The First Mutation

 “The Church is a place of great beauty and healing. It can also be a place that traumatizes, excludes, and abuses.”[1]

From the very beginning—the Acts of the Apostles in the Christian New Testament—the church has been divided. In chapter 15 Peter and Paul, the leading voices of the nascent church, locked horns over whether Gentiles should become Jews (read: be circumcised) before being accepted into the church.

The church in Corinth was divided over almost everything: which spiritual gifts were more important, whose baptism counted, which preacher they should follow… Even the Lord’s Supper was a point of contention.

Heresies abounded in that first generation of the church: Gnosticism, Docetism, Arianism, etc. The overarching question was “Who’s right?” How can we make sure we get it right, so we won’t go to hell when we die? (More about hell in the next blog!)

That issue of who’s right and who’s wrong never has been resolved within the historic church. I saw a headline today (I didn’t read the article. The headline was upsetting enough.); it read, “All Baptisms Performed by Phoenix Priest Invalid Because He Changed One Word.” Good grief!

Some of the apostles seemed to catch momentary glimpses of what was right; but they were inconsistent in their proclamation of it. Some of the early church fathers—I’m thinking specifically of Origen of Alexandria (c. 184 – c. 253)—seemed to get it right, at least part of the time. Of course, even this paragraph represents my own conviction that I’m right. (One difference is that I accept the human limitations described by the title of my blogsite: “Flawed Glass,” based on I Corinthians 13:12. I accept the possibility that I may be wrong.)

The purpose and objective of spiritual discipline—both individually and in community—is not to attain that divine love, but to experience what already is and always has been.[2]

But there’s that first mutation thing. From primordial wondering about things unseen, we humans have wanted to get it right. We have a need to be loved and accepted. We have a need to make sure we’re loved and accepted. We don’t want that faith and trust stuff, we want a solid guarantee! So we develop a binary “right/wrong” system by which we can be sure. Oral Roberts often said, “I know that I know that I know.”

So that first mutation is the move from trust to certitude. It’s not a new thing; it’s a throwback to a prehistoric human need to control the unknown. It is a rejection of faith and trust.

The truth is: nobody ever gets it right! That’s why we need grace. It’s not about being right. It never was. It’s about being loved and accepted by the source of all love. John got it right (I John 4:8): God is love!

Red, brown, yellow, black, white: you are loved! LGBTQ/Straight: you are loved! Republican/Democrat/Libertarian/Socialist/Communist: you are loved!

And here’s the thing: when we are experiencing love and acceptance, we are free from all that worry and anxiety about whether we’re “right.” The reason we wanted to be “right” in the first place was just to be loved and accepted. When we experience love we are free to love, without concern for ourselves and without concern about whether the recipient of our love is worthy, or whether our love will be returned. We already are loved!

The natural response to experienced love is to love in return. We worship the God who is Love with praise, adoration and thanksgiving, and we serve the God who is Love by loving the people God loves, which excludes nobody! Thanks be to God!

That’s the way it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

---

[1] Bruce Epperly, endorsing Mark Gregory Karris, Religious Refugees (Orange, California: Quoir, Kindle Edition, 2020) p. 4.

[2] I’m grateful for this insight discovered in David Artman, Grace Saves All: The Necessity of Christian Universalism (Wipf and Stock, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition 2020) p. 105.

Let's You and Him Fight

Between me and any other human there are infinitely more similarities than differences.

That’s a bold statement, especially in a culture that has become obsessed with eliminating differences—in a culture that is persuaded that differences and disagreements are bad and assumes that conformity is good (as long as I am the standard to which everyone must conform)—in a culture that does not recognize or accept the enrichment that emerges out of diversity—in a culture in which defenders of differing ideologies demonize each other.

Nevertheless, I maintain that we agree much more than we disagree—about almost everything.

We all agree that justice is better than injustice.

We all agree that good is better than evil.

We all agree that right is better than wrong.

But we don’t always agree on the definitions of justice, good and right.

