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Category: Christian Living

  • Ronald Higdon: There's Always Something I Can Do

    by Dr. Ronald Higdon, author of In Changing Times: A Guide for Reflection and Contemplation and Surviving a Son’s Suicide

    pose casualIt immediately caught my attention because I felt it spoke so clearly to the predicament many feel has taken over their lives. It was the account of a conference for pastors that was being held in New York City; a number of pastors from Africa were in attendance. One group arrived early enough to make a walking tour of the city. When they started back to the conference center they realized they had no idea how to find it. One of them called the center announcing that they were lost. He was told to go the nearest corner and relay the two street names he found there. After a brief pause, the African pastor announced, “We’re at the corner of ‘Walk’ and ‘Don’t Walk.’
    My immediate response to the story was, “I know how that feels.” There are more graphic ways to express the idea but this certainly provides a visualization of the idea of being between a rock and a hard place with inactivity appearing to be the only present alternative. I don’t believe that is ever the case. There is always something I can do and most of the time it is some simple thing.
    As a consultant, I worked with conflicted congregations where my challenging role was to be a “non-anxious presence.” My first responsibility was to “turn down the heat” that differences and misunderstandings had generated. My second task was to listen and encourage people to listen to one another. I don’t want you to think I’m saying I was ever one-hundred percent successful in my endeavor. Occasionally, I found the challenge a little overwhelming: I had to battle my own anxiety and the anger that was churning in me. There are always a few persons in every congregation who seem to have a monkey wrench handy. And they know how to use it. The motto in all my interims: “Perfection is not possible but perseverance is.”
    In our present culture of anxiety, I find my role in retirement as an “ordinary citizen” has not changed. The responsibility to turn down the heat is now entirely focused on my daily personal relationships on all levels. A bumper sticker once proclaimed: “Change is good. You go first.” I know who ought to go first. Since it is impossible to change others and I can only change myself, it is obvious where to begin. The kind of change I’m talking about begins with common courtesy and civility in the small things in my small world. Most of us don’t have a big stage but we all have a stage on which we are living out our lives. That is where I’m called to play my part to the best of my ability.
    Inflammatory rhetoric has literally set the atmosphere ablaze. I don’t know where it all began, but it seems many took the 1976 movie Network literally and have thrown open the windows to shout out to all the world their anger and frustration. I thought it was a joke when one writer mentioned a website – justrage.com. I checked it out and discovered it is no joke (in every sense of that word.) It ought to come with a Iabel: “Warning: This site may be hazardous to whatever level of civility you may have left.” It is termed an “internet anger sponge,” but it appears to me to be more like a venom scattergun.
    Martin Seligman in Authentic Happiness discusses the concept of “emotional hydraulics” that maintains we need to ventilate negative emotions, otherwise their repression will cause mental problems. Seligman states what I have found to be true: just the reverse is correct. I have read from multiple sources that the most recent studies reveal this venting is not nearly as therapeutic as once thought. The toxic pollution it has created has reached alarming saturation.
    Many researchers believe the tag “Angry American” can be placed on more than half of the population. My goal as a consultant was to bring people to the place where they could sit across from those with whom they differed, listen in order to understand where the other person was coming from, calmly and non-judgmentally share their own ideas and then begin genuine dialogue and negotiation. This did not come easily or happen quickly.
    My disappointment with the current political and cultural confrontations is how little real conversation is taking place. Loaded adjectives with their demonizing and dehumanizing implications make calm discourse almost unthinkable. I have no quick fix slogan or bumper sticker campaign to offer for a sound-bite resolution. I only know that I have a daily calling not to fight fire with fire and to determine to be “on the listen” to everyone with whom I come into contact – no exceptions. That much I owe to my community, my nation, and my responsibility as one who hopes to be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem.
    I’m not at the corner of “Walk” and “Don’t Walk.” This is something I can do.

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  • Bruce Epperly: Ruth, Esther, and Process-Relational Theology

    by Dr. Bruce G. Epperly, pastor, professor and author of Process Theology: Embracing Adventure with God, Ruth and Esther: Women of Agency and Adventure, and more!
     
