Traders for or Traitors of the Kingdom, A Sermon

Here's a sermon I preached during FBC's noon day Holy Week services, reflecting on the "Parable of the Talents."

As we explore the theme this week, , “Give Me Jesus [Question Mark],” I’m reminded that we needed to be unsettled in our faith journey, in order to ask hard questions.

“Is it Jesus that I really want or do I prefer the Jesus who helps me feel self-fulfilled, the Jesus I use to make me feel good.”

And in order to unsettle us this afternoon, I want to offer up, what some may consider to be an uncommon reading of this common parable about talents. I want to explore a different interpretation that steers us directly into the heart of: “Give Me Jesus?”

Just in case you’re unfamiliar with the common interpretation of this parable, it goes something like this. Everyone has God-given talents or abilities, and what this parable teaches us is that God wants us to use our “spiritual gifts” or talent to grow his kingdom while we wait for Christ to return.

But the more I studied this parable, the more I became uncomfortable with this way of reading it. And so, I ask you to listen again as I offer up a modern reading that I hope will make the meaning plain.

He stumbled into the room, resting on the door frame in his usual drunken stupor. The Owner of the land, or Lord has he liked to be called, eyed his workers with hopeful greed and piercing hate. It had been several months since the Owner left, leaving these three day-laborers in charge of his estate.

As migrant workers with no papers, and thus no rights, these three men were no better than slaves to their Lord. They were hostages to this life now. If they’d known what kind of man he was, maybe they wouldn’t have jumped into his truck to work for him.

He is known among many of the migrant workers for his cruel spirit. On several occasions he has been known to deliver his workers to the border patrol if they anger him or try to leave.

Among the day laborers, who live in daily fear, the border patrol is commonly referred to as the dark place, or the “place of weeping and gnashing of teeth,” because it is there families are torn apart, forced from the country, forced from their wives and children.

Yet, the Owner was very wealthy and could offer work, which was hard to come by these days as families grew hungrier. So, these three men remained, unable to leave because of their own need for work, and their fear of the Owner.

Disappearing for months was a common affair for their Master. They had grown used to being left to manage the fields and estate while he lived a life they couldn’t imagine, one of luxury and extravagance. But this time was different. Before wandering off, the Owner, probably as a cruel trick, left each of the workers an inexplicably large amount of money.

To one worker, he gave five talents, to another two talents and to the third he gave one talent. One talent. These men knew, a single talent was enough to feed one of their family’s for 20 years. It represented lavish wealth, almost an entire life’s worth of work balled up into one, large piece of metal.

Familiar with their Lord’s avarice, they inferred his intent.

It was his common practice, without a blink of an eye, for the Owner to cheat people. Anyone. Everyone. His singular goal was to build his wealth, and of course that meant building on the backs of others. His practices were harsh, always reaping where he did not sow, making money off of his neighbor’s crops, and gathering where he did not scatter seed.

Uncertain what the reward would be, if there would even be a reward, these three men knew the Master would arrive expecting a plentiful return, reaping where he had not sown. It was a perfect plan, for the Master at least. Go on vacation, live it up, and come back to an even larger amount of money or talents.

With the fear of their Master’s cruelness haunting them in his absence, two of the workers fought diligently to make his money grow, allowing theirs hearts to grow cold long enough, hopefully just long enough, to make it past this malicious ordeal. They only wanted to work. Their families needed them to work. What choice did they have? And so, for week after tireless week, they scraped, stole, created false investments schemes, ponzi schemes, triangle schemes, whatever it would take to make the money grow.

But the third, who was given 20 years worth of wages instead of 40 years or 100 years like the other two, went off early one morning and found a safe place in a field and buried the talent. He was there to live and help his family live. But he knew, life could not be found in this injustice. There was simply no excuse to do his living off the backs of others, and so he buried the treacherous demand of the Master.

