Hugging Trees in Your Underwear

I have just finished one of the best books that I have read in the past year (well, it was a toss up between it or my Bob the Builder Colouring-In Book). Colossians; Remixed, written by the husband wife duo of Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat, had been recommended to me by numerous people about a year ago and I am so glad that I finally got around to it. Reading through some parts of the book were so inspiring and challenging whilst other parts of the book just moved your heart to worship as the authors sought to articulate and help the readers to gain more of a full understanding of the scope of the gospel. I could say that this book has given me another lens through which to read and interpret the Bible; that of kingdom and empire. This book will easily provide enough blog fodder for about the next 30 entries (you think that is bad, Scot McKnight squeezed about 65 entries out of it, so count yourselves lucky).

Recently, I been antagonising my roomie by referring to his desire to create an ecological ethic amongst Christian students (or even just a healthy admiration and concern for the gift of Creation) as being a Tree Hugger. I speculated that his quintessential man would be Brian Walsh. And when I try to imagine his home life, when he is not with Sylvia, it generally consists of him out in the woods or his back garden in his underwear (not sure why he is only wearing underwear, it just felt appropriate for the story) hugging and tending to a young sapling whilst listening to to the gentle whispers of Creation.

I am afraid that after reading the chapter a few days ago on Ecological Praxis, I am going to have to retract all my snide, disparaging comments about my aforementioned roomie being a Tree Hugger. I want to be one now (well, at least strive to understand the gift of creation and have a heart of gratitude towards). Brian and Sylvia helped me to understand the significance of having a Hebraic understanding of Creation, of understanding that human worship is always to be in accord with the worship offered by all creation, the heartbeat of our lives of worship must be in rhythm with that of creation. To see that even the trees, rocks and fields offer worship to their Creator God has to impact our understanding of our responsibility for good stewardship of the earth rather than continuing to have consumerist lifestyles that destroy our earth.

Earlier in the book, the authors had went to great lengths to argue that the covenant of restoration and redemption was not just for individual people or groups of people but for all of God’s creation; human beings, animals and the world. It was a creational covenant that God established with Noah in Genesis where God promises to never bring total destruction upon the earth again. And because we live in the tension of the kingdom not being fully established until Jesus returns but of also living in the coming kingdom with the Church as Christ’s Body (or agent) on earth, our daily lives must anticipate this kingdom of the Beloved Son in how we relate towards the restoration of creation. This view of creational covenant also has a lot to say to partisan Christianity, interdemoninational superiority and sectarianism but that is for another entry.

The Dark Side of Leadership 2

Please forgive this highly unoriginal title for my second blog in three days but I haven’t endeavoured to write with this frequency before so it may become more difficult to think of original titles for blogs. This resurgence (however longs it lasts) is coming from two main sources: Zoomtard’s constant encouragement (we miss you, not really, just felt obliged to say that because I work with you and all and your wife paid me to be nice to you) and something that the Soapbox said a couple of weeks ago. Soapbox made the observation that when his blogging stops or slows down significantly, it is a warning sign that he is overworking and is unable to find time in his schedule to process some thoughts. It has been almost three months since my last post (I sound like an distraught attendee at a Bloggers Anonymous meeting) so go figure.

Each day, we make decisions that either are part of our true mission from God or that are part of our shadow mission that is serving ourselves. In the book of Esther, characters were given a choice between their true mission and their shadow mission. Xerxes embraces his shadow mission of egotism, appearance and pleasure when he reacted furiously after Vashti, his queen, refused to be paraded as one of the king’s possessions. Haman embraces his shadow mission after he is slighted by Mordecai and sets about wiping out the entire Jewish race. And Esther, a Jewish girl who has become Queen because of her beauty, has to choose between embracing her shadow mission to remain silent and be comfortable in the king’s palace or to risk fulfilling her true mission. A true mission which recognises that she was given the role of queen for a certain purpose, to work for justice and spare people’s sufferings, to be part of God’s plan for creational restoration and redemption but that could also just as easily result in her death because she would have to approach Xerxes without being summoned into his presence.