    Ruth and Esther CoverThe Bible is a book of relationships and nowhere is it more evident than in the Books of Ruth and Esther. Ruth’s and Naomi’s survival depends on their care for one another and the kindness of strangers. Brought to power against her will and hiding her Jewish identity, Esther springs into action when Mordecai reminds her that God is work in these chance, and unpleasant events, to raise her up for just such a time as this. Queen Esther calls for fasting and praying. The young queen herself is transformed from a concern for individual survival to a commitment to the survival of her people, regardless of the cost to herself.
    The God the Bible is a relational God. Abraham Joshua Heschel speaks of God’s relationship to the world in terms of the divine pathos. God cares. God is concerned about weights and measures, foreclosures, and the relationship between piety and poverty. If you don’t care for the poor, the prophet Amos asserts, you will soon experience a famine of hearing God’s word.
    In the Biblical tradition, humankind is made for relationships. Although Jesus prized prayerful solitude, he reached out to the marginalized, vulnerable, and forgotten. He embraced the “nuisances and nobodies” (Crossan) as well as the rich and powerful. Jesus saw God as a loving parent, who feels our pain and rejoices in our celebrations. When Jesus proclaimed that as you have done unto the least of these, you have done upon me, he asserted that is God is touched, changed, and transformed by what happens here on earth in our relationships with one another. He also affirmed that God is constantly calling us to be faithful to God’s vision of healing, abundance, and Shalom.
    The most pitied person in Biblical theology is the self-made individual – the man who builds a barn, contemplates contentedly his wealth without gratitude or generosity, and then dies that night. Paul’s image of the body of Christ suggests that we truly do experience one another’s joys and sorrows. When one suffers, all do; when one succeeds, all celebrate. We are intimately connected in what Martin Luther King described as the “beloved community.”
    Today, process-relational theology describes the spirit of scripture insightfully and inspirationally. In process theology, we are joined. Everything we do shapes our neighbor, and we are shaped by the environment from which our lives emerge, whether this environment is spiritual, familial, educational, communal, economic, political, or planetary. We truly live in an ecological universe in which everyone matters and no one can truly succeed without the well-being of others.
    Cover1In my books on Ruth and Esther and Process Theology, I have sought to explore the practical implications of scripture and theological reflection. Ruth and Esther remind us of the need for generosity and a secure social safety net. They clearly tell us that our flourishing and survival depends on a benevolent community of relationships to which we are obligated to contribute. Process theology takes the insights of Ruth and Esther one step further in proclaiming the global interdependence of life. What we do here radiates across the planet and contributes to the good or ill of people we may never meet. In process theology, every decision, including business, economic, and governmental is personal and global. Every decision brings more beauty or ugliness to the world and to God’s experience. Ruth and Esther and process theology invite us to move from individual self-interest to world loyalty, to go from individualism to servanthood, and to the place the well-being of others on par with our own. Yes, we must protect ourselves, but not by spiritual or political walls. Our calling is to do something beautiful for God, to recognize our profound dependence upon others and our responsibility within the intricate interdependence of life, and then commit ourselves as individuals, community members, and citizens to doing something beautiful for God and this good earth.
     
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  • David Alan Black: A Mountain to Climb

    by Dr. David Alan Black, author of The Jesus Paradigm, Why Four Gospels?, Seven Marks of a New Testament Church: A Guide for Christians of All Ages (available in Simplified Mandarin) and more! Dr. Black also blogs at daveblackonline.com/blog.htm
    Becky Black Memorial Fund signI came to Zermatt in search of a summit or two — and, like Terry Fox, the Canadian who ran thousands of miles on one leg to raise money for cancer research, I wanted to give a nod to the Becky Black Memorial Fund, which I started a few weeks ago. (To date, 650 million Canadian dollars have been raised in Terry’s name. I’m trying to raise $25,000.) I decided I’d display a banner with Becky’s name on it every time I summited one of Zermatt’s peaks. You ask, “Weren’t you even a little bit afraid?” Oh yeah. For the first hundred yards or so I always had butterflies in my stomach. But as Helen Keller once said, “It’s okay to have butterflies in your stomach. Just get them to fly in formation.” (A heartfelt thanks, by the way, to everyone like Helen Keller who has been an inspiration to me.) To climb my first 4,000-meter peak (that is, anything over 13,123 feet), I drew on less than a year of experience climbing the hills of Virginia and North Carolina. After a lot of looking back at the past year, I asked myself a big question: “Are you really up to it?” Charles Dickens once said that it was focus that made him such an accomplished writer. “I could never have done what I have done,” he said, “without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.” Coming to Zermatt I think was the Lord’s way of saying to me, “Dave, I want you to concentrate yourself one more time.”    (Read more)

  • William Powell Tuck: There Are Many Lessons from Failure

    9781631992209by Dr. William P. Tuck, author of The Church Under the Cross, The Journey to the Undiscovered Country, Overcoming Sermon Block: The Preacher’s Workshop, The Last Words from the Cross, Holidays, Holy Days and Special Days: Preaching Through the Year and more! His blogsite is: friarsfragment.com

    Many people in life have experienced failure. Moses wanted to go into the Promised Land. He had led the Children of Israel for forty years to the Promised Land. God did not permit him to enter that land himself. He caught a vision of it from Mount Pisgah. David longed to build a temple for God. Because of his sin, he was not permitted to do that. But he still has influenced many through his leadership as king in Israel and through his many psalms. Jeremiah wrote about his own sense of failure. He had preached for thirty-eight years that the end was coming for the nation of Israel, but it did not. He experienced only rejection from the people. He felt that he was a failure. But history proved him correct in his prophecy.

