Jesus Christ – Page 16 – Salvaged Faith

Hebrews Part 3: Milk First, Meat Later

Posted on October 18, 2009Leave a comment

Milk First, Meat Later

[SLIDE] As we continue in the book of Hebrews today, we come crashing into the heart of the letter’s Christology.

Christology? That’s a pretty big word, you might be thinking. If we break it apart, we find first Christ, and then ology – Christology is what we understand about Jesus Christ.

[SLIDE] Already the book of Hebrews has told us some things about who Jesus is. He was with God before the foundations of the earth. He is the Son of God. And for a time, he was made a little lower than the angels – took human form and lived among us. He took on our life and because of what he has done for us, we are now children of God.

Last week, we recalled how easily we forget what God has done for us. Like the Hebrew people in the desert, we wander and grumble and always want something else than the rest, the grace, that has been prepared for us. But Christ cuts through all of our excuses and denials and speaks to our heart, shows us the right path, if only we are willing to listen.

So what are we listening for? What is it that Jesus wants us to accept? What has Christ done for us?

The answer begins with chapter 4 verse 14. Jesus is the great, high priest and we are invited to approach the throne of grace with boldness to find mercy and grace in time of need.

We need to turn our lives around, approach God in Christ and accept the grace we find there.

Seems simple enough doesn’t it?

[SLIDE] Hebrews doesn’t think so. Because immediately after these phrases, we have a whole series of explanations about what it means for Jesus to BE the person waiting there for us – what it means for him to be the high priest… what exactly Jesus is doing there on the throne of grace?

For just a moment, lets skip through a few more verses and go to verse 11, this time in the Message translation – “I have a lot more to say about this, but it is hard to get it across to you since you’ve picked up this bad habit of not listening. By this time you ought to be teachers yourselves, yet here I find you need someone to sit down with you and go over the basics on God again, starting from square one—baby’s milk, when you should have been on solid food long ago!”

We’re going to stick with the milk today – and next week we’ll tackle the more difficult stuff about what it means for Jesus to be the priest.

So beginning with the basics. We need to repent from our past lives and turn with faith towards God… Or as we put it all through the month of August – God keeps telling us, I love you, I forgive you, and I have a job for you.

[SLIDE] For most Protestants – Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists – our focus is on the “I forgive you” part. We know who God is, we know who Christ is, through what Christ has done/accomplished for us.

That is Christology. By looking at what Christ did, we have a better understanding of how we are forgiven, how we are justified, how we are saved.

Think about this in another way. If a new person comes to town, we get to know them by asking questions about what they have done in the past. We ask where they lived. We ask where they studied. We ask what their job was. And we continue to get to know if they are a good person or not, if they are trustworthy, not by what they say, but what they do – how they treat us once they become a part of our community.

The same goes with Jesus. Once we understand what Jesus has done for us, we understand how we can put our lives in his hands.

There is a bit of a problem however. There isn’t just one answer to that question.

[SLIDE] In fact, in the Western world there are actually three different understandings of how Jesus saves us.

This word at the top, atonement, is basically a fancy way of saying just that. How we become at-one again with God – how we make amends, how we are reconciled to our creator.

Looking at why Jesus went to the cross, three major theories have been laid out.

1. Christus Victor – in the battle for good and evil, we are held prisoner to sin, held captive by Satan. In Jesus’ victory over death, evil is defeated and we are set free
2. Satisfaction – problem is that we have broken the covenant and a penalty must be paid. Jesus knows we are guilty, but his action on the cross bears the punishment for us.
3. Moral Example – the cross is the natural outcome of the life of Jesus – who spoke truth to power and dared to love those who society turned away. In his life and death, he shows us how we should also live.

How many of you knew there was more than one way to understand why Jesus went to the cross?

We’re going to look at each one a little bit more in depth.

• Christus Victor – We are captured, not free; imprisoned to Satan and sin; evil has control over us
 Addiction is a sort of prison – we can be imprisoned and homeless and not even know it
 How can we be set free? Christ the resurrected one rescues us, defeats sin and death.

• Forensic – we are in the defendent’s seat – we have broken the covenant and must face the consequences
 Satisfaction (Anselm) God’s honor has been destroyed by our sin & we have infinite debt to God. Only the God/Man can make our satisfaction
 Penalty Satisfaction (Aquinas)Our offense against God disrupts order, God as a just God must keep the righteous order and justice must be recieved. Christ pays the penalty to restore the balance.
 Substitutionary Justification (Luther/Calvin) God’s work in Christ is enacted in us – we are acquitted, pardoned and our record is cleared.

• Moral Example (Abelard) – we have lost the understanding of and ability to love and Christ’s life, death, and resurrection shows us what true faithfulness looks like

All three of these are at play in Wesley and should be in ours as well
• if we respond to this pardoning love and allow God deeper access to our lives, we will be liberated from our captivity to sin and the transformation into the fullness of our lives… penalty/satisfaction emphasis with a moral element and a ransom effect.

We too heavily emphasize just the judicial understanding of sin – that claims we must be tried, found guilty, and punished for what we have done wrong.

In my understanding of God, it is through judgment that we are free to recognize we need the grace of God, repent of our sins and live lives worthy of the calling of God. Punishment is not required. Because Christ already restored us. The moment Christ became human, we were reconciled to God. The moment Christ rose again, the powers of this world that plague us were defeated. But then Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit so that we could also participate in that resurrection, so that we could be made new.

Hebrews Part 2: Cut to the Heart

Posted on October 11, 2009Leave a comment

This morning, I want share with you a little video clip that will become for us a parable about what it means to trust in God’s word.

http://www.theworkofthepeople.com/hosting_files/theworkofthepeople.com/content/store/images/preview_video.swf?preview_file=/hosting_files/theworkofthepeople.com/content/store/files/previews/V00444.flv&thumb_file=/hosting_files/theworkofthepeople.com/content/store/files/thumbs/system_thumbs/V00444.jpg

If we each took some time, we might each find ourselves relating to one of these characters just a little bit more than others. We could ask who we each as individuals are, or we could ask who we as this congregation is most like.

The character that I relate to the most in this clip is probably the father.

You see, we have good intentions but are so wrapped up in the things around us that we are just going through the motions. We’re doing something just because we think it’s the right thing to do. And then, in our attempts to be faithful we stumble and we fall back into old patterns.

The father in our holiday dinner is trying his hardest to bring his family to the table and to offer thanks for what they have received. And after his wife makes a meager attempt to give thanks – I think Nordstroms and Neiman Marcus were on her list – our dad himself flounders around with his thankfulness. He hasn’t really thought it through all the way. We are disappointed by his focus on things and in the end we have a feeling that he has set a bad example for his kids to follow.

More often than not – no matter how good we are or how hard we try, we are like that dad. We are like the rich young man in our gospel reading from Mark. We can cross all the t’s and dot all the I’s, but then Jesus shows up and cuts straight to our hearts. Deep inside, are we really ready to leave it all behind and trust in the God of the universe?

