sustain:if:able kiwi

Salvation as eschatology: mixing redemption, Advent, eschatology, Irenaus

The Bible text is Jude 24, 25

And now to him who can keep you on your feet, standing tall in his bright presence, fresh and celebrating—to our one God, our only Savior, through Jesus Christ, our Master, be glory, majesty, strength, and rule before all time, and now, and to the end of all time. Yes.

Which generated the following reflection: a move between salvation, Advent, eschatology and Irenaeus. Complete with wedding vows. Perhaps not your standard evangelical gospel presentation. But surely Biblical, and perhaps thoughtfully, evocatively, transformative (more…)

the spirit, worship, leadership. but outside the gathered?

Some random thoughts have been churning through my head. They are a mix of pastoral encounters with people in hard places, who no longer feel able to pray. And the ongoing tension of being a pastoral leader in today’s post-Christendom context, when the gathered expect my feeding, but the mission task keeps itching. And engaging (through study and reading this week) Romans 8:26, in which the Spirit prays for us.

And wondering if this prayer is embodied, takes shape in the habits of the praying community and the praying leader. As in Anunication, baptism, transfiguration, resurrection, pentecost, the Spirit finds concrete shape in human things, so does this prayer of the Spirit take shape in the prayers of the saints?

And all of this stimulated by watching U2 live in Raleigh. (Yes, yet another U2 reference on this blog. Sorry for being stuck in a moment. This time will pass!).  Third song in is Mysterious ways. At the end, Bono invokes the Spirit. (See a clip here).

He literally names the one who moves us as the Spirit (3:45 “Spirit teach me, reach me), and then shifts from singular to plural (is the “we” the band or the crowd?), inviting that Spirit to come and be present (3:55 “we move with it”). And the lighting switches from being band-centric, to mirror-ball, with white light moving over the crowd (4:08). A magic moment, as for the first time the crowd are lit. 

And the part of me that is not dancing and enjoying, but is paying attention wonders if this is coincidence, or if I am hearing Bono right, and seeing the light correct. Is the Spirit being invoked to be present at a rock concert, to play not just over a band member, but over all those gathered? If so, is this part of Romans 8:26, in which the Spirit is praying for the aches and pains of the gathered thousands, through the words and invitation of a singer, and underlined by a lighting director?

And if so, how to make sense  – theological, liturgical, congregational – of that moment, and other moments, when the Spirit is invoked beyond the gathered church?

Many will have never make this connection I have made. Does this matter? Is this “prayer” still “for” them? Many of them will not consider themselves “Amen-ers” ready to say yes to the work of the Spirit in them. Does this matter? How is this “prayer” still “for” them? But many will go on in the concert to pray and to enact justice on behalf of the One campaign. So is this then their participation in an activity of the Spirit?

Such are the thoughts that wriggle through my head at the moment.

death and dying: contemporary trends and Christian life

A fascinated opinion piece by theology professor, Tom Long in the New York Times. It’s on cultural trends in funerals. I have just finished a course on reading contemporary culture. We look at cultural icons – at Nike shoes and play stations – and the implications for being human today. How then to live, and to live life to the full (John 10:10)?

Reading Long pushes me to think about another dimension of contemporary cultural change, that of recent trends in the funeral industry.

For the first time in history, the actual presence of the dead at their own funerals has become optional, even undesirable, lest the body break the illusion of a cloudless celebration, spoil the meditative mood and reveal the truths about grief, life and death that our thinned-out ceremonies cannot bear.

The context of course, is Halloween, that day in which a society faces death by dressing up and trick or treating. Long surveys contemporary funeral practices. Such as increasingly gaudy coffins. And the trend to no longer accompany the body to the crematorium or graveside, but instead to let the body be driven, while the cup of tea is poured back at the church.

Long concludes

“Show me the manner in which a nation cares for its dead, and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender mercies of its people,” William Gladstone, the British statesman, is said to have observed. Indeed, we will be healthier as a society when we do not need to pretend that the dead have been transformed into beautiful memory pictures, Facebook pages or costume jewelry, but can instead honor them by carrying their bodies with sad but reverent hope to the place of farewell. People who have learned how to care tenderly for the bodies of the dead are almost surely people who also know how to show mercy to the bodies of the living.

