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  • Advent Question of the Day

    We at EDN are in a period of reflection and contemplation for these important seasons of Advent and Christmas. Over the next few weeks, our attention will be on raising certain questions that we invite you to comment on.  We will return to our series probing controversial questions on January 4th.


    Advent looks  forward to two arrivals. The anticipation of Jesus coming into the world, and to his return. We live in this “in between” time.

    TODAY’S QUESTION:  How does the notion of the 2nd coming influence your life, or does it?

  • A Very Process Christmas

    by Bruce Epperly

    Epperly picLet me be the first person to wish you “A Very Process Christmas.” Process theology and Christmas just seem to fit together. That might surprise you, especially since process theology asserts that God acts naturally, through the regular processes of nature, and not supernaturally, showing up from the outside every so often to overturn the laws of nature to perform a miracle or defeat an enemy. Just the same, process theology joyfully proclaims the birth of Jesus, Mary and Joseph’s beloved child, and the boy who grew up to be healer, reconciler, prophet, and world-changer. God was in the stable and God is in our lives, too! Every day is an advent adventure in which can train eyes for signs of new birth in a world of threat and challenge.
    Alfred North Whitehead asserts that the world lives by the incarnation of God. God moves everywhere and in all things, seeking beauty and love. Each moment emerges from God’s inner inspiration. God midwifes each person’s journey, seeking to bring forth the holiness within. God seeks abundant life for every creature, urging all things toward wholeness.
    The world incarnates God! Emmanuel, “God with us,” is just as real today as it was in Bethlehem’s stable. A child is born in Bethlehem and a baby cries in a refugee camp, recalling the fact that shortly after Jesus’ birth, the holy family set out on a refugee journey to Egypt.
    Walt Whitman once said, “All is miracle.” Meister Eckhart affirmed that “all things are words of God.” Julian of Norwich rejoiced that something as small as a hazelnut contained the fullness of God’s energy. If a hazelnut can emerge from the fullness of God, so can the baby growing in a mother’s womb.
    Process theology proclaims that each moment is an epiphany and every encounter an incarnation. Christ is in us, and we can become Christ-bearers in our place and time.
    Bethlehem’s stable is not an anomaly but the revelation of what God is doing everywhere. Our world is full of wonder, and the same love that grew day by day in Mary’s womb grows in every person’s life.   God gives life to our souls, but also our cells, even at the moment of conception.
    The birth of Jesus expresses the wonder-full world in which we live. The child in the manger is a miracle child, manifesting God’s holy light and giving light to all creation. But, my grandchildren and the children in your life are also “miracles,” energetic incarnations of divine love. They too take birth in an amazing, complicated, and often challenging world.
    At Christmas, we listen for angelic voices, and for process theologians there are angels around every corner. Every moment brings a message from God and divine messengers abound. God’s angelic messengers speak in our hearts, inviting us to share in the birth of God in our world today.
    God also comes to us as the magi from the East, revealing God’s many-faceted wisdom giving life to every authentic spiritual quest. The unique revelation of God in Jesus of Nazareth also shines in the holy words and people of other faith traditions.
    Christmas celebrates God’s birth in a baby in an occupied land. Today, Christ’s brothers and sisters will take birth among Syrian refugees, inner city parents, Appalachian coal miners, grieving relatives in San Bernardino, Paris, and Beirut, and suburban households.
    The word lives by the incarnation of God! Look under the Christmas tree and you’ll discover God with us. Have a very process Christmas!

    Bruce Epperly is the author of over 35 books and a number of Energion titles, including “Finding God in Suffering: A Journey with Job” and “Process Theology: Embracing Adventure with God.”
    https://energiondirect.info/authors/authors-d-k/bruce-epperly

  • Advent Question of the Day

    We at EDN are in a period of reflection and contemplation for these important seasons of Advent and Christmas. Over the next few weeks, our attention will be on raising certain questions that we invite you to comment on.  We will return to our series probing controversial questions on January 4th.

    TODAY’S QUESTION: What can we do to in Advent to make Christmas less commercial and more spiritual?

