Practicing God’s Presence

Thinking about what it means to be missional or what it means to be a Christ follower is important, but not very important, if I don’t intend by God’s help to live the life.

Michael Frost in Exiles writes about practicing the presence of Christ, building on Brother Lawrence’s classic The Practice of the Presence of God. I have reworked that material for my own benefit but post it here in case it might be an encouragement to someone else.

Brother Lawrence lived by five simple rules. I agree with Frost that they may be simple enough to summarize but living by them is nowhere near as simple. Here they are:

1. Regularly confess sin and realize that our sinfulness does not disqualify us from seeking God’s presence. Frost encourages accountability relationships with more mature Christ followers. It would seem to me this type of mentoring would work best if the mentor likewise has a passion to pursue God’s presence in the “kitchen” of life.
2. Cultivate the capacity to see God in every aspect of life. In our narcissistic age, an essential part of that cultivation is weeding out of our thinking the view that everything ought to be about me.
3. Do all things, even everyday things, for the love of God. It is not the sacredness or greatness of the act that counts but the attitude of the heart. Ah, man looks on the outer life, but not so with God.
4. Communicate regularly with God through short and simple prayers. I wonder if this rule presumes a more formal prayer life. Anyone know?
5. Practice God’s presence primarily to please God. Again I see this as very counter-cultural; we are surrounded by voices that encourage us to make choices based on “what’s in it for me”. Piper’s line that ‘God is most glorified by us when we are most satisfied with him’ seems to harmonize well with this rule.

As I reflect on these rules the third is the most challenging. I seem to be easy prey for the notion that the little things in life offer little opportunity to please God. What rule gives you pause?

Let the dead bury the dead – what?!

We say things not only to deliver content but to affect our listeners. Sometimes we are being very good about it…other times unfortunately not.

As I reflected on Jesus’ encounter with two would-be disciples I came to think that Jesus’ replies were very much intended for their effect.

Here is the narrative,

¹⁸ Now when Jesus saw a great crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. ¹⁹ And a scribe came up and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” ²⁰ And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” ²¹ Another of the disciples said to him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” ²² And Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.” (Mt 8:18-22 ESV)

Of these two encounters it is the second one that I find most perplexing. Jesus response seems callous. The man wanted to tend to the burial of his father, an important duty in those days. So why is Jesus not more sympathetic?

I have concluded because his response is intended to affect the would-be follower, to shake him up and get him to think beyond the surface content of the dialogue. Who is this Jesus that invites him to follow and suggests that the dead can tend to the burial of the dead? That is impossible! It would be scandalous for a devout son not to honour his father in caring for his burial. How can Jesus suggest such a thing!?

The would-be disciple is forced to probe deeper. What is truly happening in this encounter?

When the would-be disciple addresses Jesus as ‘Lord’ what is he meaning? Is it just a polite salutation? Is it no more than “Please Mister Jesus…?” That degree of commitment is not enough for an apprentice of the Son of Man. It is not Mister Jesus but Master Jesus.

Moreover, when this would-be disciple said ‘first’ let me go and bury my father what was he meaning by first? Is it just an indication of temporal sequence? Or implicit in the sequence is the governing hierarchy of his values. Of first importance is his duty, or maybe of first importance is what he considers to be first. Ah that won’t do for a follower of Jesus. What is first is God’s kingdom and his righteousness (see Mt 6:33), what is first is loving God with all that you are (see Mt 22:37-38). There is no room for self determination or even co-regency. All that is important in life, like the honouring of family, is carried out not independent of our allegiance to God through Jesus but in concurrence with it.

Deep issues about lordship and allegiance and priorities and commitment needed to be raised. Jesus’ perplexing response affected their emergence into the would-be follower’s consciousness.

Are the complexities of our life and God’s apparent callousness to our plight and our pressures designed to affect us, to push us to think beyond ourselves, our family, our culture and traditions. Is Jesus once again prompting us to make clear who is Master and what is ultimately important?

Whatever did St. Paul do with the Kingdom of God – Part 5

Vacation time has interrupted my progress through N.T. Wright’s sermon Whatever did St. Paul do with the Kingdom of God. In today’s post we finally begin to deal with Paul and his view of the kingdom.

The Book of Acts provides a secondary summary (cf. Acts 19:8, 20:25, 28:23, 28:31) in which it would seem that preaching the kingdom was what Paul was basically about. However, methodologically it is better to see what Paul himself says in reference to the kingdom.

The heart of Paul’s view is found in 1Co 15:20-28.