Christians generally agree on the reality of God, and agree that God is the Creator of the Universe, the Redeemer of all that is broken in creation, and the Sustainer of all that is eternal. If we humans could leave it there and simply stand in awe before that reality and respond in adoration and praise and in commitment to live in harmony with the redemptive, sustaining work of God in creation, life would be as God intended life to be.

Moreover, Christians generally agree that Jesus of Nazareth completely manifested the redemptive work of God.

But (and you can pick almost any other point in Christian history as a starting point), within the first generation of Christianity somebody said, “This is specifically how God accomplished redemption through Jesus, and you must agree with my assessment or you’re wrong.” And immediately there was established the dichotomy of orthodoxy vs. heresy.

The need to identify heresy is an act of insecurity, and manifests a need to be in control of our eternal destiny. It's the fruit of the tree of which, when we eat it, we will know the difference between good and evil (Genesis 3:1-5). When we know what we have to do, then we won't have to trust some mysterious creator deity. If we obey the rules, that deity will be obligated to favor us in our eternal destiny.

Orthodoxy replaced the pure response of awe and adoration and praise and shifted the focus from the awesomeness of God to human works; and no matter how high we fly the grace flag, the message we send with our lives is "you've gotta' jump through my hoops or you're out". The focus shifted from relating to God to being right and demonizing those who don't affirm my perception of right. And we've been fighting ever since.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…” (Genesis 1:1). That should have been enough. But somewhere along the way somebody decided to limit the possible ways God could have accomplished that task, and orthodoxy and heresy were created: “There’s only one way God could have done it, and you agree with me or you’re out.”

So to this day we square off and fight over “creationism” vs “intelligent design” vs “evolution”, and God gets shoved into a corner and essentially forgotten in the preoccupation with being “right.”

And in the process of eliminating disagreements, the larger arena of our agreements, upon which we could work together collaboratively to fulfill our divine calling to build a more just, good and “right” world (“…on earth as it is in heaven…”), gets lost in the shuffle. And God is neither adored nor praised—nor impressed.

"And I will show you a still more excellent way.  If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal" (I Corinthians 12:31-13:1).

That’s how I see it through the flawed glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

In God We Trust?

“In God We Trust.” But we trust more in our guns and in our violent ways of enforcing our ways. It’s been that way consistently, regardless of the governmental or economic system in place, in every culture since human history has been recorded.

We trust in violence and we persecute those who advocate any alternative in dealing with social and interpersonal disagreements and problems. Even our films and television shows constantly rehearse the necessity of violence as the only effective way to bring about “justice” (retributive justice) and to ensure our safety.

Even our Scriptures proclaim violence as a way of maintaining order. The Holy Writ attributes violent jealousy and vengeful wrath as a part of God’s character and nature.

Well, at least part of the Scriptures do.

Many of the Hebrew prophetic writings project a compassionate God whose love engenders faith and loyalty in those who seek Him (sic). But most readers of Scripture and practitioners of Christianity choose to ignore those parts, or at best to privatize them. The most common (almost unanimous) assimilation of that message is that God offers love and compassion only to those who are faithful to Him and who jump through His hoops. God’s love is conditional; and that message continues to leak through even our loudest pulpit-pounding about God’s grace.  And those who are outside God’s grace are still doomed to violent retribution by this “loving” God.

The greatest tragedy is that so many of us use Scripture to justify our trust in violence. We have approached the Scriptures on a legalistic all-or-nothing basis, when the Scriptures themselves are not presented as such. Too often we have seen the Scriptures as self-contradictory, and then proceeded to “protect” the Holy Writ from itself by inventing all sorts of incongruous rationalizations and justifications to avoid what we see as contradictions.

But, instead of contradictions, the Scriptures present an ongoing courtroom-like debate among God’s people. On one side is the testimony of those who see God as a hero/warrior who competes with other gods over people and territory. Even after Judaism—or at least most of the religious leadership of Judaism—had become monotheistic, that God image persisted.

On the other side is the counter-testimony of those who understood God as one whose love is universally inclusive. They called upon Israel to be a “light to all nations” (Isaiah 60:1-3, et al).

