Wednesday 26 November 2008

With thanksgiving at hand, this will be the final devotion for this work week. More from Cornel West.

Christianity itself comes out of prophetic Judaism. Persecuted early on, Jesus ended up on the cross. This unarmed truth and unconditional love in the face of catastrophic circumstances was seemingly crushed, but the love bounced back. That story is what has attracted black folk - and others.

I remember an African-American Lutheran theologian making the case for being a follower of Jesus in the midst of other religious traditions. After talking about Jesus life and the way he was treated for being who he was and after being executed and humiliated and being buried in a borrowed tomb...he came back. That's right. No leaving to a place where we might eventually enter. He came back - "love bounced back." We confess that our God is forever present among us. Love is not something we do in order to make it "up" to the presence of God. Love is the life that is full of God among us. So full, it still cannot be tolerated in a world that would rather keep divisions and prejudice and bigotry and injustice in place among us. Truthfulness may be something we talk about...but it is a road that is often closed for fear that things may change. And yet, truthfulness and love still abides and will abide and will find its way out into the open even when the gates of hell try to be reconstructed again and again. For this love and this truthfulness will always tear down those gates and make God's people free...free indeed.

Connection: Bounce back again...go for it.

Come, Spirit of Life. Come and remind us of this way that is so often pushed to the back of our minds and hearts so that we forget the truth and the life and way. For as you way is made known among us, the light will attract all who long for new life and a deep reservoir of hopefulness. Amen.

Tuesday 25 November 2008

We continue with Cornel West.

Behold, that first century Palestinian Jew was born in a funky manger. He had some funky working-class parents sometimes dealing with unemployment and underemployment. He walked on some funky and dusty roads, didn't he? He brought together 12 funky folk.... He picked them right from around where he came from. It's so easy to forget the funk in Jesus' life because our church can become so easily deodorized. The funky gospel of funky Jesus can become so Americanized that it is reduced to marketplace spirituality, prosperity gospel, and Chamber of Commerce religion. No! We want to keep focused on the funk of Jesus, especially that funky blood on that funky cross.
If you don't find joy in serving others, if you don't understand the joy in loving people, then come back to the cross. Get down in that funky blood and understand what it means to be at that funky tomb that was empty when that prostitute Mary Magdalene showed up and had a message for the world. You can't be committed to that funky gospel if you're not willing to pay a price. You need to be willing to bear a burden. You need to cut against the grain.

I readily return to this turn of phrase: Jesus didn't die for us...Jesus dies before us. We are invited into a way. A way that is already blessed...a way that Jesus walked and then when it was rejected, beat up, brutalized, and hung out to dry on the cross...God said, "Yes!" This funky gospel has already made a place for us. It is a place that has been and will be judged as blessed - no matter how funky it looks or feels. I often use these words from the group Osibisa about the road we will travel as followers of Jesus (even though I know they are not singing about "church"): It will be long I know, and the road will be muddy and long, but we'll get there, heaven knows how we will get there, we know we will. The "there" is here already -and the fullness of someday- so we can cut against the grain and turn upside down to view things with a new lens for life.

Connection: This journey of following Jesus is all about life...our life together...all the way.

It is as we remember the cross and how funky this world can be that we begin to hear and seen and smeall and tough and feel that you are present eternally to be our God, our Savior, our Companion, our way in and through all time. We give you thanks. Amen.

Monday 24 November 2008

We continue with the piece from Friday from "Hope on a Tightrope" by Cornel West.

Behold, that first century Palestinian Jew was born in a funky manger. He had some funky working-class parents sometimes dealing with unemployment and underemployment. He walked on some funky and dusty roads, didn't he? He brought together 12 funky folk.... He picked them right from around where he came from. It's so easy to forget the funk in Jesus' life because our church can become so easily deodorized.
The funky gospel of funky Jesus can become so Americanized that it is reduced to marketplace spirituality, prosperity gospel, and Chamber of Commerce religion. No! We want to keep focused on the funk of Jesus, especially that funky blood on that funky cross.