  • EDN will focus on Advent and Christmas Season Until January 4th

     

    Today, we at EDN begin a period of reflection and contemplation for these important seasons of the Church Year. Over the next few weeks, our attention will be on raising certain questions that we invite you to comment on.  We will return to our series of controversial questions on January 4th.

    TODAY’S QUESTION: What practices can you recommend during Advent that will make Christmas more meaningful?

  • Why SOOOO Many Denominations?

    by  Chris Surber

    GomorrahWhy are there so many Christian denominations? It’s because people are really messed up. Divisions in the Body of Christ point us directly to our need for Christ.
    Divisions among the brethren are the very best evidence of this. Even after a person is born again and grafted into the Body of Christ, he or she may remain in desperate need of the grace of God. And you can’t get that through religious traditions, maintaining an impressive building, or belonging to the right church or family of churches.
    In my book Gomorrah Was Religious Too, I wrote, “The Church has become a stockroom for the crumbs which fall from the world’s table, rather than a storehouse for the bread of life. Division, greed, divorce, anger, violence, and brokenness are as rampant in most of the body of Christ as they are in the world.”
    Look at how divided the Body of Christ is today. We call it diversity and pretend that God is pleased with the weird variety of church options available to would be church goers on Sunday mornings. “Diversity in the Body of Christ” is a phrase that means, “We don’t want to admit that we can’t even get along with ourselves!” God surely isn’t pleased with the division in the Body.
    While it’s true that we can learn from every expression of the Church, those various “expressions” are all examples of people insisting on their way over unity among the brethren. I love to study Church History because we learn from wise sages and profound saints. But we also learn that our history is one of prideful assertion that we can figure this following Jesus thing out entirely on our own.
    In this series of three blog posts my heart has been to provoke thought in the direction of seeking unity in the Body of Christ. There is a lot more than can be said on the subject, but I want to leave you with this one thought. These aren’t merely thoughts. I’m living it. I’m seeing it played out in my life and ministry.
    A couple of years ago I founded a ministry for Haiti called “Supply and Multiply” (www.supplyandmultiply.com) that has allowed me to watch a network of churches, individuals, friends, and supporters from various denominations and church traditions come together to support our work bringing the love of Christ and the Gospel to Haiti. It’s been amazing to watch God at work. It is astonishing to see people from such varied traditions as Pentecostal to Southern Baptist partner in direct ways to see the unifying Gospel go forward in Haiti.
    The Gospel is unifying. The truth of Christ can bring His people together. It will always be hard work. It will always involve sacrifice. But it brings with it the beauty of seeing God at work on a level far deeper than brand loyalty. Why are there so many denominations? Because we are imperfect and sinful. What can bring unity? Only the love of Christ lived out in simplicity in honest fellowship with other broken sinners honestly responding the call of Jesus to follow Him together.

     

  • Is God Schizophrenic?

    by Chris Surber

    Journey coverIf it is true that the Church is the visible witness to the glory of God in this world then it must surely follow that God is schizophrenic; at least, if I were an unbeliever, that’s what I’d think. In John 17:11 Jesus prayed to the Father for His disciples saying, “And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.” (ESV)
    If God is one and Jesus prayed that His disciples would be united as one, why is the Church so utterly replete with divisions of every kind? Some people say that God desires variety and that’s why we have so many different denominations. Others say that the division we see in the Body in the Christ is healthy as people live out different expressions of Christianity.
    We may attempt to redeem the division in the Church by resorting to labeling division diversity but that doesn’t really solve the basic reality that the Body of Christ is divided. We are not at all reflective of Jesus prayer in John 17:11.
    Commenting on broad divisions among the brethren, Puritan Pastor John Anderson wrote,
    “Immanent lights have arisen and shone forth among Independents and Episcopalians, but yet their defenses of Gospel truths, and their distinguished piety, do not make these different forms of religion any more agreeable to the word, but only show that we know in part, and prophesy in part; and that we ought to call no man master, nor follow any man, no matter how learned or pious, any farther than he follows Christ.” (Overcoming Division and Unifying the Visible Church: A Rebuke Against the Sin of Occasional Hearing 1794)
    God is one in Himself. He is unified in principle, personality and purpose. He is not at war with Himself, though His followers are often at war with one another. This should not be so, and we should fight against division by engaging in intentional acts of unification. The world is on the offensive against the Body of Christ.
    To varying extents, persecution is commonplace in most of the world. Meanwhile, we make of ourselves a soft target for the enemy because we are like a soldier with an auto-immune disease: We are busy attacking our self. There are practical ways to fight against division and that’s what it’s going to take to bring about unity.
    Here are three really practical ways you can seek unity in the Body of Christ:

    1. Start thinking more in terms of the Body of Christ in your community and less of the Body of Christ in terms of the denomination your individual church belongs to. I’ve seen God do miracles for unity by being a part of the local community of followers of Christ and letting go of denominational anxiety to protect the “brand.”
    1. Actively seek out fellowship with multi-denominational Bible Studies, benevolent societies, men’s and women’s groups, and Christian awareness projects. I’m not implying you abandon biblical truth to fellowship with folks who are Christian in name only, only that you start to see the Body of Christ a broader than your “clan.”
    1. Do your part to create a culture of reconciliation healing in your local fellowship. If a local church doesn’t seek unity within, members of that church are very unlikely to seek unity with other believers without.

    God isn’t divided. We shouldn’t be either. We won’t see pure unity among the faithful until Jesus returns for His bride. But in the meantime we can’t let religion of a denominational and divisive sort define the nature of our interaction with one another as followers of the master of mercy.

  • Tainted Love

    by Chris Surber

    GomorrahI was on a long drive recently while thinking about denominations and division in the Church when the song “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell came on. (Ya I get it… I’m a theology nerd stuck on 80’s pop…) I’ve heard those lyrics a thousand times but I heard in a new way. One part of the song goes like this:
    “Once I ran to you (I ran). Now I’ll run from you. This tainted love you’ve given. I give you all a boy could give you. Take my tears and that’s not nearly all. Tainted love (oh). Tainted love. Now I know I’ve got to. Run away, I’ve got to. Get away, you don’t really want any more from me. To make things right. You need someone to hold you tight. And you think love is to pray. But I’m sorry, I don’t pray that way.”
    There was a time when I loved religion. I once found a great deal of comfort in the sights and smells of religion. I found the charm of incense irresistible. Big steepled church buildings enthralled me for their grandeur and seeming connection with the divine. Formal liturgy once made me feel connected to something bigger than myself. I used to meander into the oldest church buildings I could find to pray and contemplate Christ. My intentions were good but now I don’t pray that way.
    I don’t pray in dusty sanctuaries because they feel holy. I still love church history but for different reasons now. I no longer pray as a way of feeling connected to the past but as a way of understanding more fully what God is doing today. Religion of a dry and dusty kind is tainted love. It’s seldom even a vehicle for the living breathing love of Jesus put on display in real terms.
    Religion of a light show and smoke filled auditorium isn’t any better. It’s just a new wave of love tainted by the sights and smells of modern culture. Just because you get rid of the pews and the oak pulpit doesn’t mean you got rid of religion. You just changed the methods, but the motivations and means are very likely exactly the same as they’ve always been – getting our way.
    In my book, Gomorrah was Religious Too, I wrote, “We have it backwards in the Church today. We venerate the church sanctuary built by human hands while we denigrate the sanctity and the sufficiency of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We rely on our religion rather than His provision. The more modern local church is not less idolatrous in our day. In places where we have traded out stained glass for folding chairs, we elevate the method of ministry over the purpose of ministry. We rejoice over things that are not worthy of rejoicing.”
    Religious love is tainted love. If we want to have the power of God in our life in a way that really matters we’ve got to get beyond religion – whether it is of a dusty pipe organ or a contemporary rock variety. Tainted religion is tainted religion. Authenticity doesn’t come from taking off a suit and tie, and reverence to God doesn’t come as a natural result of wearing them.
    Religion that pleases God and brings real transformation power into our lives is a matter of the heart. It’s a matter of our heart connecting to God in Christ by faith and to fellow followers of Jesus by the presence of the Holy Spirit in us. Run from religion into the arms of Christ and the fellowship of other followers of Christ.
    Spit out the Kool-Aid of tainted religion and get back to those most basic principles of authentic Christianity. Pick up your walking stick, get shoulder to shoulder with some other people whom God has saved by faith in Jesus, and get busy following Him in this tainted world.