    Adoniram Judson wanted to go as a missionary to India with the gospel of Christ, but that door was closed and he turned to Burma. Caruso was told by a music teacher that he had no real potential as a singer. He didn’t listen to that word of failure but went on to be one of the greatest singers of all time. Einstein failed physics. Walter Scott tried to write poetry, but was unable to compose very good poems. Later he wrote novels and became one of the outstanding writers of all times. Georgia Harkness wanted to be a missionary but that door was closed. She went on in her education and got a Ph.D. from Boston University and later became the first woman to be a professor in a theological seminary and to be admitted as a member of the American Theological Society. Helen Montgomery was discouraged from translating the New Testament because she was a woman. But she finished her translation and it was widely praised and accepted.

    Lloyd Douglas was a minister in California and resigned his church with a sense of failure as pastor. At the urging of his brother in law, who reminded him that he had always wanted to write a novel, he began to write. His first novel was the famous Magnificent Obsession. Edison wanted to be a newspaperman, but he spilled acid on the papers and was fired. Later when he was working in his lab and had failed eleven hundred times with various experiments, somebody asked Edison: “Doesn’t that mean that you have failed?” “No,” he responded. “It just means I know eleven hundred things that don’t work!” Charlotte Elliot was ill and suffered greatly but wrote over one hundred hymns.

    Many persons have failed in their original goals. Few reach everything they aim for the first time. R. H. Macy failed seven times before his store caught on in New York City. Whistler, the artist, wanted to be a soldier but failed his chemistry exams at West Point. John Creasy, an English novelist, received seven hundred fifty-three rejection slips before the first of his five hundred and sixty-four novels was published. Babe Ruth struck out thirteen hundred and thirty times. But he also hit seven hundred and fourteen home runs.

    Charles Kettering of General Motors, one of this century’s great creative minds, once wrote these words about the value of learning to fail:

    An inventor is simply a person who doesn’t take his education too seriously. You see, from the time a person is six years old until he graduates from college he has to take three or four examinations a year. If he flunks once, he is out. But an inventor is almost always failing. He tries and fails maybe a thousand times. If he succeeds once then he’s in. These two things are diametrically opposite. We often say that the biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.

    From your failures you can learn what doesn’t work and you can take another approach. There is more growth in risking something great and failing than succeeding at something easy or insignificant without cost or risks.

    A Radical Idea

    We may fail in one area of life sometimes. That failure, however, does not have to become final. We can learn from our losses and be better persons because of these experiences.

    Wayne Dyer has challenged us to consider what he describes as a “radical idea.”

    “There is no such thing as failure! Failing is a judgment that we humans place on a given action. Rather than judgment, substitute this attitude: You cannot fail, you can only produce results! Then the most important question to ask yourself it, ‘What do you do with the results you produce?’”

    Whether it is learning to play the piano or guitar or taking up golf or mastering the computer or baking a cake, we may not do well at first. Do we look at the results of our efforts and then ask, “Where do I go from here? What have I learned to help me move further along?” Each ‘failure’ provides a learning opportunity to move us toward achieving better results next time.

    In one of Paul’s Epistles he writes that John Mark had deserted him. He and Barnabas had a falling out over John Mark. Paul felt that Mark had failed him when he needed him. We don’t know why Mark deserted Paul. Was he homesick or afraid? We don’t know. Barnabas continued to work with Mark. Later Mark became one of the great saints in the early church and the author of one of the gospels. Paul changed his mind about him and requested in one of his last letters, “Bring John Mark with you, because he is a great comfort to me.”

    Mark’s failure was not final. Like Mark and many others, we can learn from our failures to become stronger and better persons. “The value of a man,” (or woman) Paul Tournier writes, “is not to be measured so much by his successes as by the way he bears his undeserved failures, that nothing is more dangerous for a man than unlimited success.”

