of course there is little that religious leaders can do other than exercise whatever moral authority they have,” said Rosen. “In other words, any ‘coalition’ is more for the sake of the good name of religion … than any ability to thwart religious extremism which portrays religious leadership that opposes it as Uncle Toms at best, if not collaborators with the Devil.”
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THIS SUNDAY
This Sunday, 5 October 201417th Sunday after Pentecost / World Communion Sunday - Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Psalm 19
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46
Scripture Texts:
Exodus 17:1-2 Directed by God, the whole company of Israel moved on by stages from the Wilderness of Sin. They set camp at Rephidim. And there wasn’t a drop of water for the people to drink. The people took Moses to task: “Give us water to drink.” But Moses said, “Why pester me? Why are you testing God?”
3 But the people were thirsty for water there. They complained to Moses, “Why did you take us from Egypt and drag us out here with our children and animals to die of thirst?”
4 Moses cried out in prayer to God, “What can I do with these people? Any minute now they’ll kill me!”
5-6 God said to Moses, “Go on out ahead of the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel. Take the staff you used to strike the Nile. And go. I’m going to be present before you there on the rock at Horeb. You are to strike the rock. Water will gush out of it and the people will drink.”
6-7 Moses did what he said, with the elders of Israel right there watching. He named the place Massah (Testing-Place) and Meribah (Quarreling) because of the quarreling of the Israelites and because of their testing of God when they said, “Is God here with us, or not?”
Psalm 78: An Asaph Psalm
1-4 Listen, dear friends, to God’s truth,
bend your ears to what I tell you.
I’m chewing on the morsel of a proverb;
I’ll let you in on the sweet old truths,
Stories we heard from our fathers,
counsel we learned at our mother’s knee.
We’re not keeping this to ourselves,
we’re passing it along to the next generation—
God’s fame and fortune,
the marvelous things he has done.
9-16 The Ephraimites, armed to the teeth,
ran off when the battle began.
They were cowards to God’s Covenant,
refused to walk by his Word.
They forgot what he had done—
marvels he’d done right before their eyes.
He performed miracles in plain sight of their parents
in Egypt, out on the fields of Zoan.
He split the Sea and they walked right through it;
he piled the waters to the right and the left.
He led them by day with a cloud,
led them all the night long with a fiery torch.
He split rocks in the wilderness,
gave them all they could drink from underground springs;
He made creeks flow out from sheer rock,
and water pour out like a river.
Philippians 2: He Took on the Status of a Slave
1-4 If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.
5-8 Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.
9-11 Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on earth—even those long ago dead and buried—will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ, and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the Father.
Rejoicing Together
12-13 What I’m getting at, friends, is that you should simply keep on doing what you’ve done from the beginning. When I was living among you, you lived in responsive obedience. Now that I’m separated from you, keep it up. Better yet, redouble your efforts. Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God. That energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure.
Matthew 21: True Authority
23 Then he was back in the Temple, teaching. The high priests and leaders of the people came up and demanded, “Show us your credentials. Who authorized you to teach here?”
24-25 Jesus responded, “First let me ask you a question. You answer my question and I’ll answer yours. About the baptism of John—who authorized it: heaven or humans?”
25-27 They were on the spot and knew it. They pulled back into a huddle and whispered, “If we say ‘heaven,’ he’ll ask us why we didn’t believe him; if we say ‘humans,’ we’re up against it with the people because they all hold John up as a prophet.” They decided to concede that round to Jesus. “We don’t know,” they answered.
Jesus said, “Then neither will I answer your question.
The Story of Two Sons
28 “Tell me what you think of this story: A man had two sons. He went up to the first and said, ‘Son, go out for the day and work in the vineyard.’
29 “The son answered, ‘I don’t want to.’ Later on he thought better of it and went.
30 “The father gave the same command to the second son. He answered, ‘Sure, glad to.’ But he never went.
31-32 “Which of the two sons did what the father asked?”
They said, “The first.”
Jesus said, “Yes, and I tell you that crooks and whores are going to precede you into God’s kingdom. John came to you showing you the right road. You turned up your noses at him, but the crooks and whores believed him. Even when you saw their changed lives, you didn’t care enough to change and believe him.
John Wesley Notes-Commentary:
Exodus 17:1-7
Verse 1
[1] And all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin, after their journeys, according to the commandment of the LORD, and pitched in Rephidim: and there was no water for the people to drink.
They journeyed according to the commandment of the Lord, led by the pillar of cloud and fire, and yet they came to a place where there was no water for them to drink - We may be in the way of our duty, and yet meet with troubles, which Providence brings us into for the trial of our faith.
Verse 5
[5] And the LORD said unto Moses, Go on before the people, and take with thee of the elders of Israel; and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thine hand, and go.