The reader is the jury, and must decide which testimony to believe. Historically, God’s people consistently have chosen to reject the vulnerability of love in favor of the seemingly more secure use of violence and retributive justice.

Jesus made the unpopular choice. He chose to reject the violence in the Hebrew Scriptures and chose instead to lift up love: compassion, restorative justice, reconciliation and enemy love. And the power people of his time found his message so confronting to their own lives that they killed him. Power people still persecute all who challenge them.

At best, again, we privatize those words of Jesus that call for restoration and healing and love, and we wrap them in conditions. As a society we still trust in violence. We think it keeps us safe; we think it makes us strong.

The problem with a system built upon strength and power is that eventually somebody stronger always—ALWAYS—comes along. Love does not need power, for love is the strongest force in the universe. God is love (I John 4:8).

For all these reasons, it will not be enough simply to point out the harm that comes from violence. That harm will simply be called “unfortunate-but-necessary collateral damage.” We will need to demonstrate to the world that there are viable nonviolent alternatives to dealing with societal problems—“ways that are not only effective, but in fact are more effective than violence at resolving conflict and keeping us safe.”[1]

There are numerous historic manifestations of effective non-violent confrontation of injustice and evil. Even in my own life-time names like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela come to mind. Yes, Bonhoeffer’s and King’s non-violent strategies, like Jesus’, cost them their lives; nevertheless, their effectiveness in weakening the evils they confronted is unquestionable. I know no one who denies that love is risky. And those who have challenged violent defense and retributive justice continue to be persecuted.

Maybe we’ve been asking the wrong questions: instead of asking, “How can we be safe and protect ourselves?” maybe we should be asking, “How we can be loving as Jesus was loving?”

That’s the way I see it through the flawed glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

---

[1] Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did (San Francisco: Metanoia Press, 2014), Kindle edition, Location 2289.

A New Paradigm of Faith (which I think is a carbon copy of the original)

• "I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love." ~ Wendell Berry

• “Choose being kind over being right and you’ll be right every time.” ~ Richard Carlson

My heart aches to the point almost of tears when I dwell on “man’s inhumanity to man”. Jesus ate with sinners of every variety, touched the untouchables, healed the unclean and even reminded those in Nazareth that when there was famine in Israel, God sent Elijah to feed a woman from Sidon; when there were many lepers in Israel, God had sent Elisha to heal a Syrian named Naaman—both of whom were heathen aliens!

Jesus refused to condemn a woman caught in the act of committing adultery (a capital offense in that culture), he visited in the home of Zacchaeus, a treasonous, embezzling Publican, and he advised carrying a Roman soldier’s pack not just one mile, as the law allowed, but two miles.

 Jesus called upon his followers to forgive others 70 X 7 times (literally 490 times, which is more than any of us would ever attempt; but which in the numerology of the day was probably intended to mean an infinite number of times) and never, ever to retaliate or seek vengeance. He even forgave the ones who nailed him to the cross.

Jesus reserved his strongest reproof for those who openly boasted of their piety and moral superiority and then used their considerable religious authority to dominate all who dared any divergence from their dogmatic pronouncements.

The Pharisees boasted of their righteousness. Perhaps they even kept checklists of the laws they obeyed. They dotted every “i” and crossed every “t”; but Jesus said, “…unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20 NRSV).[1]

But so many who claim to follow Jesus call others the foulest of names over disagreements about political ideologies, and seek legal authorization to discriminate against people they judge to be the vilest of sinners (but will gladly serve sinners of every other category). Then we all assemble at church and congratulate each other on our moral superiority.

We tend to read Scripture selectively. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Jesus read Scripture selectively, too; and so did Paul. The crux of the matter is not whether we read the Bible selectively, but rather, which texts we select. Jesus selected those that lead to compassion, healing, restoration, reconciliation and love. He rejected those Scripture passages that lead to vengeance, retaliation and violence or domination of any kind.