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  • Liz Brown: Am I Not Enough? Pandora's box flung open

    This month, Energion Publications’ author, Dr. Harvey R. Brown, Jr., shares, with her permission, his daughter Liz’s post from her blog, The Single Side.
    Dr. Brown’s contribution to Energion Publications’ Topical Line Drives Series is a book entitled Forgiveness: Finding Freedom from Your Past.
    From Dr. Brown: Liz Brown used to be “Bitsy,” but she fired that name in junior high and became Liz. She is amazing. We have quite a story to share together about our relationship. We were wired so differently, it was really tough to connect with each other as I was parenting her. But after my renewal in 1996, she and I connected at a heart level that neither of us dreamt was possible. The most introverted of all my children, she and I have shared the platform together telling our story at the Korean-American Presbyterian Church national youth event in New Jersey a decade or so ago. When she found out that I was going to be the main speaker for this week, she asked what my topics were. When I told her that one of them was entitled “Healing Father Wounds,” Liz declared, “You can’t share that without my sharing it with you.” I contacted the organizers of the event and they thought it was a wonderful idea. By the time everything was finished, Liz and I co-presented a main session, she had her own session, and she did a separate event for girls only. My introvert! Not only that, she has traveled and participated in ministry schools in New Zealand, and spoken at conferences in Finland. She’s not one to put herself forward, but others have discovered (as I have known) that she has some wonderful insights into Father’s love and His healing Grace. Like I have told her, she is a gifted talker. I always delight when I know that others are getting to hear the Liz that I know. – Dr. Harvey, R. Brown, Jr. (Dad)
    Am I Not Enough? Pandora’s box flung open by Liz Brown
    I am officially breaking my own rules about blogging. “One per week,” I promised myself. “More than that would be overload for readers.” So I thought of writing this today as a draft and releasing it soon. I just can’t do it. Some things cannot be placed on hold. … See more
     
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  • Herold Weiss: Paul Did Not Teach Righteousness by Faith

    by Dr. Herold Weiss, author of Meditations on the Letters of Paul 
    Martin Luther’s argument against the selling of indulgences to shorten one’s stay in purgatory before reaching heaven was a courageous and necessary attack on a grievous abuse of ecclesiastical authority. The ninety five theses he nailed to the door of the church at the university where he was a professor of Scripture presented his argument with meticulous precision. At its core, the point was that “works” were not what saved those doing them. In other words, paying for sins did not open the gates of heaven. Said positively, Luther’s argument has survived and become encapsulated and promoted as “righteousness by faith.” These days the phrase is understood somewhat differently by different Christians. Generally, it is understood to mean that to be saved one must believe that the death of Jesus on the cross pays for one’s sins and thereafter believers receive strength to live in conformity with the Ten Commandments. In other words, salvation is attained by faith in a substitutionary atonement, and the keeping of the commandments, made possible by Christ’s grace, keeps believers from sinning again.

    I find the above understanding of righteousness by faith only tangentially related to the theology of the apostle Paul. It is true that there are two texts in Paul’s writings which could be understood in terms of substitution, but such an interpretation is not demanded by them. One says that “God shows his love for [eis] us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for [hyper] us” (Romans 5: 8), and the other says that “the life I now live in the flesh I live by [the Greek says “in”] faith in [the Greek says “of”] the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for [hyper] me” (Galatians 2: 20). The English of the first text uses the preposition “for” twice, but the Greek has two different ones. The Greek preposition eis usually is translated “toward.” In this case it indicates that God’s love is directed towards us, it is aimed at us. The basic meaning of hyper is “on behalf of,” “having to do with.” In other words, Christ’s death had to do with us, had us in mind. It was concerned with us. The idea also appears in the earliest Christian confession known to us. Paul quotes it as the foundation on which to build his argument against those who teach that there is no future resurrection. It said, “Christ died for [hyper] our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, he was buried, he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and he appeared . . . “ (1 Corinthians 15: 3). The confession is formulaic. The formula “for our sins” is balanced with the formula “on the third day,” and both are declared to be fulfilments of the Scriptures. In summary, that Christ’ death had to do with “ us,” “me” or “our sins” was the customary way of affirming that Christ’s death had not been just a Roman execution, which in fact it had also been, but an event of cosmic significance in which God was involved. It was “concerned with” the life humans live under the power of sin. These texts do not show that Paul saw the death of Christ as a substitute for the death of sinners.
    Paul is quite clear, however, on the necessity for all men and women to die with Christ. In other words, the predominant Pauline teaching is not that Christians need not die because Christ died for them, but that all must participate in the death of Christ in order to also live “in Christ.” He does not teach a substitutionary atonement but the need to die to life in the flesh and live free from the condemnation of the Law (Romans 6: 4-8; 8:1).
    The first thing one should know about Paul’s understanding of faith is that for him it is not a noun but a verb. It is a serious handicap that English does not have a verbal form of the root “faith” as it has one of the root “belief.” Faith is not a belief. Faith is a way of being. As Paul says in the verse quoted above, I live “in the flesh” and “in faith.” To live in faith is to live in Christ by the power of the Spirit. For him salvation is not by faith as the adoption of a belief. Salvation is something God accomplishes for those who “live in faith,” that is, those who live faithfully in Christ. Righteousness is not a stamp placed on those who affirm a particular proposition as true, but something “attained to” (Romans 9: 30) by those who live in ‘a manner worthy of the Gospel” (Philippians 1:27).