We are going to journey a little bit farther into the book of Hebrews this morning. Last week we skimmed over the beginning of this letter. So I want to touch on it again. In chapter 1 we are reminded that God has been reaching out to us throughout all of history… first through the prophets… and then through his Son.

The Son of God – Jesus Christ – has finally brought God’s message of love and salvation to us. He is greater than even the angels – who helped us to hear this message in the past.

In chapter 2, we find the same question raised that we did when we studied Isaiah – presented with God’s glory and majesty and power… we start to compare ourselves to that glory and find ourselves utterly unworthy and feel as tiny as ants. If you remember in Isaiah – this leads to confession and it is why we confess our sins together in worship after we praise God in our call to worship and opening hymn.

But in Hebrews – there comes a slightly different answer to this question. The author of Hebrews goes back to Psalm 8 and while we might question why God cares so much – we are reminded that God made us just a little less than the angels – that all we see is a gift and it has been placed in our hands. While we don’t always see the power in this statement – we do have control over this world. We have control over how we treat one another. We have control over our children and the animals that surround us. We have harnessed natural resources for power. And In this day and age as we see the impact that humanity has made on the climate of our world – we even recognize our power over the wind and the rain and the sun.

We have lots of power… however sometimes that power spins out of control and we do hurt one another, and we are hurt by one another and by the planet. What gets us through those times is knowing that Jesus humbled himself and took human form and became himself a little less than the angels for a time. Christ entered fully into our human experience so that the one who saves and us who are being saved might all become one. Christ took our lives upon himself – so that he might redeem us, restore us, heal us, from all of the mistakes we have made with our gift of control, power and free-will.

God in Christ came to save us and calls us to follow… but first, there is a warning.

You see, God has tried to save us before. In chapters 3 and 4 of Hebrews, we are reminded of the failure of the Hebrew people to respond.

Our writer in Hebrews is very familiar with our Old Testament and he quotes from Psalm 95… Hear these words again from the Message Translation:

“Today, please listen; don’t turn a deaf ear as in the “bitter uprising,” that time of wilderness testing! Even though they watched me at work for forty years, your ancestors refused to let me do it my way; over and over they tried my patience. I said, ‘They’ll never keep their minds on God; they refuse to walk down my road.’ Exasperated, I vowed, ‘They’ll never get where they’re going, never be able to sit down and rest.’”

Because of their stubbornness, because of their unwillingness to trust in the God who was leading them, because of their foolish attachment to the “golden years” of slavery in Egypt – the Hebrew people refused to accept the gift that was right in front of them! All they had to do was trust in the power of God enough to cross over a border into the land of the Canaanites. And they would have found themselves in the land of milk and honey.

But they couldn’t let go of the security of the past. They couldn’t let go of the things that they knew. They wouldn’t open themselves up to the possibility of what was lying ahead.

The same could be said of our father in the clip we showed at the beginning. He wanted to show some kind of faithfulness so he was trying to express his thankfulness. But he was so tied to the things of this world like cars and HDTV that he found himself grasping for straws…. Did any of you think that he really meant what he was saying?

As the older son chimes in – his thankfulness extends to things like piracy and music groups and the internet. He is focused on himself and what he can get and how quickly he can get it.

The younger son follows up with being thankful for the food that is right in front of them. He rattles off the items on the table because he knows that if he says something he will finally get to eat them. He might actually be thankful for the food – but he has no spirit of thankfulness for those who have prepared it or made it possible for him to sit down and eat.

In our gospel reading – our rich young man falls in the same boat. He has said all the right words and done all the right things and he has gone through the motions of faithfulness – but is his heart really in it? Does he really believe?

You see, belief is the difference. In the message translation, it might be called “ a deaf ear” and in the text as printed in your bulletins it might be called “ a hardened heart” – but in either case, it is an unwillingness to accept the truth.

There are a couple of ways that the truth escapes us.

First, we might not look beyond ourselves. Like the older son, we see and feel only our own truth and our own reality. If you noticed in the clip, he actually interrupted someone else who was speaking to quickly rattle off his list of items. This perhaps was also the greatest sin of the Hebrew people in the desert, because they were so focused on what was in it for themselves that they forgot the blessings they had received from God and looked only at what they lacked – what they were missing.

Second, we might be unwilling to go past the surface level of things. Like the boy at the table, we see only what is right in front of us and don’t look any farther. We put our blinders on to the reality that is just beyond our fingertips. All he sees are mashed potatoes and red stuff – and he misses the time and energy his parents put into making the meal, the people at the store who worked so they could buy the ingredients, the farmers who raised the crop, the sun and the rain and the earth that nurtured his food, and the God who is behind it all.

Third, we might be fooling ourselves by going through the motions. Here, the father at our dinner and the rich young man have a lot in common. They are doing all the right things – they might even be saying all the right things, but are their hearts really in it? Do the dad really understand what thankfulness is about? Does the young man really understand what the law is about?

In Hebrews we are warned about the deceitfulness of sin – it blinds us, it tricks us into thinking that we can do it on our own.

But what we really need – all we really need – is faith. We just have to believe and trust in God’s promises. We just have to believe and trust and God’s goodness. Today – Please listen – the psalmist implores us – don’t turn a deaf ear!

God means what God says. The promises are sure. The invitation is real. And when Jesus calls out to the rich young man asking him to leave all of his wealth behind – he means it. Because he is cutting to the heart of what is holding him back. The Word of God, both as we see it on the page and as Christ speaks it, knows who we are and it cuts through all of our defenses. As put by the Message translation – the word lays us open to listen and obey – nothing and no one is impervious to God’s Word – to the truth. We can’t get away from it – no matter what.

Jesus has compassion on that rich young man… even more than that he loves him. And so he has to tell him the truth. And Jesus’ words cut straight to the heart of the matter. You are just going through the motions, my friend. You have built for yourself a wall of deception through your wealth and you trust in your things more than you do in me. So trust me. Leave it all behind. I will take care of you.

The rich young man hears the truth. He sees the promises. But just like the Hebrews in the wilderness who could almost taste the honey that awaited them across the border, he turned a deaf ear. He walked away. He thought it was impossible – because he wasn’t ready to believe that with God all things are possible.

Which brings us back to the person at the dinner table we haven’t talked about yet. The daughter among the group – who was hesitant to even speak opens her mouth and out pours truth. Her words cut to the heart of the matter, and you can see that each person around that table has to stop for a second. The truth gets through – even if just for a second – the truth gets through that God loves us… even if we don’t deserve it… even if we turn a deaf ear and harden our hearts and ignore him. The truth gets through.

Today – Please listen – don’t turn a deaf ear. Take the mercy, accept the help, trust in God.