Go on before the people — Though they spake of stoning him. He must take his rod with him, not to summon some plague to chastise them, but to fetch water for their supply. O the wonderful patience and forbearance of God towards provoking sinners! He maintains those that are at war with him, and reaches out the hand of his bounty to those that lift up the heel against him. If God had only shewed Moses a fountain of water in the wilderness, as he did to Hagar, not far from hence, Genesis 21:19, that had been a great favour; but that he might shew his power as well as his pity, and make it a miracle of mercy, he gave them water out of a rock. He directed Moses whither to go, appointed him to take of the elders of Israel with him, to be witnesses of what was done, ordered him to smite the rock, which he did, and immediately water came out of it in great abundance, which ran throughout the camp in streams and rivers, Psalms 78:15,16, and followed them wherever they went in that wilderness: God shewed his care of his people in giving them water when they wanted it; his own power in fetching it out of a rock, and put an honour upon Moses in appointing the water to flow out upon his smiting of the rock. This fair water that came out of the rock is called honey and oil, Deuteronomy 32:13, because the people's thirst made it doubly pleasant; coming when they were in extreme want. It is probable that the people digged canals for the conveyance of it, and pools for the reception of it. Let this direct us to live in a dependance, 1. Upon God's providence even in the greatest straits and difficulties; 2. And upon Christ's grace; that rock was Christ, 1 Corinthians 10:4. The graces and comforts of the Spirit are compared to rivers of living waters, John 7:38,39; 4:14. These flow from Christ. And nothing will supply the needs and satisfy the desires of a soul but water out of this rock. A new name was upon this occasion given to the place, preserving the remembrance of their murmuring, Massah - Temptation, because they tempted God, Meribah - Strife, because they chide with Moses.
Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16
Verse 1
[1] Give ear, O my people, to my law: incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
My law — The doctrine which I am about to deliver.
Verse 2
[2] I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old:
Parable — Weighty sentences.
Dark sayings — Not that the words are hard to be understood, but the things, God's transcendent goodness, their unparallel'd ingratitude; and their stupid ignorance and insensibleness, under such excellent teachings of God's word and works, are prodigious and hard to be believed.
Of old — Of things done in ancient times.
Verse 12
[12] Marvellous things did he in the sight of their fathers, in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan.
Field — In the territory.
Zoan — An ancient and eminent city of Egypt.
Verse 15
[15] He clave the rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink as out of the great depths.
Wilderness — In Rephidim, and again in Kadesh.
Verse 16
[16] He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers.
Streams — Which miraculously followed them in all their travels, even to the borders of Canaan.
Philippians 2:1-13
Verse 1
[1] If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies,
If there be therefore any consolation — In the grace of Christ.
If any comfort — In the love of God. If any fellowship of the Holy Ghost; if any bowels of mercies - Resulting therefrom; any tender affection towards each other.
Verse 2
[2] Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.
Think the same thing — Seeing Christ is your common Head.
Having the same love — To God, your common Father.
Being of one soul — Animated with the same affections and tempers, as ye have all drank ill to one spirit.
Of one mind — Tenderly rejoicing and grieving together.
Verse 3
[3] Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.
Do nothing through contention — Which is inconsistent with your thinking the same thing.
Or vainglory — Desire of praise, which is directly opposite to the love of God.
But esteem each the others better than themselves — (For every one knows more evil of himself than he can of another:) Which is a glorious fruit of the Spirit, and an admirable help to your continuing "of one soul."
Verse 4
[4] Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.
Aim not every one at his own things — Only. If so, ye have not bowels of mercies.
Verse 6
[6] Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
Who being in the essential form — The incommunicable nature.
Of God — From eternity, as he was afterward in the form of man; real God, as real man.
Counted it no act of robbery — That is the precise meaning of the words,-no invasion of another's prerogative, but his own strict and unquestionable right.
To be equal with God — the word here translated equal, occurs in the adjective form five or six times in the New Testament, Matthew 20:12; Luke 6:34; John 5:18; Acts 11:17; Revelation 21:16. In all which places it expresses not a bare resemblance, but a real and proper equalitg. It here implies both the fulness and the supreme height of the Godhead; to which are opposed, he emptied and he humbled himself.
Verse 7
[7] But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
Yet — He was so far from tenaciously insisting upon, that he willingly relinquished, his claim. He was content to forego the glories of the Creator, and to appear in the form of a creature; nay, to he made in the likeness of the fallen creatures; and not only to share the disgrace, but to suffer the punishment, due to the meanest and vilest among them all.
He emptied himself — Of that divine fulness, which he received again at his exaltation. Though he remained full, John 1:14, yet he appeared as if he had been empty; for he veiled his fulness from the sight of men and angels. Yea, he not only veiled, but, in some sense, renounced, the glory which he had before the world began.
Taking — And by that very act emptying himself.
The form of a servant — The form, the likeness, the fashion, though not exactly the same, are yet nearly related to each other. The form expresses something absolute; the likeness refers to other things of the same kind; the fashion respects what appears to sight and sense.