Holding himself up on the doorframe, the drunken Master waited perversely to hear the news of how the workers had carried out his longing for gain. When the first two told him how they’d made to make his money expand, he grew elated. No longer needing the door frame to hold himself up, he declared just how much Joy they had given him and they would both be given even more responsibility than they already had, of course, more responsibility, but not more pay.

Then he noticed the third worker, sitting in silence. He demanded to know how he made the Owner richer. The meek man rose to his feet and clearly said, “I know you reap where you do not sow. You take from the poor and live like you’re the only one that matters. You cheat, you steal, and you harvest where you don’t plant seeds. I was afraid of losing the talent due to your harshness, but I was more afraid of becoming like you because of your harshness. So, I didn’t steal or cheat, but merely hid the money.”

“Don’t you understand boy,” raged the Owner, “this is how the world works. Those that have will be given more, even in abundance. But the “have-nots,” like you, they’ll be stripped what little they do have, because they’re not even worthy of that tiny amount. You’re type don’t deserve the scraps from my table.”

With vile, the Master loaded the single, resolute worker in his truck and drove to the place of “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” sending him away from his loved ones and their only source of life and income.

Well, I’ll be the first to admit this reading of the parable isn’t very warm or fuzzy, but it is certainly more unsettling. And it needs to be unsettling, because the older, more common interpretation, for me at least, is too comfortable, too self-fulfilling. “God gives to those that help themselves.” But As Walter Wink and other Biblical scholars have noted, this way of thinking, this older interpretation, goes against the social conventions of Jesus’ time.

Jesus’ audience in the Gospel of Matthew was comprised mostly of those at the margins of society. They were familiar with the practices that profited the prosperous, as they were the victim’s of fraud, exorbitant rates with ambiguous contracts (much akin to predatory lending in our time), and sidebar taxes that allowed the collector to skim off the top.

Moreover, in first century Jewish culture, individual pursuit of wealth, especially at the cost of others members of society, was looked down upon as a violating communal and religious loyalty. Therefore, to even be able to own a single talent, much less several, was seen as anathema, a sinful cheat among Jesus’ audience. Thus, for the villain in this story to represent God, wouldn’t have made any sense to the first century listener.

Besides the common interpretation being nonsensical to its audience, another reason I think we should read this parable in this new way is that it fits with the larger picture of Jesus’ agenda. Unlike some theologians who would have us believe that God sent Jesus to earth for the sole purpose of being a divine punching bag, or the only reason Jesus was sent to earth was to die, we must remember that Jesus had an agenda, in other words, Jesus had a mission.

Sewn throughout the Garment of Matthew’s Gospel is Jesus’ mission. And this thread of mission is that Jesus is bringing about a movement of God’s justice and love here among us now through costly follower-ship.

Jesus came proclaiming the good news, “the Kingdom of God is near, repent and come join the movement.”

And the readers of Matthew knew that Jesus’ kingdom proclamation was being united with a very powerful, hebrew concept: tsedawkaw translated to greek, dikaiosune.

Dikaios and dikaiosune are the Jewish and Christian answer to the perennial human question, “what does it mean to live a full, and good, and righteous life before one dies? What does it mean to live life eternally beginning now? What does it mean to be truly human?”

If there was ever a word appropriate enough for something as mysterious and beautiful as God’s kingdom, Dikaiosune is that word.

In the greek, dikaios or dikaiosune is a word so pregnant with meaning that if it were to inhabit the heart, it would birth God’s kingdom. You see, dikaios is one of those words that’s hard to render into English because it’s so full of meaning.

Often interpreted in the New Testament as “Righteousness”, Dikaiosune means three things all at once, never mutually exclusive: justification, righteousness, and justice. In Jesus’ dikaiosune movement, we find that God is restoring our relationship with him (justification), restoring our inner selves as God’s image bearers (righteousness), and the restoring human relationships/community through equity (justice).

So we see in Jesus, that God is setting and restoring our humanity in righteousness in order that humanity can be restored to itself through justice.

In the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, we read in Genesis that “Abraham believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as dikiaosune.”