It brought to mind a similar conversation with a New Zealand funeral director a few years ago, alarmed at industry trends in which families are being encouraged not to accompany bodies to the place of burial. And the contrast between Pakeha funerals and Maori funerals, in which the body stays at the house and on the marae for a number of days. And how it allows a different type of grieving, a greater acceptance of death, a wider range of emotions, a greater relational connection.

And the contrast with that common euphemism “passed away.” So easy to use weasel words that mask the reality that life matters and things hurt when what matters becomes broken.

The church has many options for doing mission today. They include helping people face death with honesty, reality and Christian grace.

is God holding a white-y Bible? (chapter four)

This continues a review of Mark Brett’s Decolonizing God: The Bible in the Tides of Empire and the question of whether God’s book, the Bible, really is an instrument that increases the power of white-y/Western cultures. For me, such conversations are essential to whether an emerging church can get beyond a stylistic makeover, and actually be part of a post- world in which the Bible can have a liberating, rather than enslaving, place in the task of being Christian and being church.

Chapter four. Pigs, Pots and Cultural Hybrids.

There is a convergence between the biblical narrative and archaeological reconstructions, not in terms of an exodus of hundreds of thousands of people from Egypt that in one swoop defeated Canaan, but in terms of a developing unique identity among indigenous Canaanites, evolving over time, in negotiated contact with neighbours. This includes contact with refugees from Egypt, bringing the name Yahweh to Canaan.

Archaeological evidence suggests some hundreds of new settlements in the hill country around the 12th century BCE. (Of course, more evidence might be discovered in the future, but this is an argument from silence).

Biblical evidence includes the fact that Bible book of Joshua only mentions the burning of three Canaanite cities (Jericho, Ai and Hazor) and of these, only Jericho enacts the “holy Jihad” of Deuteronomy 20:16. It also includes the fact that Amos 9:7 describes multiple Exodus narratives. (This reminds Israel that their landrights are not exclusive. More, if they do not act justly, they will forfeit their land.)

“In the course of time, and especially with the rise of urban centres, one group within Israel developed an understanding of El-Yahweh that made the worship of other gods incompatible with Israelite identity, even though many aspects of culture continued to be shared with Indigenous neighbours. In principle, there is nothing problematic with this development, since no ethnic group is static.” (Brett, Decolonizing God, 77, 78)

For discussion: What are the implications of ethnic identity is framed as ‘part of a continuum of ethnic groups with overlapping borders … held together by a founding … set of … narratives about how this particular group came into being’ (70)? Is God any less powerful if he is part of such an evolving story?

Links:
For all the posts relating to this book/blog review go here.

neat service: transfiguration of Jesus

Sunday morning’s service included a baptism. We’re seeing a steady stream of local, more working-class adults, who have not previously been in church, saying yes to Jesus. We put a lot of effort into our local community mission and baptisms are wonderful encouragements.

In addition, we had four people share short testimonies in the service. As the service was being shaped around the transfiguration in Mark 9:2-14, during the week I had emailed the church, asking if anyone had an experience of “awe” – whether silence or song, preaching, communion, or art, public or private, while loving a neighbour, or simply driving down the road – that had changed their walk with God and they might be willing to share. Four people said yes. Each was profoundly different, a reminder of God’s living and vital presence.

It seems to me that the stories of God’s activity, whether in baptism or in testimony, are just SO important in terms of change processes.

And for those interested, aware that I’ve been wrestling with the Transfiguration Bible text all week, here is the sermon. With a nod to David Letterman, U2, Transfiguration art, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Chalcedonian Creed (more…)

So what does the transfiguration do to Jesus?: updated

Updated: For those interested, the eventual sermon, plus some of the worship, is here.

Classical Christianity affirms Jesus as fully human and fully divine. So what do we do with the Transfiguration – you know, the bit where Jesus clothes goes all dazzling white: “whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them” (according to Mark 9:3)? What’s that all about?

Is this the real Jesus? Or is this him pulling back his fully human flesh to let the real power show? Well if so, then isn’t he sort of faking it, being less than divine, the rest of the time?