Hewbrews Part 1: Disposable People

Posted on October 4, 20091 Comment

The strange and frustrating thing about the lectionary – the three year cycle of readings that is used in many churches in the world – including ours… the strange and frustrating thing about the lectionary is that sometimes it just doesn’t make sense.

Each week we have a reading from the Old Testament, the New Testament, a Psalm, and a Gospel reading. And while most of the time they go together – with the same message and purpose, sometimes they just don’t seem to fit.

Take today for instance. Worldwide, we are celebrating the fact that as Christians we all partake of communion with one another. It is a day to remember that a Christian across the globe is our brother or sister in Christ – that we all partake of the one loaf and we all drink from the one cup.

In the lectionary cycle – today is also the day that we start exploring the books of Job in the Old Testament and Hebrews in the New. Until Thanksgiving, in fact, we will be going slowly through the book of Hebrews as we worship on Sunday mornings. But those readings have very little to do with the Old Testament reading from Job where Satan begins testing the faithful man by raining destruction into his life. It has very little to do with the passage from the gospels about divorce.

In fact, I couldn’t figure out how any of these things hung together – what we were supposed to make of them until I remembered a conversation I had with a patient of mine from Nashville

This patient, Adam, was struggling – deeply struggling with his worthiness before God. You see, Adam had cancer. And on this afternoon he was in a particularly deep hole of doubt and self-pity. On this day, the illness had gotten the best of him. And as I entered the room to visit with him he wanted to know why he couldn’t just die.

As we got to talking, I wondered what kind of comfort I could bring him. I couldn’t take the pain away. I asked him if he wanted to pray with me and he barely lifted his head as he spoke.

“I’ve asked Jesus over and over again to help me and he hasn’t,” Adam cried out, “how can he just let me suffer like this?”

As we talked more I began to realize that Adam was expressing a deep feeling of being forsaken by God. Forgotten. Thrown away. He felt like no matter how much he cried out, God wouldn’t listen.

Instead he was being punished. In his eyes, the suffering he was experiencing was God knocking on the door saying “see, I told you so,” and Adam was going to withstand that suffering. Whether it was sheer pride, or self-loathing, or the medications, he felt like he was being punished and he was going to take it like a man.

I remember asking him at one point: What if God’s just waiting for you to let go? What if God is just waiting for you to stop fighting him so that he can actually heal you? What if who you are fighting is yourself?

And then, I’ll never forget what he said. “Even if I do let go, even if I do admit he’s really there, I don’t deserve it.”

I have no idea what Adam’s past was. I don’t know where he thought that he failed.

I do know that I wanted to shake him and tell him that no matter how unworthy he thought he was, God wasn’t done with him.

God didn’t see him, and God doesn’t see us, as some disposable thing – made and then broken and easily thrown away. God saw him in the words of Psalm 8 as the one who was made just a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor. It didn’t matter what he had done – God’s grace and forgiveness was bigger and stronger than his mistakes.

The amazing thing about the book of Hebrews is that while it is a text that portrays very vividly what Christ has done – it is humans who are the focus. Hebrews is about who God is yes, but about what God has done for us – how God acts because of us.

In chapter 1, we are reminded that while God has always been speaking to us – in various times and places – God chose finally to speak by his Son. This Son is the Word of God that is God and was God and spoke all things into being in the creation. Jesus, the Son of God, the Word of God, is God and is fully of all glory and honor.

But then in chapter two we compare this glory and majesty with what was created. This world, that we live in, was not given to angels or to demons, but to humans. Compared with the moon and the stars we are nothing – and yet God has made us a little lower than the angels and God has placed this world in our hands.

Here, the author of Hebrews turns our eyes back towards Psalm 8. We are reminded that Adam and Eve were made caretakers over the garden – over the animals and the birds and the fish and the land and the seas. This is our world – a gift, given to us by God for safekeeping.

And while chapter 2 verse 8 says that we are supposed to be in control, when we are sick. When natural disasters like earthquakes and tornados and floods ravage. When a brother or a sister harms us – the feeling of control slips between our fingertips. The reality that we experience however is that we feel completely out of control.

That is what my friend Adam in the hospital was experiencing. Completely out of control.

Hebrews tells us that while this world appears to be spinning out of control, we catch a glimpse of Jesus and we are reminded of how he poured himself out, became human – became one of us, and took the sins of the world with him through the cross. That becomes our reference point. That becomes our hope.

We are not disposable in God’s eyes, we are redeemable. As John 3:16 reminds us, For God so loved the world. God doesn’t abandon his creation – he loves it and he redeems it.

And through Christ, we become children of God. Or as verse 11 puts it – we all have one Father, one source – and Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters.

What I told my friend Adam is that it doesn’t matter if you feel unworthy or not. It doesn’t matter if you think you deserve help or not. Heck, we probably are unworthy and we are undeserving. There is nothing that we can do to earn God’s love. But God loves you anyways. You are not a disposable part of God’s creation.

Christ invites us each to the table because it is more complete when we are all here. And when we sit at this table, we look across and see our brothers and our sisters. And just as you are not a disposable part of God’s creation – neither are they.

Gathering at the table means that we speak the truth about those we have hurt. It means that we acknowledge that there are people in the world that we have treated as if they can be used up and easily tossed aside. They may be people we never see like sweatshop workers in Vietnam, or coffee farmers in Columbia, or diamond miners in Africa.

But they might also be people who are close to us, people whose lives we share on a daily basis.

In our gospel reading today, Jesus makes a plea with his disciples not to separate the bonds of marriage and to honor the lives of children. And in both of these instances, he is speaking against cultural practices that allowed spouses and children to be considered disposable people.

If your wife burnt your dinner, you could write her a certificate of divorce. If you didn’t like the way she wore her hair, you could write her a certificate of divorce. While this had been in part Jewish custom, Greco-Roman culture also allowed by this time that women could divorce their husbands in a similar manner.

The same was true for children. They were seen as not fully human. Until they reached a certain age they had no voice and no standing. They were non-persons who could be sold and traded.

But just as Christ doesn’t give up on us – doesn’t throw us out with the slightest irritation, so too are we supposed to love one another. The relationship between two partners in marriage does not entitle either one to see the other as disposable. The relationship between parent and child means that the parent should care for the child and the child should honor the parent.

That doesn’t mean that there won’t be brokenness in the body of Christ. We all know situations where divorce has divided a family. We all know situations in which divorce was the only way out of an unhealthy situation. We can all think of instances in which children were not cared for by their community.

And we bring that to the table. And we speak the truth about the ways we have failed one another through confession. And here we receive forgiveness. In this bread and in this cup, we are restored. Whether we deserve it or not. Whether we think we are worthy or not. You are not disposable in God’s eyes and this table is set just for you.

Can you be Christian outside the church?

Posted on September 28, 2009Leave a comment

Can you be a Christian outside of the church?

Depending on how you hear that question, two different things might be arising to your mind.

On one hand, Can someone who doesn’t come to church be a Christian? Can you be a Christian outside of the church?