In Isaiah we find that “all our dikiaosune is like filthy rags.

And in Amos, the verse forever heard in my head through the voice of Martin Luther King Jr, “But let our justice roll down as water, and dikaisune as an ever flowing stream.”

Thus, Jesus’ mission was to establish God’s dikaiosune among us now. And he expected this endeavor to be costly.

In the beatitudes Jesus declared, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for dikaiosune for the will be filled.”

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for dikaiosune’s sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The kingdom belongs to those who like the third servant in the parable object to unjust practices that destroy justice even to the point of being persecuted or cast from society. And certainly the persecution Jesus is talking about here isn’t when we don’t get along with go workers or when we suffer some illness, but persecution is being marginalized and force to live uncomfortably because of our faith in this Jesus way of restoration.

But of course we shouldn’t seek out suffering for suffering’s sake, but rather we should seek out life and justice for God’s sake.

In the parable directly following this one in Matt 25, we learn that God hides himself among the poor and the forgotten, those who will never make history books. Thus we must stand for dikaiosune’s sake and resist evil practices that misuse and abuse God’s very self found in the thirsty and oppressed.

This week we need to be unsettled, because the injustices born on the backs of the poor are unsettling. And what is even more unsettling is these injustices are born on the back of God’s very self.

Jesus was and is the embodiment of God’s kingdom come. To meet Jesus, means to bump into God’s Kingdom. Thus, we have to remember that the cross wasn’t God’s sadistic torturing of his Son, but it was the ultimate cost of Jesus’ mission. Jesus was crucified for bringing a new way, God’s way of life on earth, because when God’s kingdom of dikaiosune confronts the evils and injustices of our world, the world convulses and pushes it out to the margins, even to death.

But as Jesus said, “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

So, Dikaiosune is the unsettling vision that all might not be well with the way the world works, the way we live, the lives we exploit, the poor we neglect, the voiceless we hush, the enemies we murder, and the pain we hide our faces from.

Dikaiosune is the unsettling vision that all are created equal and deserve a chance to live while we go on living lavishly and not just beyond our own means, but the very means of the our earth.

Dikaisune is the unsettling vision that we may stand alone, and be cast aside, we may be put to death, but at the core of following Jesus is a vision for restoring the world until dikaiosune flows down as an ever flowing stream.

The answer to the perennial question for all of humanity, “what must I do to be good and live the fullest possible life now,” is found in Jesus’ Kingdom of dikaiosune and a life devoted to bringing it about no matter the cost.

So may today be about coming to Jesus in a new way, and giving up our pretenses, declaring our desire for him not because of what he can give us, whether earthly or heavenly rewards; but rather may we learn to desire Jesus in our lives for our own restoration as well as the restoration of the world. May we desire Jesus, because this dikaiosune vision is the hope of the world, and there is nothing, not even death that can conquer this Kingdom.

May we be like the third servant, knowing this is a kingdom worth being put to shame for, worth being marginalized for, and worth being persecuted for, knowing that in the end it is not death that prevails, but life everlasting.

Benediction:

Here these words from Jesus,

Matt. 6:25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?

But strive first for the kingdom of God and his dikaiosune, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Desiring the Kingdom, James K.A. Smith - A Book Review

Why is it that the everydayness of many Western Christians' lifestyles often reflect the values of their culture instead of Christ? How do our ways of engaging and teaching discipleship often leave our actions thin but our heads heavy? What is it that our actions betray our words or beliefs so that we proclaim God as highest but pay homage to the other gods of entertainment, consumerism, or nationalism? James K.A. Smith's newest reflection on education at its core is a reflection on discipleship. In this quest, he gives a fuller and more correct understanding of humans as affective, desiring animals in able to work towards a deeper discipleship, but fails to go beyond classical liturgical practices. This book is valuable to many: students, teachers, Sunday Schools, professors, preachers, and academics.