Theologian, Walter Wink, begins the 9^th chapter of his book, The Powers that Be, with these words:

“American culture is presently in the first stages of a spiritual renaissance. To the degree that this renaissance is Christian at all, it will be the human figure of Jesus that galvanizes hearts to belief and action, and not the Christ of the creeds or the Pauline doctrine of justification by grace through faith. And in the teachings of Jesus, the sayings on nonviolence and love of enemies will hold a central place. Not because they are more true than any others, but because they are crucial in the struggle to overcome domination without creating new forms of domination.”

As I said earlier, we all read the Scriptures selectively, and that’s not necessarily bad. Having surrendered all anxiety over my eternal destiny to the one who said, “My grace is sufficient,” it is my intention, and my prayer, that my reading of Scripture will always put me on the path of following Jesus, even in—especially in—the selection of Scripture texts I choose as my standard for living.

Having arrived so late in life at this paradigm of faith, I have a deeper sense of freedom and joy in Christ, and I have a smidgen of resentment for all those years wasted in the old pattern of reading the Bible to find evidence that I’m right. I’ll never be totally right, except in the act of entrusting my eternal destiny to Christ and moving on to serve him.

That’s how I see it through the flawed glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

---

[1] I believe the Pharisees were totally sincere in their attempts to be faithful; but, their faithfulness had become misdirected toward legalistic and unquestioning obedience to a set of laws, and their manipulation of those laws pointed them away from their intended purpose, which was to describe a relationship with God that resulted in loving treatment of persons. 

Can Love Rise Again?

Easter:

·         Resurrection

·         New Life

·         Hope

Through disputation and deliberation and discernment, the people of God laid their varied, even opposing, understandings on the table and through faithful questioning and honest collaboration successive generations moved closer to the understanding of God reflected in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus then sided with one specific side in the debate, and plotted a redemptive trajectory of healing, restoration, compassion and love based on his way of interpreting Scripture.

But, somewhere around the third and fourth centuries the rabbinic process of faithful questioning and Jesus’ redemptive trajectory were strangled by the Pharisaic practice of unquestioning obedience to their understanding of Scripture, which they saw as frozen in time, for all time. The problem is, given that humans are limited by the clay of which we are made, and given the subsequent human penchant for control and domination, what they would have everyone obey unquestioningly is not always consistent with the way Jesus read Scripture.

Subsequent generations have followed the Pharisees, replacing the Word with our doctrines, thereby splintering the Body of Christ.

All the foregoing is essentially what prompted the founders of my denomination [Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)] to break from their established churches. It was never their intention to form a separate denomination. In fact, at one point in the unfolding of our history, the founders formed “The Springfield Presbytery”, which was intended as a venue for uniting the splintered Body of Christ. When it quickly became evident that the participants were beginning to institutionalize specific doctrines and polities, the founders disbanded what they perceived to be an increasingly sectarian Presbytery and published “The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery” to clarify their non-sectarian position.

The founders would turn over in their graves today if they knew the movement they birthed has now become not a separate denomination, but three separate denominations that don’t get along with each other; indeed, some manifestations of what once was known as the Restoration Movement now demonstrate difficulty getting along with all other Christian bodies; indeed, they contribute significantly to the further splintering of the Body.

If Christians can’t interact with loving collaboration, then I fear for the future. But doctrine has trumped love as a foundation of identity for too many Christian bodies.

Still, a valid concern is how do we thrive without a body of beliefs?

According to Jesus (Matthew 22:36-40) and Paul (Romans 13:9-10), when we love we have fulfilled all the requirements of the law. Love is the face of true faith.

That understanding of faith and Scripture was put to death by an unquestioning obedience to a reading of Scripture that condones violence as a valid way of enforcing “right” doctrines and vengeance as an appropriate response to evil. It was buried by the act of freezing Scripture in time, for all time.

But Easter calls us to resurrection. Can love rise again from the grave of intolerance reinforced by an unloving reading of Scripture?

What if, for one year, a significant number of Christians from across the denominational spectrum all agreed to set aside the creeds and doctrines we have so meticulously categorized and so fervently venerated, and what if we agreed to support and encourage each other in an effort to drape our actions over the framework of love?

