Wednesday, September 8, 2004
Wednesday, 8 September, 2004
This week's devotions are written by Vicar Steve Bond.
More from Hauerwas’ “Only Theology Overcomes Ethics”…
To know what it means to be human comes from being made part of the church. In other words, we do not know in general what it means to be human and then discover that being a Christian is but a further specification of that more general way of being. Rather what it means to be human in general is an abstraction from the humanity God has made possible in Christ.
Being a follower of Jesus is not about withdrawing from the world or heaping up special divine merit badges, nor are disciples called to be superhuman. In the end, following Jesus is just about being human, but being fully and truly human at that. Or, as one Christian songwriter puts it, it is a “new way to be human.” Freed from the worries of being good enough or belonging, we are also freed from the things that lead us to treat each other inhumanely. And we are freed for life together in a new community.
Connection: In this day, we can face the world honestly and without pretense. We don’t pretend to be perfect or to have life all figured out; instead, we can freely be what we are—people trying to learn how to be truly human, and partakers of the new humanity made possible by Jesus.
Gracious God, today let us be the people you have made us and claimed us to be. Show us that the chains of all the things which hold us back from love are broken already, and so free us to be present to each other.
Ephesians 2:15—[Christ] has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace.
Monday, September 6, 2004
Monday - 7 September, 2004
This week's Devotions are written by Vicar Steve Bond.
More from Hauerwas’ “Only Theology Overcomes Ethics”, in which the author dialogues with Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson…
A Christian, according to Jenson, is someone whose nation and polity is the church, so the “baptized person must be the only available paradigm of human personhood.”
Before any other entity can claim or label us—as Democrat, Republican, American, old, young, rich, middle class, poor, blue- or white-collar—we are claimed by God and made part of the community of believers, a body that crosses all other barriers. That also means that all other allegiances are subordinated to the our faithfulness to the God who is supremely faithful to us, and that all other hopes offered to us pale in comparison to the hope offered us by God.
Connection: In a time and situation where many forces want to label us (as blue or red states, for example), we can face this day knowing that God has first laid claim to us and that other labels do not have power over us. And what’s more, we are freed and empowered to risk loving, to risk vulnerability, because we are always claimed by God and belong permanently to God’s family.
Gracious God, help us to trust you promise that we belong. And trusting, let us live this day witnessing to your sure promise in action and speech
1 Peter 2:9-10—“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
More from Hauerwas’ “Only Theology Overcomes Ethics”, in which the author dialogues with Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson…
A Christian, according to Jenson, is someone whose nation and polity is the church, so the “baptized person must be the only available paradigm of human personhood.”
Before any other entity can claim or label us—as Democrat, Republican, American, old, young, rich, middle class, poor, blue- or white-collar—we are claimed by God and made part of the community of believers, a body that crosses all other barriers. That also means that all other allegiances are subordinated to the our faithfulness to the God who is supremely faithful to us, and that all other hopes offered to us pale in comparison to the hope offered us by God.
Connection: In a time and situation where many forces want to label us (as blue or red states, for example), we can face this day knowing that God has first laid claim to us and that other labels do not have power over us. And what’s more, we are freed and empowered to risk loving, to risk vulnerability, because we are always claimed by God and belong permanently to God’s family.
Gracious God, help us to trust you promise that we belong. And trusting, let us live this day witnessing to your sure promise in action and speech
1 Peter 2:9-10—“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
Friday, September 3, 2004
Friday - 3 September, 2004
This week's Devotions are written by Vicar Steve Bond.
More from Hauerwas’ “Only Theology Overcomes Ethics”…
All are created to live by God’s good commands. Yet God has called the church to participate in his life, so that our justification is “a mode of deification.” We share with God a history through which we become acquainted.
Our identity as the church, as the people of God, is never a claim of sole possession of the Truth. Yet even though we do not possess exhaustive truth, we do lay claim to true truth. Or better still, the Truth has truly claimed us. And so as we witness t to the world, live in the midst of the world, and share God’s love for the world, we live out God’s purposes for us and have fellowship with God. Lutherans tend to be suspicious of deification talk—that we somehow take on divinity—and perhaps with good reason. But we can faithfully say that, as the body of Christ, we are graciously drawn into the very life of God and into the story of God and humanity, and we are made to be the hands and feed of Christ for the world.