While I'll hold off on a full review I will say that he takes off better than he lands. Part I of the book is devoted to constructing a deeper philosophical anthropology than the anthropology modernity or romanticism. The core argument of Desiring the Kingdom is that humans at their core are not thinking or even believing animals, but rather are precognitive, pre-rationalist lovers. We are what we love, we are what we worship. Furthermore, the first part of the book reflects upon the power of "secular" liturgies that form and shape human desire and love, so that our love is misdirected. Much of my aggravation from my own as well the discipleship of the Western church, is that the true formative practices of our daily lives come less from the church than the mall, White House, flag, Jerry World (the newest Mecca of entertainment and competition: the Dallas Cowboys Stadium). While these things are not evil in themselves, they should not be the focus of our desire as they tend to claim.

Overall, the power of Part I is Smith's aim is to unveil the truth that behind every pedagogy or practice for teaching is a philosophical anthropology, or understanding of human existence. I fully appreciate Smith's understanding of human anthropology: "loving, desiring, affective, liturgical animals who, for the most part, don't inhabit the world as thinkers or cognitive machines."
So, instead of being pushed by our beliefs, we are "pulled by a telos that we desire."

Part II builds off of the anthropology of humans as "fundamentally and primordially- lovers," to instill worship as the creation of habits that "constitute the fulcrum of our desires." Smith claims rightly that instead of focusing on changing beliefs or worldviews, the church or particularly the Christian university must inculcate habits that counter the cultural practices that are "thick"- or powerful enough to (mis)guide human desire. The final section of Desiring the Kingdom reflects on the worship practices in the Christian tradition that are "formative for identity, that inculcate particular visions of the good life." Possibly the most important piece in this section for myself is Smith's argument that the imago die is basically the participation of humans in the missio dei, but not in those words.

This is where Smith gets closest to being right. The practices that will ultimately guide human desire lie with and beyond the Sunday morning worship service. "[T]he image of God is a task, a mission," writes Smith. Thus, beyond classical liturgical practices found in "worship," the church must create an ethos and ethic of participation in the mission of God. It is only by moving from doing mission and worship, to being mission and worship through ministering, living among, and fighting for caught up in God's mission of redemptive love that the church will claim once again the hearts of the church with "thick" practices. Counter-formation must occur beyond the walls of Sunday morning.

Sowing Seeds of Doubt, A sermon on Mark 4:26-32

Once long ago, a carpenter was born into a tribe of farmers, merchants, and shepherds. As the carpenter grew into a boy then a man, people in his area began to get suspicious of him. See, these people had long ago settled into the land and they survived by studying, listening to, and living off the soil, trees, and grass.

But this young carpenter came with a new vision for life, a vision of casting out and sailing the deep blue sea.

Everywhere this carpenter went crowds gathered around him. He often spoke in healing ways and told strange stories about life on the water. Crowds would disperse after hearing the carpenter speak with newfound hope and sense of life because of his beautiful visions and stories about the sea.

The carpenter continued his life going from village to village proclaiming life on the salty sea. He even began to draw up blueprints and make notes about his vision for sailing, a vision for a completely new way of life.


Along with a few faithful followers this carpenter began to build a ship on the sands of the sea. But like Moses who didn’t get to cross into the promised land, the carpenter died before ever setting sail. So his followers continued the good work and finished the boat and eventually cast out to sea.

Time passes and soon people are born on the ship who never knew the carpenter. It seems that life on the sea is as beautiful and wondrous as the carpenter ever spoke of, yet everyone still desires the land. Running deep within their veins is the soil of their ancestry, while the salt of the sea continues to burn their lungs.

Time passes and new generations come along and fortify the ship for fear of the sea. All windows are boarded up and no one is allowed on deck. The dream and vision of life on the sea is soon replaced with life in the ship. Most everyone’s effort was put forth in maintaining the vessel. Of course, once every week everyone on board would gather to read and talk about the carpenter and his notes, some even sang songs in praise of the carpenter.

Others dedicated themselves to the study of the carpenter and tried to figure out exactly what he really said, and what earlier generations might have added to his notes. Others found this study frivolous and decided to make the ship hospitable by using all their energy to adorn the vessel.