  • “Christmas Lite”

    “Christmas Lite”

    by Steve Kindle

    Pastors in the Liturgical traditions find that Advent has been smuggled out of the church, and in broad daylight to boot!
    The Liturgical Year is a way of educating the people about the biblical story of salvation needed to offset the nearly universal illiteracy of Christendom in its formative years, until almost modern times. The Church Calendar (or Liturgical Year) was devised many centuries ago as a way to provide not only information, but also psychological and emotional involvement with the story. It is a pageant with the congregants acting out the story as it unfolds.
    It’s no accident that the church year begins with Advent. It is a time devoted to preparing the church for the coming of the Christ into the world. All of salvation history leads to this climax. You might say that the Hebrew Bible is prolegomena, and the New Testament is its realization. The key to the success of Advent is in the adequacy of the preparation. In the early centuries of the Christian church, many Christians would spend 40 days in penance, prayer, and fasting to prepare for baptism. Eventually, this became the practice now incorporated into the Advent Season. For the already baptized, it serves as a means of repentance, recommitment, and hope for a better world. That is, if Advent is understood and used for these purposes.
    Let’s face it: spiritual disciplines are mostly an afterthought these days in mainline Protestant circles. In too many congregations, lay people prepared to assist in worship are hard to come by. Church services that run over an hour, and sermons more than 20 minutes long, are unwelcome. Advent requires introspection and spiritual inventory taking. It also requires a modicum of patience. Americans in general find these difficult.
    Our culture is no friend of Advent, either. It’s hard to sing, “O Come, O Come, Immanuel,” when the radio and shopping malls are blaring Christmas carols all day, even beginning before Thanksgiving. The television stations are running Christmas movies and specials weeks before, as well. Black Friday, Local Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, all focus on getting ready for Christmas with a material bent, not really in preparation for the “spirit of the season.” When the first of the Twelve Days of Christmas finally arrives on December 25th, we’re done with the whole thing, and throw it out with the present wrappings and drooping Christmas tree. Most people in the church I know are surprised when I tell them that Christmas has just started. They are too pooped to care.
    Every church I served followed the Liturgical Year, and I normally preached from the lectionary. Come Advent, I strictly adhered to the preparation motif with the blessing of the worship committee. But that’s as far as the blessing went. Complaints arose immediately that I was dampening the Christmas spirit by not singing the carols. Try as I might to educate about the purpose of Advent, I always lost out. I realized that the time to inform the church about Advent is not during Advent.
    But the biggest loser in all this is not Advent; it’s Christmas. Or, better put, the people who do not adequately prepare for the coming of the Christ into the world are the big losers. Christmas, for them, remains bound up in family reunions, present giving and receiving, tree decorating, rum drinks, and “chestnuts roasting on the open fire.” None of these is inappropriate in itself. It’s what’s omitted that causes the loss. This ushers in “Christmas Lite.”
    One of the objections to a strict Advent observance came in the form of this query: “Why do we have to prepare for Jesus to come when he’s already arrived?” The short answer (and perhaps the best one) is that for many in our world, our country, our city, even our family, Jesus has yet to arrive. He is still standing at the door, knocking, waiting to be invited in. And in a very real way, Jesus is still standing outside our door, wanting to be given the full run of our lives, not just the areas we currently allow him access to.
    Without a full-featured Advent, we hasten the arrival of the Christ, who arrives too soon and is as exhausted as we are. We have not prepared for his arrival, are not sure what to do with him, and can’t wait for him to leave, along with all the other guests the season has accumulated. Besides, we have to get all those unwanted presents back to the stores so we can exchange them for what we really want. And it doesn’t seem to be Advent anymore.