Being made in the likeness of men — A real man, like other men. Hereby he took the form of a servant.
Verse 8
[8] And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
And being found in fashion as a man — A common man, without any peculiar excellence or comeliness.
He humbled himself — To a still greater depth.
Becoming obedient — To God, though equal with him.
Even unto death — The greatest instance both of humiliation and obedience.
Yea, the death of the cross — Inflicted on few but servants or slaves.
Verse 9
[9] Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:
Wherefore — Because of his voluntary humiliation and obedience. He humbled himself; but God hath exalted him - So recompensing his humiliation.
And hath given him — So recompensing his emptying himself.
A name which is above every name — Dignity and majesty superior to every creature.
Verse 10
[10] That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;
That every knee — That divine honour might be paid in every possible manner by every creature.
Might bow — Either with love or trembling.
Of those in heaven, earth, under the earth — That is, through the whole universe.
Verse 11
[11] And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
And every tongue — Even of his enemies.
Confess that Jesus Christ is Lord — Jehovah; not now "in the form of a servant," but enthroned in the glory of God the Father.
Verse 12
[12] Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
Wherefore — Having proposed Christ's example, he exhorts them to secure the salvation which Christ has purchased.
As ye have always — Hitherto.
Obeyed — Both God, and me his minister.
Now in my absence — When ye have not me to instruct, assist, and direct you.
Work out your own salvation — Herein let every man aim at his own things.
With fear and trembling — With the utmost care and diligence.
Verse 13
[13] For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
For it is God — God alone, who is with you, though I am not.
That worketh in you according to his good pleasure — Not for any merit of yours. Yet his influences are not to supersede, but to encourage, our own efforts.
Work out your own salvation — Here is our duty.
For it is God that worketh in you — Here is our encouragement. And O, what a glorious encouragement, to have the arm of Omnipotence stretched out for our support and our succour!
Matthew 21:23-32
Verse 23
[23] And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority?
When he was come into the temple, the chief priests came — Who thought he violated their right: and the elders of the people - Probably, members of the sanhedrim, to whom that title most properly belonged: which is the more probable, as they were the persons under whose cognizance the late action of Christ, in purging the temple, would naturally fall. These, with the chief priests, seem purposely to have appeared in a considerable company, to give the more weight to what they said, and if need were, to bear a united testimony against him.
As he was teaching — Which also they supposed he had no authority to do, being neither priest, nor Levite, nor scribe. Some of the priests (though not as priests) and all the scribes were authorized teachers.
By what authority dost thou these things — Publicly teach the people! And drive out those who had our commission to traffic in the outer court? Luke 20:1; Mark 11:27.
Verse 24
[24] And Jesus answered and said unto them, I also will ask you one thing, which if ye tell me, I in like wise will tell you by what authority I do these things.
I will ask you one thing — Who have asked me many: The baptism, that is, the whole ministry of John, was it from heaven or from men? - By what authority did he act and teach? Did man or God give him that authority? Was it not God? But if so, the consequence was clear. For John testified that Jesus was the Christ.
Verse 25
[25] The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven, or of men? And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say unto us, Why did ye not then believe him?
Why did ye not believe him — Testifying this.
Verse 27
[27] And they answered Jesus, and said, We cannot tell. And he said unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things.
Neither tell I you — Not again, in express terms: he had often told them before, and they would not believe him.
Verse 30
[30] And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not.
He answered, I go, sir: but went not — Just so did the scribes and Pharisees: they professed the greatest readiness and zeal in the service of God: but it was bare profession, contradicted by all their actions.
Verse 32
[32] For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him.
John came in a way of righteousness — Walking in it, as well as teaching it.
The publicans and harlots — The most notorious sinners were reformed, though at first they said, I will not. And ye seeing the amazing change which was wrought in them, though at first ye said, I go, sir, repented not afterward - Were no more convinced than before. O how is this scripture fulfilled at this day!
Dying to live—Losing in order to win By Guy AmesPhilippians 3:4b-14
Mildred always dressed like a rainbow. Not a particularly attractive woman, she wore designer clothes, pounds of makeup, and offered her faith to everyone she met. She had come to call on the new preacher’s family. In the course of the visit, she told story after story of answered prayer. She capped it off by telling us she had heard of Dad through a parishioner from my father’s previous appointment, and she prayed that God would send us there. As she left I asked incredulously, “That wasn’t true, was it, Dad?”
During our four years at that church, I watched this outlandish Christian woman model abandonment to God in ways I had never before witnessed. Each Sunday evening when it was time for words of witness, Mildred would jump to her feet with words of thanksgiving for God’s great grace. “I’m not what I ought to be,” she would always say, “but thank God, I’m not what I used to be.”