In 1896 Charles Sheldon published In His Steps, a novel about a minister who challenged his congregation to preface every act and every response with the question, “What would Jesus do?” As the plot develops it expresses the values and ethical mores of late 19^th century Christianity; but the point it makes is still valid. The lives of those people were changed; and through them their community was changed. Yes, it was fiction; but while it may not have been fact, it bore every characteristic of Truth.

So, what if congregations and individual Christians covenanted together to support and encourage each other to preface every act and every response with the question, “What would Love do?” Instead of obsessing over what some people are “getting away with,” what if we simply took responsibility—and held each other accountable—for our own actions and responses?

What if we take as our only doctrine the way of Christ and his redemptive trajectory of compassion, grace and love of the enemy? Might we discover better Jesus-shaped alternatives to the way we have been pursuing?[1] (And, by the way, how have those alternatives we’ve been pursuing been working out for you?)

It may be easy, and even tempting, to divert attention away from the difficulty implied by this direction. It would be easy to return to those passages in the Bible that justify and even celebrate retaliation and violence—the very passages Jesus rejected. Love is difficult. Love is risky. Love makes us vulnerable, just as it made Jesus vulnerable.

The Pharisees and other religious leaders had adopted those vengeance-oriented texts from the Hebrew Scriptures and had venerated them as the way of liberation from their oppressors (or more likely as the way of wreaking bloody vengeance upon them!) And when Jesus rejected those passages and chose instead the way of Love, his vulnerability was multiplied all the way to the cross.

But the call is to approach the Bible not as passive readers, but as morally engaged and thinking readers. It involves faithfully questioning the Bible, but it equally involves allowing ourselves to be challenged and stretched by it as well. It demonstrates that truth is found in the struggle—that questioning is the mark of a healthy faith, and the reflection of a robust character.[2]

Christ Is Risen! Can his love live again?

That’s how I see it through the flawed glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

---

[1] Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did (San Francisco: Metanoia Press, 2014) Kindle edition, Location 1502.

[2] Ibid., Location 1590.

Trust is the Opposite of Certainty

We have seen that Jesus interpreted Scripture in the rabbinic spirit of faithful questioning motivated by love. We have noted that Jesus’ interpretation of Scripture was in direct contrast to that of the Pharisees and other religious leaders of his time, who read the Scriptures in a spirit of unquestioning obedience and were motivated by an obsession with correct doctrine. The Pharisees were concerned about who was “right” and who was “wrong,” and were determined to enforce their “right” understanding, even if such an effort required violence.

We have said that over the centuries the Church has tended not to follow the pattern of Jesus, but rather to follow the pattern of the Pharisees, striving to maintain orthodoxy and labeling those who disagree as heretics. The result has been a long history of various manifestations of the church enforcing their authority through violence or the threat of violence—all in God’s name.

The struggle to know what is “right” has replaced Grace as the foundation of faith. In far too many cases our trust is more in the correctness of our doctrine than in the Grace of God. Such an application of religious faith establishes an “us vs. them” mentality, which always leans toward an exclusionary witness and far too often is forcefully inflicted.

While the exclusionary witness establishes categories for judging who is acceptable and who is not, Jesus’ witness was to go out among the outcasts and the fringe people—to eat with them, to touch them and through loving inclusion to restore their lives to wholeness. Too often our approach has been to demand that those on the outside become “like us” before they can gain admission and acceptance. Our doctrine becomes "the way, the truth and the life."

We all read Scripture selectively, and justification can indeed be found for both approaches. They stand in direct contradiction within the Holy writ, and we choose one way or the other:

1.       The way the Pharisees chose: unquestioning obedience to what they had determined to be the “right” doctrine (Law), and enforcing that doctrine as the prerequisite of faithfulness—excluding (and sometimes punishing with violence or threat of violence) all who do not conform (including Jesus).

2.      The way Jesus chose: faithful questioning the violence in Scripture and bearing witness to unconditional love (Grace), including all humanity in a divine embrace of reconciliation and restoration. All humanity. And "All" means "All."