  • WHAT IS TRUTH?

    by Herold Weiss

    John coverMore than any other biblical book According to John is concerned with the necessity to distinguish what is true from what is false, what is genuine from what is spurious. Throughout the gospel one finds declarations concerning “the true light,” “the true bread,” “the true food,” “the true Israelite,” “the true shepherd,” “the true disciple,” “the true worshipper.” It would appear, then, that there are false manifestations of all these things. These statements, even while cast metaphorically, are discrete claims to be taken seriously. Moreover, the gospel establishes that “God is true,” and that the Son brought “grace and truth” to women and men. Jesus among human beings is identified as “the way, and the truth, and the life.”
    The gospel makes clear, however, that the truth it is concerned with is not that which stands because it passes the test of non-contradiction. Neither is it an abstract universal that exists apart, of at least distinct, from all its instances. Today the search for truth is concerned to establish the facts in any given case. We are the inheritors of the Western tradition that is interested in dissecting nature and in establishing what happened in the past. These efforts are constrained by restrictions as to what counts as evidence on which conclusions may be drawn. There is a prevailing skepticism about any claim to absolute truth because there is no evidence that can support such a claim. Of course, the basic characteristic of both scientific and historical truths is that they are to be discarded as soon as new evidence establishes that something else is to be taken as true. This new truth, of course, is also liable to becoming obsolete. Our modern search for the determination of what is going on in nature and in history assumes that truth has to do with knowledge, that is, with true information. Thus our search for the truth is bound to what is bound by space and time.
    In According to John, on the other hand, Jesus promises his disciples that the truth they will encounter will make them free. Freedom, however, is not something to be known. It is something to be had. Like the truth that Jesus promised his disciples, freedom is something to be experienced, something to be lived. The establishing of this basic distinction between what is in the realm of knowledge and what is in the realm of being is one of the great treasures to be found in this wonderful gospel. In fact, it would seem that it was written to answer Pilate’s question at Jesus’ trial, “What is truth?” Pilate’s question assumes that truth is to be known. Jesus assumes that truth is in the realm of being. What he promises his disciples is life, not more information.

     

  • WHAT ABOUT THE SACRAMENTS?

    by Herold Weiss

    John coverToward the end of the first century the Christian Church established rituals through which members could cleanse themselves from sin and receive the benefits of the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives. These are called sacraments. The Church also set apart persons with special powers who could mediate the power of the Spirit to the rest of the members. This established a distinction between the laity and the clergy. Eventually, it institutionalized different ranks among the clergy and defined their competency to administer the sacraments.
    Most sacramental theology is based on the gospel According to John. It has become standard practice to use the conversation of Jesus with Nicodemus and the discourse in which Jesus contrasts the descent of manna from the sky during the Exodus from Egypt with the descent of the Son of Man in the person of Jesus as the basic sources for the theology of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The legitimacy of the use of these verses for such a purpose, however, is challenged by the way in which the conversation with Nicodemus and the discourse about the breads that descend from heaven are actually interpreted with the gospel itself.
    Besides, in the accounts of the encounter of Jesus with John the Baptist, Jesus does not come near John and John does not baptize Jesus. On the other hand, this is the only gospel which reports that Jesus became a baptizer. The activity of Jesus the Baptizer caused the disciples of John to become upset because the one who had benefitted from John’s generous endorsement had become a competitor and was taking away John’s audience after him.
    Moreover, the last supper Jesus ate with his disciples, as told in this gospel, was neither a Lord’s Supper nor a Passover Seder. In this account of the meal, Jesus does not call attention to the bread and the wine and pronounce words to sacramentalize them. Unlike the reports in the synoptic gospels and the letter of Paul To the Corinthians I, Jesus does not attach special significance to the moment within a historical horizon. These details in the narratives of the last supper found in these other sources are what make the meal into the Lord’s Supper. Besides, in According to John, when on the following morning Jesus was being tried before Pilate, the Jews did not enter the praetorium for fear of defiling themselves and thereby rendering themselves unable to eat the Passover meal that night. In other words, Jesus ate the last supper with his disciples on the day before Passover. This means that the last supper he ate with his disciples could not have been a Passover meal. In other words, as told in According to John the last supper did not enact or establish a ritual.
    So, what does the gospel According to John teach about the sacraments?

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