After prayers and a devotional message at our last Holy Thursday Communion service at the church, the invitation was given: “Ye that do truly and earnestly repent of your sins and are in love with your neighbor and intend to lead a new life, draw near with faith and take this holy sacrament unto yourself.” As I knelt at the railing, Mildred knelt beside me. As the bread was placed in her hands she began to weep, the deep tears of remorse and forgiveness. Her weeping became, for me, a holy song of gratitude and sheer love for the one who had delivered her from a life of human indignity. I never really knew her past, but somehow I knew that Mildred had seen the worst of the human condition, and somewhere along her journey Jesus Christ rescued her.
From time to time I meet people who declare that they have no regrets. I have come to suspect that these individuals either live in perpetual denial or have conveniently chosen to forget the indiscretions of their past. Paul never forgot his path. Conversion for Paul never could erase his sense of shame and indignity at having demeaned Christ and having injured the young church through torture and execution. If God could forgive the persecutor of the early church, then indeed God’s grace was large enough for the gravest of sinners. Paul had been humbled by the cross.
For Paul, the greatest danger was not the threat of death but the everpresent “false teachers,” who lay in wait until Paul had moved on to another town. These well-meaning teachers wanted folks to be good Hebrews before they could become Christians. Paul contended that salvation is available to all because of Christ’s work, and that no amount of work on our part can bring peace with God. If anyone qualified for salvation based upon heritage, Saul of Tarsus had the bloodline. But he refers to those Hebrew accolades as “loss” and garbage in comparison to the “surpassing value” of knowing Jesus Christ (Philippians 3:8).
Paul could live a life abandoned to Christ because he had come face-to-face with the profound power of the risen Christ. He calls us to the simplicity of surrender to Christ. Similar to the opening lines of a 12-step program, Paul “came to believe that he was powerless over (you name the addiction).” This is the abandonment of one who could not do for himself, but who called on the one alone who could put his life right.
Somewhere between his conversion on the road to Damascus and his prison letter to the Philippian church, Paul faced his failures. Perhaps it was in those dark days after his ride to Damascus, or alone as an outcast from the infant church in the Syrian Desert. Paul came to grips with his failings and inadequacies and discovered true meaning and authentic humanity.
I know something of that struggle. I reached a point when everything seemed lost. Day by day our home, instead of being a haven of blessing and peace, was a battlefield. Months had passed without one day in which mental illness had not reigned supreme behind the walls of the preacher’s home. No doctor seemed to offer any hope. I had no idea how to help my wife or my children. Desperate, I found myself in a meeting of men who had gone through similar family circumstances. I can’t tell you how uncomfortable I was because of my need to go to a meeting like that. . . . I really should have been lecturing those men, shouldn’t I? Then I began to weep unashamedly; the years of stress, the months of brutal living, came up through every pore of my being. I realized that I could not do for myself what was needed, and there was something powerfully freeing about being among others who would hold me up when I couldn’t stand.
Christian martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer chastised the church in his book The Cost of Discipleship. His argument that the church had become the dispenser of cheap grace still rings loud. Cheap grace demands nothing in return for God’s costliest gift. Jesus simply said, “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39).
The twenty-first-century church in the United States needs a conversion. We need conversion from believing that we can put things right, and that we are in control. We need fresh abandonment to God, who can work in us all possibilities. God can set us free from having to know where the Spirit is leading the church, and give us renewed conviction that God’s abundant love holds us. May God make us willing to be lost even for the sake of Christ. The future is completely uncertain—we don’t have a written rule book for successful churches or living in this day. No, all we have is the risen Christ.
Worship Connection: October 5, 2014 By Nancy C. TownleyLectionary: Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Psalm 19; Philippians 3-4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46
CALLS TO WORSHIP
Call to Worship #1:
Come away from the rush and worry of the world to worship God.
We come seeking peace and quiet for our souls.
Rest your spirits. Quiet your hearts. God is with us.
Praise be to God who calls us to come away.
Call to Worship #2:
Come, the banquet of hope and praise is ready.
We come on your invitation, seeking to be fed.
Feed on the love of God in Jesus Christ
We come on your invitation, needing healing.
Be healed by God’s gracious mercy
We come on your invitation, longing for forgiveness
In Jesus’ Name, you are loved, healed and forgiven.
Alleluia, Praise be to God. AMEN.
Call to Worship #3:
[From THE FAITH WE SING, p. 2202, have a soloist or a group of unison voices sing the first verse of "Come Away with Me". This will be followed by the spoken words of welcome]
Soloist: Come away with me to a quiet place, apart from the world with its frantic pace, to pray, to reflect, and seek God’s grace. Come away with me. Come away.
Come. Rest your hearts and spirits in the presence of the Lord.
Give peace to our hearts, O Lord.
Listen with your ears and your hearts to God’s word for you this day.
Open our hearts to hear your good news, O Lord.
Amen.
AMEN.
Call to Worship #4:
Good morning, friends. Welcome to a celebration of God’s love.
