Xenophobia

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each [one's] life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.   Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

He (God) defends the cause of the fatherless and widow and loves the foreigner, giving him food and clothing. You are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.  Deuteronomy 10:17,19

xe·no·pho·bia noun \ˌze-nə-ˈfō-bē-ə, ˌ: fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign - from Merriam online dictionary

The following was written in response to an email circular, replicated below my response...

Dear Cathy:

Regrettably the letter you have circulated adds the growing xenophobia we have here in Canada towards new immigrants and refugees.

Canada's history of welcoming immigrants is a checkered one at best. Just ask the Japanese and Chinese who were imprisoned during the war, the immigrants from Eastern Europe who were forced to hard labour before they could bring their wives and children here.

Our first Native people, allowed the first Christian immigrants their religious freedom. They didn't seek to impose on the first white settlers their customs or traditions.
And in return we took their land, bludgeoned their people, traditions and culture, and then stuck the ones we didn't kill in reservations. And then we proceeded to forcibly make them like us by separating their children from their parents to attend residential schools, where many were sexually and physically abused.
We white anglo folk were proving to be mean nasty hosts of the land we had taken from the Native people.

And so we adopted 'multiculturalism', a flawed but nonetheless civil attempt to embrace people from different races and ethnicities, without forcing them as we had the Native people, to abdicate their culture. It's not perfect, but it's better than how our French and English forefathers had welcomed people from Eastern Europe, China and Japan.
But even now in welcoming immigrants, we don't recognize their academic credentials prior to their coming here. Few we'll accept if they're poor. Many refugees we turn away, sending them back to countries where they face imprisonment or death. The struggles they face in coming here may not seem as harsh as endured by those who came 80 to 100 years ago, but they are harsh. Just talk to a taxi driver in Halifax or Toronto - the one who obtained his doctorate in Zimbabwe, or Taiwan - whose only work option coming here is to drive a taxi 60-70 hours a week in a city he doesn't know. He didn't come to undermine our freedoms, nor our way of life - he came because he wasn't safe to fulfil his life's ambitions living where he lived.

I would encourage you, if you haven't already, to attend a swearing in ceremony for immigrants choosing to become Canadian citizens. It is one of the most moving events to ever be a part of. There you'll hear the Canadian anthem sung in a myriad of accents, by people in a myriad of dress, singing the anthem with a heart and depth of conviction you'll rarely hear among those 'native' to Canada. Their feel for freedom, not yet tainted by the affluence and apathy which dulls our taste for freedom, is inspirational.
These we should be welcoming, not condemning.

This does not preclude our society's right to not adopt certain practices that some immigrants may be more accustomed to, sharia law for instance. We are a democracy which embraces new Canadians as fellow citizens with the same right to influence our country's future as we old Canadians have.

We can't blame on immigrants and refugees the growing prevalence of various institutions i.e. government, public school boards, multi-national corporations etc to abandon Judeo-Christian traditions.
The blame lies elsewhere. It can be laid at the feet of those who abused the Judeo-Christian tradition to oppress and marginalize those not of that tradition. It was also used to keep women in the kitchen, blacks on plantations and gays in the closet.
We have a long and ungodly history of twisting the words of God into traditions which bully people outside the norm.  Instead of our rightly putting into practice the love God has for the stranger, we soiled the image and holiness of the One our traditions were meant to reflect and honour. Had we as Christians recognized the wrong we'd done to the peoples not like us, perhaps God wouldn't have needed the ACLU and other agencies to take issue with the wrong we'd done. Conjecture I know, (for who of us can claim to know how God works), but maybe not far from what's transpired.

Every immigrant and refugee I know wishes me 'in season' Merry Christmas and I in response wish them 'in season' Happy Chanukha, blessed Eed or whatever. And we all gain as a result. Strangers become neighbours and in that backdrop and richness of cultures, the essentials of loving God and loving one's neighbour emerge. If we as Christians are taking the lead in that, then the truth of the gospel rings true for all people of peace and goodwill.

Immigrants and refugees are our future. But for them Canada's population would be shrinking and our capacity as a people to fulfill our pension, health and other social obligations to our fellow Canadians won't be met. So welcome the stranger, not only because the gospel commands it, but because it's good economic sense.

John Deacon

Fundamentalists and the inerrancy of scripture

Fundamentalism works until you realize there is someone else in the room; someone who believes differently, thinks differently, who thinks that what they believe is as inerrant as what you believe.
If the two of you are to survive, love will have to prevail. And whether the rationale for that love is based on the other’s faith or yours; love must prevail. Otherwise you'll kill each other and God gets no glory in that. He who hates another does not know God.
Some of us believe in the inerrancy of scripture, that scripture is the real test of whether something’s true or not. But if that were true there would have been no reason for Jesus to resist the devil in the wilderness. After all, the devil was quoting scripture. He quoted more bible verses than Jesus did.
So if inerrancy exists, it must be in something other than just the words. Interpretation matters, but application even more. And that’s the rub, because even two fundamentalists can’t agree on interpretation, let alone how to live it out.
‘The commandments … are summed up in this one rule: “love your neighbour as yourself.” Love does no harm to its neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfilment of the law.’ Romans 13:9,10. Paraphrasing 1 John 3:18,19 ‘we know that we belong to the truth when we love not just with words but with actions.’
The poignancy and truthfulness of what fundamentalists believe have little to do with how many verses they can quote. It has to do with whether they love.
For a day will come when the fundamentalist is in the same room as his enemy. If he loves his enemy, as Christ loved his enemies, then fundamentalist or not, he’s got the application right, and that is all that really matters.
I am biting my tongue as I write this, keenly aware of my predisposition to debate with fundamentalists over anything from eschatology to gay rights, but I’ll say nothing more lest the next room I’m in is with a fundamentalist, who God puts there to test what I really believe!

Thoughts on gay marriage

The following is a paper I submitted to the Lead Pastor, Ken Davis and the Governance Team of our church (TOB - The Olive Branch Community Church) in the spring of 2007.
The church wanted to implement a 'Standard Marriage Policy' limiting the church's recognition of married couples to persons of the opposite sex.

There are four reasons why I am opposed to our implementing this policy – none of which have to do with my own personal beliefs about gay marriage.  I agree with the fundamental premise that marriage is God’s business and biblically speaking, He is quite specific to its involving two persons of the opposite sex. Gay marriage, like infant baptism, has no evident scriptural foundation.
So I am entirely in line with TOB’s right to not marry gay persons, just as I entirely concur with TOB’s right to not marry any two people with whom viable concerns have been expressed about their getting married.
 
But this does infer one concern I do have about this policy. In the case of a couple for whom we would be reluctant to marry where sexual orientation is not the issue, we would take the time to meet with them and express in person the reasons for our refusing to marry them.
But in case of gay couples, the ‘Statement of Marriage’ policy shields us from the discomfort of such a meeting. What we are willing to extend to the wayward heterosexual couple we withhold from the wayward homosexual one. It would be hard for the gay person to interpret what we had intended to be a boundary to be anything other than a barrier – a sign over our door saying: ‘no gays allowed’. The ‘Statement of Marriage’ exempts us from further discussion.  

If we really want to be a safe place – especially for people on life’s margins, where many gay people live – we have to be vigilant to not prescribe ‘protectionist’ policies that safeguard us from having to meet face to face with the gay couple, the same way we would for the non-gay couple. We are a church without walls – which means we repudiate measures and safeguards which prescribe who we’ll go the 2nd mile with and who we won’t.


If we truly believe that marriage God’s way falls within certain parameters, we must be willing to answer for those parameters not only to the heterosexual couple who we think ill suited to each other, but also to the gay couple whose request to marry contravenes the biblical norm.
No doubt it would make for a hard conversation, but one which I am convinced would be good for all of us. Jesus didn’t shy away from hard questions or hard conversations. If we are determined to engage individuals in a dialogue which asks that they ‘not check their brains at the door’ and require us to give a good answer for what we believe, we have no choice but to engage in hard conversations. It can’t be Ken alone involved in these conversations, he would be have to be assisted by individuals with professional and/or pastoral counselling experience
To implement this Statement discourages any such conversation from taking place and will hinder (if not inhibit entirely) our having meaningful impact on the gay community for whom Christ died.

The second reason for my opposition to this Statement is that I am unconvinced as to its necessity.
We already belong to as denomination which if I remember correctly, already includes in its by-laws, a ‘Statement on Sexuality’ consistent with our proposed ‘Statement on Marriage’.
Since part of our being accepted as a Member Church of the Congregational Christian Church of Canada is our concurrence with their belief about sexuality, why the need for us to re-state it? My understanding – without having researched it – is that if we as a church wanted to adopt a policy which allowed for our marrying gay couples, our membership in the CCCC denomination would be jeopardized, if not outright revoked. The Congregational denomination broke away after 60 years of being under the umbrella of the United Church of Canada, specifically because of the United Church’s decision to allow for the ordination of gay persons. So it is already in our denominational DNA not to marry gay persons.


To reinforce what is already in place conveys a fortress mentality bordering on paranoia. It is hard enough for us as evangelical Christians to escape the charge of being homophobic. Why compound the matter by Policy overkill on this one issue?
Jesus spoke repeatedly against greed and not a word about homosexuality. But we wouldn’t think of drafting a ‘Statement Against Greed’ because of who would feel excluded if we did. That’s not to say that we’re indifferent about greed, but it is symptomatic about how our notions of grace suddenly revert to legalism when it comes to the matter of sexual orientation.

The third reason for my opposition to this Statement is the complicating ripple effect it will have on ‘eligibility’ requirements for ‘ministry partner’, employment at TOB, etc.
What happens when a gay couple – legally married elsewhere – wants to join our church? Will we deny them membership unless they commit themselves to either celibacy or the annulment of their union?
There are at least two situations I’m aware of, where TOB ministry partners have grown children who are in a gay marriage. Can we guarantee, were we to adopt this Statement, our receiving their children with the same openness and warmth we’d extend to them without question were they not gay?

Finally – in principle it’s wrong to adopt a policy which impacts people excluded from either the input or decision making process. All we have to do is look at the history of our country’s dealing with Native Canadians or our city’s dealing with the poor in the early 1950’s to realize the folly of trying to develop policy when we don’t have representation from people directly affected by the policy we’re implementing. We only deepen the divide between us.


Think for a moment of the issue of women having leadership roles in the church.


For decades, Male Church Board after Male Church Board, were implementing policies affecting women without including them at the table. When asked to justify their exclusiveness, they cited two scriptures: 1 Timothy 2:11,12 and 1 Corinthians 14:34, 35…one calling for women not to be permitted to either teach or have authority over men and the other insisting that women not be allowed to speak in church for ‘it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church’. To permit women to have leadership roles in the church was deemed to be in defiance of the ‘inerrancy of God’s word’.
And yet we have women in leadership at TOB. Why? Well, for a number of reasons including the feminist movement, the evident skill of women in leadership roles in other organizations – business, government, volunteer organizations, NGOs etc. - and because we’ve determined that a verse in Galatians (3:28) overrides the legalistic applications of I Tim 2:11,12 and I Cor. 14:34,35 with its insistence that ‘in Christ – there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus’ …making all positions of authority accessible to all.
The reason TOB chose to allow one verse to take precedence over 2 other contrary verses was as much situational as it was scriptural. We considered the women and determined from their conversation, their commitment and their contribution that our future as a church would be in jeopardy were we to exclude them from leadership.
It would have been wrong had we sought to answer the question of ‘women in leadership’ without their input…even though it meant our defying two scriptures which at face value validated their exclusion from either the input or decision making process.


The same applies here.


We’re agreed there are scriptures which at face value oppose gay marriage. But does that make it right for us to make a decision affecting gay persons when they are not represented either in the input or decision making process?

Most of us know gay people who would do well to attend our church. And we would do well for having them. But had any been there at last Sunday’s congregational meeting and as a ‘seeker’ witness to the first reading of our ‘Statement of Marriage’ policy – they might have never returned. That scares me…mainly because of the incredible lengths Jesus went to make his kingdom accessible to the lost and because of his stern warning to those who obstruct them from coming. Our mission statement commits us to open the doors to Christ’s kingdom as wide as we possibly can and put no obstacle in the way.


Please understand I am not saying that we re-define marriage more in keeping with the society we live in. 75% of our membership would leave the church if we did.
Nor am I in advocating our having no ‘Statement on Marriage’ suggesting that we refrain from the subject entirely, anymore than I would argue that our not having a ‘Statement on Greed’ inhibits us from speaking against it.
What I am saying is our response to couples considering gay marriage – must reflect a willingness and ability ‘to deal gently with those who are going astray…since we ourselves ‘are likewise subject to weakness’ (see Heb 5:2).  We must be willing to engage with gay people in what could very well be the defining moment of their lives rather than allow a disengaged ‘statement of marriage’ to answer for us.

I close with a quote from a contributing theologian to a church in the US called ‘Emergent’. Their lead pastor is Brian McLaren, who Ken on occasion has quoted in some of his recent messages. If you replace the phrase ‘Statement of Faith’ with ‘Statement on Marriage’, it summarizes exactly why I am opposed to it...

Please feel free to call or email me if you wish to discuss this further.
Respectfully,

The Politics of Cain

The observation of a swing in North American politics to the right is hardly rocket science.
Whether locally with Torontoʼs Mayor Ford, federally with Prime Minister Harper or south of the border with the meteoric rise of the Tea Party, the politics of tax cuts at the expense of social programs has gained the upper hand. Looking to the upcoming Ontario Provincial election, advance polls indicate this trend is likely to continue.
Mired in the rhetoric of the political right is an appeal to traditional family values. For many this equates to 'biblical' values with this ʻreligiousʼ component ranging from the quiet Catholicism of Rob and Doug Ford to the more boisterous evangelism of the Tea Party.
Past history repeatedly confirms the mix of religion and politics is a volatile one. The Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, the recent tragedy in Norway are a few of the many examples of what can go wrong when politics and religion mix.
But there is also historical evidence of what can go right when politics and religion mix.
The abolition of slavery in the UK, the civil rights movement in the US, the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa, the fall of the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe, all are examples of what can go right when politics and religion mix.
Think of the horrors that occur when religion is severed from politics. The massacre of millions in Russia and in the Ukraine during 1920's and 30's; millions more in China in the '50's and 60's, the extermination of 1/4 of Cambodia's population in the 1970's, are what can happen when politics forbids religion.
As volatile the mix of politics and religion is, the atrocities of the last century suggest that politics without religion is even worse.
So the question then becomes:
When is religion good for politics?
Deliberating on this question, an old bible story came to mind:
One day Cain suggested to his brother, “Letʼs go out into the fields.”
And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother, Abel, and killed him.
Afterward the Lord asked Cain, “Where is your brother? Where is Abel?”
“I donʼt know,” Cain responded. “Am I my brotherʼs keeper?”
But the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brotherʼs blood cries out to me from the ground! Now you are cursed and banished from the ground, which has swallowed your brotherʼs blood. No longer will the ground yield good crops for you, no matter how hard you work!
Genesis 4:8-12
Whether one understands the story of Cain and Abel to be literal or not, is not the issue here.
The story captures both religion and politics when both were in their infancy.
The story occurs before the variants of language, ethnicity, politics and religion emerge.
Two brothers are together in a field. Both believe and make sacrifices to the same God.
But Cain wants what his brother has and kills him.
Survivorʼs first winner now has the field to himself, his politics built on this foundation:

I am not my brother's keeper!

His dead brother is the world's first victim of oppression.
To the victor belong the spoils.

By killing his brother, Cain holds all the cards.
Without religion, the story would end here with this caption:

Oppression wins.

But the story continues.

He's with me

text of a sermon shared at Good Shepherd Community Church
August 21st, 2011

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
“Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.”
Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?”
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus replied, “You are blessed, Simon son of John, because my Father in heaven has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being. Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it. And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven, and whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.”
Then he sternly warned the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

It is truly an honour to have been asked to speak this morning.

Your church has made a significant contribution to the advance of God’s kingdom in this City, from its inception in West Ellesmere United to the community meeting here.

Having made the impact you have can be intimidating when you as a congregation contemplate your future.

If your past had not been so glorious, the pressure to improve on it in the days ahead would not be so intimidating. But it is intimidating and all the more so when there aren’t as many people involved as there used to be and questions loom on every side.

Questions like:
- where do we go from here?
- have do we generate the income we need to keep going, to grow, to make an impact on the community around us?
- who should we be reaching out to?
- what changes do we have to make to our services that more people might be drawn in?
- are we just one fantastic preacher away from seeing our glory years return or has the Lord something different, something brand new for us?

What is the new creation?

“If anyone be in Christ, he is a new creature” (AV).
It has seemed self-evident that we were being promised here, overlapping with the language of a new birth (John 3:5-6), a metaphysical or ontological transformation of the individual person.
As the italics in the AV indicate, the words ‘he is’ are not in the original text...
A shortcoming of this interpretation of ‘the new creature’ as transformed individual personality is that the word ‘ktisis’, here translated ‘creature’ or ‘creation’, is not used elsewhere in the New Testament to designate the individual person. It is most often used to designate not the object of creation but rather the act of creating (e.g. Romans 1:20)...
In the one other place where the phrase ‘new creation’ is used, it is quite parallel to the ‘new humanity’ of Ephesians 2:15, not a renewed individual but a new social reality, marked by the overcoming of the Jew/Greek barrier; ‘neither circumcision nor uncircumcision but a new creation’ (Galatians 6:15).
Putting together these strictly linguistic observations...we should lean to the kind of translation favoured by the more recent translators; literally, ‘if anyone is in Christ, new is creation,’ or more smoothly, ‘there is a whole new world’ (NEB).
The accent lies not on transforming the ontology of the person...but on transforming the perspective of one who has accepted Christ as life context.
This is certainly the point of the rest of the passage in question.
Paul is explaining why he no longer regards anyone from the human point of view; why he does not regard Jew as Jew or Greek as Greek, but rather looks at every person in the light of the new world which begins in Christ. ‘The old has passed away, behold the new has come’ is a social or historical statement, not an introspective or emotional one.
from ‘The Politics of Jesus’ John Howard Yoder - 2nd Edition 1994
pgs. 221-223

Forgive me this extended quotation, but it highlights in broad strokes the impact ‘individualism’ has had on the modern evangelical church.
It is by no means all bad. Many evangelicals, me included, have been drawn to Christ with the promise of a complete makeover...as though the thing being made over is ‘me’.
But therein lies its fatal flaw.
A ‘me’ centric new creation has spawned multitudes of Christian ‘shut-ins’ even when we are in fellowship with one another. There is no ‘body politic’, no social
ethic defining us as God’s ‘new social entity’ in the world.
As long as we understand the ‘new creation’ as the new ‘me’ or the new ‘you’, our engagement with the world is scattershot - a helter-skelter mixture of pious platitudes and self-branded spirituality.
This would be understandable if Jesus had left us with no definitive economic policy, if he had limited sin to the personal realm, if he had said nothing about the pitfalls of wealth and possessions, if he had said nothing about the sword and making peace.
But he did leave us with those things and it is evident through the book of Acts that the early church ‘got it’ - from ‘selling their possessions and goods and giving to everyone in need (Acts 2:45) to food distribution to widows (Acts 6) to not resorting to the sword when confronted by mortal enemies (Acts 7) etc.
But somewhere in the generations since, the 'new creation', a very social and visible reality has been scaled down to the very private internal reality of 'what I believe in my heart'.
The impact of individualism on the contemporary church has been to disable what is the real ‘new creation’ in this world, the body of Christ.
Again this would be understandable if we were meant to understand the body of Christ as some theological construct overarching those who believe Jesus to be ‘their personal Saviour’.
But he has left us with much more: the hearing of God’s word and putting it into practice - an undeniable and severe social responsibility we are incapable of doing except as members together of his body.

Going public with things done in secret

This was my response to a debate ongoing about the legitimacy of a public fast undertaken by Jim Wallis and others in response to the threat of US legislators cutting social programs further adding to the plight faced by America's poor people.

Interesting conversation re: fasting openly vs. fasting in secret.
The same can be said of prayer and almsgiving. To inspire others to pray, fast and give there is the requirement which Jesus himself modeled of being both open and secretive about it. We know he fasted for 40 days in the wilderness, we know what he prayed in the Gethsemene, we know he gave everything for our sakes - nothing secretive about those ventures.
But equally so, we know nothing of what he prayed on those occasions he sought solitude, nor what he gave to the temple in the days prior to his public ministry, nor of what he gave to the poor.
I think the real issue surrounding 'going public' about prayer, fasting and giving is motive. The instruction from Isaiah 58 and the teaching of Jesus is clear: if we do it for our sakes, it is in vain. But if we do it to identify with the poor, the oppressed and the forgotten, we are taking our place alongside Jesus the advocate for those without an advocate, the One who shares the authority of his name with the powerless...

Reflections on the Lent readings - March 13th, 2011

Preamble
- creation happened before the fall
- God had said about every creature he had made ‘it is good’
- after creating man and woman, God said ‘it is very good’
- even now, God says over each of us born into this world: ‘it is very good’
- regardless of who our parents are, regardless of whether they wanted us or not, God rejoiced with our being born into this world, He is happy we are here
- he rejoiced whether we were born with two legs or just one, with a mind like Einstein or a mind that barely worked at all, he rejoiced.

from Genesis 3

The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?”
“Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,” the woman replied. 3 “It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, ‘You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die.’”
“You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman. “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”
The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too. At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves.

- the first reading reminds us that something happened, something broke and because something broke the world is beautiful but not paradise, and God is here but we can’t see him, and the things we do aren’t always good, and more often than not, harmful to our neighbour
- God gave Adam and Eve a commandment and they broke it and everything changed
- God still loved them but now there was distance, like there is distance in a marriage when the husband commits adultery; and distance in a family when parents start abusing their kids
- life is filled with all sorts of ‘do nots’ which can be catastrophic - do not do crack cocaine, don’t steal from the company safe, don’t be abusive to the one you love, and don’t swallow anything that has you thinking you are God
- God is happy we are here, He loves us to the core, but He isn’t always happy with what we are doing, especially when what we do harms others

Romans 5:12-20

When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned. Yes, people sinned even before the law was given. But it was not counted as sin because there was not yet any law to break. Still, everyone died—from the time of Adam to the time of Moses—even those who did not disobey an explicit commandment of God, as Adam did. Now Adam is a symbol, a representation of Christ, who was yet to come. But there is a great difference between Adam’s sin and God’s gracious gift. For the sin of this one man, Adam, brought death to many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of forgiveness to many through this other man, Jesus Christ. And the result of God’s gracious gift is very different from the result of that one man’s sin. For Adam’s sin led to condemnation, but God’s free gift leads to our being made right with God, even though we are guilty of many sins. For the sin of this one man, Adam, caused death to rule over many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of righteousness, for all who receive it will live in triumph over sin and death through this one man, Jesus Christ.
Yes, Adam’s one sin brings condemnation for everyone, but Christ’s one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God and new life for everyone. Because one person disobeyed God, many became sinners. But because one other person obeyed God, many will be made righteous.
God’s law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were. But as people sinned more and more, God’s wonderful grace became more abundant. So just as sin ruled over all people and brought them to death, now God’s wonderful grace rules instead, giving us right standing with God and resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

- the 2nd reading tells us how God has fixed what was broken
- the first man, Adam sinned and because he did, violence and greed and death took over, nobody was exempt, everyone was condemned
- but thankfully a second man appeared, Jesus who came to fix what we had broken
- the proof that he has fixed what we had broken is his resurrection from the dead.
- so through Adam came death and condemnation, but through Jesus comes grace and life and right standing with God
- notice that what comes to us in Jesus isn’t perfection, it’s this amazing gift called ‘grace’, which works in us even though we’re miles from being perfect
- grace not only means God loves us, but that he isn’t distant anymore, God isn’t just the Holy One, He is our Father, devoted to our welfare, helping us to overcome the things we can’t overcome on our own
- he hears us when we pray and he hears us as though we are Jesus Christ himself, most especially when we pray for those around us

Matthew 4

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted there by the devil. For forty days and forty nights he fasted and became very hungry.
During that time the devil came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.”
But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say,
‘People do not live by bread alone,
 but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’
Then the devil took him to the holy city, Jerusalem, to the highest point of the Temple, and said, “If you are the Son of God, jump off! For the Scriptures say,
‘He will order his angels to protect you.
 And they will hold you up with their hands
 so you won’t even hurt your foot on a stone.’
Jesus responded, “The Scriptures also say, ‘You must not test the Lord your God.’
Next the devil took him to the peak of a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. “I will give it all to you,” he said, “if you will kneel down and worship me.”
“Get out of here, Satan,” Jesus told him. “For the Scriptures say,
   ‘You must worship the Lord your God and serve only him.’

- the 3rd reading begins the story of how Jesus starts to fix things...it starts in the wilderness
- God has already told Jesus how much he loves him. After being baptized by John the Baptist, it says the heavens were opened and the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove and God said:
‘This is my dearly loved son, who brings me great joy.’
- Just like Adam and Eve hear God say of the day they were made ‘it is very good’, Jesus hears the words of God’s blessing over him.
- And just like Adam and Eve he goes from God’s blessing to being tempted
- to begin to fix what Adam and Eve broke he must resist the devil better than they did.
- and like Adam and Eve he is confronted with doubt - ‘did God really say?’ ‘if you really are the Son of God’...
- but unlike Adam and Eve he resists the devil by relying on God’s word
- he knew if he was going to do God’s will, he had to do it God’s way and God’s way meant he couldn’t take any shortcuts by turning stones into bread, or make a spectacle of himself by doing a high dive off the roof of the temple and let angels save him.
- it meant he couldn’t do what other people in power do to become powerful; he couldn’t compromise with evil; he had to do God’s will without money, without armies, without political influence, without spin doctors and media consultants

- so what does this mean for us?
- regardless of who we are, what we’ve done, God is glad we are here
- he wants us to be governed by things that don’t destroy us, nor destroy those around us
- he wants us to be governed by grace and life and justice and right standing with God
- and he wants us to follow Jesus, not take any shortcuts even if at times it means going hungry and without shelter
- it means he wants us to serve him without thinking we have to make a spectacle of ourselves
- to love Him and to love our neighbour is all he asks us to do
- and he asks that we not compromise with evil, that if we have money we will share it, if we have power and influence we will use it to serve others and that the last thing any of us should be looking for is fame, or promotion or anything that makes us think or feel or believe that we are superior to others.

When evangelism means nothing more than conversion...

For so long evangelism has been shackled to conversion only evangelism which brings to mind that verse about its converts being hell times 2.
Those of us for whom justice burns grew to despise conversion
evangelism, because of its lip service to mercy and justice and loving
one's enemies. I mean how many times can you hear the phrase 'God
changing the world one life at a time' and not despair for the
incapacity of millions of converts effecting any meaningful social
change? In fact, just the opposite has been happening. While the
number of converts increase, so too the number of children who die
daily from malnutrition world wide. How can it be that we who have
been told 'to feed his sheep' could make the world such a starving
place for so many?
And yet for those of us for whom justice burns, we can't escape the
charge that justice only evangelism can also make for followers who
are hell times 2. We can alienate those who won't subscribe to our
agenda even faster than any conversion evangelist, even without
resorting to threats as dire as 'burning in hell for eternity'.
Green evangelists aren't much better and those discipleship
evangelists can make spiritual discipline as invigorating as eating
dust.
Cultural evangelists make Sunday morning services like Entertainment
Tonight with Jesus break neck dancing down the aisle. Why talk about
the cross when it's a better North American fit for our Lord to be a
therapist?
Brian rightly states that the challenge is for us to be all five:
Conversion evangelists - those ever born anew,
Justice evangelists - those pursuing a just world which God makes
right
Green evangelists - those caring for it is God who cares for the
sparrow
Discipleship evangelists - expeditiously living both Jeremiah's lament
(see Lamentations 3:19-27) and the song of Isaiah (see Isaiah 26).
Cultural evangelists - story-tellers who can see God's story in the
world and tell it in ways the world can hear.
Needless to say, we can do only this in community.
Otherwise we as hell times 2.

If Christ were to send a letter to our church...

In response to Brian Cunnington's reflective exercise: "If Christ were to send a letter to your local church...how do you think your church might respond to such a letter?"
In order of what I'd think most likely:
1. Mark the envelope 'Return to Sender'.
2. Mark the envelope 'No longer at this address'.
3. Do a handwriting analysis and render its content heresy because it's divisive and not what the pastor's preaching.
4. Burn it at the church reunion campfire while singing Kumbaya and consoling ourselves in the re-telling of our church's wondrous inception.
5. Read and conclude that it had been a bad day for Jesus and we were bearing the brunt of misplaced anger really meant for liberal churches and others outside the true faith.
6. Be really shaken and plead to be restored to our first love, even if we had to be dismantled myth by myth, stone by stone, dollar by dollar, idol by idol...

When preaching becomes therapy

I have had the occasion of ministering to someone's 'felt need' and it
is intoxicating stuff.
It's enough to make me never say a discouraging word to anyone.
So when I was given a pulpit from which to speak, I widened my topic
to address the congregation's 'felt need' and boy that was really
intoxicating!
Some people cried and others came to me after to tell me how they had
never heard anyone speak so deeply into their lives before.
I was addicted to doing therapy!
And so the next sermon I preached included stories about my wife and
kids (where in the name of humility I'm typically the fall guy) and
unforgettable anecdotes. I could feel the congregation in the palm of
my hand, like a little lamb and I caressed them with the gentle words
of God's love and they opened their arms to receive it and the church
offering went through the roof and I was really addicted. GIVE ME THAT PULPIT!
It was enough to make me never say an offending word to anyone even if it meant ignoring all the offensive things Jesus said. No way I was
ever going to say anything about 'God being a consuming fire'.
No wonder most of our congregations live with a Sunday School sized
god. Just the right size to make sure we never fear Him.
If we are ever to get beyond the Sunday Service as therapy, we its
therapists will have to get back to preaching again and leave the
therapy to Oprah and Dr. Phil.
We will have to sacrifice our addiction to being 'felt needed' for the
truth.
For many of us, it will be a harder addiction to break from than
heroin, requiring major detox i.e. repentance.

Something more than its own welfare

‘Christ died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will
no longer live for themselves.’ (2 Corinthians 5:15) That’s why the
goal of the church has to be something other than its own welfare.
I have a pretty good feel for how hard it is to make my own welfare
something other than the goal - so I’m sympathetic as to why the
church struggles with the same.
But for as long as our own prosperity is the goal we deny the process
through which Christ’s new life emerges among us. The cross. The ‘not
my will but yours be done’ process. The ‘sell all you have, give to
the poor and then come follow me’ descent into divine consequence.
So then the question becomes - what is it about the missional church
that would make it any more inclined to dying to self-interest than
other expressions of the church?
The new frontier mentality is a plus. People concerned about their own
welfare aren’t likely to sail uncharted waters in the vague hope of
finding a New World. They’d just as soon stay at home.
Being committed to moving helps.
Have you ever noticed how many of the great commands of Jesus begin
with motion words? Words like ‘Go sell all you have’ and ‘Come to me
all you who are heavy burdened’ and ‘Go into all the world’ and ‘Take
up your cross and follow me’.
Going public as 'in going into the streets' helps. Many of us have
been shut in the closet of private spirituality for so long we’ve
forgotten how Christianity thrives in the open air, out in the big
wide world, where both rationalism and superstition abound, but where the voice of God is its only anchor.

The church and temptation

Sadly the temptations Jesus resisted in the desert, we his church have
not.
OT Israel were not the only band of God's people given to adultery and 
idolatry. We too have slept with the enemy to gain this world's 
riches. 
Whereas Jesus would have rather starved to death than use his divine 
privilege to overturn his utter dependence on God's word; we have 
twisted God's word to our advantage at the expense of the world's 
starving. 
We have embezzled the food that belongs to the hungry by clinging to 
the stones of our institutions and property. 
Whereas Jesus refused to succumb to supernatural theatrics to win the 
world over, we think nothing of prostituting ourselves and God's truth 
to gain the world's favour. 
Whereas Jesus resisted the devil's offer of all the kingdoms of this 
world; we have repeatedly jumped into bed with the devil in his 
various disguises of power - Emperor, Superstar, Merchant 
Extraordinaire.
I heard a minister recently take issue with those who criticize the 
church. If his point is that those who criticize not be arrogant, his 
point is well taken. Arrogance only makes the critic twice as bad. 
But if his point is that the church - especially the prosperous 
contemporary church - is not that far off from where we should be, I 
vehemently disagree. 
In my humble opinion, we have exchanged our birthright of sharing in 
the hunger of God's poor for affluence and privileged social standing; 
we have not resisted the power brokers of our time to 'get behind us 
Satan'. 
We have chosen patriotism over Christ's kingdom, self-sufficiency over 
his cross, convenience and superficiality over perseverance and 
prayer.
Fortunately, one other temptation Jesus has resisted, is the 
temptation to give up on us. 'I am with you always, even to the end of 
this age', he says. 
But let's not mistake his loyalty as though he's indifferent to our 
current condition. 'Repent or I will spit you out of my mouth', is 
also what he says.

When the main thing becomes the main thing...

This morning I had a glimpse of the other side - of what the main thing looks like when people take hold of the main thing.
It had me shuddering for more.
I attended a prayer meeting involving Christian leaders who work among the poor - pastoring urban churches, leading social agencies. It was as if I had been transported into the book of Acts.
There was a 28 year old - a mere kid spiritually speaking - who had intentionally moved into one of Toronto poorest communities to 'mobilize the neighbourhood for Jesus sake'.
Over the past 4 months what has mobilized is a group which meets every morning for prayer. It includes new immigrants from Iran and India and Ethiopia - many of whom came here as Muslims, but are now 'on fire for Jesus'. He admitted that their theology is 'loose' but the stories he told of miraculous healings, visions in the night had me confounded as to why him and not me. Sorry bad confession to be making but it did 'arouse me to envy'...
I'm old enough to realize how complicated life gets and tend to think of faith as equally complex. But then I see people - typically new to the faith - doing 'foolish' things, things which strike me as naive, impulsive and self-defying, with prayer as their only resource, running at complete odds to either fiscal or numerical certainty.
And while I am confounded by the impossibility of it all, they are dancing like kids in the rain! The kingdom of God is flowing and they’re getting drenched!
Help my unbelief Lord.
And squeeze the complex camel I've become through whatever it takes to join them.

Part-time preacher that I am

Part-time preacher that I am, I am now thoroughly disillusioned with almost every word I have ever preached.
I’ve been preaching to make Jesus look good so that people might admire him even more than they do...so they pray more, so their faith might be lifted.
I have said lots about Jesus being the way to God, but next to nothing about Jesus the way God expects us to behave.
I have said lots about our having a saving faith in Jesus but little about how faith working by our love saves our neighbour.
I have said lots about how Christ has brought ‘healing and salvation to the world through his woundedness, suffering and death’ but nothing about our bringing ‘healing and salvation through our woundedness, suffering and death.’
I’ve said lots about Jesus having walked among us, but next to nothing about Jesus walking in our shoes having crucified our ambitions and self-interests so he can bust out of our shell to love those on the street.
You can see my homiletical shortcoming - I have majored in belief as 
it pertains to Jesus but not in belief as it pertains to the way we 
live. I have detached belief from behaviour killing any possibility of 
Jesus being seen in us. 
From now on, I am going to preach about the church’s being a counter- 
cultural, enemy loving, anti-greed, power refuting, total social re-make.

As a part-time preacher I should be able to get away with it. I am in 
a position where I can offend. It’s not my job that’s on the line. 
Sometimes I think that when a full-time preacher gives up his pulpit 
for a week, it should be to someone who has had rocks thrown at him 
like Jesus or Paul.

It takes a pulpit to craft a people. 
Which means what’s coming from the pulpit has to change. 
Forgive me for decrying the preaching. But what a misshapen self- 
absorbed people we have become and there is more than just one part- 
time preacher to blame. 
As congregations we’ve got the Jesus died in our place part of the 
gospel. What we’re missing is the part about our dying for Jesus; a 
threat to the existing ‘powers and principalities’ the same way he 
was. We have forgotten that part of his invitation to come and die 
with him, to carry our cross as he carried his, to be worthy of such a 
cross because we are as contrary as he is to the way things are.
The upside is that most preachers get it. For them, looking through 
old sermons is like wading through pablum. Their congregation should 
be overflowing with teachers but instead there are infants warring in 
the pews. Their congregation should be stirring the pot but instead 
they are leaving the pot be. Their congregation should have be making 
inroads among peoples of differing faith, cultural and socio-economic 
groups, but instead they vigorously keep to themselves. 
TIme to move from pablum to chili. The kind of spiritual food that 
when it passes through the body is likely to offend, even as it 
inspires the kind of action whose signature is courage, creativity and 
love.

If there was one word for the church...

If I could give you one word, that word would be 'GO'. 
Go to where the people are. 
Go to where the needy are. 
Go to the people nobody else is caring for. 
And there in life's margins - among the broken and disillusioned - 
expect to find God there and hear what he'd have you do.
The prevailing word among most churches is 'build it and they will 
come'. 
It might make for a good movie but it is the antithesis of Christ's 
command to 'go and find the lost and rescue them'.
The prevailing word in successful churches is 'settle down'. 
Settle down in your office and write a good sermon. 
Settle down in your Board meeting and write a good strategic plan. 
Settle down in your renovated building and expect the seekers to come.
If the church is meant to have any seekers, them seekers are supposed 
to be us - us seeking first the kingdom, us seeking first his will, us 
seeking first the lost and broken and hurting and abandoned, us going 
out into the alleyways and the dingy rooms, among the forgotten lost 
in institutions of care - the mentally ill, the elderly, those in 
homeless shelters.
Tell the pastor he can't write his sermon in his office where the 
hurting people aren't. 
Tell the Board it's God's vision which drives the church, and that 
vision can only be clearly seen on the street where God goes before 
you.

When the church is political...

The church is a political community where ‘chief among you are the least’, and judgment perpetually loses out to mercy. Her boundaries are not extended by the tactics of empire, technology or capital, but in her willingness to lay down her life for the forgotten, the refugee and anyone else level with her humility.
The church has all the zeal of the Zealot but without the sword, all the activism of the social revolutionary without the arrogance or the gun. She is a threat to the existing powers because she can’t be bought. Her authority is rooted in her powerlessness and her reliance on God’s help. Entitlements she defers to others, she is neither benefactor nor debtor other than to love as He loves. She becomes poor to enrich and honour the excluded, she shields the defenseless and speaks for those oppressed by power and greed. She is the prophet calling the world alongside her on her knees.
The church is an economic community making her home in the ghetto as among the rich, forgiving people their debts (yes I mean monetary ones!) and emptying herself that others have a home. She is the great wealth re-distributor, the proclamation of God's Jubliee.
Regarding world hunger she understands ‘God desires that no one perish’ and lives accordingly, sacrificially.
She chooses loss over gain, invisible in her charity and yet blessing the world.
She understands that among the reasons Jesus was crucified are political and economic and social ones. He died because he was contrary to the way things are.
Living as he did, she takes up her cross, prepared to meet up with the same fate he did. As he was contrary she too is contrary, mirroring his obedience, living to ‘share in his sufferings’ and his resurrection.

When the church is big...

Big box companies. Like GM.
Big Box stores. Like Walmart.
Big Box churches. Like Willowcreek.
When they’re flourishing it’s hard to resist the stampede.
But when they become cumbersome, too big to move one more step, one can hear the thunder of an avalanche.
‘Do you see all these things?’ Jesus asked. ‘I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another, every one will be thrown down.’ (Matthew 24:2)
I like GM and Walmart. I love Willowcreek. I have done well because of them.
So if they falter, it won’t be due to a lack of buy-in on my part.
Baby boomer that I am, I’m easily swayed by BIG. BIG incomes, BIG homes, BIG dreams, BIG numbers, BIG market share...success for me is BIG. BIG numbers can’t lie, can they?
There is biblical precedent for distrusting numbers. The prophets never had numbers on their side. Nor did Jesus especially after saying that bit about eating his flesh and drinking his blood.
We belong to a kingdom in which a little child shall lead them, a kingdom which is a mere mustard seed compared to the kingdoms of this world. We are as small as we have to be to rely totally on God.
BIG makes for great museums as the great cathedrals in Europe attest to. They are beautiful to tour, their art is dazzling and there's the experience of stillness in walking their marbled floors.
But occasionally I would shudder as though overcome by a dark echo: ‘Think of all the bloodshed, all the strife that would have been averted if all the resources it took to build this place had been given to the poor.’
To me this is the issue. If BIG means 80 or 90 percent to run the church and the remainder to the poor...we’ve set our sights on something other than the Kingdom of God. Which means instead of God's commendation of ‘well done’, the question will be ‘why did you rob me?’

Sin

I don’t know what to do with either the word or the concept of ‘sin’ outside the 2 commandments that really matter i.e. loving God and loving one’s neighbour. No doubt in some circles it may have to do with violating a dress code, or one drink too many, but there its use is too subjective and flimsy to be worth keeping.
Where it does apply, now as much as ever, is in identifying the things we do which hurt, malign, oppress, disavow, ignore, or convey indifference to our neighbour. When we do those things, we sin. To sin against our neighbour is to sin against God. Conversely to love our neighbour covers a ‘multitude of sins’ which experientially speaking may be the greatest freedom we can know.