    Paul defines the Gospel as “the power of God for [eis] salvation to every one who has faith” (Romans 1:16, RSV). The translation “to every one who has faith” provokes misunderstanding. Paul wrote, “to all the faithful.” Faith is not something to be had, something to be grasped intellectually. The Gospel is not information to be believed, but power to live faithfully (Romans 1:16). Paul says that righteousness can never be attained from [ek] works of law. It can only be attained through [dia] faith in Jesus Christ, or from [ek] Christ’s faith (Galatians 2:16; both expressions are found in this text). This is so because those who have been baptized and thereby have been crucified and raised now have Christ living in them and are guided by the Spirit that made them a new creation. They are “alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6: 11), rather than dead under the Law. Paul, quoting Habakkuk, says that the righteous live from [ek, out of] faith (Galatians 3: 11). In other words, for Paul faith is not a way of knowing but a way of living.
    The mantra of righteousness by faith may be used to live unlovingly; it may serve as an excuse for living denying the Gospel’s power to give life. True Christianity is not a theological system, but a way of being. Paul emphasizes that Christians are those who crucify themselves with Christ and participate in the faith that brought about Christ’s resurrection and gives new life to the believers. That Christ died “for [hyper] all” (2 Corinthians 5:14), does not mean that therefore no one else needs to die. It means that his death was concerned with all, and all are welcome to die with him having the faith that Christ himself had in God when he died. Faith has to do with a manner of living and of dying.

    Paul makes very clear that at the Parousia all will have to appear before God’s judgment and give an account of what they have done (2 Corinthians 5:10). God’s judgment is definitive; therefore, Paul insists, no believer has the authority to judge another. God’s judgment, however, is not an evaluation of what people believe, but an assessment of whether or not they live “in the faith of Jesus Christ.” Since all believers are servants of their Lord Jesus Christ, only their Master has the authority to judge them (Romans 14:4, 10).

    Paul also warns his converts of the necessity to live as members of the body of Christ who are guided by the Spirit. As such, they are empowered by the Spirit to discern the will of God (Romans 12:3). Living in the Spirit, guided by the Spirit is living “in faith.” It is living empowered to “approve what is excellent,” and thus be “pure and blameless for the day of Christ” (Philipians 1:10). The conduct of those who have Christ living in them is no longer determined by the conditions of life “in the flesh,” in which the Law of Moses rules. Those who live faithfully are beyond the power of the Law to condemn (Romans 8:1), but not beyond the judgment of God. The sins of the believers are the things they do which are “not of faith” (Romans 14:23). As Paul says, God’s righteousness has been revealed “apart from the Law” (Romans 3:21). According to Paul, those who live actualizing their faith and hope, that is, those who demonstrate the power of God’s promise to give life to the faithful attain to righteousness. That is Paul’s understanding of righteousness by faith. It has to do with the actions performed by those who live in the faith of Jesus when he faced death. It has nothing to do with the Ten Commandments and judicial declarations.

  • Bruce Epperly: The Book of Ruth, Gleaning, and the Social Safety Net

    by Dr. Bruce Epperly
    Leviticus 19:9-10 proclaims:

    When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.