One theory is to suggest that the disciples are hallucinating. But the fact that the story appears in three of the Gospels, and is so grounded in time and place “after six days” (Mark 9) suggests a historical reality.

Another theory is just to theologise it: Spirit here is same Spirit as at the angelic announcement of birth to Mary, as at baptism, and so we have theology of Spirit on bodies. But that still leaves the who is the real Jesus question open.

Updated: In the text, we see that (unlike the chorus) the flesh life of Jesus does not melt away. Jesus remains in bodily form, flesh, blood. Yet this bodily form is enlightened, enlivened, “whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them.”

Is this a window into what it means to be fully human: we remain in our bodies, yet our bodies are enlivened by God? If so, this says something vital about the importance of the human body in Christian spirituality. It is important, essential. Our senses remain, to be enlivened by God’s light. Bodies, ours and Jesus, are indeed a temple of the Spirit.

twilight at 30,000 feet

A delightfully unexpected bonus of my recent travels was the Twilight series, by Stephanie Meyers. Looking for a light read, wondering what the teen fuss was all about, I picked up Twilight for the flight between Sydney and Los Angeles. Intrigued, I engaged New Moon over various cities in the United States and then Eclipse (The Twilight Saga) returning to Christchurch via Sydney. I then gave Twilight to my 12 year old, who finished it in about 24 hours.

They are a good read. Good dialogue, helpful characterisation. Pacing is good, with a nice gathering of mystery and suspense. The engagement with classic literature offers an intelligence. The three novels manage to be both stand alone, yet build on each other.

So is there any theological value? I’m still processing this. Yes, there is some exploration of themes of good and evil. A number of Bible passages are engaged. While the front cover is that of an apple, we all know that no apples actually appear in the Garden of Eden! There is some sense of what it means to be human, albiet limited by the teen lens. There is an ongoing processing of love, although the fact that this is grounded in loving a vampire made it hard for me to take it seriously.

But ultimately, I suspect that the books should be left simply as a good read, a window into some of the pressures of being adolescent.

is God holding a white-y Bible? (chapter three)

This continues a review of Mark Brett’s Decolonizing God: The Bible in the Tides of Empire and the question of whether God’s book, the Bible, really is an instrument that increases the power of white-y/Western cultures. For me, such conversations are essential to whether an emerging church can get beyond a stylistic makeover, and actually be part of a post- world in which the Bible can have a liberating, rather than enslaving, place in the task of being Christian and being church.

Chapter three Ancestors and their gifts. How should Christians relate to indigenous spirituality? How does the Bible shape our understandings of redemption?

Brett suggests Genesis 14:18-22 is a guide: an example in which an indigenous priest names the Creator as God most high (El Elyon), which Abraham assimilates with his reply, honouring Yahweh El Elyon. Brett finds more examples in Deuteronomic theology, an overall strategy “not so much to revoke the previous traditions as to assert a new interpretation of older Israelite identity and law, claiming continuity within change.” (Brett, 50)

Exodus 20.24 encourages worship in every place, 1 Samuel 20:6 indicates worship in various places, yet Deuteronomy 12:5-6 encourages worship at a single site. Since “Deut. 13.2-10 subversively ‘mimics’ Assyrian treaty material” (Brett, 48) then was the book of Deuteronomy written at a much later date, after the Assyrian invasion, as a theology of centralisation within Israel?

“Several studies have pointed out that Exodus 23 envisages the destruction of Indigenous cults only, not the ‘holy war’ on Indigenous peoples that we find in Deut, 20.16-18 …. In other words, there was more that one denomination of Yahwism.” (Brett, 54). What we see is, in the words of Chris Wright a “taking over [of] established culture patterns and then transforming them into vehicles of its own distinctive theology and ethics.” (Brett, 57, citing Wright, God’s land, 156).

Ah. So is colonisation now justified Biblically? Dueteronomy did it, so we can do it: sanctioned by God no less?

Not quite, for the Old Testament mounts sustained resistance against the abuse of centralised power: Naboth in 1 Kings 21:3, the year of liberty in Leviticus 25), which enshrined land in families and Dueteronomy 26:14 separates veneration of ancestors from worship of familial gods, affirming the first, rejecting the second.