• Here Paul is not introducing the topic of kingdom but rather dealing with something that has been part of his teaching (cf. 1Co 4:20, 6:9-10).
• Echoes of the theme of creation and re-creation from Ge 1-3 are evident wherein creation’s order is re-established though humans who have been made right.
• Christ’s coming (v. 23) is not about believers being snatched away to join Jesus in heaven but rather Jesus royally returning to establish God’s kingdom in fullness.
• Paul alludes to Ps 110 (v. 25) and Ps 8 (v. 27) making the point that with the coming of the exalted Messiah human beings will realize their created destiny of being in authority over all creation. From this Paul constructs his understanding that Jesus is reigning in the present. His resurrection attests publicly to his lordship and his ascension puts him in the place from which he will rule over the earth.
• Jesus present reign is not total; he must overthrow or better understood nullify (cf. Col 1) the evil which his enemies commit, making them completely subject to him.
• Death too will be overthrown by the re-creation of a new embodied world and the raising of God’s people to imperishable embodied life.

This is the kingdom of God in Paul, namely that for now Jesus rules from heaven, calling the world to account. In the end, Jesus will win the victory against all enemies, particularly death and then hand the kingdom over to God who will rule all in all.

Engagment but no marriage

You look but you don’t see cause for discomfort. But the next time you handle something, there it is, a fork of pain, a jab. There must be a splinter, embedded out of sight, but real enough.

Likewise there was a splinter rooted somewhere in my thinking such that when I handled missional stuff it would needle me anew. Alan Hirsch’s comment in David Fitch’s post was just the poultice needed to bring the prickle issue to the fore. Alan writes,

Just to clarify, part of my concern for binding ourselves to any cultural system like postmodernism is Barth’s old warning that ‘he who marries the spirit of the age will be divorced in the next.” Hence my reticense to allign myself with modern, postmodern, or the like. I do believe a missional stance will relate to any culture, no matter what that might be. But we do need to maintain a discreet distance with any culture to be genuinely missional as well.

The discomfort I had been feeling was the idea that to be missional, one needed to embrace the spirit of the day, one needed to be postmodern in outlook. That is not the case, any more than it is the case that to be modern is to be missional.

I agree with Hirsch not only do we need to distance ourselves from any one cultural perspective; I would add we need to intentionally fashion our lives by the ethos of the kingdom.

Jesus in his prayer for his followers petitions the Father,

15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth (Jn 17:15-19 ESV)

Before Pilate Jesus says,

Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” (Jn 18:36 ESV)

The ethos of the kingdom is not from this world, not today’s, yesterday’s or tomorrow’s world. But it is very much for the world. We engage the world, not to emulate it, but to serve as emissaries of Jesus, giving witness to our neighbour of kingdom life into which they might enter.

Yet in my experience, we seem to garble all this. We are dominated by either separation from the world or syncretism with the world. What would lead us toward what Jesus spoke about in his prayer and in his testimony before Pilate?

Whatever did St. Paul do with the Kingdom of God – Part 4

We continue our way through N.T. Wright’s sermon Whatever did St. Paul do with the Kingdom of God, dealing in this post with the kingdom of God in the preaching of Jesus.Jesus’ announcement of the kingdom was not about how an individual might escape earth and get to heaven, but a declaration that the life of heaven was now to be lived on earth.  This is clearly expressed in the Lord’s Prayer “your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.

Jesus does not just talk about the kingdom he enacts it through his ministry, showing what it looks like when God become king.  This ministry generates push back from people wanting to know what Jesus thinks he is up to.  Through his parables Jesus seeks to answer those questions and explode the worldviews that lie behind them.

Western believers have had a hard time viewing the Gospels holistically; either the focus is on Jesus’ death and resurrection and thoughts about personal atonement or on his public ministry and thoughts about social justice.

It is better however, to see Jesus’ preaching and ministry in light of the Old Testament expectation of God’s kingdom.  Jesus public ministry is not opposing one expression of evil here or there, but opposing evil as a whole and anticipating the in-bursting of God’s new creation.  What was begun and anticipated in Jesus’ ministry was achieved through his death and resurrection by which he defeated the powers that enslave this world and ultimately the power of death itself.  This then provides the adequate foundation from which to launch God’s project of new creation in this world and the proper context in which to understand personal atonement.

Do you accept Wright’s take on the Lord’s Prayer?  What is your understanding of “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’”?

Whatever did St. Paul do with the Kingdom of God – Part 3

N.T. Wright in the sermon entitled Whatever did St. Paul do with the Kingdom of God, presents the following definition:

 Kingdom of heaven, kingdom of God is not the place called heaven where God rules it is the fact that God, who is in heaven, rules.  It is not the place ‘where’ it is the fact ‘that’ and as soon as we say that we realize that to talk to about the kingdom of God is actually to use an abstract noun ‘kingdom’ where what we are really talking about is a verb, an action: God ruling, God reigning and once we realize that then we realized where this all comes from in Judaism which is the entire sweep of the Old Testament and it re-appropriation in the second temple period.