Thank you. We are glad to be here this morning.
Today we will hear the good news of God.
In this world in which the news is mostly bad, we look forward to hearing God’s good news for us.
Prepare your spirits. Quiet your souls. God is ready for you.
AMEN.
PRAYERS, LITANY, BENEDICTION
Invocation/Opening Prayer:
Gracious and Patient God, as we come to you this day, we are mindful of the many ways in which we have so easily turned our back on you. Turn us around again, O Lord. Open our hearts and our spirits to receive your holy word that we may again walk in the path of true discipleship. AMEN.
Prayer of Confession:
Confession is not an easy or a pleasant thing to do. We would like to think that we have been good and faithful disciples, following your way. But we know in our hearts the many ways in which we have turned our backs on you and rejected your will for us. Like the people in the wilderness, we create for ourselves idols and worship them, only to discover their shallowness and emptiness for our lives. And we wonder what went wrong. Stop us in our tracks, O Lord. Help us to be open to your will for our lives. We know what you want us to do. Give us the persistence and the courage to do your will. Heal us from our wayward actions and attitudes. Remind us that we must reach out to others in compassion and peace. Merciful God, come to us this day with your healing power and help us again to be your disciples, offering hope and peace to your hurting and wounded world. In Jesus’ Name, we pray. AMEN.
Words of Assurance:
God, who has never strayed from you, is with you. God will heal your hearts and direct your steps. Place your life in God’s loving care. AMEN.
Pastoral Prayer:
[This prayer has an optional ending. At the close of this prayer, you may have the choir sing the following canon, THE FAITH WE SING p. 2156 "Give Peace". Have them sing it through twice]
The hymn writer, Shirley Elena Murray, offered these words "Silence is a friend who claims us, cools the heat and slows the pace. God it is who speaks and names us, knows our being, touches base, making space within our thinking, lifting shades to show the sun, raising courage when we’re shrinking, find scope for faith begun." We are afraid of silence. So much of our world is claimed by noise and clamor. But here, in this place, we are called to let go, to let go of the noise, to let go of the anxiety and worry, to let go of our fears. Silence is truly a friend who claims us. Now for just a moment. Be in silence. Let the beating of your heart and the rhythm of your breathing be your focus. Put aside your worries. Focus on God.
[use approximately 1 minuted of silence here...................]
God of our lives, who offers to us peace in the silence, a moment apart from the demands and struggles of life, relax our spirits today. We have brought to you the names and situations which have claimed our worries and our attention. We come seeking healing for those who suffer, comfort for those who mourn, direction for the lost, and peace for all your people. We have brought our joys and celebrations to you, thanking you for the many ways in which you have touched our lives with your love. Give us peace and strength for our service to this world in your name. AMEN.
Optional Ending: Choir: Give peace to every heart, Give peace to every heart, Give peace, Lord, Give peace, Lord.
Offertory Prayer:
Washed in your peace and love, O God, we bring our gifts to you. Bless the gifts and the lives that they represent, that all may be used in your service and to your glory. In Jesus’ Name, we pray. AMEN.
Litany: [Note: this Litany may be used as a Call to Worship]
What do you hear today? P
Noise. Noise surrounds our lives.
What is the purpose of the noise?
It takes up space. It takes the space and place of quiet and peace.
What do you want to do about it?
We just want a little time for some quiet, a chance to catch our breath, to relax.
In the quiet, we hear God’s voice, whispering, inviting us to be peaceful.
In the quiet, we can open our hearts to God’s prompting rather than the demands of the world.
Do not be afraid of the quiet, for in the silence God’s word is proclaimed to your hearts.
In the quiet, we can find peace.
It is here for you.
Amen.
Benediction, Blessing, Commission:
The Banquet of God’s love has been given to you. You have received blessing upon blessing. Go now into the world in which noise and confusion reign. Bring peace and hope in Christ’s Name to all you meet. God’s peace and love be with you now and always. AMEN.
ARTISTIC ELEMENTS
[Note: Strong themes in today’s scripture are God’s providence, obedience, witness. There are several very visual passages in use today. The Hebrew scriptures reflect on the creation of the golden calf for the wilderness wanderers to worship. The Gospel lesson offers us the image of the banquet of the king for all the people. It will be important to determine which emphasis will dominate the worship service]
[Note: It will be important to include in your worship bulletin a brief description of the meaning of this worship visual setting]
[Note: if the focus is on the Hebrew Scriptures, the following visual may be helpful]
SURFACE: Place several risers on the main worship center. They should be placed with the higher riser on the upper left corner of the worship center, and at least one or more progressively lower ones diagonally across the worship center. Place a riser in front of the worship center.