Even Jesus was not safe from wrestling with his shadow mission as the three temptations by Satan in the wilderness can be described as an encouragement of Jesus to embrace his shadow mission of fulfilling his mission without suffering, of doing it in a less costly way, a way without death. Satan was offering Jesus a means of gaining this world without the cross, without becoming the Suffering King. This helps us to understand the vehemence with which Jesus rebukes Peter when he innocently declares that his Saviour will not die. Or we see it in the taunting of the people at the foot of the cross, a final invitation to embrace his shadow mission and come down off the cross but Jesus refused to take up his shadow mission and destroy sin and death using the means and tools of sin and death which are power and violence.

But he fulfilled his true mission of taking sin and death onto himself and allowing them to exhaust themselves within his body and thus destroying them and allowing creation to be restored. This correct choice changed (and is changing and will change) the world. Esther made the correct choice, chose her true mission and saved the Jewish people from mass genocide allowing the Messiah to come forth from the Jews. Her correct choice changed (and is changing and will change) the world. And as we are faced with the choices each day of which mission we will choose, we must recognise the significance and magnitude of the decision as our decision will also change the world. Maybe this is what Jesus is calling us to when he invites us to daily take up our cross and follow him.

The Dark Side of Leadership

Back in October, I attended a Global Leadership Summit on the leafy, Ugg boot-wearing suburban campus of University College Dublin, a campus rife with Ag students (more faeces than theses as my friend’s fiance reminded me) and budding socialites (quite a unique combination). This summit was organised by Willow Creek, which is the church network and extended ministries that have been founded by Bill Hybels in Chicago. The summit lasted for two days with a total of eight seminars with speakers such as Carly Fiorini (ex-CEO of Hewlett Packard), Colin Powell (ex-US Secretary of Defence), Richard Curtis (founder of Comic Relief and director of Four Weddings and a Funeral) and Bill Hybels himself (team leader at Willow Creek Church).

Out of the all the talks we listened to and furiously scribbled down notes, there was one particularly outstanding talk by John Ortberg (pastor from Menlo Park, California) from the book of Esther where he described the concept of a ‘shadow mission’. Now before you rue your missed opportunity to see such stalwarts of the church in person, the talks were recorded in June and shown via a data projector. But Bill was still just as enigmatic and had the usual healthy glow of someone who was just back from a two week break in the Hamptons. I was quite taken by this idea of ‘shadow mission’ and was reminded of it again on Sunday past as the Chief touched on it during his sermon.

Simply, Ortberg defines a ‘shadow mission’ as our ‘authentic mission hijacked by our ego and wounds’. Shadow missions are rarely things that involve a 180 degree shift but they are more commonly those things that can put us a few degrees off course from our true mission. It can be those methods that we all use to find comfort or self-gratification in, methods that we can substitute or that can distract us from our true mission as God’s Kingdom people. It can be the fear of failure that paralyses us from realising our full potential and settling for sub-maximum potential. It can be reacting defensively or confrontationally out of our past wounds and hurts. It can be the constant striving to maintain image and choosing self-aggrandisement rather than choosing the way of a servant. It can be the need for continuous affirmation or dependence on the approval of others. It can be the need to succeed in ministry to prove our life-choices or vocation. It can be the methods of coping that we have developed and keep hidden in the recesses of our lives whilst maintaining the exterior facade of being a success. Life can easily drift into something self-centred, something devoid of God at the core, something without the True Light, a shadow mission.

In fact, a shadow mission can be really similar to our true mission, so similar in fact that they are unknown to us, our external ministry often appears to be functioning perfectly fine in our own eyes. But a few degrees off over a long enough period of time can result in us being just as far off the mark if we had taken a 180 degree turnabout. Shadow missions are also easier that our true mission as they are based on our ego, our image or our wounds so they offer instant gratification and balm. But Ortberg again helpfully instructs us that one of the signs of a shadow mission is that it never brings contentment to our souls that embracing the true mission and call of God can bring.

Less Worthy Than We Think, More Loved Than We Could Imagine

For a change, yesterday morning I decided to go for a walk before our weekly staff meeting to clear my head. I was walking along Carton Lane which is a tree-lined path between the main street in Maynooth and the golf course. There were tons of fallen leafs for me to step on so I was able to entertain myself as I walked along. In the past few weeks, I had heard or read a few quotes or stories that I thought were really worth remembering. I think that they all kind of came together yesterday to make some sort of sense (for a change or maybe not).