So...part of this deodorizing has to do with sell-ability. What can the marketplace sustain...what will it permit...what can get by and connect with the consumer!?! If there is no money to be made or no immediate or self-gratifying pay-back for the consumer, we often look elsewhere. And yet, it is not the task of the followers of Jesus to market a message or a product. We are invited to point to the "funk of Jesus." The "funky blood on that funky cross" show how far our God goes to show the worth of humankind. By that, I would suggest God points us to a way of life that has great worth. The way - which may appear funky at times - stops at nothing to let itself be known. The blood and the cross demonstrate the distance we go as people made in the image of God for that is how far God goes with us. That is a dramatic move. The Gospel never pulls us away from the cross to some 'adventure in prosperity." The Gospel will pull us into the way of the cross so that the well-being of all the funky people -like me- will have room to dwell in the house of the Lord.

Connection: Don't worry about what will sell...consider what will bring people life in the midst of a whole community of others. Then, there will be peace in the land.

By the blood of your Beloved, O God, you lift us up and brush us off and make us your own and remind us that such a way of life is the Reign of God making itself known and present among us. Thanks be to you, O God. Amen.

Friday 21 November 2008

Here's a piece from Cornel West I offered as part of the devotion at church council last week. I will bring it here in three pieces that will run into next week.

Behold, that first century Palestinian Jew was born in a funky manger. He had some funky working-class parents sometimes dealing with unemployment and underemployment. He walked on some funky and dusty roads, didn't he? He brought together 12 funky folk.... He picked them right from around where he came from. It's so easy to forget the funk in Jesus' life because our church can become so easily deodorized.

I was going to put the whole reading here today but for some reason I was really struck by the comment that "our church can become so easily deodorized." It can. It does. I think our Lutheran theology tries hard to keep out the deodorizer. The Good News as grace unbounded, (as Robert Farrar Capon calls it- radical grace) really says that the whole community and that which is beyond it may be funky but it is one, big, household - an alien nation in which no one needs to find a way to fit in. Unfortunately as we all know, there are many ways we make sure that the funky-ness a of some is enough to keep them out. That happens when we do not listen to the profound and eternal word of God claiming us and never leaving our side - even if means God is crucified and left for dead. Remember, deodorant only lasts for awhile and when the day at hand demands that we be the image of God's love in the world, we are invited to act and love no matter how funky we may be or how funky those around us may appear.

Connection: We all spray too much deodorant around...we all want our folk to be like us. What would happen if we shared space and time unconditionally. That might be the Good News - alive.

You, O God, abide with us in all things. With you so close it is amazing that we try to push you so far away. Help us to see how you abide within that we have called the funky world around us. Amen.

Thursday 20 November 2008

Today I pushing on into a new book by Cornel West. Most everything I read of his is full and rich and evocative. In "Hope on a Tightrope," he offers bits of wisdom in many areas of life. We first will be wandering through he reflections on "Faith."

I stand fundamentally on the profoundly Christian notion that we are each made equal in the eyes of God. a single mom on welfare has the same status as a corporate CEO and they both have the same right to human flourishing regardless of race, regardless of religion, nation, or gender. It is a deep, spiritually based notion of equality.

This deep, spiritually based notion of equality is not merely something floating in the air. As Christians we find it based in the story or Jesus which we call the story of God in the flesh. Our status rests on the fact that God is with us and will never be outside of the room. And as long as our God is among us demonstrating what it is to live together in a love that will not let any of us go, then no one in the room is pushed to the back or pushed out. In fact, the depth of this love enables us to leave the room and be that love incarnate in the world. That sense of love cannot get any more deep than that...and it makes all people into recipients of the life that comes in the middle of such a rock-solid base to our lives. When we are beloved of God and as we see beyond ourselves to others and see others as beloved, we each exist in a realm of possibility that will bring about a fundamental shift in our communities and our world. As was noted when we were reading Stanley Hauerwas - we teach the world how to be the world. Among us, the world is not to be broken - it is to be a part of the healing of all things for we honor the other who is also beloved - even though they are nothing like us in other areas of our lives. When we honor...we protect...we support...we act and live on behalf of those who are our brothers and sisters in the eyes of God.

Connection: Quite a day is laid out before us...and to think we are invited to be walk around as ones beloved as we meet and greet the world around us.

Within your eyes, O God, each of us shine with your image. When we turn to see others, help us to see that shining image in all who join us in the adventure for life that will be in this day. Amen.

Wednesday 19 November 2008

This is a good way to leave Stanley Hauerwas' work for awhile - enjoy.

The church therefore is a polity like any other, but it is also unlike any other insofar as it is formed by a people who have no reason to fear the truth. They are able to exist in the world without resorting to coercion to maintain their presence. That they are such depends to a large extent on their willingness to move - they must be "a moveable feast." For it is certain that much of the world is bound to hate them for calling attention to what the world is. They cannot and should not wish to provoke the world's violence, but if it comes they must resist even if that resistance means the necessity of leaving one place for another. For as Christians we are at home in no nation. Our true home is the church itself, where we find those who, like us, have been formed by a savior who was necessarily always on the move.

When we, as the church, have no reason to fear the truth, we become an image given in the Quaker hymn "simple gifts." It goes like this: "When true simplicity is found - to bow and to bend we shall not be afraid - to turn, turn, will be our delight - til by turning, turning - we come down right." This hymn calls for quite a bit of movement. But it is the movement of clarification and communication and discernment so that the way of God's Reign will be the way in which we walk. It is a constant task and a constant gift. Some of that bowing and bending is done in order to create a new order. Some of it is done to listen more closely to the voices of others. Some of that bowing and bending is to give us space and time to welcome what is not a part of our own way. At that point, we are not people who are in allegiance to any power. Rather, we listen to find a place in which we can put life to the life of the one we follow within a world that has a history of not wanting to give a place to such a contrary life and voice.

Connection: Bow and bend and turn and let's see where we come down today.

Gentle and Persistent Lord, you bring us together under the blessed Reign of your grace. It is here that we are free to lift up our voices and begin to engage our world and one another. Within that grace, we become open to differences and expect to be surprised by the joy that comes when people once separated are finding that we are really quite bound to one another. We give you thanks. Amen.

Tuesday 18 November 2008

Let me start with the concluding part of yesterday's piece from Hauerwas and then....push on.

Christians are engaged in politics, but it is politics of the kingdom that reveals the insufficiency of all politics based on coercion and falsehood and finds the true source of power in servanthood rather than dominion.
This is not to imply that the church is any less a human community than other forms of association. Just as in other institutions, the church draws on and requires patterns of authority that derive from human needs for status, belonging, and direction. The question is not whether the church is a natural institution, as it surely is, but how it shapes that "nature" in accordance with its fundamental convictions. "Nature" provides the context for community but does not determine its character.

So like other communities, we will see that the church muddles around in that which is a part of the nature of every community. It is within that universal context that we bring the story that shapes us - the story that provides us with a character that begins to work with what we have by nature. That can be a revolutionary journey. Whenever the vision of the peaceable Reign is brought into the ways of any institution, it carries with it the danger of being utterly rejected in favor of those elements of human community that can so easily become that which feeds our egos and has the potential to tear apart the fabric of our institutions. This vision also carries with it the possibility of something new coming into being. That newness will be something distinguished from everyday business and goals that do not consider and act upon the life of God's Reign of which we are entrusted.

Connection: I had a friend who would always say that when two people get together politics is involved. That conversation was after I said I hate the politics in the church. Well, when we come together, there are always differences and that can be a blessing or a curse. It really depends on our character. It doesn't eliminate the politics - even in the church.

Lord of All Life, we long to carry into this day the imprint of your loving character on our lives. Too often we let it go for other things that grab us and influence us and give us what we think we want. We need the reminding presence of your Spirit to keep us within the vision of your Reign. Amen.