In summary, “Genesis, Leviticus and Deuteronomy all pay respect to the ancestors, even though the monotheizing tendency of these books has absorbed the diversity of ancestral religion in very different ways… In short, the biblical ideas of redemption cluster around the restoration of ‘kin and country’, and to suggest as colonizers sometimes did that Indigenous people need to forsake their kin and country in order to be ‘redeemed’, turns this biblical language into nonsense.” (Brett, 59)

For discussion: How important was family and land in your redemption? Have you ever considered worshipping Jesus as your great ancestor?

Links:
For all the posts relating to this book/blog review go here.

is God holding a white-y Bible? (chapter two)

This continues a review of Mark Brett’s Decolonizing God: The Bible in the Tides of Empire and the question of whether God’s book, the Bible, really is an instrument that increases the power of white-y/Western cultures. For me, such conversations are essential to whether an emerging church can get beyond a stylistic makeover, and actually be part of a post- world in which the Bible can have a liberating, rather than enslaving, place in the task of being Christian and being church.

Chapter two Alienating Earth and the Curse of Empires. For Brett “one of the most significant biblical texts in the development of colonialism was Gen. 1.28, a single verse within the Bible’s complex theologies of creation. The divine command in this verse to ‘subdue the earth’ was frequently cited from the seventeenth century onwards both as the reason for imperial expansions and as a warrant for linking the cultivation of land to property rights.” (32)

Yet for Brett, the verse provides no endorsement of colonialism. Reading Genesis 1-11 as narratives, Brett notes that Gen 1:29-30 presumes a context of vegetarianism. In Gen 2, humans are tasked with service and care, rather than with rule and subdue. Then in Gen 9:1, when the vegetarian ideal is replaced, so is the command to “subdue.” Further, in 9:13, humans are offered a covenant of restraint with the earth. Consider also the Babel narrative (Gen 11) which encourages not the superiority of one culture, but of cultural diversity.

A second verse significant in the history of colonisation is the “children of Ham” in Gen 9:20-25. Brett argues that what unites the children of Ham is not in fact an ethnic unity, but a social and economic pattern of life. Ham-ites are city builders (10:8-12), while Shem-ites are rural dwellers. Brett suggests this would help a rural Israel make sense of their oppression as slaves of the city-building Egyptians.”

“Colonizers would be the ones to stand under Noah’s curse, not the Indigenous peoples whose connection with the land was swept aside. Thus it is not just that colonizers of modern history misconstrued these chapters in Genesis to serve their own interests. Rather, they inverted what the editors set out to do, and failed to see that the biblical texts potentially deprived them of legitimacy.” (41)

Brett notes the approaches of St Francis and the Celts toward creation. As Christians, they never read the Bible as giving license for exploitation of indigenous people and planet. Rather, for Brett, modern philosophies have re-configured Biblical texts.

For discussion: How important has “subdue” in Gen 1:28 been in your understanding of Christian faith? Does the notion of a complex of theologies of creation excite you, or freak you?

Links:
For all the posts relating to this book/blog review go here. For a review of a fine book on St Francis, go here.

is God holding a white-y Bible? (introduction, chapter one)

Decolonizing God: The Bible in the Tides of Empire is a fascinating read by Australian, Mark Brett. He’s a lecturer in Old Testament at Whitley College and has been a researcher in Aboriginal land claims. It gives him a unique perspective from which to consider the question of whether God is a white-y, and whether God’s book really is an instrument that increases the power of white-y/Western cultures. In this chapter by chapter review, I plan to summarise the book and offer some down-under reflections, specifically from where I sit in New Zealand. It’s an urgent discussion for those of us who live in a post- world, and have to face the abuse of the Bible, it’s complicity in slavery and colonisation and whether we can have any confidence in our ability to use it better than those who have gone before us.

In the Introduction Mark lays out his aims. He acknowledges the crucial role of the Australian context in shaping his work and the fact that he Bible has been used, historically, to legitimate colonization. He outlines his method, in which he refuses to adopt one particular hermeneutic. Instead he uses a range of questions and methods to ask the question: Can God be decolonised, freed from this past? What might it look like for Christianity to not only say sorry, but to find ways to live that are freed from historical injustices and power imbalances?