FABRIC Beginning at the top of the higher riser, cover the entire worship center with burlap. Make sure that the burlap covers the front of the worship center, including the front riser. Again, beginning at the top left of the worship center, begin to drape a long flowing line of brightly colored fabric (something in rich burgundy or gold colors, to give the concept of wealth. Be careful not to use fabric with a large pattern). Puddle the fabric down the front of the worship center, across the riser and onto the floor.
FLOWERS AND FOLIAGE You may want to use leafy plants behind the worship center and at the sides to soften the edges of the fabric. Small leafy plants may be placed on the worship center near the various risers, again to soften the look. If you are using flowering plants, keep them to a minimum.
CANDLES On the upper right side of the table place a grouping of candles, with a 10" white pillar candle dominating the group. You may use 4-6 other candles. Cream or off white are recommended. These candles represent Christ/God, and the witnesses/disciples.
ROCKS & WOOD Take a small pile of garden rocks, the kind used for ground cover and spray paint them gold. Take six 10" lengths of two by four wood. Spray paint them gold and stack them as follows: bottom row: three 10"; second row 2 10"; top: 1 10" length. They will look like ingots. . .
OTHER: Using a basket, tipped on its side, and placed in the worship center, place the gold colored rocks in the basket, looking as though they had just spilled out. On a riser on the worship center, place the stack of "ingots". You may also place other shiny Gold objects...the golden idols that we worship. On the top riser in the center of the worship table, place a large white candle, representing God. This should be the highest candle and a central focus of the worship center.
[Note: If you are using the Gospel Passage as the major focus of the day you may want to use the following visual display]
SURFACE: Place a long riser across the back of the worship table. It should be wide enough to support a brass cross and several pillar candles.
FABRIC : Cover the worship center in brocade fabric or any other rich textured fabric that would represent celebration and banquet. You may use white fabric to cover the entire worship space and place a piece of the rich fabric over the center portion of the altar, cascading down the front of the worship center to the floor.
FLOWERS AND FOLIAGE: Floral arrangements, somewhat formal, may be placed on either side of the candles on the top riser. If you are using large ferns or other green leafy plants, you may put them on the floor in front of the worship center, but leave a place in the center for the "puddled" textured fabric.
CANDLES: I recommend using six 10" white pillar candles on the top riser of the worship center, three candles on each side of the brass cross.
ROCKS & WOOD : I do not recommend rocks and wood in this setting.
OTHER: Using good china and crystal goblets, set an attractive place setting as you would for an important dinner guest. You may want to include special napkins and napkin rings, serving pieces, etc. These should be placed directly in front of the cross on the main table and should be visible to the whole congregation. Creating the worship bulletin as though it was an invitation to the king’s banquet might be a good way to invite the people into an understanding of the setting.
Bible Study: Week of October 5, 2014 By Keeping Holy TimeOld Testament: Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
The centrality of today’s Old Testament lection to the identity and self-understanding of God’s people—Jewish and Christian—cannot be overstated. The Ten Commandments (decalogue) in fact transcend their historical and theological context, providing a moral framework for much of Western civilization. The giving of the law to Moses at Sinai also marks a pivotal moment in God’s unfolding story of salvation for the Israelites.
The commandments provide clear, succinct, fundamental principles for the life of the community, where one’s relationship to God is inextricably linked to one’s relationship to neighbor. The common thread of relationship-with- God/relationship-with-neighbor can, in fact, be traced through each of this week’s lections.
Then God Spoke. . . .
There are two general types of law in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible: case law and absolute (or apodictic) law. Case law is conditional and detailed, citing the legal consequences for specific actions. It is developed gradually to provide guidance for concrete life dilemmas as they emerge. Absolute law, on the other hand, is unconditional and overarching. Usually stated in short, to-the-point utterances, absolute law leaves little room for external interpretation of the demands of the covenant. Many scholars believe that the original decalogue (“ten words”) did not contain explanatory comments (such as verses 5, 6, 9-11). These additions are thought to be the work of later writers who expanded the utterances as they were handed down, in an attempt to offer greater clarity.
At the heart of the law is YHWH (the four Hebrew letters used, but not uttered, by Jews to point to their God, which we, somewhat insensitively, pronounce “Yahweh”). This was the “God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:1). It was this God who initiated, who delivered, who was now meeting the wandering people at his holy mountain, in the midst of their desert journey, and calling them to enter into covenant. This covenant would bind them to a high moral standard, but also promise divine guidance and protection.
The form of this preamble or prologue to the Mosaic covenant (verse 1) closely resembles that of the suzerainty treaty, a unilateral understanding between parties of unequal power and standing. The suzerain, often a king, would initiate a covenant with a vassal, which demanded obedience while offering security to the weaker partner. Such treaties, known as covenants, were common among the Hittites in the second millennium B.C. But instead of an earthly king, Israel would have YHWH as their only sovereign.
Thou Shall Not . . .