Or on the other hand, Can you and me continue to be Christians during the hours and the days of the week that we aren’t in the church? Can you be a Christian outside of the church?

Both of these are very important questions. And we think that the answers are fairly simple.

Let’s take the first one. As people who show up every Sunday morning, it frustrates us that there are people who claim to be Christian but never darken the door of the sanctuary. I think a big part of us really wants to answer NO to that first question. The church is such an important part of our faith journeys. It is where we worship God. It is where we learn about our faith. And yet we could all probably name people in our lives who do not go to church and yet are good people – people who even claim to believe in God.

As I thought about people I know who fit that description, I thought about my mom whose work schedule varies with the wind and who is either working or sleeping on Sunday mornings. And about the young couple I married this summer who can’t find a church home because the bride is a nurse who works the weekend option. Yes, they could have different jobs – but they don’t. They are where they are, whether by choice or by chance.

In many ways that’s actually the same story that we find in the book of Esther. Esther was a young, beautiful Jewish woman who found herself in difficult times. Her people had been conquered by the Persians and because of her beauty and virginity she was brought into the King’s court.

Her uncle wanted to protect her and ensure that she had a good future and so he ordered his niece to deny her family and her racial background. And after twelve months of purification this young, insignificant woman from Israel suddenly found herself as a queen of Persia. There in the King’s court, she was no longer allowed to practice her religion. She had given up her traditions and her upbringing. In fact – as an interesting note – the name of God is not mentioned at all in the entire book of Esther!

She was in a position of power, of success, and yet was completely outside of her religious heritage and upbringing. She left it all behind.

While this might not seem like the best role model for our children, we keep the story of Esther in our scriptures because of her faithfulness even outside of what is “ acceptable religious behavior.” Throughout the story there is an idea that she is where she is, doing what she is doing, for a reason…. “for such a time as this” as her uncle Mordecai puts it.

Because when the fate of her people is in danger, she puts her own life on the line to approach the king and to rat out his most trusted advisor. She speaks the truth in a time when it would have been expected of her to keep silent and still today, the Jewish tradition celebrates the feast of Purim in remembrance of her act of courage and faithfulness.

As a pastor, I absolutely want everyone to find a home here in this congregation or in another congregation. I want to make sure that as the church, we make every opportunity to encourage our brothers and sisters to be a part of a congregational life. Let me be clear… I’m NOT encouraging you to go home and tell your family, “Pastor Katie said it was okay for me to skip out on church.”

What we should do, however, is not jump to conclusions about why someone might be outside of the congregational life. In this story from Esther you don’t see the local rabbi knocking on the palace door wondering why Esther isn’t at synagogue. What you do see is her uncle Mordecai, quietly watching her, encouraging her, praying for her. He encourages her to use her time and her position to do good. He shows her that she can make a difference because of where she is.

And we too can do this. We can encourage our family and friends in their work and their play. We can point out and celebrate the ways that they experience God’s kingdom in their daily lives. That nurse who works on the weekends is bringing God’s love and healing to people who are in their darkest moments… that is a noble task and as her friend, I can remind her of that. And I can pray for circumstances to change so that she is able to join us. Those parents who are carting their kids off to soccer games and football games on Sundays need to know that we love them and care about them and that we hold them in our prayers as they work to raise their children in the world today.

There are absolutely things that we miss out on if we try to live our faith as a Christian outside of the congregation. We don’t get to share in the public worship of God – which centers our hearts and minds as much as it praises the one who made us. We don’t find opportunities for learning about the faith very readily outside of the congregation or have as many people to talk about the scriptures with. But just like Esther was still able to follow God in the midst of her circumstances…. our brothers and sisters in Christ are not cut off from God just because they are not here in church with us this morning. In fact, if we understand the church to be the people of God, rather than this building – perhaps they aren’t outside of the church at all. We can carry the church to them – through our actions of love and encouragement.

In it’s weekly feature: Pastor, Talk to Me, a website I frequent (Lectionary Homiletics) has a feature where church people are invited to ask questions about the weekly sermon texts. In many ways – it’s what we try to do with the Round Table Pulpit.

One particular story from a parishioner struck me. She talked about how she needed to support and serve the others in the world who God uses and shares that last Sunday a beloved member of the church was injured and could not attend worship. She describes her congregation as a small church with limited technical abilities, but then goes on to tell how she held up a cordless phone throughout the worship service, so that the member who was home could participate and interact with the rest of the congregation through hymn singing, prayer concerns, and passing the peace. Just because she wasn’t in the church building, didn’t mean the church was very far from her.

Which leads me to that second side of the question.

Can WE be Christians outside of the church?

I know that there are days we are so concerned about who is in and who is out, so prideful that we are here, that WE forget to take our faith with us outside of the congregation.

In fact, I think something that many of us practice is “two hats theology.” We wear one hat when we pray, when we come to church, when we are around our Christian friends, but when we go to work, or go home, or turn on the football game, we put on our other hat.

I was talking with a friend last night during the Iowa game… during the part of the game when things weren’t going so well for our beloved Hawkeyes. And this friend of mine who is a new father said that he had already gotten in trouble for cursing in front of the new baby. It was hard for him to censor himself because he had his football hat on!

This two hats theology makes its way into our lives whenever our business practices lead us to take advantage of another person, or our political choices lead to less equality and less justice.

Two hats theology makes its way into our lives whenever we push back on the urgings of the Holy Spirit because we are too busy to respond.

In fact – we are so busy with the other things in our lives that we push church back into the “discretionary time” of our lives.

What is discretionary time?

This doesn’t work so well in a congregation in which we have a lot of retired persons, but lets say that the average person is working 40 hours per week – and let’s say that you probably need another 50-60 hours each week to maintain your home, family, health, school, etc. You eat, you watch your kids and grandkids play sports, you shower and clean. Add in another 50-56 for sleeping. That takes up 156 of the 168 hours available to any human person during the week.

So, typically the church tries to take those 12-15 hours of “discretionary time” – “free time” if you will – that you have available in the week and we say: let us have that.

We ask you to give up 2-4 hours on a Sunday morning. We try to get you to join small groups and to serve through the church. But at the same time, other volunteer groups are also vying for your time. When all is said and done, you might only put your “church hat” on for 5 hours a week.

But what if we tried to think about what it meant to be a Christian in all of those other hours of our day? What if the main thing about being Christian isn’t how much time we give to the church, but how we seek God in the other 160 hours of our week?

Here is where we find help from the words of Jesus. Because the disciples are struggling with this exact thing. In our gospel reading from today, John notices another person casting out demons in Christ’s name and the disciples tried to stop him because he wasn’t one of them, because he wasn’t healing people on sanctioned “Jesus time”

They are so concerned with the fact that they are the “in-group” that they stopped believing anything good or holy could happen outside of their little band of followers. But Jesus urges them not to stop these good actions. “For no one who does a deed of power in my name will soon be able to speak evil of me.”