Chapter one The Bible and Colonisation explores how the Bible was implicated in colonisation and the key texts that might help a ‘post-colonial’ re-reading of the Bible. Brett notes the uniqueness of Australia (unlike New Zealand, South Africa or North America) it was settled with a mindset that which considered Australia “waste and unoccupied.” Social evolution was a huge driving factor in European colonisation, applying Darwin’s theory of evolution to suggest that white people were superior.

“[William] Ward’s prediction was based on the assumed superiority of European literature in general, of which he took the Bible to be a part – even though not a single line of it was first composed in the colonizing nations of Europe.” (Brett, 22).

Brett notes a variety of responses: from evangelical Anglicans like William Wilberforce advocating for indigenous peoples (influencing the thinking of the British Government in relation to the Treaty of Waitangi), through to the published opinions of Australian missionary clergy that Aborigines were “brutes” and “beasts.”

Genesis 1:28 was interpreted (for example by John Locke) to suggest an original empty creation. Land could be owned by no-one until the advent of agrarian labour (ie colonisation).

However, missionaries could not control the reception of the Scriptures once they were translated. “[B]iblical faith presented a form of sovereignity higher than government and it thus provided a foothold for Indigenous resistance.” (Brett, 26). Hence Gandhi drew on the Sermon on the Mount to shape his resistance to British rule, as did the Gikuyu tribe in Kenya in the 1920’s. In New Zealand, Te Kooti drew on the Bible in founding the Ringatu faith. Aboriginal leader David Burrumarra urged holding together both traditional and Christian life.

Despite this subversion, “the overall effect of most of the missions was cultural genocide.” (Brett, 29, quoting George Tinker, an Osage/Cherokee theologian). Ironically, “most biblical texts were produced by authors who were themselves subject to the shifting tides of ancient empires,” (Brett, 31) and this is the focus of Chapter Two.

For discussion: Does it worry you that the Bible might have been used to endorse colonisation? What does such knowledge do to your respect for, and reading of, the Bible?

For all the posts relating to this book/blog review go here

tradition or why I’m not the first kid around this block

I grew up keen to make a straight line between myself and the early church. If I could just get back to Acts, then all would be well with Christianity. Somehow in my naivety I used to ignore the lying Christians in Acts 5 or the fighting Christians in Acts 6. I guess those chapters never fitted my idealistic dreams.

Over the years, I’ve become more aware of the 2,000 years that stand between me and the early church. I’ve become aware that lots of Christians (probably more intelligent and more spiritually aware than I will ever be) have sought to follow God in their time.

Sadly, when I first started reading church history, I read looking for the splinters in their theology, keen to find the mistakes they had made and the errors of their ways.

But I’m increasingly aware that people will no doubt do the same to me. Some of the comments on this blog leave me in no doubt, commenters eager to point out the dirty, great big logs that make up my human fumblings to articulate the mystery that is God. All of which leads me to savour the following:

“We may view the Christian past like a gigantic seminar where trusted friends, who have labored long to understand the Scriptures, hold forth in various corners of the room. There is Augustine discoursing on the Trinity, here St. Patrick and Count von Zinzendort comparing notes on the power of Light over Darkness, over there Catherine of Siena and Phoebe Palmer discussing the power of holiness, across the room Pope Gregory the Great on the duties of a pastor, there the Orthodox monk St. Herman of Alaska and the first African Anglican bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther on what it means to carry Christianity across cultural boundaries, here St. Francis on the God-ordained goodness of the earth, in a huddle Thomas Aquinas, Simeon the New Theologian, and Blaise Pascal talking about the relation of reason to revelation, there Hildegard of Bingen and Johann Sebastian Bach on how to sing the praises of the Lord, here Martin Luther on justification by faith, there John Calvin on Christ as Prophet, King, and Priest, there Charles Wesley on the love of God, there his mother, Susanna, on the communication of faith to children, and on and on.” (Mark Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity)

So there’s treasure in church history. Reading how humans before me have wrestled with faith, God and life can in fact enrich my faith. As the next paragraph astutely notes.