    The God of Israel recognized the reality of poverty. God was well aware that poverty is more often the result of accident and misfortune than laziness. As the Hebraic scriptures, or Old Testament, constantly asserts, God hears the cries of the poor. Abraham Joshua Heschel described God’s relationship to the world in terms of “pathos,” God’s passionate care for the vulnerable, grounded in God’s experience of their pain.
    God is not aloof, but our companion every step of the way. Passionate for justice, the details of life matter to God, as can be seen from Hebraic laws and prophetic critiques. God is concerned that the scales for weighing be exact, that farms be maintained by owners and not foreclosed, that lending be a matter of ethics and not profit, and that every child be fed.
    Gleaning, or what we would describe as the “social safety net,” was not optional nor was it a matter of generosity. It was law! God’s law, and it was required of landowners and institutions. The divine passion inspired prophets to cry out against the injustice of economic inequality and the dissonance of poverty in the midst of plenty. Everything is personal to God, and this means business and government as well as individual relationships.
    Ruth and Esther CoverThe Book of Ruth is more than a pretty love story. Now, I must confess that I like the happy endings of Hallmark movies. I delight in performing weddings and celebrating at wedding receptions. The Book of Ruth is often invoked in weddings and the relationship of Ruth and Boaz is often seen as purely romantic. But, it was also a matter of economic survival and the welcoming of a foreign women into the Jewish community.
    Ruth can be read as immigration story, as a reminder that strangers have a place in our communities because they are God’s children, too! Ruth can also be read as an argument for a strong social net provided by government and business as well as personal generosity. Worried about their survival, Ruth goes to the wheat fields to gather food, the leftovers at the edges, and perhaps to catch the eye Boaz, who will provide economic security for this mixed race family. As scripture notes: “And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, ‘Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor.’”
    Ruth had a right to glean in the fields. She was poor and she was a foreigner and God’s law mandated that Boaz provide out of his largesse for the well-being of the power. All’s well that ends well. Ruth marries Boaz, bears a child, and becomes the great-grandmother of King David, Israel’s greatest king. Dig deeper, the greatest king was the descendant of a foreigner, an immigrant, and a welfare recipient. Although she was single and childless at the time, Ruth’s experience is similar to today’s single parents, the working poor, doing their best to support a family on a minimum wage job. Ruth’s experiences is also mirrored in the couple, both of whom work in the service industry, perhaps serving our lunches or cleaning our rooms, who barely scrape by, who receive no sick leave from their employers and must go to work or not be paid or lose their job, and who live from paycheck to paycheck and must depend on government services for health care and child care. (For more on Ruth, see Ruth and Esther: Women of Agency and Adventure.)
    In the midst of the election cycle, the Book of Ruth challenges any form of “dog whistle” politics that asserts that the poor are lazy and undeserving, and highlights “welfare queens” (with the implication that these are people of color) while neglecting our nation’s subsidies of corporations, many of whose employees must receive their health care from the government, our tax dollars, because wealthy corporates often fail to give benefits or a living wage to their employees.
    In today’s world, the practice of gleaning was a tax. It was God’s requirement, codified in Hebraic law. Generosity was encouraged in Israel, but generosity is always optional and arbitrary. Law is a requirement. Those who call themselves Christians would do well to look at the principle of gleaning, as well as the sabbatical and jubilee years, as a reminder that we have a social responsibility for the poor and vulnerable and that governmental support for vulnerable people is a necessity and not a luxury in securing the protection and the common good of the nation. This means fair taxes for the wealthy and corporations, who gain the most from our economic and governmental systems. Christians would do well to challenge candidates for whom lower taxes are an idol and who want to “starve the beast” and in so doing, starve our families and children.
    To God, it’s never just business or public policy or profit, its people and their joy and pain. God rejoices when the city streets are safe, children are laughing, everyone has enough to eat, and families are secure. God delights in just such public policies and governments that care for the least of these.

  • David Moffett-Moore: Book Review of "The Making of an Ordinary Saint" by Nathan Foster

    Book Review by Dr. David Moffett-Moore
    The Making of an Ordinary Saint: My Journey from Frustration to Joy with the Spiritual Disciplines. Nathan Foster. Baker Books. Grand Rapids. 2014.