With the exceptions of the fourth and fifth commandments, the Decalogue is stated as a series of prohibitions, often seen as negatives. The intention, however, was to stress by contrast with what is prohibited, that which was good and acceptable in the life of the community. Incredible freedom was implicit in the relationship of the individual to YHWH as well as to the community, as defined by the commandments.
The injunctions provided a structure by which the community could respond to God’s love. Jesus would later summarize the commandments in two positive phrases: “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” (Mark 12:28-31).
Think About It: Aside from the absolutes of the law, the individual is free to live in response to God’s love. This is close to Martin Luther’s summary of Christian ethics, uttered centuries later: “Love God, and do as you please.” Do we need more guidance than this? How might this understanding of law and love free us to experience a deeper relationship with God and neighbor?
Psalter: Psalm 19
Today’s psalm consists of two distinct sections. Verses 1-6 glorify God through the expression of creation itself, and verses 7-14 expound the wonder of the commandments as God’s greatest creative act. The heavens “tell” God’s glory, the firmament “proclaims,” the day “pours forth speech,” and the night “declares” (19:1-2). The glory of creation points to the glory of the Creator, whose expression is the law.
The “sun” is personified as a bridegroom, an athlete, and a runner. The imagery again points to the Creator. The appropriate response is awe, praise, and obedience. God’s glory is also revealed through the “law,” expressed as “decrees,” “precepts,” “commandment,” “fear of the Lord,” and “ordinances.” Far from the negative connotations associated with prohibitions, the law is life-affirming. Through it, the soul is revived, the heart rejoices. But the law, like the wonder of creation, is only valuable as it points beyond itself to the Giver of the law.
The psalmist understands that knowing the law is insufficient. While the commandments provide all that is required for living out the covenant relationship, the presence of God is still needed: “But who can detect their errors?” (19:12). The psalm ends in petition to YHWH for what the psalmist cannot accomplish on his own: “Clear me from hidden faults.” It is not the commandments that are praised, but the love of God that provides the law for the good of the human creation.
Epistle: Philippians 3:4b-14
The theme of life in God’s presence and within the community is continued in today’s Epistle lection. As Paul writes of his own “straining forward” in response to Christ, so he encourages the Philippian community to live in a way that upholds the gospel.
In verse 2, Paul warns of the “dogs” and “evil workers . . . who mutilate the flesh” (Philippians 3:2), those who insist upon the requirement of circumcision for Gentile converts. In his response, he claims his own heritage as a member of the community of Israel. He reminds the Philippian Christians of his own “confidence in the flesh”—his circumcision as a descendant of the tribe of Benjamin. This suggests to some scholars that the Jewish Christians against whom Paul debated were themselves converts first to the Jewish religion and then to Christianity. Paul asserts that he is “more” confident as one born into the Jewish community. His confidence goes beyond just his birth—in terms of adherence to the law, Paul was a Pharisee. He persecuted Christians with zeal. He was “blameless” under the law (3:4b-6).
In light of Christ, however, all these must be counted as “loss,” not as entitlement. The worth of Christ far outweighs the former glories of his standing within the Jewish community. These are mere “rubbish.” (Some scholars suggest that a more literal translation would be the more emphatic dung.) In Christ To know Christ, to be in Christ, is what Paul is seeking. Righteousness is not living blamelessly under the law. Paul is seeking a righteousness that is not his own doing, but “one that comes through faith in Christ” (3:9). He strains toward the goal of participation in the “power of his resurrection.” He presses on, because Christ “has made me his own” (3:12). Some scholars suggest that this translation belies the urgency and forcefulness of the Greek; Christ, in Paul’s understanding, “overtakes” or “seizes” the believer in an outpouring of grace. The only response is to continue striving toward the prize.
Think About It: Think about your standing in the community and the church. Has your experience of Christ rendered any of your former accomplishments as loss? Has knowing Christ transformed your values?
Gospel: Matthew 21:33-46
Today’s Gospel lection, the parable of the vineyard, appears also in Mark 12:1-12 and Luke 20:9-19. Highlighted in this retelling is the necessity of producing “fruit” befitting the realm of God, a theme found throughout Matthew (3:8-10; 7:15-20). Such fruit is the result of complete obedience to God as lived out in the community of faith.
The Vineyard
The image of the vineyard would be immediately recognizable to Jesus’ audience. They would connect the story with the vineyard of Israel depicted in Isaiah 5, a vineyard destroyed because it would only produce wild grapes. Those listening would understand the planter of the vineyard to be God and would recognize their own place in the story to be the “vines.” The practice of tenant farming (akin to sharecropping) was common in the first century. The slaves sent by the planter at the harvest would be identified with the prophets sent by God to the people of Israel.
Following the beating, killing, and stoning of his messengers, the landowner sent his son to collect his share of the harvest. The son was seized, thrown out of the vineyard, and killed by the tenants, like Matthew’s account of Jesus’ crucifixion outside the city. As in the preceding parable, Jesus allowed his hearers to condemn themselves by their answer to his question: “What will [the owner] do to those tenants?” They stated the obvious conclusion: “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time” (Matthew 21:40-41). Matthew’s account allows the listeners to implicate themselves in its conclusion; in Mark and Luke, Jesus answers his own question.
