More Than Stone

From N. T. Wright’s book “Evil and the Justice of God”

We are not told-or not in any way that satisfies our puzzled questioning-how and why there is radical evil within God’s wonderful, beautiful and essentially good creation. One day I think we shall find out, but I believe we are incapable of understanding it at the moment, in the same way that a baby in the womb would lack the categories to think about the outside world. What we are promised, however, is that God will make a world in which all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, a world in which forgiveness is on e of the foundation stones and reconciliation is the cement which holds everything together. And we are given this promise not as a matter of whistling in the dark, not as something to believe even though there is no evidence, but in and through Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection, and in and through the Spirit through whom the achievement of Jesus becomes a reality in our world and in our lives. When we understand forgiveness, flowing from the work of Jesus and the Spirit, as the strange, powerful thing it really is, we begin to realize that God’s forgiveness of us, and our forgiveness of others, is the knife that cuts the rope by which sin, anger, fear, recrimination and death are still attached to us. Evil will have nothing to say at the last, because the victory of the cross will be fully implemented.

We return to the point at which we began. In the new heavens and the new earth there will be nor more sea, no more chaos, no more monsters coming up from the abyss. And, as with all Christian eschatology, the best news of all is that we don’t have to wait for the future to start experiencing our deliverance from evil. We are invited, summoned, bidden to start living this way in the present. I suspect that the problems this poses for us—the immediate problems of forgiving ourselves and our neighbors, and the practical and political problems of working for a world in which people no longer wish to become terrorists, in which people no longer enslave one another with crippling debt, and in which those who live at great risk of the natural elements receive special protection form civil authorities—are the real problems. The philosophical problems often function simply as a smoke screen behind which we try to hide. And I suspect, therefore, that the more we learn the meaning of forgiveness in our own lives, the more we shall glimpse the deep theological truth that all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, and the more we shall be enabled to anticipate that reality even in the midst of our suffering world.

Technorati Tags: suffering, Virginia+tech, social+justice, poverty, aids

Matt 10:22
All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved

Mark 13:13
All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.

Luke 6:22
Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.

Luke 21:17
All men will hate you because of me.

These 4 verses are thrown around in the US Christian culture a lot. It’s a “badge of courage”. The problem is that Jesus was not only talking to His disciples, many of whom were martyred, but also, across the ages to Christians in places like China, Sudan, and the Middle East. I do not think that Jesus was talking to us, here and now, to give us an excuse to be careless and unkind. If my basic understanding of the Scriptures is correct, those who were persecuting Jesus, and then the church, were the religious system and the empire of Rome. Persecution came as a result of challenging the Pharisees. Persecution came because Jesus challenged the empire that oppressed and abused those who were weak. I do not see evidence that persecution came because Jesus hated first.

“All men will hate you because of me.” How we love this statement. We love it because, if we can say it’s true, it somehow proves that we are genuine followers of Jesus. We love it because, if we can say it’s true, it puts us in good company. We love it because, if we can say it’s true, we will grow spiritually through the persecution. The problem is that most people that throw this statement around are taking it out of context and using it to be insufferably arrogant and cruel.

Think about the times you have heard one of the above Scriptures used. What was the context?

· People will hate you because they don’t like their sinfulness being exposed.
· People will hate you because they look pretty good until contrasted with true righteousness.
· People will hate you because you don’t laugh at their dirty jokes.
· People will hate you because you believe in 6-day creation.
· People will hate you because you picket at abortion clinics.
· People will hate you because you call homosexuality an abomination.

AMEN, Brother! REJOICE in the persecution!!! Now, perhaps the above examples are the far leaning “right” kinds of examples. However, I recall a conversation recently with a friend. This friend is not what I would call a fundamentalist. I was talking to him about Rob Bell, and how I love the fact that Rob focuses on the redemption of the world and Jesus’ love, the fact that Rob doesn’t use all the “churchy” language like “substitutionary atonement”. My friend replied, “It doesn’t matter how we talk, or if we change our approach to presenting the Gospel, because the world hates us.” It doesn’t matter. Really? It doesn’t matter…because all men will hate us. Then what are we doing? What’s the point? No wonder we all just sit around waiting to get to heaven. There’s no point doing anything in this world, because all men will hate us, anyway.

Isn’t this just a tired old excuse to be judgmental and hateful? Or an excuse to not have to examine the way we’ve been doing things in the Church? Or an excuse to stay locked within the church walls fraternizing with all the other Christians that the world hates? Could it be that when Jesus said the world will hate us, he meant that they will hate us because we are breaking the dominions, empires and structures of this world that oppress? That we are truly setting captives free, not just from their own sin, but also from the sins of others? That we are setting people free from religious institutions that keep people from the freedom that Jesus promised? Could that be what he meant?

Jesus challenged the power hierarchies. He challenged the hierarchies of kingdom, religious structures, wealth and social status. When Jesus said the world will hate you because of me, could it be that we would be hated because we;

· Love everyone, not just those we call our “brothers and sisters”.
· Invite the lame, poor, maimed and blind to our parties.
· Do not continue to amass wealth within an unjust system.
· Proclaim that in the Kingdom of God there are no slaves or masters, no men or women, no teachers or students.
· Challenge the systems that tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders.
· Have fellowship with outcasts, thus rejecting the views of those who demand separateness from an unclean world.

Could that be what Jesus meant?

John Smulo says:

“I could develop a list of things to say sorry about that could go on until tomorrow. But over the last few weeks I’ve been thinking through a few different ways for the Christian community as a whole to say “we’re sorry”.”

If you’ve ever regreted the way you’ve acted, or things you’ve said “in the name of God”, take a look at John’s website and join the chorus of apologies.

Interesting discussions lately.

John Smulo asks “What Does It Mean To Walk The Emerging Church Talk?”
Church-The New Exodus has generated disussion.

So, with all this discussion about how we do this new thing….how we change the way things are…how we walk this out…

Here is my challenge:

What one thing will you do, today, to make a difference?

How will you heal someone that has been hurt by the church?
How will you feed the hungry?
How will you live out the missional church?
How will you become a “new kind of Christian”?
How will you bring justice to the oppressed?
How will you be the incarnational Jesus to someone?

Imagine if we all committed to one thing, today. What might that look like? Could we really start walking out this revolution?

What is your one thing? I’ll start…..
Today, I will, start knitting the baby cap hat for “Caps to the Capital”.

Ok, your turn….let’s do this thing.
Technorati Tags: poverty, missional, emerging+church, justice