“Teachers of foreign languages say that you don’t really know your own language unless you have tried to learn a second or third language. In the same way, students of the Scriptures usually cannot claim to have understood its riches unless they have consulted others about its meaning.” (Mark Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity)

So there’s a challenge for the week ahead. Read some history folks. Read it not looking for their splinters, but our own dirty big logs!

an apologetic for evil

Following on from my recent post, a narrative theology concerning evil, I have been pondering whether Christians need to explain evil.

Much ink has been spilt on whether, if there is a God, did this God create evil? And if there is Satan, can we say the devil made me do it?

But we live post-Auschwitz. Is the task to philosophise? Or to weep?

I remember once being part of volunteer training event. The phone rang, with news of a suicide. The room went silent, sickened by the pain seeping into the room. The person taking the phone call shouted to me across the room “What would the Christian God say?” All the room, many non-Christian, looked at me, awaiting my reply.

I still think it an absurd question. The Christian God would visit and would weep and would rage and say My God, why have you forsaken us. It would not philosophise.

And in the months to come? Would it then philosophise? Or would it still not visit and weep and rage and say My God, why have you forsaken us?

Or am I just ducking hard issues?

It’s been a tough week for Opawa Baptist. Can’t say more here. Perhaps later. So this post is not a theory.

a narrative approach to a theology of evil

Lots of stories are happy stories. Yet we live in a dark world. Babies get hurt. People grieve. Relationships break. This raises the question as to the presence of evil. Are there bad forces, outside humans, that contribute to human pain and destruction? If so, how should their presence shape human behaviour? Here’s a short story, a dark story, that I wrote for our Grow evening service, trying to get my head around evil and being human. I’m not sure if it works, or if I like it, so I’ll post it here.

The advertising catches your eye. The Bible Horror puppet show. Human puppets performing avant garde interactive theatre.

The voice fades as the final curtain fall begins.

A note of explanation (ie. Biblical shaping). (more…)

amos yong’s theology and disability chapter 6

Chapter 6 – Reimaging the Doctrines of Creation, Providence, and the Imago Dei. Rehabilitating Down Syndrome and Disability, pp. 155-193. (For earlier: see Yong’s Chapter one; Yong’s Chapter two; Yong’s Chapter three.)

This is a superb chapter. Yong points out how destructive to the disabled are traditional Christian understandings of creation. “Put most succinctly, if God is the creator and sustainer of the world and all that is in it, then God is also responsible for disability.” (162). Yong then explores what I would call “the dark side” of the theory of evolution: that is, that just as genetic variation ensures survival of the fittest, so it produces the chromosonal abnormalities including the likes of Downs Syndrome.

Given these observations, both of theology and of evolution, what follows is a reformulation of doctrines of sin and Fall, a movement from “the idea of divine omnipotence causing all events to divine omnicompassion redeeming all events.” (169) Yong’s use of the four fences of the Chalcedonian Creed is a creative refreshing of classical Christian understandings.

This continues as Yong turns to Jesus. He notes recent advances in neuroscience and an emergent (nothing to with church) anthropology, which defines humans in holistic and relational terms, and explores this as a potential way to move beyond more functional (people have value because of what they do) and materialistic (people have value because of what they earn) notions of being human. “A disability perspective exposes how modernity’s notions of freedom, autonomy, and expertise undermine the kind of social flourishing that comes with mutuality, reciprocity, and interrelationality.” (187)

Yong explores the nailscarred and tortured body of Jesus as a “disabled God.” This allows him to connect Jesus, creation, being human and disability. “God’s redemptive work as revealed in the cross and resurrection also illuminates divine nonviolence and nonintrusive action that effectively, even miraculously, brings life out of death, novelty out of impossibility, and beauty out of suffering and hardship.” (180)

This offers a way to respect and seek redemption for all human beings. “Hence, the question concerns not the dependence of the disabled on the nondisabled but the other way around: the nondisabled are dependent on the disabled, whom God has chosen to be a means of saving grace.” (188)

It is a fresh and challenging chapter. Yong has a creative mind. He is reading widely and summarising superly. All the time, his personal experience of disability lends authenticity and groundedness.