    Nathan Foster is the adult son of Richard Foster, author of the classic Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth. This book is his reflection and response to his father, as well as to his father’s well known tome. Celebration was written in 1978, has sold over two million copies in English and been translated into twenty-five other languages. Along with others, it motivated Richard Foster to form “Renovare,” an international and ecumenical community promoting personal spiritual renewal. I expect everyone reading this review has also read Celebration or at least heard of it.
    I grew up as a preacher’s kid, with all the subliminal strings attached to that relationship. Imagine growing up as the child of one of the most influential spiritual writers of the late twentieth century. Poor Nathan barely stood a chance. I remember seeing a matched set of tee shirts, one saying “Saint: Someone married to a Martyr” and the other “Martyr: Someone married to a Saint.” Somewhere in this dynamic tension, Nathan had to find his own way.
    The book is very much a contemporary exploration of the classic spiritual disciplines, each taken in Nathan’s own way. There is ample personal sharing; it is always “on the way,” not “in the way.” Nathan’s personal sharing of his reaction to each discipline, whether as a rebellious youth, wandering young adult, or a more settled disciple, makes the discipline more personal and more relevant. Without being obvious, he has updated his father’s efforts.
    Nathan includes the same twelve disciplines his father identified, but sets them in his own order, making his own path among them. In Nathan’s order, they are: submission, fasting, study, solitude, meditation, confession, simplicity, service, prayer, guidance, worship and celebration. Though the two books take different paths through the disciplines, they both end with celebration! In this telling, Nathan offers an explanation of the discipline, his experience of that discipline, and then identifies a saint who is an example of each discipline. I enjoyed the honesty and humility exhibited by his willingness to share from his own journey, his own frustrations and struggles, his own path to his own peace. Nathan’s sharing is not as a spiritual exhibitionist, but rather invitational, inviting the reader to share in the journey.
    The church I serve has several “Christ Care” groups, members who meet twice a month for devotion, sharing, mutual support and study. Two of those groups are currently using this book as their study book. Every two weeks they read a chapter and share their responses, questions and reflections on the text. The concept of “spiritual disciplines” and “spiritual formation” as formally structured is new for them and both groups are thoroughly enjoying this introduction.
    Nathan has an earlier book, Wisdom Chaser: finding my Father at 14,000 Feet,” in which he shares his experience of getting re-acquainted with his father as an adult himself, by climbing the “Fourteens” in the Colorado Rockies, mountaintops at least 14,000 feet high (Intervarsity Press, 2010). This book is equally well written in Nathan’s very personal, reflective, conversational style. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and, as a father of two adult sons myself, was touched by its shared intimacy.
    I encourage anyone who has read Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline to read Nathan Foster’s contemporary update of his father’s work. Anyone who has not read Celebration and is interested in or curious about spiritual formation or spiritual disciplines would enjoy reading Nathan’s offering and benefit by it. I found it informing and enjoyable.

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  • Doris Murdoch: Our New Bodies, Transformed, Transfigured, and Glorified with Christ

    – by Doris Murdoch
    From my recent Holy Land journey: Jesus on the shores of Galilee in the towns of Tabgha and Capernaum, along with Jerusalem, where He manifested Himself before His disciples.

    Sea of Galilee Shoreline next to the Church of the Primacy of Peter, Tabgha, Israel Where the Resurrected Jesus Served Breakfast to His Disciples
    Sea of Galilee Shoreline next to the Church of the Primacy of Peter, Tabgha, Israel
    Where the Resurrected Jesus Served Breakfast to His Disciples

     
    In John 20:14-17, we read about the first person to see the resurrected Jesus before He ascended into heaven. In this scripture, we read that Mary of Magdala did not recognize the voice or physical being of Jesus. Mary thought Jesus was the gardener. Jesus tells Mary not to touch Him for He had not ascended to “My Father and Your Father and My God and Your God.” Jesus confirms Himself as the Son and Mary as a child of God. Had Jesus received a “new body” prior to ascending to heaven? Did His “new body” change in the tomb as he awoke from death? When will this “new body” occurrence happen for a Christian believer? When Mary did recognize Jesus, was there familiarity in His voice tone or inflection as Jesus said her name, “Mary!” or did she understand His confirmation as the Son? Was Jesus and His spirit still bound by His earthly body? Did He receive His heavenly or divine body after ascending to His Father in heaven? I Corinthians 15:20-26 tells us Jesus is of the first fruits as a human being resurrected from the dead and all believers will come alive through Jesus Christ. As I continue through the 15th chapter of Corinthians, I understand that we must be human first, then spiritual, and last through the life-giving spirit of Jesus Christ, we become heavenly and imperishable, completely transformed and transfigured.
    After ascending into heaven, Jesus manifested Himself on earth. In Luke 24:13-35 (Mark 16:12-13), we read about two followers encountering Jesus on the road to Emmaus on the same day as His resurrection. The men did not recognize Jesus physically or by His voice. This recognition happened when their eyes were opened upon the breaking of the bread by Jesus. They returned to Jerusalem to share about the visit and to testify to Simon’s sighting of the risen Jesus found in Luke 24:34.
    John 20:19-20 shares this:

    19 So when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week (Sunday, the day of Jesus’ resurrection), and when the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 20 And when He had said this, He showed them both His hands and His side. The disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 