The Rejected Stone
The full impact of Jesus’ message (and the self-condemnation of the hearers) became clear as he quoted Psalm 118:22-23. The vineyard was now the reign of God. If the original tenants did not produce the fruits of the kingdom, the vineyard would be taken from them and turned over to those who would be obedient to the will of God and whose lives would bear fruit. The story points to the inclusion of the Gentiles in the gospel message; adherence to the law could not guarantee a place in God’s realm. The chief priests and Pharisees, realizing that Jesus was talking about them, refrained from arresting him at the time, only because they feared the reaction of the crowds who saw him as a prophet of God.
The Cornerstone
The image of the cornerstone, rejected by the builders, pronounces a message of vindication; God’s purpose cannot be thwarted. The very community to which the Messiah had been promised had rejected Jesus. The image of the cornerstone (God) as a stumbling block is borrowed from Isaiah 8:13-15. For the faithful, God is a refuge, a sure foundation.
For the faithless, God—and later Jesus—becomes a stumbling block, a “snare.” The rejected stone “will crush anyone on whom it falls” (Matthew 21:44). God’s reign cannot be built on a foundation without the cornerstone of Christ. A new community, built on the foundation of Jesus Christ, would consist of all who faithfully respond to God’s call. The message of vindication is the message of Easter.
Adherence to the law, privileged status as religious insiders, and reliance on “cheap grace” do not guarantee tenantship (membership) in the realm of God. The Kingdom will be given to those who “produce the fruits of the kingdom” (21:43).
Think About It: The changed life, the life made new in Christ, is evidenced by the “fruits” produced. The disciple is called to a life of self-examination and faithfulness. Think about our discipleship and witness; do we see evidence of the fruits of God’s rule in our life?
Study Suggestions
A. Open With Devotions
Read Psalm 19 together in unison or responsively. Reflect together on how God’s commandments (word) can revive one’s soul. Pray for guidance and insight in the discussion to follow.
B. Examine the Commandments
Without looking at the Bible, work together as a group or in pairs to list the ten commandments, striving for the correct order. When did you first learn these “ten words”? How has your understanding and appreciation of them changed since then? To what extent do they still provide daily guidance for your life? Do the commandments strike you as predominantly negative or positive statements?
Now look at Exodus 20 and check the list you made. Did you remember the commandments accurately? Is there any room for interpretation in the commandments? Are they used as case law or always as absolutes? In which of these ways do you usually take them? For what moral dilemmas do they provide insufficient guidance? (Examples might include abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, and “white lies.”)
Using the commentary above, discuss the commandments as prohibitions. How might they be stated as “You shall” instead of “You shall not”? How are the commandments restrictive? How are they freeing? What do they tell us about God? about the relationship between God and people? about the relationship between neighbor and neighbor? If Jesus could summarize them as “love God; love your neighbor,” why didn’t God say it that way in the first place? In light of this discussion, how might we respond to some outside the community of faith who claim that “religion is dogmatic,” or “I don’t want someone telling me what I can or cannot do”? Why do some insist that the Ten Commandments be posted in courts of law? and others object?
C. Explore “Loss” and “Gain”
Read Philippians 3:4b-14 and the commentary above. Working together, develop a before-and-after description of Paul’s life in relation to his conversion experience. What did he give up in order to follow Christ? How did his value system change? How did his understanding of righteousness change? What did it mean for Paul to be “in Christ”? What does it mean for us? What does it mean to say that Christ has “taken hold” of or “seized” our lives? How is this “taking hold” a manifestation of grace? Does it pre-empt our freedom?
D. Study the Parable
Read Matthew 21:33-46 and the commentary above. How might we understand the “fruits of the kingdom”? How are these fruits made manifest in the relationship of a person to God? in the relationship of neighbor to neighbor? in the life of the community? For Paul, righteousness cannot be earned through one’s accomplishment or adherence to the law. What, then, is the relationship between grace and the mandate to “produce fruit”? between faith and works? Is our motivation to “be good” primarily to please God or out of gratitude to God? How might a faithful life be described?
E. Summarize Faith Relationships
All the Scriptures today point to following the will of God. How would you summarize the main points of each lection? the theme(s) common to them all? If we take seriously all that they say, what claim will that make on our life and faith? What level of commitment are we ready to make?
F. Close with Singing and Prayer
Sing a hymn celebrating the faithful life, such as “Wonderful Words of Life” or “Take My Life and Let It Be Consecrated.” Pray that your lives as individuals, and as a community of faith, may produce fruits befitting the rule of God.
Adapted from Keeping Holy Time: Year A © 2001 Abingdon Press
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