Connection: The God who has claimed us doesn’t just label us as “saved” and then leave us where we are. God’s claim on us invites us, draws us, into the very life of God. That means that nothing in the course of this day is mundane or merely routine—everything is an opportunity to live out God’s gracious will for us and to delve deeper into relationship with God.
Lord, breathe new purpose and life into us this day, even as you have first breathed your Spirit into us.
Romans 8:15-16—“For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”
Thursday, September 2, 2004
Friday - 3 September, 2004
This week's Devotions are written by Vicar Steve Bond.
More from Hauerwas’ “Only Theology Overcomes Ethics”…
All are created to live by God’s good commands. Yet God has called the church to participate in his life, so that our justification is “a mode of deification.” We share with God a history through which we become acquainted.
Our identity as the church, as the people of God, is never a claim of sole possession of the Truth. Yet even though we do not possess exhaustive truth, we do lay claim to true truth. Or better still, the Truth has truly claimed us. And so as we witness t to the world, live in the midst of the world, and share God’s love for the world, we live out God’s purposes for us and have fellowship with God. Lutherans tend to be suspicious of deification talk—that we somehow take on divinity—and perhaps with good reason. But we can faithfully say that, as the body of Christ, we are graciously drawn into the very life of God and into the story of God and humanity, and we are made to be the hands and feed of Christ for the world.
Connection: The God who has claimed us doesn’t just label us as “saved” and then leave us where we are. God’s claim on us invites us, draws us, into the very life of God. That means that nothing in the course of this day is mundane or merely routine—everything is an opportunity to live out God’s gracious will for us and to delve deeper into relationship with God.
Lord, breathe new purpose and life into us this day, even as you have first breathed your Spirit into us.
Romans 8:15-16—“For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”
More from Hauerwas’ “Only Theology Overcomes Ethics”…
All are created to live by God’s good commands. Yet God has called the church to participate in his life, so that our justification is “a mode of deification.” We share with God a history through which we become acquainted.
Our identity as the church, as the people of God, is never a claim of sole possession of the Truth. Yet even though we do not possess exhaustive truth, we do lay claim to true truth. Or better still, the Truth has truly claimed us. And so as we witness t to the world, live in the midst of the world, and share God’s love for the world, we live out God’s purposes for us and have fellowship with God. Lutherans tend to be suspicious of deification talk—that we somehow take on divinity—and perhaps with good reason. But we can faithfully say that, as the body of Christ, we are graciously drawn into the very life of God and into the story of God and humanity, and we are made to be the hands and feed of Christ for the world.
Connection: The God who has claimed us doesn’t just label us as “saved” and then leave us where we are. God’s claim on us invites us, draws us, into the very life of God. That means that nothing in the course of this day is mundane or merely routine—everything is an opportunity to live out God’s gracious will for us and to delve deeper into relationship with God.
Lord, breathe new purpose and life into us this day, even as you have first breathed your Spirit into us.
Romans 8:15-16—“For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”
Friday - 3 September, 2004
This week's Devotions are written by Vicar Steve Bond.
More from Hauerwas’ “Only Theology Overcomes Ethics”…
All are created to live by God’s good commands. Yet God has called the church to participate in his life, so that our justification is “a mode of deification.” We share with God a history through which we become acquainted.
Our identity as the church, as the people of God, is never a claim of sole possession of the Truth. Yet even though we do not possess exhaustive truth, we do lay claim to true truth. Or better still, the Truth has truly claimed us. And so as we witness t to the world, live in the midst of the world, and share God’s love for the world, we live out God’s purposes for us and have fellowship with God. Lutherans tend to be suspicious of deification talk—that we somehow take on divinity—and perhaps with good reason. But we can faithfully say that, as the body of Christ, we are graciously drawn into the very life of God and into the story of God and humanity, and we are made to be the hands and feed of Christ for the world.
Connection: The God who has claimed us doesn’t just label us as “saved” and then leave us where we are. God’s claim on us invites us, draws us, into the very life of God. That means that nothing in the course of this day is mundane or merely routine—everything is an opportunity to live out God’s gracious will for us and to delve deeper into relationship with God.
Lord, breathe new purpose and life into us this day, even as you have first breathed your Spirit into us.