    In this scripture of manifestation, Jesus proves his identity by revealing His nail-scarred hands and spear-wounded side. Otherwise, this scripture does not identify that they did not know Him. Verse 20b says, “they saw the Lord”. In this body, Jesus could make himself recognizable or unrecognizable at His will. We do know from this scripture that the new body could walk through walls or doors. Since the scripture states that the doors were shut, this fact is significant. In verses 26b-29, we read that Jesus returns to the house when “Doubting Thomas” is present. Again, Jesus proves His identity through His nail-scarred hands and spear-wounded side. Jesus even allows Thomas to touch the wounds as proof of His reality. Jesus uses man’s senses to help them identify Him. His body is visible, but it can travel through walls; the scripture emphasizes this again by saying “doors having been shut”. His body wounds are healed but still remain visible and touchable. In the new body, will we be recognizable? Will scars of the past life be visible? Will our voices remain the same? Will we be capable of traveling through walls?
    In John 21: 1-14, we read again of Jesus manifesting Himself before His disciples beside the Sea of Galilee near the town of Tabgha. The disciples did not know or recognize Jesus on the beach. Jesus calls them children; is this word “children” a hint for recognition? After the net full of fish, John whom Jesus loved, recognized the manifestation of Jesus through the act of catching the fish in the net. John recognized the works or acts of Jesus! Peter now knows Jesus because John identifies Jesus as the Lord. Even after offering breakfast to the disciples, they do not truly know Him. They were afraid to say, “Who are you?” The statement that follows, “knowing that it was the Lord” tells me Jesus had been identified by name but not by His visual or spiritual appearance. In this transfigured body, was Jesus able to change characteristics for different types of recognition (sight, touch, voice, and acts)?
    After that Jesus was seen by over five hundred followers at once (Galilee Region, possibly on the mountain where Jesus fed the 5000 or the Mount of Beatitudes). We still read of eye-witnesses doubting Jesus’ resurrection from death. In Matthew 28:16- 20, it states:

    16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

    We know Jesus returned to the Jerusalem area with His disciples before ascending into heaven (Luke 24:47-49, 52). Luke 24:50-51 tells us that Jesus ascended into heaven from Bethany, the town of Lazarus.
    Revelation 3: 5 says, “He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.” The newly transformed bodies will be clothed in white garments, much like we envision angel appearance. White garments could also be like a karate suit, not an angelic gown and cloak (The word garments is plural.)!
    In physical death, the body goes to the grave and the spirit or soul goes to heaven. According to John 5:28-29, the separation of body and spirit is in effect until the resurrection: “Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear His voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment”. Right now the souls of believers who have died are in heaven. Eventually, their bodies will be resurrected and join their spirits.
    Jesus’ resurrected body was the same body as before, not a completely new body. Sometimes He was recognizable. After Jesus was resurrected, the tomb was empty. So body and soul or spirit left the burial tomb. This will not happen to man; our physical bodies will remain on earth in burial tombs or graves. For Jesus, His wounds from His crucifixion were still evident. One could touch Him so He wasn’t a ghost as we might imagine. He looked human in every way; we are made in God’s image. Jesus could speak, eat, walk, etc. After His resurrection, Jesus’ body had divine or mystical properties beyond man’s understanding. He could pass through solid walls and doors. He could appear in different forms so His identity was not immediately recognizable. In Luke 24:36, we read that Jesus could suddenly appear out of nowhere. In Luke 24:51, we read that Jesus was capable of going directly into heaven in bodily form. In Acts 1:9, Jesus ascends into heaven on a cloud.
    Our heavenly or resurrected bodies will be real, concrete human bodies, yet wholly perfected and glorified. We will be much like the resurrected body of Christ. I Thessalonians 4:16-17 describes how the earthly bodies of believers are reunited with their spirits. At the trumpet of God, “the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord”. The new bodies will join or unite with each of our perfected, waiting spirits and the new heavenly body will be complete. In completeness, these heavenly bodies will be transformed and transfigured, and glorified with Christ.

  • Robert Martin: Homecoming — A Story

    Recently, Energion author Robert Martin [The Caregiver’s Beatitudes] gave this review of Jude Lee‘s new book, House Calls with Jesus: Stories of Redemptive Love:
    In this world, there are few sacred spaces left. However, the space around and surrounding the severely ill and dying is one such space. There is something holy and special that happens when one enters a hospice room, or an ICU, or the bedroom chamber of a terminally ill person. We approach in silence, in reverence, sometimes in fear. For many of us, it is difficult to navigate this space and to know what should be said, what needs to be said, and when to simply be silent and let the space dictate the response.
    On his own blog, Abnormal Anabaptist, Martin shares a personal story that can bring a picture of hope and peace. Take five minutes to read Homecoming – A Story by Robert Martin.

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