And then comes the line that turns our modern sensibilities upside down. Whoever is not against us is for us.

We tend to think about that in the opposite way. If you aren’t for us – if you aren’t actively supporting what we are doing, then you must be against us. You must be the enemy. It’s how we respond to foreign policy decisions, it’s how we respond to competing business interests. It’s how we think of our time.

If we aren’t in the church, if we aren’t doing something for the church – then we must be doing something against the church. We must have to put our other hat on – the worldly hat – until the time comes when we can get back into that sacred building again.

But that’s not what Jesus says. Jesus says if you aren’t against us, you are for us.

Jesus doesn’t care about what time church is or how many hours you spend in this building any more than Jesus cares about who is included in his little band of disciples. His goal isn’t to build the congregation – it’s to transform the entire world!

And so he’s a lot more interested in the things we are doing with those other 160 hours of our time during the week.

How are you demonstrating your faith during the core time of your life? How can you wear your church hat in those areas? How can we demonstrate our faith in the other spheres of our lives – in our families? In our work? In our schools?

The disciples are troubled because they see people acting outside “the church” – outside of what they believe to be the prescribed boundaries of their community. And Jesus’ response? Go and do likewise… I don’t care if you are in or if you are out… if you follow me, you’ll follow me wherever you are.

Go out into the world and serve me. Serve me as you cook supper for your family. Serve me as you prepare expense reports for your business. Serve me as you take mail to the post office. Serve me as you knit a blanket for a friend. Serve me…. And then come back to this place each week – to this congregation – and find rest and comfort and strength, so that you can go back out there and serve me again.

Can you be a Christian outside of the church? I pray that we all might take up the challenge.

What if we put the church last?

Posted on September 20, 2009Leave a comment

Last summer, when we went on vacation with my husband’s side of the family we all were packed into two different vehicles on the way home. My neice and nephew were fighting about who got to ride in our car, and so to make it the most fair, we divided them up and they got to switch places about half-way through the 7 hour trip. My neice, Cami, rode with us first.

And for the first thirty minutes of our drive – we sang one song. Over and over and over again. “Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar.” Cami did “Who me?” yes, you, “Couldn’t be” then who? You get the idea.

Only, my husband liked to mercilessly tease my neice. Whenever the song got passed to him – he fully admitted eating the cookies! =) He would make chomping sounds and say how good the cookies were and my neice would protest! “You’re not really supposed to eat the tookies!!!” The fun part of the game is that no one ever really gets caught. The fun part is in blaming other people!

But when I read our scripture from this morning and find Jesus catching the disciples arguing – it’s a classic hand caught in the cookie jar moments.

The disciples were having a rough day. First they did some hard ministry casting out demons and healing people and then Jesus has them leave and head back to Galilee – familiar homeland for some of these guys. Only, he makes them keep quiet about even being back home because he wants to spend some time with them personally.

That’s all well and good – except for the fact that Jesus started talking about dying but not really being dead again. They couldn’t figure out how that fit into the whole “good news” mission that they were on, and after the last time when Peter got told that he was Satan for speaking up, no one dared question Jesus motives.

Instead they decided to have their own little private conversations. And somehow the topic of the day turned to who was the best among the disciples. Each thought they had a certain quality that made them special – something that caused them to shine just a little bit brighter than the others. Their efforts to outdo one another with pride and bragging practically turned into a full blown fight as they begun to point out one another’s weaknesses and faults. Elbows were still being jabbed as they all finally sat down after a long days walk in the house in Capernum for the night.

And Jesus carefully looked at each one in the eye and said: What were you arguing about on the way?

And the disciples froze. Surely he hadn’t heard! Were they really so dumb as to argue about who was the best? Ugh.

They felt so stupid. They felt exposed. They were caught red handed. And there was no one else to blame.

It’s fairly easy to look back upon them and find the whole situation rather silly. Jesus is talking about giving up his very life for the sake of the world and they are arguing about which one of them is better than the other. It’s easy, that is, until we try to imagine what it would be like if Jesus sat down among us and asked what WE had been talking about… what WE had been doing.

Many of us would probably fall silent too if we had to explain our actions for the last week… or month… or year.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what Jesus would say if he showed up in our congregation. In fact – whenever I hear Jesus talking in the gospels to an individual person – I’ve started substituting the world “church” in. Because I’m hoping for a word, a direction, a clue as to what we need to be doing next.

So last week, in our gospel reading Jesus said

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34, NRSV)

Reinterpreted:
If your church wants to follow me, it has to deny itself, take up its cross and follow me. The church needs to set aside its own wants and desires and head to those places of struggle between life and death, hope and despair in our world.

Whew… that’s a big old fat message!!!

I did the same this week:

After Jesus asks the disciples what they were arguing about… because he knows it was about who is the best, he tells them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

So I’ve been praying about that and here is what I hear when I put the church into that message:

Your church needs stop worrying about filling the pews, stop thinking that you’re so wonderful people should just be flocking to you… and instead needs to position yourselves as the last… as the least – as the servant of all and your church should go to where the people are.

To put it another way: God’s vision needs to come first – And God’s vision is for the people of this world. Look for where God’s heart is breaking in your community and humble yourself to go and serve there… everything else will sort itself out.

At the beginning of August – our church received an invitation. It was an invitation by our conference to participate in a journey that could help us do just that: follow Christ into the world and learn how to be the church in our community.

Jill Sanders, our Field Outreach Minister came down and shared this invitation with us at an Administrative Board meeting, and I know that some of you were there – but not all of you.

As we gathered – here were some of the statements that Jill shared with us that really rang true in our minds:

We live in an unchurched world and feel the church is ill equipped to respond. We look out at Marengo – at Iowa County – at our state and see so many people who need to hear that God loves them and we have no idea how to respond.

We are tired of just going to church and want to really be the church. We are tired of waiting for people to come to church and want to go make church happen in the world!

We are challenged by the passion and vitality of newer congregations. We want to know what makes them tick. We wish we had the energy and passion to be out there in the world bringing people to God.

We also said that we hoped God might give us increased clarity of purpose as a congregation. What are we here for? What are we specifically called to do?

And how can we develop leaders in our congregation? How can we help to nurture people, energize people around the tasks that God has called us to?

And Jill’s response…

That we are ready. That we are no longer a congregation that is merely surviving. That in these past two years we have grown and we are in a healthy place and that if we really want to answer those questions – that she has an invitation for us.

My hope was that in the weeks following that event, those who were there would talk about what that invitation entailed: this missional transformation process and that word of this thing might spread throughout the congregation.

But for those of you who haven’t heard… or those of you who may have forgotten – I want to share again what that invitation is.

The Missional Transformation Process is a two and a half to three year journey where we as a congregation ask:
Why does our community need this church?
What does God want us to do here?
And how will our church live out God’s vision in our life and mission?

