Risk in the Church

A church which pitches its tents without constantly looking out for new horizons, which does not continually strike camp, is being untrue to its calling…[We must] play down our longing for certainty, accept what is risky, and live by improvisation and experiment.

                                                                -Hans Küng – The Church

Preaching and Living

(A congregation) will give you leave to preach against their sins, and to talk as much as you will for godliness in the pulpit, if you will but let them alone afterwards, and be friendly and merry with them when you have done, and talk as they do, and live as they and be indifferent with them in your conversation.  For they take the pulpit to be but a stage; a place where preachers must show themselves, and play their parts; where you have liberty for an hour to say what you list; and what you say they regard not, if you show them not, by saying it personally to their faces, that you were in good earnest, and did indeed mean them.

                                                -Richard Baxter, Puritan Preacher, 1615-1691

Speed

Spiritual growth does not happen by running faster.  What keeps many of us from growing is not sin but speed. We are going as fast as we can, living life at a dizzying speed, and God is nowhere to be found. We're not rejecting God: we just don't have time for him. We've lost him in the blurred landscape as we rush to church. We don't struggle with the Bible, but the clock. It's not that we're too decadent; we're too busy. We don't feel guilty because of sin, but because we have no time for our spouses, our children, or our God. It's not sinning too much that's killing our souls; it's our schedule that's annihilating us. Most of us don't come home at night staggering drunk. Instead, we come home staggering tired, worn out, exhausted, and drained because we live too fast.

If we want to stay on the road of faith, we have to hit the brakes, pull
over to a rest area, and stop. Christianity is not about inviting Jesus to
speed through life with us; it's about noticing Jesus sitting at the rest
stop.

                                                                     -Michael Yaconelli, Messy Spirituality

Messy

Some quotes from the book:

People who are desperate for spirituality very seldom worry about the mess they make on their way to be with Jesus.
Messy Spirituality is the scandalous assertion that following Christ is anything but tidy and neat, balanced and orderly. Far from it. Spirituality is complex, complicated, and perplexing—the disorderly, sloppy, chaotic look of authentic faith in the real world.

Life with Jesus is meant to be lived, not smothered, dissected, inspected, or condemned.

Followers of Christ are odd. Oddness is important because it is the quality that adds color, texture, variety, beauty to the human condition. Christ doesn't make us the same. What he does is affirm our differentness. Oddness is important because the most dangerous world in Western culture is sameness. Sameness is a virus that infects members of industrialized nations and causes an allergic reaction to anyone who is different. This virus affects the decision-making part of our brains, resulting in an obsession with making the identical choices everyone else is making.

Sameness is a disease with disastrous consequences.---differences are ignored, uniqueness is not listened to, our gifts are cancelled out. Life, passion, and joy are snuffed out. Sameness is the result of sin and does much more than infect us with lust and greed; it flattens the human race, franchises us, attempts to make us all homogenous. Sameness is the cemetery where our distinctiveness is buried. In a sea of sameness, no one has an identity. But Christians do have an identity. We're aliens! We are the odd ones, the strange ones, the misfits, the outsiders, the incompatibles. Oddness is a gift from God and sits dormant until God's Spirit gives it life and shape.

Spiritual growth is more than a procedure; it's a wild search for God in the tangled jungle of our souls, a search which involves a volatile mix of messy reality, wild freedom, frustrating stuckness, in creasing slowness, and a healthy dose of gratitude.

                                                                                 -Michael Yaconelli

Holes

“Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me?”

This is what Jesus said in Mark 14. He knew what was going to happen: in fact he had just explained it several times to his disciples both during supper and later in the garden of Gethsemane. He knew the disciples would all desert him: he had just been arguing that point with the Peter, who angrily thought he would be better than that. So the question is: why did Jesus ask this question? Surely he was not looking for an answer. In addition, he knew that in asking it, it would not change the course of events: he would still be captured, tried unfairly, and tortured to death by crucifixion.

One reason I think that Jesus asked this question was simply his emotional response to the situation. The injustice, the absurdity, the irony. As if he was overthrowing a government, or he was a master criminal. After all of his efforts put in to teaching these very people. After all the miracles, all of the work, all of the sacrifice, was this the result? A night time secret arrest by a bunch of thugs? Surely Jesus must have been upset at this, even if he knew it was to happen. Sad, lonely, even confused if that could be possible. No wonder he asked this question: is this really what is happening? Are you really going through with this? Et tu Brutus?

Are we who follow Christ to expect no confusion, no being forsaken, no betrayal in walking the pathway He walked? Do we expect no existential crisis when the world in its insecurity and vanity turns its back on us? No, more than turns its back on us: actually seeks us out to capture us, as if we were a danger and not a help. A threat and not a hope. A bringer of chaos and not what we are in reality: the hands and feet of Christ in the world. Remember that His hands and feet have holes in them. If we are his hands and feet, are we not to have gaping holes?

We will run away. We are more like Peter than like Christ. The crisis is too much, and we like all of the disciples bend under the pressure. But the life of Christ depends on Christ, is fulfilled by Christ, and is sustained by Christ. With Christ, the laws of mathematics are put aside and 1-1=1. When we fall, he does not. When the rooster crows, we cry; but even then Jesus is not finished with us. It is then he dies for us. It is then that his body sustains and His blood washes.

We have our questions, just as did Jesus. Like the holes in Jesus hands, there are pieces missing, things we cannot explain. Even moral and religious matters that gnaw at us and weaken us, draining out our life strength. But Christ is with us. He is our strength. Let us serve Him with all of our selves, holes and all. Be like unto Christ and wear those holes without shame.

A Ship. An Ocean

An ocean.  I couldn’t believe it.  All my life I had grown up believing and trusting in a safe, beautiful place.  That place?  Our boat.  Our family boat:  the USS Christian.  I knew its masts, sails, its nooks and crannies.  With my brothers and sisters I had explored it through and through, read in the library, hassled the cook for an extra pastry.  I had been entranced by the night-time stories from the Captain. 

But here I was, for the first time looking out at the vastness of the ocean.  I had read of the ocean, learned of it, memorized its dangers.  But never before had I understood the depth of the ocean, in juxtaposition to our little, restricted boat.  Why had I not been told that really our little boat was a poor representation of the reality of the world around us?  Who did we think we were after all, floating about, ignoring the reality of the waves?

idiot box is now 2D

"Through technology the whole world has now become the media's parish, talk-show hosts the prophets, actors and musicians the priests, and any script will do for the Scriptures as long as moral constraints are removed. Sitting before a well-lit box is all the cultic performance needs, and each person can enthrone his or her own self as divine. Truth has been relegated to subjectivity; beauty has been subjegated to the beholder; and as millions are idiotized night after night, a global commune has been constructed with the arts enjoying a totalitarian rule."
-Ravi Zacharias

I guess I am not so negative as all of that. But certainly we have substituted something for what was formerly energy "devoted" to "devotion." Growing up I recall being "hushed" in church out of respect for God. Now we have noise after noise, though interestingly no kid noises in church, which were always there before despite all the "hush"ing. Our churches are trying to reach us, over-stimulated i-pod wearing moderns.