Our celebrated First Amendment rights which grant freedom of speech and religion actually came about in direct response to the church’s legacy of persecution and rampant bloodshed committed in the sincere (but sincerely wrong) effort to maintain purity of doctrine. As a result of those Constitutional rights, there are no more burnings at the stake today.

So, what is the greater wrong: not getting the formulation of the Trinity quite right, or slaughtering those who do get it wrong? What is the greater sin: questioning a doctrine or working to destroy people’s careers and livelihoods because they question it?

Equally important as what we profess is how we profess it and how we live what we profess. When we act in any way to harm others in the name of Scripture or faith or morality we demonstrate that we are neither scriptural, moral nor faithful. Jesus said the whole law and the prophetic writings were predicated upon love of God, love of neighbor and love of self (Matthew 22:36-40). And Paul wrote, “Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:10) When we do not act in love, nothing we do is right, and nothing is faithful, not even according to the law.

The simple formula of the New Testament witness is “Grace Trumps Law.” It’s simple; but it’s not easy. It requires that we “let go” of our efforts to justify ourselves through adherence to “right” doctrine, and that we instead “take hold” of the Grace God offers and surrender to the power of that Grace to mold us into the likeness of Jesus. That whole process of “letting go” and “taking hold” is called “Trust.” Trust is the opposite of certainty, and certainty is a first cousin of control.

And we are a culture of control addicts. Maybe we need a 12-Step program to facilitate recovery. “Hello. My name is Jim; and I’m a controlaholic.”

That’s the way I see it through the flawed glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

Only Human?

(Luke 2:7 KJV) And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. 

(Romans 16:25-27 NIV)  Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, ²⁶but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him-- ²⁷to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.

Do you end personal letters with a Doxology? “Give my love to the kids, and all praise and glory be to God, through Jesus Christ, Amen!” That's how Paul ended his letter to the Romans. While it seems perfectly normal for a book of Scripture to end with a doxology, when we remember that before Romans was Holy Scripture, it was a personal letter, it may seem strange.

An ordinary letter:  communication with some friends; expressions of concern for their well-being; some advice and council regarding a mutual concern; some closing remarks and then this doxology.

But it didn’t stay “ordinary.” The people in the church in Rome were anxious to know when Paul would arrive.  This man, reputed throughout the empire, had announced plans to visit Rome; but kept being delayed. They knew he lived under constant threat of death, so every week, when the church gathered, the conversation began, “Has anybody heard from Paul?”  “How’s he doing?”  “When is he coming?” 

Then the letter arrived, and word spread quickly: “There’s a letter from Paul” And on Sunday morning the church was packed. A hush fell over the room as the scroll was opened. Heads nodded sagely at the beautifully-constructed theological passages; knowing smiles were exchanged at the personal references. Then, once again: “I’m coming.  I’ve got to go back to Jerusalem, but then I’m coming to you.”

Copies were made and circulated among other congregations in Italy, and the theological passages began to show up in sermons and teachings and even in the worship litanies; this ordinary letter to some friends.

But, years later, this same letter became a part of sacred scripture. In the hands of God, the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

Take, for example, birth. There’s nothing more ordinary—more common—than birth. I dare say everyone reading this blog has experienced it. Most females will give birth at some point in their lives; and most males will sire offspring.

But, in one sense, birth is always extraordinary. In a dirty shack—beer cans and cigarette butts on the floor, cockroaches rummaging through last night’s leftovers still on the table—birth can be an extraordinary problem: another mouth to feed; another child to shield from an abusive spouse. 

In a suburban apartment complex—rock-and-roll blasting from the stereo by the pool, sports cars in numbered parking places—a birth can be an extraordinary intrusion and inconvenience in a life of carefree self-indulgence.

But under different circumstances—in a secure relationship of love and mutual commitment, as God intended—birth is even more than extraordinary; it becomes almost a sacrament: life is given.