Romans 8:15-16—“For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”
More from Hauerwas’ “Only Theology Overcomes Ethics”…
All are created to live by God’s good commands. Yet God has called the church to participate in his life, so that our justification is “a mode of deification.” We share with God a history through which we become acquainted.
Our identity as the church, as the people of God, is never a claim of sole possession of the Truth. Yet even though we do not possess exhaustive truth, we do lay claim to true truth. Or better still, the Truth has truly claimed us. And so as we witness t to the world, live in the midst of the world, and share God’s love for the world, we live out God’s purposes for us and have fellowship with God. Lutherans tend to be suspicious of deification talk—that we somehow take on divinity—and perhaps with good reason. But we can faithfully say that, as the body of Christ, we are graciously drawn into the very life of God and into the story of God and humanity, and we are made to be the hands and feed of Christ for the world.
Connection: The God who has claimed us doesn’t just label us as “saved” and then leave us where we are. God’s claim on us invites us, draws us, into the very life of God. That means that nothing in the course of this day is mundane or merely routine—everything is an opportunity to live out God’s gracious will for us and to delve deeper into relationship with God.
Lord, breathe new purpose and life into us this day, even as you have first breathed your Spirit into us.
Romans 8:15-16—“For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”
Thursday, 2 September, 2004
This week's Devotions are written by Vicar Steve Bond
More from Hauerwas’ “Only Theology Overcomes Ethics”…
The God of Israel and Jesus, the God we find in Scripture, is a storied God. That we learn of God, or more exactly, that we learn who God is through narrative is not accidental but rather indicative of God’s nature.
It is not any old god who has claimed us—it is the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God of Miriam and Moses, the God whom Jesus addressed as Abba—“Papa.” So often, our culture offers us only a generic and abstract deity—a god so transcendent as to be uninterested or unwilling to interact with the world and yet so domesticated that we can hem the divinity into abstract principles of our own design (we assume that our conceptions of justice, truth, and goodness must be God’s). What grace it is to know that the God who has claimed us meets us in our particular stories and draws us into a story bigger than any of us, a story centered on a rough cross in 1st-century Palestine.
Connection: God loves us and knows us even in the details of who we are—God doesn’t just love the idea of us or the people we might become. Moreover, we are invited into relationship with a God who has a story, not just to follow a list of abstract principles. In this day, we can have communion with such a real, storied God.
Abba, take us—take all of us, in every detail, to be your own. Draw us into the mystery of knowing you more deeply this day, and free us to be open enough to know and be known by others.
1 Corinthians 15:3-4—“For I handed onto you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures…”
Wednesday, September 1, 2004
Wednesday, 1 September, 2004
This week's devotions are written by Vicar Steve Bond.
First, a word of introduction about what we’ll be using for devotions. The next week and a half or so worth of material will come from an essay by a Methodist theologian and ethicist named Stanley Hauerwas entitled, “Only Theology Overcomes Ethics,” in which he dialogues with Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson. That may sound like a lot of people’s thoughts packed into one day’s devotions, but it’s got a lot of good stuff, too. Let’s give it a whirl, anyway…
“Theology is thinking what to say to be saying the gospel….” Theology is therefore the ongoing activity of the church to explore the prescriptive grammar required by the presumption that to be known and to know the one God of all requires that the God Christians worship is the decisive fact about all things.”
That’s a mouthful! The point, however, is profoundly simple: God matters. And theology, rather than being solely the task of trained professionals, not to be attempted at home, is the call to all believers to work out in life how it is that God matters. What’s more, the character of the God we know if Jesus Christ re-orients all of how we live, speak, and act. Because we know God’s goodness and mercy in Jesus, and most clearly in his cross and resurrection, we are not bound by fears of being worthy enough to earn God’s favor or worries that God is uninterested in us, nor are we constrained by other people’s judgments about us. God’s claim on us is truer, God’s grace more real, and God’s love for us is fiercer than any other claims the world makes on us.
Connection: The claim that God matters at least means that before my own brokenness or other people’s assertions define me, Jesus has already re-defined me as his own. What would it look like if I lived this day in the freedom of knowing that God’s claims on me truly matter?
Gracious God, you have claimed us as your own before we knew you, and your love holds onto us through each day. Open our eyes this day to live in the freedom of knowing that before all else, you have made us your own daughters and sons. We ask it in the name of your Son, Jesus.
Romans 14:8—“If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”
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