It all started a couple of weeks ago, when Zoomtard told me a short anecdote about an exchange between Karl Barth and a member of the clergy. The minister said to Barth that he was struggling and had lost his faith. To which Barth replied ‘And what makes you think that it was your faith to lose in the first place.’ Surely my faith is my own, this couldn’t be right, I have faith and then God forgives me. Sounds like a fair exchange. Then I was reading an article by NT Wright on his ‘Fresh Perspective on Paul‘ where he wrote that:

‘Faith is not something that someone does as a result of which God decides to grant them a new status or privilege. Becoming a Christian, in its initial moment, is not based on anything that a person has acquired by birth or achieved by merit. Faith is itself the first fruit of the Spirit’s call’

This got me thinking about the source of our faith. Is it something that I muster from within, something of merit that I can bring to God where he then owes me the forgiveness and adoption that he has promised? Do I hold God to ransom with a gift that he has given? Or is the very the spark of my faith, actually the first fruit of the Holy Spirit’s call that brings me into God’s covenant people.  Then I was reading an essay by CS Lewis from Fern-seed and Elephants where he wrote about how God did not die for us because of any value we had:

‘The infinite value of the human soul is not a Christian doctrine. God did not die for man because of some value he perceived in him. Out of relationship with God, each human soul’s value is considered simply in itself, zero……To die for valuable men would not have been divine but merely heroic, but God died for sinners. He loved us not because we were lovable but because he is Love’

As I write this, I am now not so sure how all these things tie together neatly, it felt clearer yesterday. But on Sunday, I heard two different strands that helped me maybe to link this all together. Firstly, the Chief told a story about a guy called John that he knew from his time in university. John was the local joyrider in the area, was constantly in trouble and had even been banned from coming to the Youth group. And when the Chief asked him about how he felt that God would view him, he replied that ‘if God ever caught a hold of him, he would shove him into a tiny room and threw away the key’. And secondly, the Eco-warrior shared with me a quote from a church service that he attended where the minister said ‘The only thing more important than us reaching up for God is God reaching down for us’.

And something clicked for me at that moment, in how often I approach God with an attitude that God owes me, that I can bring something of merit or value to trade for credits. But I can only simply come with empty hands and pockets seeking  grace, where even the little faith I have is a gift of grace, not something I can offer. And this is the part of the gospel that the human heart finds most offensive, that I can’t contribute anything of  worth towards my salvation. All through the bible, God constantly moved towards people though his covenants and finally, through the Incarnation of Jesus where God lived among us. And that maybe people like John who had no illusions of grandeur or worth in God’s eyes reflect the very people that Jesus spoke of  in Matthew 5, those who are ‘poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven’. But as I become more aware of my sinfulness and lostness, I become more sensitive to God’s grace and can live out the rhythms of a Kingdom life, not when I feel that I have something to barter with. The past few weeks has just got me thinking about the nature of faith so I apologise for its haphazardness.

A Semi-Definitive List of Alternative Resolutions

Jonathan Edwards, an American preacher and theologian, once wrote a series of resolutions that he read each week to help him to keep his mind on his task as a minister. So, in keeping with that seemingly successful method of keeping our minds on the task at hand, I decided to compose my own list of resolutions that I am going to endeavour to read weekly as I seek to be a dedicated brother, friend, church worker and member of society.

The Alternative Resolutions

1. Resolved, to work tirelessly for the promotion of Irish heritage and identity by bringing back certain phrases and nuances from rural Ireland into the general vocabulary of the suburbs of Dublin. For example, (a) if someone is annoying you or has just told you something unbelievable, the correct response is to tell them to ‘go and shite’, (b) encourage people to boycott Coca Cola and Pepsi and just drink TK red lemonade, (c) to call your jumper a ‘geansai’,etc.
2. Resolved, to be naked in the sea at least once every three months
3. Resolved, to stop trying to love people by highlighting their obvious flaws and shortcomings in public places, it is not helpful.
4. Resolved, to stop referring to going to bed as ‘heading to Club Duvet’ as unexpected folk keep turning up with glow sticks. That can be a tough one to explain to your spiritual mentor.
5. Resolved, to whenever I go home to continue to find new and creative ways to remind my younger brother that I am still top of the foodchain. Now that he is officially taller than me, I can no longer physically humiliate him so I have been considering a ‘forced outing’ which is a bitch to deal with especially when you are in transition year at secondary school.
6. Resolved, to always laugh heartily if I hear the word ‘Boob’ even if it is heard in a conversation with my housemate whenever he quotes the Jewish Philosopher ‘Martin Buber’
7. Resolved, to win a discussion with Zoomtard before August 2008, wave my finger in his face and calmly say ‘Q.E.D’, followed by clambering onto the table, discarding some items of clothing and doing the truffle shuffle.
8. Resolved, to shower and bathe regularly, not just when I feel unclean.
9. Resolved, to have monthly film night to watch a homo-erotic film. 300, tick. Top Gun, tick. Any Given Sunday…..
10. Resolved, to have the regular consumption of beer recognised as a vital component of church ministry, up there with caring for people, believing in God and such like.