Those are big questions. And to answer them, we would be invited to do a few things.

1) We need a committed group of 4 or 5 people who would be willing to go with me to 6 day long workshops. These workshops will be spread out over 2-3 years, and each one prepares us as a congregation to take the next step forward.

2) We as a whole congregation move through those steps through prayer, conversations, bible study, and by listening to God.

3) we open ourselves up to possibility. And we trust that the Holy Spirit will guide us and give us the courage we need to answer!

4) we do need to make a financial commitment to this process. As a congregation – spread out over three years – we would commit $1250 that would go towards the cost of workshops, materials, and a partner that will work directly with our church.

This process has six steps:

1) Getting Ready for the Journey
2) Discovering our Missional Context
3) Discerning God’s Call
4) Crafting our Missional Strategy
5) Shaping Missional Life and Witness
6) Living into a Faithful Future.

What might this all look like when we are done?

Possibilities: family church; youth church; Hispanic ministry; elderly ministry; something we can’t even imagine.

Can I be completely honest with all of you? When I first saw this process all laid out my first reaction was a huge sigh of relief. Because I desperately want to help our church to grow and thrive… but I know the only way to do that is to get on board with what God is doing here in Marengo. And as a new pastor, this resource is amazing. It takes the best of what we have to offer and molds it with what God wants from us.

But even as I’ve been excited about it, and as I have sensed some of you are getting excited about it, I have also sensed some really big reservations. It’s almost as if you all are thinking – this is a really great thing, but…

First, you think you’ve tried this before and it didn’t work.

Second, you may think this is a great idea, but you aren’t sure that you can personally make the commitment. We have to have 4-5 people who are committed to these workshops. People who are willing to not only show up, but who are willing to bring these materials back to the church. People who are willing to ask tough questions, people who aren’t afraid to speak up with creative ideas. People who are full of passion and energy. And what I have realized is that these may not be the people who have been faithfully serving our church in the past. They have been working long and hard and they are tired! And so what we need is prayer for God to place this calling on the hearts of a few people and we need the courage to look for people to stand up from places we may not have expected.

At our next Ad Board meeting – on October 4, we will sit down and decide if we are going to say yes to Jill’s invitation. What I need from all of you is serious considered prayer. I need you to think about this at home, with your family. I need you to listen for God’s prompting. I need you to look at any reservations you might have and to PLEASE come and talk with me or other people in leadership here at the church about them. I need you to ask questions, to share your feelings and your passions.

And probably most importantly, I want us to look back on our prayer of confession for today. I want us to think about what it means to put ourselves second or third in order for God’s vision and will to be in the front. And I want us to say those words again together…

God of patience and mercy, we come to you, offering “lip service” to serving you, but when things get difficult; when we are called to do something which is hard for us, we shy away from the duty and the opportunity. We turn our back on service out of fear of failure.

Forgive us, gracious Lord. Heal our fears and our weaknesses. Strengthen us and give us courage to truly be your disciples, not counting the rewards, but rejoicing in the work. In Jesus’ Name, we pray. AMEN. (Cokesbury Worship Connection)

the redemption of creation

Posted on September 14, 20091 Comment

Over the next few weeks (months probably) I want to go back through my notes and blog a bit about some of the amazing things I have brought back from the Moltmann conference.

The first one that has been really chewing in my soul is the idea that creation needs redemption.

I guess this has always been in the background of my theology. I think about Paul writing that the creation is groaning. I think about how all of the earth suffers under the sin of humanity and our greed and destruction. But for the first time, I started thinking about how this planet itself has also fallen and committed acts against God’s will and needs to be redeemed.

Now – I don’t think that the oceans have a will. I don’t think that the skies and the clouds do things intentionally – but in many ways neither do we. But this world is not as God created it. And when a tsunami strikes land in southeast Asia and 225,000 people die – I don’t think that is God’s will. Moltmann said time and time again that God is with those who suffer, not the cause of the act. He said time and time again that an act against creation is an act against God.

So, in putting various pieces together, we could talk about an ecological soteriology. That as Christ redeems us, Christ redeems the world. That all of creation is taken through the cross to the promise of the resurrection.

We spend so much time worrying about theodicy, looking for God as the cause of these events, instead of thinking about God as the one who will ultimately redeem even the world from the suffering it has caused. God in Christ through the power of the Spirit bears all of these things through to the new creation. And that is an amazing thought to behold

Wisdom of the Cross

Posted on September 13, 2009Leave a comment

Why do you follow Jesus? And how far are you willing to go?

This past week, I got to spend some time with one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century – Jurgen Moltmann. At the age of 84, he traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to come and have a conversation with the 100 or so of us gathered in Chicago.

I had known parts of his story before and I had read at least one of his books. I knew that he was the mentor, a father-figure really, to one of my most important professors in seminary. But to sit before him and hear his story in his own words was absolutely stunning.

The center of Moltmann’s theology is the hope of the cross and the resurrection. Everything else in the world is futile if we don’t see hope there. And our journey of faith must travel through the cross to the love that awaits us on the other side.

The cross is a very difficult thing, however. It has become much easier in our lives to minimize it’s importance, to minimize its call, to polish it up and paint it beautiful colors and let it become merely the symbol of our faith.

But time and time again, this statement of Jesus’ comes up in the gospels:

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34, NRSV)

Why do we people follow Jesus? Are we willing to go to the cross?

Peter certainly thought he wanted to follow Jesus. As one of the disciples, sure he didn’t always get things right – but he tried. And when Jesus and his band stopped just outside of Caesaria Phillipi to refocus their mission, Peter was ready.

Jesus asked, “who do you say that I am?” And Peter got the answer right – “You are the Messiah!”

But he didn’t understand the depths of the word that he was uttering. He heard a word that was full of power and justice and victory – when Christ has a much different sort of path in mind.

And I think that is true for many of us as well. We too balk at the idea that of a suffering Christ. We like to quickly pass over the parts about his death and get to the resurrection. We, like Peter, are eagerly waiting for the victory of Jesus to be shown in the world!

And when we are focused on victory and power and success, then we get sidetracked by other things.

The cross that we are called to take up becomes a status symbol. We wear beautiful crosses around our necks… but aren’t willing to give all we have to the poor.

The cross becomes an excuse to flaunt our difference before others. We wear the cross all over our clothes on pins and hats and backpacks… but we aren’t willing to go the extra mile for someone in need.

The cross becomes excitement and entertainment as we flock to the biggest churches with the most charismatic preachers… but we aren’t willing to see the least of these on the street corner.

The cross makes us feel good and we show up for church once a month to get our fix… but then we turn back out into the world and leave our faith in the pews.

Wisdom cries out in the streets; in the squares she raises her voice. At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks: How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? Give heed to my reproof; I will pour out my thoughts to you; I will make my words known to you.

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34, NRSV)

Peter needs to be shown another way. He needs to have his simple story of success and victory with little or no cost altered. He needs to hear the truth. We need to hear the truth.