Times passes and people continue to desire the land while still revisiting the need to be on the sea at least according to the readings from the carpenter’s work. The ship is maintained and people bicker and argue about what the carpenter really meant and said. Vision for life on the sea is all but lost.

Then one day some children were playing in the hull of the ship and a mother noticed the wood beginning to crack. By this time the ship had seen hundreds and hundreds of years of service. Everyone’s minds were filled with images of the children being violently swept out to sea. Fear filled the air of the hull with the anticipation that drowning water would soon follow.

And before anyone could get to the children one child broke through the wood. But something surprising happened. Instead of a great splash of water bursting into the ship, a great cloud of dust puffed through the hole.

To their bewilderment, the sea had long ago dried up and the ship laid not in the midst of water, but rather in the midst of land and the civilization they had originally deserted all those years ago. And it wasn’t until they began to go forth from the vessel that the teachings of the carpenter began to make sense.

_________
This story of course, is my own parable, if you will. As we saw from the reading this morning, this was Jesus preferred way of teaching, in stories or parables. Not that I pretend to have special insider knowledge or even that a parable simply has one single, once for all time meaning, but with the gap between Jesus’s time and now, I wonder if we lose some of what Jesus meant with these simple, yet complex stories.

See,

Many of the commentaries and a few sermons I read on this text always pointed to one theme: faith. They say, Jesus was teaching about the power of a little, mustard seed-like faith or the power of God's word to plant itself mysteriously in faith. But I wonder if these parables are less about the need for faith, and more about the need for doubt.

Is Jesus sowing seeds of doubt?

Under roman occupation and a history of oppression, the Jews of the 1st century long awaited the appearance of the Messiah. This day was the eschatological day of the Lord, the day when God would come with a sword and bring vengeance to Israel’s enemies and restore the Davidic kingdom.

But we know when Jesus came on the scene; he compelled people to believe that God’s Kingdom of peace & reconciliation was right in front of them.

And this is what Jesus was focusing in on when he says: “The Kingdom of God is like”. With those words, he began to rock the religious system of every 1st century listener. Jesus spoke these words not only so people would believe toward the Kingdom, BUT so they would believe away from a religious system, doubting the very thing they measured life by.

And
This was the exact problem of Jesus: he wasn’t quite the Messiah people were expecting. Even Peter, the unshakable rock, the guy who walked on water questioned Jesus’ way of bringing in the kingdom. Not only was it not violent, but it reversed violence and called those who would follow Jesus to die with him.

Jesus still seems to defy the categories we place on him.

So,
What we find in these parables of Jesus is a call to put the primary things first and secondary things second. Or, by doubting what we place as primary, we can become people of peace, reconciliation, and love.
________

Did you know Google has the power to transform how we think and read?

At least this is what social science researcher Katie McGowan writes in her article, “Does Google (re)Make Us?

McGowan writes that “we are not only what we read…we are how we read it.”

She likens this shift in thinking to the effects of the clock on humans. Before the clock was invented people measured the day, went to sleep and woke up according to the sun. But with the invention of the clock we began to change our internal habits of eating and sleeping.

So, in our search for knowledge Google and the internet has given us something no civilization on earth has experienced before: instant knowledge at our finger tips. McGowan makes this poignant observation: as humans use technology, technology begins to use us.

Thus, Deep textual readings and analysis are replaced by sound bytes; the discipline for concentrating is replaced by short attention spans.

According to this researcher the primary search for knowledge and study, is actually replaced by the secondary methods: research using Google, reducing the human ability to reflect, think, and analyze what is being read.
________
Jesus spoke in parables because his listeners were entrenched, entrenched in their system of thought that made Jesus’ call to the Kingdom sound silly, for they all knew the Kingdom and it’s Messiah would come with force and power.

The very thing that made Jesus’ crowd “holy” kept them from Jesus & a life of peace & reconciliation.

So, what he is saying in these two parables is that despite appearances, despite our tendency to measure and control; it is not the KoG which is here and coming that should be doubted, but our religious systems that give us the appearance of goodness and righteousness.

Yet, because it’s easier to doubt the power of God’s mysterious rule than our religious life, we often approach Jesus like those on boat from my earlier story.


First, we make the voyage not about actually sailing and living according to what the carpenter taught, but about studying sailing and the carpenter’s teaching.

These Christians are like soldiers who sit in a foxhole and when the captain commands them to charge, they all remain seated. One soldier remarks on the tenor of the captains voice, another parses the words of the captain, while another argues if it was even the captain’s voice at all…all the while the front closes in on them.

It’s as if we think that thinking is doing something. As if the call of Jesus is to think about Jesus.

And
Before we know it, we think we can consume our way into following Christ.
“If I read one more book, go to one more conference, join a Bible study, then I’m more of a Christian. If I can recite to you Marcus Borg or NT Wright, Brian McLaren or whatever new curriculum, then I’m following Jesus.”
_____

Of course, there are others that find this way of being a Christian as frivolous.
These Christians are those of us, who spend all our energy on the life in the ship.

Much like the power of Google to shape how we think and read, making church or life in the ship primary can shape you into thinking you are a person of peace and reconciliation. But sometimes the truth is, some of the most bitter, power hungry, and angry people I’ve ever met have been people in the church.

Missiologist and church planter Alan Hirsch is right when he says:
It is theologically correct to say that the church IS NOT the kingdom. The church serves as a sign, a symbol, a foretaste of the Kingdom of God. The kingdom can express itself in and through the church in powerful ways, but the Kingdom extends to God’s rule everywhere.

Or as one of my favorite theologians says: “It is not that the church has a mission, rather it is God’s mission that has a church.”


Now, I’m not saying these things aren’t important. Of course studying and reflecting upon faith, Scripture, and history are important. Of course, church work and programs are necessary. But neither are primary.

In allowing Jesus to sow seeds of doubt, we may find that we've allowed secondary things to become primary!

We make going to church, more important than being church. We make being entertained more important than being formed. We make committees more important than forgiveness. We make amassing knowledge more important than the doing of that knowledge. We board up our windows and make our life central; over against the life of God, who as Bono says “is playing house among the poor, the forgotten, and marginalized.”

These stories of insignificant seeds point back to one thing: In Jesus’ words and work, the Kingdom had made its entrance.

Tony Campolo says, "I wish [Jesus] would ask, 'Virgin Birth: strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree? Check one.' But those are not the questions. [The questions are] 'I was hungry, did you feed me? I was a stranger, did you make room for me?"

Faced with the decision to continue the beautiful and wondrous life on the sea, the people on the ship gave up in the face of the discomforts and growth pains of transformation. All the while life around them shifted and changed.
______
It was about my sophomore year of college when I all but lost my faith. As a religion major at a small Christian University: Mary Hardin-Baylor, I entered into a second and continual transformation.

My first big transformation came when I became a Christian, swinging far from being an atheist at the age of 17 to hard, fundamentalist faith as a senior in high school. For the first two years of my new life as a Christian, Christ radically transformed me with the power of forgiveness, but as this experience past away I soon replaced that vision of love and forgiveness with religious measurements for my faith as well as others.

Doing church, being a “holy” person, and closing myself off from the world became central. But in my struggle to reconnect with God, I found God planting seeds of doubt.

See, in the fall of my second year, I took two classes with Dr. Carol Holcomb, a brilliant woman theologian, a feminist and a deacon (of course in my early faith, all these things were contradictory to me, at least in the same sentence). Through her teaching and this new relationship, I internally began to question everything I had grown to know, everything that kept my faith safe.

So, my faith began to shrivel and die. I had become a judgmental, closed off person; fooled into thinking that I was righteous b/c I studied the Bible, worked at a church, and supposedly knew who was holy and who wasn’t.

It wasn’t until I learned through some mentors and friends that following Christ into the margins, actually doing forgiveness, and living love instead of just talking about them, that I again met God.

It was then I learned that meeting God and following Christ, finding love and peace were made real by giving love and peace, by following God found in the margins and often outside the walls of church.

As the world, our culture shifts around us, we, the church, are called to be a sign, a foretaste of God’s hope by going out into the world, to Austin, your neighborhood, or maybe even in this church and really doing the hard work of peace, love, and reconciliation….by making following Christ primary and real, thus realizing what has been true all along, in Christ you are a new Creation.


[God, you have loved us and been patient with your people. Holy Spirit, awaken us to your activity in us, around us, and through us. May we know you more by following you in the difficult and narrow path of reconciliation. We ask God, in your goodness that you’d give us the faith to doubt what we place over our lives and over you, relinquishing control and efficiency for the messiness of forgiveness and love. Truly in you we are already a New Creation, so we ask for faithfulness in making your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.]




Despite all appearances, trust that the Kingdom of reconciliation and peace is here among you. Leave this place as a servants to God’s causes, finding patience for love in the face of hate; justice in the face of oppression; and new life in the face of brokenness. May you, in the imitation of Christ, incarnate hope to the hopeless, light to the darkness, and water to the thirsty. Go now embodying a new way of life, go now sharing the gift of reconciliation, go now in peace.

This Ain't Your Momma's Christianity...

Merehope posts up some interesting research from church historian, Mark Noll:

First, the magnitude. In order to grasp the current situation of world Christianity concretely, consider what went on last Sunday. More Roman Catholics attended church in the Philippines than in any single country of Europe. In China, where in 1970 there were no legally functioning churches at all, more believers probably gathered for worship than in all of so-called “Christian Europe.” And in Europe (as reported by Philip Jenkins) the church with the largest attendance last Sunday was in Kiev, and it is a church of Nigerian Pentecostals. Last Sunday, more Anglicans attended church in each of Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda than did Anglicans in Britain and Canada and Episcopalians in the U.S. combined. And several times more Anglicans attended church in Nigeria than in these other African countries. In Korea, where a century ago there existed only a bare handful of Christian believers, more people attended the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul than all of the churches in significant American denominations like the Christian Reformed Church. In the United States, Roman Catholic mass was said in more languages than ever in American history. Last Sunday many of the churches with the largest congregations in England and France were filled with African or Caribbean faces. As a final indication of global trends, as of 1999 the largest chapter of the Jesuits was in India, and not as in the United States as had been the case for many decades before.

In a word, the world Christian situation is not what it was when your grandparents were born, or even when you were born.

Shenk & a missional ecclesiology

Wilbert Shenk asks, “What can we say are the main features of a missional ecclesiology? At least five things will characterize a missional church:
• The missional church is intensely aware that its priority is to witness to the kingdom of God so that people are being liberated from the oppressive power of idols. The church is consciously discerning and naming the idols.
• The church is deeply committed to the world but is not controlled by the world. In other words, the church knows that it has been placed in the world but is never to be subservient to the world. The absence of this tension indicates that the church has made its peace with the world.
• Mission is patterned after the example of Jesus the Messiah; that is, mission is cruciform. The vision of Isaiah 53 is being fulfilled as God’s people serve and witness. The cross is central.
• The missional church has a keen awareness of the eschaton. In Jesus Christ the kingdom has been inaugurated, but the people of God eagerly await the consummation of the kingdom.
• Church structures will serve and support its mission to the world. Human cultures inevitably change over time. The church must stay abreast of its changing cultural context, which will require the dismantling of archaic forms that impede missionary witness and the devising of new structures that support the mission
New Wineskins for New Wine: Toward a Post-Christendom Ecclesiology
via.

Free Roland Allen Books

What? One of the most important missiological thinkers and innovators has two books online for free...oh yeah baby!

The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church

Missionary Methods: St. Paul's or Ours?

Update: brett g found Allen's journal online, thanks brett g!