I recognise that this list is only a seventh of the size of Edward’s original list of resolutions but firstly, the Leinster-Toulouse rugby match is on soon and secondly, I am running out of ideas so I am stopping here and will urge you to keep me accountable to these resolutions.

X’s and Y’s

I have been following the really interesting and helpful discussion that has started on the blogosphere regarding the role of women in the life of the Christian Church and I felt that I would add my two cents worth for whatever it is worth. This is an area of much passionate (can denote constructive as well as destructive) and hotly contested debate within the church and much hurt has been caused to many spiritually gifted members of the Body by much untheological and misogynous talk. So, I feel that this is an invaluable conversation to have and to be part of.

After meinmysmallcorner’s opening blog and as I thought about what she wrote, I think that even behind the discussion of women in ministry, there lurks something even more insidious and worrying.

I am shocked and appalled that meinmysmallcorner was greeted with the disparaging comments that she ‘thought about things too deeply’. This is an entirely unhelpful and unbiblical sentiment. This highlights for me, the continuing dichotomy in much of the Christian Church between our orthodoxy (what we believe) and our othropraxis (what we do). In much of the church, the Bible is held up as our supreme authority in all matters of faith and life (often to the point that we joke about the trinity of Father, Son and Holy Book) something that we should handle with great care and respect. Surely, if the bible is held in such high regard, we should take care in interpreting it and understanding it, we should always have the humility to know that we may be getting it wrong and be flexible enough to change our opinions.

The lifting of individual verses here and there and using them as absolute statements on issues or as Jaybercrow put it more poetically and eloquently, ‘Theological bricks’. The Chief did a brilliant sermon (I will provide a link soon) before the summer on the role of women within the church and he said repeatedly that ‘A bible passage without context is a pretext for prejudice’. So, churches have used select verses from 1 Corinthians and 2 Timothy to prevent women from playing an active and full role within the church community. It would then be easy, in fact, to use verses (out of context) to prevent people from taking communion, to justify revenge, to send your wife away when she is menstruating or to justify apartheid. To understand scripture, we must understand its context.

A couple of weeks ago, I received a personal letter. Now if you had read it without knowing what I had written in the previous correspondence or even knowing me as a person, then you could have jumped to many fanciful conclusions and wild assumptions. I think this is sometimes how it is with Paul’s letters, we need to realise that Paul is writing to specific issues that the Church in Corinth had written to him about. He is not just sitting now thinking what else do the Corinthians need to know. “I know, the role of women in ministry, haven’t covered that one yet”. Paul was addressing specific concerns and questions. Why would Paul spend time giving guidelines for when women pray and prophecy in the church service in chapter 11 if they were to remain silent? Paul would have assumed that the Corinthians would have known his feelings on women in ministry by how he commended many women into the service of the church in leadership and sought them out. He included them in his long lists of those who work for the sake of the gospel, he considered them his fellow workers, not supporters or sub-ordinates. Paul valued and honoured women. So must we.

An article that has really helped me to understand the context of the contentious passages in this debate has been written by NT Wright, the Bishop of Durham. He writes much more eloquently and thoughtfully than I can about the subject and it is a wonderful article. What I found really enlightening was how actively involved women were in the life of Jesus and his ministry and in the life of the early church in Acts. It was women, rather than the men, who felt more of the liberation of the gospel to serve in the covenant community. Jesus commended Mary for sitting at his feet in the place of a student learning to be a teacher, a woman anointed Jesus in preparation for his death (a priestly act), the women at the tomb were the first to share the good news that Jesus had risen (apostles to the apostles) and in the books of Acts, the Spirit of God descended on men and women alike to fulfil the prophecy of Joel.

Something, I find really interesting in Acts is that when Saul was going to Damascus to arrest the early leaders of the Christian church, it says that he was arresting both men and women. Why would he bother wasting his time and resources arresting women if he did not see them as influential people and leaders of the movement and a threat to the Jewish tradition that he sought to uphold? The story is told of the Battle of Saratoga in 1777 which was fought during the American Revolutionary War against the British. The American army at this battle found themselves severely outnumbered and outgunned by the superior British army. The American colonel, Daniel Morgan ordered his troops to focus their guns on the British leaders and officers and so they did. And despite being outnumbered severely, the American won, as so successful were their tactics that they took out all the British leaders and the army fell into disarray and chaos. I think that Saul was concocting the same plan. So, if Saul wanted to crush a rebellion as quickly and as ruthlessly as possible, why did he also focus on the women? I don’t imagine that he was trying to cut off the supply of traybakes or to cease biological church growth.

Jesus and Paul found themselves in a context where women found themselves having little role in society or in the ministry of the church, not supposed to attend never mind be leaders or teachers. So, how radical was the teaching and life of Jesus on the role of women in the church? Are we beginning to forget or have we already lost this radical message of Jesus? This message of liberation for all people.

What follows is probably the weakest type of argument to use in a discussion but I am going to use it anyway. But from my limited experience in student and church ministry, many of the people who have positively influenced my life as a Christian were women. Many of the most spiritually gifted people I know are women. Many of the wisest people I know are women. Many of the most pastorally gifted people that I know are women. And some of the worst hurts that I have seen done to people within the Church have been against gifted women in places of leadership and influence. Surely something is awry.

So, in order to keep Zoomie happy, Mr Wright suggests a healthier lens to look at these texts through:

“Let us read these texts as I believe that they were intended, as a way of building up God’s church, men and women, women and men alike….so we must think and pray carefully about where our own cultures and prejudices and angers are taking us, and make sure we conform, not to any of the different stereotypes the world offers, but to the healing, liberating and humanising message of the gospel of Jesus.”

But I am  going to let the Chief have the final word as he concluded his sermon with this gem,

“In the New Testament, the role that you have within the church is decided by your gifts and your gifts are decided by the Holy Spirit. If you have the gift of teaching, then you should use that gift of teaching. If you have that gift of leadership, then you should use that gift of leadership”

Let us endeavour, as a church, never to put stumbling blocks in the way of people that the Spirit has given gifts for ministry.

Reimagining

So, this is my second attempt at creating and maintaining a blog. I felt an urge to start again for the past couple of months so with things finally slowing down some what in work and combined with the ’subtle as a brick’ subliminal messages from Me in my small corner, I finally decided that it was time for me to start again. Plus taking on board, Zoomtard’s excellent post for the IFES relay workers ‘13 things to do in 12 months’ , I have decided that I needed some written method of thinking through and charting my experiences (good and bad, high and low, joyous and discouraging) as a staff member in a new church in Dublin.

I have called this new blog ‘Reimagining’ due to a conversation that I had in the office one day with Zoomtard. We were talking about why the church in Ireland was in decline, lacking vision and why people (particularly Christians) were finding church an increasingly irrelevant and superfluous part of their lives.  We concluded that was due simply to a loss of imagination of what Jesus came to show us what life and authentic community was meant to be like.

This conclusion was not new but was pinched primarily from a much used and oft-quoted section of a book by CS Lewis called ‘The Weight of Glory’ where he writes ‘We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.’ When Jesus presented to the people on the Mount a glimpse into what the kingdom of God was really like, I imagine that they were in awe and captivated by this picture of what life was created to be like and how the world was meant to be (and will be like), a place of justice, grace and real community. But we have settled too easily for something that falls far short of that picture, our minds have bought into an alternative way of achieving contentment and purpose, clouded by our selfish desires, consumerism, individualism, promiscuity, career ambitions,etc. I fear we may have missed something along the way.

The tagline (in case you are wondering or even care) across the top of my blog is a line from a poem by the American poet Emily Dickinson. I really liked the line because it contained both hope and stark realism (Dickinson was particularly adept at this). Hope that the possible is achievable but realistic in that she recognised that in order to help bring about what is possible takes a lot of time and can only be ignited by a spark of imagination of how things could be.