This week, I believe I heard the truth.

Jurgen Moltmann decided to follow Jesus as a Prisoner of War during WWII. As a young man, he had sort of found himself joining the Hitler Youth movement – not really for any good reason, and then he was drafted into the German Army. During his time of service, he witnessed the Allied bombing of his hometown of Hamburg – where over 40,000 civilians were killed – mostly women and children. He saw his best friend torn to pieces by a bomb right next to him. The two questions that lingered in his mind for years were, “Where is God?” and “Why am I not dead like all the others?” He was later captured by British soldiers and sent to a POW camp in Scotland.

It was only there that Moltmann began to hear about what had happened in the concentration camps. It was there that he began to be wracked with shame and grief and agony. And he had absolutely nothing from his experience that could get him through his pain and suffering. He had grown up in a secular home, and humanist philosophy had no words to describe his loss and guilt and grief.

But in Scotland – as a prisoner of war – as a German soldier and as a man who carried upon his shoulders the guilt of a nation – he found grace. The guards in Scotland looked at them as human beings, not demons or enemies. One of the chaplains handed Moltmann a bible – and with nothing else to do, he began to read.

Moltmann talks about how his life was completely desperate and desolate – that all the prisoners in the camp were trying to conceal their wounded souls with this armor of untouchability. But as he read through that bible from cover to cover, he was deeply moved by two things in particular: The psalms of lament and the death cry of Jesus – “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” He found in these words a fellow sufferer who understood what true sorrow was like.

Moltmann dove into the study of scripture and theology because God was the only thing that could save him from his despair. And out of his experiences and out of the scriptures, he shares with the world a new understanding of the cross.

While we tend to emphasize the cross as this cure for our sins – this simple and singular act that washes us clean, Moltmann began to see it as a complex and messy and passionate and painful understanding of the cross.

At the intersection of the cross all sorts of separate things fight for one another: live vs. death, hope vs. despair, the godforsaken and the godless collide.

And Christ bears these tensions – all of them, and takes all of these struggling forces to the cross and comes out on the other side with only victory: there is only life, there is only hope, there is only God.

But first, God suffers with us.

We look at the sin in our own lives, and yes – that needs to be dealt with – it needs to be redeemed by God. That happens on the cross, as Christ takes our place on the cross, and in doing so, brings us through to the resurrection.

But Moltmann also talks about Christ suffering with us. Because while there needs to be forgiveness for the sinner, there also needs to be justice for the victim. The victim needs to find peace also.

In his experience, this happened as the stories of the victim were presented to those of the perpetrators.

After the war, Moltmann said, we listened to the stories of survivors of concentration camps- because we didn’t know what happened in the death camps. We listened to their stories and looked into the eyes of the survivors and became aware of who we the Germans really were. Same took place in the truth commissions in Africa – the victims must tell the stories, perpetrators must listen to the stories, or they can’t become aware of their guilt. Sacrament of repentance! Confess the truth, change your mind, make good where you have done evil as you can”

What does it mean to take up this cross of Jesus? To really take it up, to really follow in his footsteps.

Moltmann says that we must not become apathetic. He said that we shy away from love because we believe it will only bring us pain. “If you love no one, you will feel no suffering – if you don’t love yourself you will not feel your own death b/c you don’t care. I saw soldiers who became so apathetic that they don’t care about death b/c they were completely resigned and no longer in service of life, but in service of death.

If you love life again, you risk disappointment, you must be ready to suffer on behalf of your compassion for another person and you must be ready to feel their dying.”

When Christ asks us to take up his cross, he asks us to go to those places where life and death meet. He asks us to go to those places where the victim and the perpetrator meet. He asks us to go to those places where the rich and the poor meet. And we are to listen to their stories. We are to heal their wounds. We are to love them. And by loving them, we open ourselves up to feel their pain. We open ourselves up to be hurt. But we also open ourselves up to God.

Moltmann Conversation – Session 3 Crucified God

Posted on September 10, 2009Leave a comment

• Soteriology didn’t make sense until I read this book – Shroyer

• Don and ann from a pastoral perspective, other speaker coming from a personal working through pain and changing ideas of God – three years since his 4 mo. Son died. Questions of where God is in the midst of that. Moltmann is helpful in remembering the pathos of God – the passability of God. Asking the Why? The why questions is not helpful, because there is no answer we would accept. The why question Jesus answered was the resurrection, but not an explanation. We ask for what will not satisfy us – we don’t want to have an answer – there is no answer that can bring us to peace with the suffering. If we feel the presence of the suffering Christ next to us, in us, that he shares our suffering and we his, then we have consolation. The other question is whether there is a process after death ,to bring the destiny of a life that was cut short – I believe there is. God will bring to a good end what he had begun with a human person

• Dismissal of the question of theodicy, and yet the question is so ubiquitous – I affirm that this is the wrong question, Caputo talks about weak forces in the world from physics (like gravity) – yet people constantly critique God – is this only a philosophical thing: it comes from the stoic philosophy… if God is omnipotent and good, how can ____. So there is no understanding of love, suffering, compassion because it starts from those two qualifications of God from greek philosophy and not from the scriptures. The more I thought about it, I not only felt the compassion and sympathy of Jesus in his passion, as our suffering, but also the bereavement of the Father. If Jesus really was true in saying “why hast thou forsaken me” then the father is also forsaken by his son and we then have two sides of the triune one which suffer bereavement as we do, and the other who suffers forsakenness. For me at least, this was a consolation.

• Challenge in pastoral care – people want a god that is very powerful and want concrete answers – that God is vulnerable, how do we communicate that to our churches? By preaching the presence of Jesus Christ instead of talking about a God apart from the life and the destiny of Jesus Christ. When in my younger years talked about this morning had problems with God, Jesus came and solved these problems I had with God. This is a problem people have with God, but they won’t have them with Christ – without Christ, I would certainly be an atheist as the other members of my family because looking into a human mystery I am not convinced there is a God that has everything under control. Can’t look in the face of a tsunami and see God’s love…. I don’t like general talk about a god – there are so many gods good and evil

• Theologians listening to people, when I speak to people as a pastor and talk about God suffering with them, they feel disappointed b/c they want someone to pull them out. How does the suffering God give us hope? The suffering God is a compassionate God – the god who is there in your distress and situation, he is not far away from you b/c he is compassionate and suffering with you. Other hand – outcome of crucifixion = resurrection, new life, eternal life. We trust the same God that is with us will raise us and bring us into that new life. Suffering God is only the one side. Other side is the God of life. We have a hard time looking at both side. The joy of God and the joy with God at the end is greater than the suffering and grief we experience.

