Monthly Archives: July 2009

Meeting New Challenges Through Repetition

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In every generation the church faces new, as well as old, challenges. For many years, Christendom allowed a basic stability within the culture for the church to remain in tact. It was a false sense of security, human capital because people were expected to hold membership in a local church, but security nonetheless. Thus, during the years of the church’s chaplaincy, at least in the West, much of where the struggle lay within the church was with itself. However, in a post-Christendom society, what many argue we are now in, the challenge is even greater. Not only are there the internal challenges and competing narratives of the church, but now the external crutch is corroding, or has corroded. Continue reading →

The (Real) Pursuit of Happiness

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Came across this today and it reminded me that true happiness is not what we’re told it is:

Happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the LORD. Happy are those who keep his decrees, who seek him with their whole heart, who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways. You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently. O that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes! Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments. I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous ordinances. I will observe your statutes; do not utterly forsake me.

How can young people keep their way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you; do not let me stray from your commandments. I treasure your word in my heart, so that I may not sin against you. Blessed are you, O LORD; teach me your statutes. With my lips I declare all the ordinances of your mouth. I delight in the way of your decrees as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts, and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.

Deal bountifully with your servant, so that I may live and observe your word. Open my eyes, so that I may behold wondrous things out of your law. I live as an alien in the land; do not hide your commandments from me. My soul is consumed with longing for your ordinances at all times. You rebuke the insolent, accursed ones, who wander from your commandments; take away from me their scorn and contempt, for I have kept your decrees. Even though princes sit plotting against me, your servant will meditate on your statutes. Your decrees are my delight, they are my counselors.  (Ps 119:1-24 NRSV).

Too often the narratives of our world say that the accumulation of things, the pursuit of our own peace-of-mind, our own pleasures (often at the expense of others), the biggest and strongest, the most powerful, the wealthiest, the smartest, the prettiest, or those who have the most love, friends, and sex are those who will truly find happiness. Not so says the Psalmist, happiness does not belong to any of those things. Real happiness can only be found by rejecting the world’s version of happiness, and instead delighting in God’s law: Love God with your whole heart, body soul and strength and love the Other.

Luke 1:1-4 Storyboards: Narration as Intervention (Sermon Notes)

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This past Sunday we reflected on Luke 1:1-4, Luke’s introduction to his wonderful Gospel.

“Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.” (Luke 1:1-4 NRSV).

Interventions

This summer we are going to hit some of the highlights in the Gospel of Luke. The reason why I didn’t want to call it “Luke: The greatest hits,” or “Peter, Paul, and Luke: Three Years to Remember,” wasn’t just because those seemed a little cheesy, but because I wanted to dig deeper into the actual encounter we have with the text.

Our reflections this summer, the Interventions in the Gospel of Luke, not only draw on the text itself, what it says, what it teaches, but it suggests that by hearing, and re-telling these stories we encounter the text in a way that transforms us.

Good stories always connect with the real “stuff of life,” great stories change lives. Continue reading →

Quakerism and Sustainability: Camas Friends Practice A New "Plainness"

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I’ve posted about this already on Twitter and Facebook so excuse the repetition, but it seems like it should be here on my blog as well. Plus, I’m really pleased with our church. Camas Friends are doing some pretty cool stuff, and it’s all stuff I cannot take any credit for! (This just shows how cool this place is). They’ve been up to some really awesome practices around caring for God’s creation: things such as, teaching classes on eating in ways that healthy and local, learning how to de-clutter our lives, planting raised bed gardens – we’ve got one at the meetinghouse right now, and reflecting on how this is all tied it to our Quaker testimony of plainness and other similar sensibilities. Camas Friends are showing their faith by how they live out their lives in very practical ways.

The other day our local newspaper got wind of it and interviewed some of us about what we’re doing. The reporter initially sent me, and a couple other folks emails, about how we see sustainability all tied into being Quakers. I wrote out some of my thoughts on the issue and then invited the rest of the church to dialogue about it over email. We got some really great responses, which I sent to the reporter.

The paper featured our church in a Sustainability section last week. Here’s a scanned .pdf version of the article because they didn’t make the essay available online:  Spiritual Sustainability

Interventions in The Gospel of Luke

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Tomorrow we begin a series we’re playfully naming, “Interventions in The Gospel of Luke.” Our reflections will not only draw on the text itself, what it says, what it teaches, but it suggests that by hearing, and re-telling these stories we encounter the text in a way that transforms us. We will be looking at ways in which God, through Jesus, intervened in our world, disrupted the status quo, and problematized the “logic of the world” and contrasted it with the logic of the embodied kingdom of God. We will be discussing how Jesus’ counter-movements of peace, love and hope model for the church how we are to live in the world.

Good stories always connect with the real “stuff of life,” great stories change lives.

Another way the Gospel intervenes is through its re-telling within our own time. Not only was the incarnation of God’s son in the first century an intervention, but as a people formed and bound by the Holy Spirit, when we re-tell these stories, God can, through the text, intervene in our own lives as well (and of course, God acts outside the text as well). My hope is that the Holy Spirit will work in and through the Gospel of Luke this to intervene in our lives and continue to form us into God’s people. Continue reading →