Where there is love and stability—where a baby is wanted and parents are ready—a woman who bears a child becomes, literally, bread of life for that child. Through her broken body, and her shed blood, she gives life, and she and her child are linked in an unbreakable communion as close and as holy as Christ’s own Eucharist.

When birth takes place within the context God intended, the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

Of course, there was never anything ordinary about the birth in the Gospel reading above. For most women the announcement comes from her doctor; and most of them already suspect, anyway.  In the text from Luke, it had been an angel who had broken the news to Mary; and it had come as a complete shock.

And listen to the content of the news from the angel: “He shall be great; and shall be called the Son of the Most High.  And the Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor, David; and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever.” (Luke 1:32-33  KJV) Nothing ordinary about that!

And when he was born, angels sang, and the very stars announced his birth. International kings came and worshipped him.

But all this we know.  What we may overlook, amid all the extraordinary trappings, is that the birth of Jesus was quite an ordinary birth.

What made the birth of Jesus extraordinary was not angelic choirs and brilliant heavenly lights; nor the visit of international royalty. What made it extraordinary was that in the Babe of Bethlehem, God became ordinary. The Word Became Flesh!

We find it extraordinary when a human rises to superhuman accomplishment; but human acts of heroism happen almost daily. If youwant extraordinary, find a rich man who gives it all too the poor—becomes poor, like them—and then stands with them and works to better their life. That’s extraordinary!

If you want extraordinary, find a God who becomes human and stands with humanity in order to save humanity from its own self-destruction. Find a God who becomes human; and in that act redeems humanity to the divine state in which it was originally created.

I grow so weary of hearing people talk about humanity as if were some kind of disease—a disability that burdens us and pulls us down. A running back leads the league in rushing  four years in a row, and then has an “off-year”—plays hurt—and people say, “Well, I guess he’s just human, after all.”

What was he when he was setting records and leading the league? If our human condition is but the dregs in the bottom of the cup; if being human is what we are when we fail and when we’re weak, then what are we when we soar to heights of extraordinary accomplishment?

If the human condition is a handicap, what does that say about Christ, who, “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human form.” (Philippians 2:5-7)

It was as a human that Jesus turned the water into wine, healed the crippled, restored hearing to the deaf, and gave sight to the blind and life to the dead. It was as a human that Jesus gave us the beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer. He called himself, “Son of Man.”

And yet, we call him, “Son of God”. We call him “Emanuel: God with us”. We call him “Savior of the World.”  How is it that an ordinary human takes on such extraordinary identity? And how are we to follow him—to be like him?

First, let us stop referring to humanity as “ordinary.”  To be human is to be created in the Image of God; so, let us accept our true identity and stop using our humanity as an excuse for failure: “What do you expect? I’m only human!” Jesus said to his human disciples, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these…. (John 14:10-15 NIV)  It’s not our humanity that holds us back!

Second, as humans, created in the Image of God, we have an extraordinary capacity that no other creature has: MORAL CHOICE. And it is in the exercise of that capacity of Choice that the ordinary becomes extraordinary—the human takes on the nature of the divine.

It began with his mother. Confronted with the extraordinary news of the impending birth of her son, she had a choice. And here was her response: "I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said." (Luke 1:38 NIV) 

It was the same with Jesus: “And being found in human form, he was obedient unto death, even death on the cross.”  (Philippians 2:8)  It is in the words, “Not my will, but Thine, be done,”—words of extraordinary obedience to the Will of God that ordinary humanity bears the extraordinary marks of divinity.

On this fourth week of Advent, I pray that we become so sensitized to seeing the extraordinary among the ordinary that closing our personal letters with a doxology is just an ordinary occurrence.

That’s how I see it through the flawed glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

Seven Biblical Principles of Unity--#3

The Foundation of Unity: Love

I Corinthians 13:4-7 (RSV) Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; ⁵it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. ⁷Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. ⁸Love never ends.

These four verses often can be found inscribed in lovely calligraphy, framed and hung in homes and offices. “A hymn to love,” it’s called. But the beauty of the language may obscure the practical, compelling force of the words. The setting and context: a conflicted congregation caught up in a distorted spirituality, engaged in intense power struggles… all that may be lost in the admiration of the beautiful poetry.