• Validity of the theodicy question? Volf said that atheists are closer to God than theists b/c they are arguing with God constantly… someone said it’s like Moltmann experienced Christ and then fell into the trinity: Looking at Christ, I see God, his God is my God. Theism is a general understanding of transcendence and that there is a higher power somewhere. Atheism is difficult because we had this type of protest – atheism. The best story about it is in the brothers karimozov – Ivan protests because of the suffering of an innocent child – I have nothing against God in heaven, but this earth as God’s kingdom I reject b/c there is not justice on earth. We had that kind of protest atheism after the war that the German Catholic poet said, I don’t like these atheists – they always talk about God! But another time of atheism which is just banality – just talk. In 19th c. the theodicy question is: If God, why evil? Best answer = no God, so the question collapses.

• The god the atheists are debunking is not the God we experience – how so: They have no use for God in their life, neither negative nor positive – you can live without using, but you miss a lot of your life – the liveliness of your life. There are two lands in Europe where atheism is wide spread, perhaps because of a long tradition of suffering under religious persecutions

• Protest atheism – protest hope… as people of God in the world, we live as protesters for hope, holding onto it in the face of suffering and reality: when one has seen the God of Hope (1 Peter 3) we wait and hasten the coming day of the Lord… we wait expectantly for someone that we have been promised is coming – we don’t adjust to unjust conditions in the present because we know that it can and will be changed and therefore you resist conformity and silence to injustice and violence in your surrounding. To wait in this sense means to resist.

• How do we actively resist and be in dialogue and resistance as the church? Follow the Sermon on the Mount – resist capital punishment…. In all the churches we pray, but the NT calling is not only to pray but to pray and watch so open your eyes if you pray to God and see what is a contradiction to God and what is an analogy to the coming of God – watch and don’t close your eyes and transcend to the other world.

• ?:– we have turned this instrument of painful dying into something of gold and silver – we should be reminded of the cross of God again and again and those who followed the crucified one – the early Christians who were called in their surrounding atheists because they refused to serve the political demons of the Roman Empire and they suffered the same fate of Jesus. Only changed after Constatnine – HCE = two crosses… the real Cross of Golgatha, the other is the dream cross of Constantine – on this sign we will win and they painted it on their shields and they won the battle… since that time we have these two crosses. The german, Victoria, st. george cross… they all go back to emperor Constantine and this makes a lot of confusion! All Christian nations have a cross on their flag – only the Americans don’t have it and that’s good (but we have turned our flag into a cross!!!!) On God, One Cross, One Empire – this was emperialistic because of the oneness of God and the oneness of Caesar – St. George = dragon killer saved the church, changed from a Martyr to a dragon killer… St Michael = archangel killing the dragon in heaven, symbolism of Holy Christian Empire that worked until the present day. I agree with the Anabaptists that we must go back to the origin to find a new future for Xty in the world – apart from this time of Xian imperialism

• Atonement theory – Penal Substitutionary, Christus Victor – Jones calls it the Indentification theory, that God identifies with the forsaken part of humanity and the atonement…? We identify with Christ on the cross – so it’s a double identification… is that right? Is that theologically, economically a transaction that takes place in the atonement. It’s very appealing that God suffered, was really tempted, really walked in our shoes, and when we identify with his suffering on the cross, that’s atonement.. How does itwork? We can call it 1) Christology of solidarity, he suffers with us, 2) he suffers for us, the guilty… both sides belong together. He suffers for us is a reconciling suffering – but we must see both sides together. He was given up for our sins and raised for our justification, so the whole process is called justification, on the other hand forgiveness of sin, the crucified one, on the other resurrection – has to bring you to a new life, a new righteous life. There is another point – I had tried to convince Catholics and Lutherans about it, but couldn’t get through. 1) justification of the sinner – but what about victims of sin? Must we not speak about justification of victims of violence and injustice – God is righteous because he gives right to those who suffer. The victims are important and the justification of the victims is the first act – in practical terms, the sinners who have become guilty of their victims have a very short memory, if they remember at all – but those who suffer have a very long memory. For those on the side of the guilty want to enter into life, you have to listen to victims because they tell you who you really are – there is no justification of sinners w/o justification of victims first!!! After the war, we listened to the stories of survivors of concentration camps- because we didn’t know what happened in the death camps. We listened to their stories and looked into the eyes of the survivors and became aware of who we the Germans really were. Same took place in the truth commissions in Africa – the victims must tell the stories, perpetrators must listen to the stories, or they can’t become aware of their guilt. Sacrament of repentance! Confess the truth, change your mind, make good what you have done evil as you can… but there is no ritual/sacrament for the justification of the victims – they have to overcome depression, weakened, degraded – we need to help them get out of this, so that they can overcome feelings of revenge to overcome evil by the good – so they can be alleviated, can raise their harts to God – can find a new self-confidence.
(Resources from Missy Meyers – Andrew Sung Park – rituals for victims… Ruth Duck has some communion liturgies and resources that are helpful here)

• Talk about love. What is so helpful about your work is it reframes so much for us – “anyone who enters into love and suffering enters into God – his forsakenness is lifted in the forsakenness of Christ – need not look away from the negative and death” I think you are expressing a whole new understanding of love that we get from God that helps us experience pain and suffering: The greatest challenge when suffering comes is to become apathetic, to not love anymore because it will cause only pain. If you love no one, you will feel no suffering – if you don’t love yourself you will not feel your own death b/c you don’t care. I saw soldiers who became so apathetic that they don’t care about death b/c they were completely resigned and no logner in service of life, but in service of death. We have similar development with terrorists today – once said – Your young people love life, our young people love death – if you love death, you cannot be threatened with punishment! You cannot feel any deterrent. This is a real danger. If you love life again, you risk disappointment, you must be ready to suffer on behalf of your compassion for another person and you must be ready to feel their dying. (I wonder how this relates to the health care conversation – we don’t want to see/feel other people’s pain and are only worried about our own)

• Personal salvation, Personal cross? All of creation has the space for redemption I nthe cross: In Western tradition we lost the cosmic traditions of Christology that we find in Ephesians and Colossians – that Christ died for the redemption of the universe – it is also corrupted and there are conflicting powers in the world so that even the universe needs reconciliation… not that only humans will be saved, but the universe will be saved – it is a deification of the cosmos! Christ became human so that the whole cosmos will become the place where God makes God’s home

• Universalism? Not a Universalist because there are some people I don’t want to see again – but God created them and would certainly like to see them again. Universalism is not only to speak about all human beings, but to speak about the universe, the stars and the moon and the sun and the whole cosmos. This is always misunderstood by fundamentalists that want a dual end or to have the other go to hell, this is anti-creation! I don’t want to go to heaven, the angels have their home in heave – I want to be reaised on earth and to live on the new earth in which justice lives. God in the end will be all in all – so where then is heaven? Christ ascent to heaven has an eye opening effect on us to those we wish to go to heaven. Luther once said in treatise on preparing for dying – don’t look at hell in the destiny of others – don’t look at heaven in your own destiny – look at hell in the wounds of Christ, there the hell is overcome, because Christ suffered.