In illustrating the Old Testament “sweep” to which he refers Wright makes these points:

• Ps 95-99 (and Ps 2) speaks of Yahweh reigning and ruling calling the whole earth to order. This truth may mark the worship of the Psalmist but it does not mark the reality of his world. The reason for the disconnect lies in the narrative of Genesis.
• Ge 1 depicts man as God’s image bearer, who like an angled mirror reflects God’s stewardship into the world. Creation is made to work under man’s sub-authority.
• When mankind rebels in Ge 3, God does not abandon his intent to operate through his image bearers, rather in Ge 12 he call the man Abram through whom God will bless the families of the world.
• This call involves a promised land and a chosen people, not chosen to be strictly recipients of God’s salvation, but to be agents of that salvation to the world. This is the context in which Isa 40-55 must be understood and particularly the servant of Yahweh passages of Isa 52-53.
• When Isa 52:6-12 declares “your God reigns” that is kingdom of God language which in Isaiah’s context involved Babylon’s overthrow, Israel’s rescue and restoration to the land and Yahweh’s return to Zion. (These three themes, namely, the overthrow of evil, the rescue of God’s people and the return of Yahweh to Zion become thematic in Jesus on self-understanding and understanding of his proclamation.)
• The interpretation of the vision of Da 2 speaks of God establishing his kingdom over against the wicked kingdoms of this world. A similar interpretation is valid regarding the vision of Da 7 wherein God through his Messiah and through the people of his Messiah will be ruling the world and rescuing the world from the predations of evil.

Have you faced the situation where believers are operating as if the kingdom of God is a place, maybe one they are longing to get to?

Any comments on Wright’s OT sweep?

Whatever did St. Paul do with the Kingdom of God – Part 2

In a previous post I indicated that I would like to do a series of post based on N. T. Wright entitled Whatever did St. Paul do with the Kingdom of God.

Let me start off with this quote:

What did Paul do with the kingdom of God? Well of course he preached it, he lived it, he longed for it, but that begs the question as to what the kingdom actually is…so many Christians in the western world blithely assumed that they know what kingdom of God is all about and then just assume that that what Paul and the others are referring to.

Has it been your experience that believers don’t have a good grasp on what the kingdom of God actually is?

Next post we will get into how Wright defines kingdom of God and his survey of Old Testament precursors to it.

By the way I discovered a neat trick (well new to me) on how to adjust the speed of playback via Windows Media player. See here for an explanation.

Whatever did St. Paul do with the Kingdom of God – Part 1

These past two mornings during my sweat reflection (aka listening to a podcast while riding the bike) I have been challenged by a sermon by N. T. Wright entitled Whatever did St. Paul do with the Kingdom of God. In fact I found it so good I have plans to commit a series of posts about it. I would love to get your take as I unpack it.

For starters here is a quote by Wright:

It isn’t that the gospel is about us getting saved in a different way and then oh yes there is a bit about the kingdom of God on the side. The gospel, the good news, the sigh-of-relief good news is that Jesus of Nazareth is the crucified and risen Messiah and therefore the Lord of the world and that He, as Lord of the world, will be God’s agent in make all things new at last and that we are called to share that, that is the gospel.

Too many times I believe we miss the whole part about being kingdom workers, apprentices of Jesus in God’s redemptive purposes.

Do you agree?

Missional as Incarnational

In a previous post I was talking about missional as incarnational, being Jesus to those that we encounter. Today I read this from Scot McKnight,

Not only is the missioner’s mission the mission of Jesus, the missioner represents Jesus. One can say that the missioner is the presence of Jesus wherever the missioner is. Think about that.

The rest of Scot’s post is worth your read as is his series “Missional Jesus”.

Being missional outside the urban context

In another life I was an industrial engineer. Classically, that profession was all about time efficiency…is it any wonder I have a bent to want to multi-task.

This morning was one of those times; I was riding the exercise bike while reading a few posts. Jamie at (e)mergent Voyageurs raised a question about being missional in a rural context. For me, I was reading that post on the heels of one dealing with the challenge of being missional in suburbia. In both cases I was left wondering whether common usage of the term “missional” was not becoming too closely identified with the urban context. Does not “missional” transcend any one particular context?

As some have expressed all mission is contextual. I agree, but I would rather express it that all mission is incarnational. As God embodied himself in earthy humanity to proclaim that the Kingdom was near, the church is empowered to continue to incarnate Jesus to earthy humanity. In that sense we don’t “do mission” but rather we “be Jesus” to the people that we encounter and live among.

As I see it, being missional in the suburbs or in a rural community (or in the city) is about being Jesus to people where they are at. It is about embodying the passion and compassion of the Master-Teacher-Healer.