The biblical preacher’s first task, then, is to anchor the text solidly in its context. Of course, the words are beautiful; but they are not written to rhapsodize love. They were written as a remedy for a church that was quarreling over whose spiritual gifts are more important (the gift of speaking in unknown tongues seems to have risen to the top of the pecking order). They’re boasting about how “spiritual” they are; and these words tell the Corinthian Christians that their fervent religiosity isn’t worth a plugged nickel apart from a new relationship with one another. Apart from love, “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”

The conflicts at Corinth emerge from a loveless spirituality. The remedy is not to further hone the gifts, but to practice—not to theorize or theologize or idealize, but to practice—“a still more excellent way” (12:31).

The spiritual gifts are not unimportant. They are essential to the full manifestation of the Body of Christ; but their end will come. Love, on the other hand, is the supreme quality of God’s reign and therefore “never ends.” As such it participates in and describes the unity that is that “Mystery of God’s Will” (the first biblical principle of unity). Rather than discount the exercise of spiritual gifts, love transforms their practice into a positive endeavor.

If the world’s population would live by this “still more excellent way”, there would be no problems. These four verses describe fifteen qualities of love:

1.      Love is patient, 

2.      and kind.

3.      Love is not jealous,

4.      or boastful;

^5.        it is not arrogant. 

6.      or rude. (NIV says, “It does not dishonor others,” MSG says, “…doesn’t force itself on others”)

7.      Love does not insist on its own way; (NLT says, “…does not demand its own way,” NIV says, “it is not self-seeking,” GNT says, “…it is not selfish,” MSG says, “…isn’t always ‘me first’”)

8.      it is not irritable “NIV says, “…easily angered,”) 

9.      or resentful; (NIV says, “…it keeps no record of wrongs.” MSG says, “…doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,” and the ERV says, “…does not remember wrongs done against it.”)

10.  does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.

11.  Love bears all things, (The variations are very interesting here! NIV says, “…always protects,” NLT says, “…never gives up,” MSG says, “…puts up with anything,” and ERV says, “never gives up on people,”)

12.  believes all things, (NIV says, “…always trusts, NLT says, “…never loses faith,” MSG notes, specifically, “…trusts God always,”)

13.  Hopes all things, (MSG says, “…always looks for the best,”)

14.  endures all things. (NIV says, “…always perseveres.” MSG says, “…never looks back, but keeps going to the end.”

15.  Love never ends.

Whew! Are you exhausted? How can one ever love in the way this passage describes? Had we read the remainder of the chapter we would find a clue in the contrast between the passing, incomplete present and the permanent and fulfilled future. The images are powerful: like the difference between the way a child thinks and the way an adult thinks; like the difference between a distorted view through a flawed pane of glass and a face-to-face meeting.

Things get complicated when we begin with ourselves. But, I remember reading or hearing somewhere that love is best received when you do something for another that is a blessing to him or her "as she or he sees it."

No man ever loved a woman more than Jo Lynn’s dad loved her mom. They met when he was 13 and got a paper route and started delivering papers to her house. From the first moment he saw her, he was a goner. Never was there a more beautiful love story.

He loved to surprise her with romantic gifts—and she loved it (especially when it was cash!) In their later years Joe wanted to take her on a train trip across the country, and he made all the arrangements. He envisioned them holding hands in the club car, watching the Great Plains slide by. He envisioned sunset dinners in the dining car, with the Rocky Mountains majestically saluting as they rode by.

But there was a lump in the gravy. She didn’t like trains. She told him so. She didn’t want to take that trip; but, he wanted it so bad; and he was just sure that once she got aboard and the trip was underway, she’d love it.

The only harsh word I ever heard from either of the about the other, was her resentment about being pressured to go on that train trip. Truly loving someone means that he or she gets to decide what is the "loving way" in which to be treated.

Which is just another way of saying, “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matthew 7:12 KJV).

And that’s the way I see it through the flawed glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim