I encourage our church to wrestle with the teaching of Jesus in the Bible.

Here’s how I define “wrestle”:

To acknowledge openly the difficulty and pain of what is being said as we feel challenged, and asking honest questions of Jesus, while nevertheless clinging to him in faith that his teaching is always true, and always for our good.

Updated my /now page.

“Over and over again the formation of a party, the growth of a clique, the promotion of a split have been justified as standing for the truth. It is said that, unless we divide, the truth cannot be safeguarded; the body from which we are dividing has rejected all truth, or this truth or that.

But when Paul withstood Peter to the face over the really cardinal issue of the truth of the gospel (Gal. 2:14), he did not separate, form a party, send word to the churches he had founded that they were now a new denomination.

The sad thing is that we who are born into a divided, wretchedly denominational situation are inured from birth to separation, and we have lost James’ realization that in Christian division, as in time of war, truth is the first casualty.”

J. A. Motyer, The Message of James: The Tests of Faith, The Bible Speaks Today, (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1985), 133.

A real problem with so much hand wringing over the future of the Church is that there’s so little re-centering of hope on the person and work of Jesus.

The hope for the continued vitality of the church too often seems to be in getting our doctrinal ducks in row in either a conservative or liberal direction…

The problem with that is getting our doctrinal ducks in a row IS NEVER enough.

I’m not saying doctrine isn’t important, it’s just…

It’s not even the right starting point!

…

Start again with Jesus.

Point people to Jesus.

Meditate on your experience of Jesus.

Listen to catholic witness regarding Jesus.

Lift up Jesus.

Deconstruct what is not Christlike.

Reform…

…but not according to “progress,” or to the “early Church,” or a romanticized Protestant ideal, to Christ and Christ alone.

There is unending hope for the future in this process, because while theological systems come and go, and even Communions fall apart…

It is Christ himself that draws all people to himself.

…

Is this messy? Yes.

Does it require faith that Christ will indeed truly build his church, even using our weakness?

It absolutely does.

…

You may wonder which Jesus? Mormon Jesus, Muslim Jesus, Protestant Jesus, Roman Catholic Jesus? Jesus the meek and mild of the Anabaptists or the Gun ‘n’ God Jesus of the Christian Nationalists?

I say, the one that defeated death with forgivess,

the one that (amazingly!) we have good reason to believe is actually alive and reigning at the right hand of God,

the one then that can and will DO SOMETHING in the present,

the one that is most consistently attested to throughout the ages in the 4 canonical Gospels, and the worshipping life of the church in all places and and times,

the one the holy martyrs placed their faith in,

the one that restored divine glory to humanity and demonstrated fully the humanity of the divine,

the one that convicts but never condemns,

the one who loved, is loving, and will always love without reservation,

And if you wonder what this Jesus thinks love is,

Just look at him on the Cross.

There is my only enduring hope for any church, for any person, and for myself.

We pray fervently for God to come through for the oppressed in the present, through those of us that have been given his Name, through the taking up of our own cross…because the Way of Christ is only and always the Way of the Cross.

The cross of speaking prophetically and truthfully, and being maligned for it.

The cross of teaching plainly the implications of the Gospel for our time and place, and being torn apart for it.

The cross of on-the-ground pastoral care, and its few-and-far-between moments of visible results.

The cross of peacemaking, when many are for war.

The cross of being actually arrested, beaten, and assassinated for declaring the dignity of those the world would use, abuse, and forget.

The cross of knowing our place in this world as “little Christs” is in fact, on a cross.

The confidence we have in doing this–instead of driving spikes through the hands, feet, heads, and sides of our enemies–can only come from the release of the fear of death in present, itself a sure result of looking with faith upon crucifixion and Resurrection of our Lord.

Some Good News is that the promise of this Way isn’t only life after death, but life in the present after our death in the present.

In other words, this way of living and dying for the sake of others–instead of responding with violence–plants seeds of life.

We see it in the hope of the Thief that throws himself at Jesus’ mercy.

We see it in the incredulity of the Roman Soldier that couldn’t help but find God revealed in God bleeding out.

We see it in the Faithful Women that never looked away from the glory of the Cross and so caught the first outpouring the joy of the New Creation, to which they bear eternal witness in the Kingdom.

We see it in self-centered, broken Peter as he is restored, even as he acknowledges his own lack of internal resources to live up to the love of Christ.

As we allow ourselves to be mystically joined to Christ and his Cross, the Love poured out there pours into us and upon those that are killing us and others in a thousand cruel ways.

Our faith is that this Love upholds prophets and practicioners of mercy and justice, satisfies thieves, chastens muderers, comforts mourners, brings traitors home, and even raises the dead to life, because that Love is the Spirit renewing the redeemed cosmos.

And where the Spirit is, there is liberation.

Photo: unsplash.com/photos/F5…

I WAS BORN IN 1 9 8 4

a musical sketch

Having so much fun with virtual synths/midi these days

best w/headphones