is both a comic i really dig (by stephan pastis – have all the annuals except the latest which i haven’t organised from overseasville yet) and a statement i wish to make as a regular blogger…
…pass me the cushion…
Category: Uncategorized
well lausanne congress has come and gone and the 4000 delegates from 197 countries are making their way back home and to their next ports of calls – it was an incredible week and lots of good relationships and networking opportunities were made which bodes well for the future – i hope that my brief reflections (as someone who didn’t attend but got glimpses via my beautiful wife and the global link i was involved in) were an inspiration and challenge or at least something to keep your mind company for the next little while…
a lot of the clips that we watched and i shared from as well as a while bunch more are available here so if you have a decent connection why not download some and take a look…
i will finish my reflections with the statement of the lausanne movement which is “the whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole world” which is what it really needs to be… maybe some more reflections on that statement at a later stage
ad on the side of my screen on Facebook:
Hard Get Pregnant?
Pregnancy Miracle will show you how to maximise chances of getting pregnant. Pregnancy Miracle will show you how to have healthy babies.
let me get this straight – you start off with the heading ‘Hard Get Pregnant?’ and you want me to trust you with the future mother of my kids… you have got to be joking.
Hard Get Chocolate? that link i may check out…
i have just started reading a book called ‘Exiles – Living Missionally in a Post Christian Culture’ by Michael Frost and wow i am really digging it – read it!
christians like to throw around the phrase ‘Jesus was fully man and fully God’ and that has never made sense to me – i understand that a carrot can be fully a vegetable and fully a food because both things are the same and one is actually a subcategory of the other (um if you’re not sure which one is which then this blog probly isn’t for you – go find something with pictures you can ‘ooh aah’ at) – but being fully God contradicts being fully man and vice versa. And so it has never sat well with me and it is also something that can’t – i don’t think – be backed up by scripture – it’s just one of those things that someone heard once from someone else and so it’s true and so we hold to its being true but we don’t really know why and we don’t really question
[and just to fully p.s. myself i don’t think it really matters either way – feels like one of those christian arguments people might fight duels to the death over like predestination and how the end times are going to play out which don’t really have any effect on how we live now so it doesn’t really matter but is an interesting thort to get your head round all the same]
anyways i really like how this book describes the whole concept. picture a picture (ooh, come back picture bloggists, this is for you after all) of a circle with Jesus in it and fully human and fully divine in it – that seems to be how the majority of people view this thing. then, the picture that i ascribe more to [which, yes, really doesn’t matter] is a picture of two circles – one with Jesus as human, one with Jesus as Divine – which overlap each other in the middle – so some bits of Jesus that were simply Jesus as Divine and some bits of Jesus that were Jesus as human and then this middle section which overlaps where Jesus is shown to be a bit of both
Michael Frost talks about how the place of incarnation (divine becoming human, so the overlap) is a dangerous place:
‘Probably the most dangerous aspect of the Christ story is the very nature of the incarnation itself. Jesus models that it is possible to be both God and human at the same time. This is for us, certainly, the most terrifying thought. Throughout history the church has retreated into deifying Jesus so thoroughly that the human Christ can’t be seen [actually maybe this is where this line of thinking actually does make a difference – brett]. If indeed Jesus is too human (or barely human at all) He calls from me a worrying response. He challenges my humanness and demands more from me than I can imagine offering. An overly deified Christ reduces my perceived response. To this otherworldly, superspiritual Jesus I simply have to offer my devotion, my worship, my adoration. By the grubby, human, peasant Jesus I am challenged that maybe it is possible to be human and Godlike after all. Nowhere in Scripture is this more disturbingly presented than in Jesus’ return to His hometown after the beginning of His messianic ministry. There, Jesus began teaching in the synagogue and received what to me has always seemed a deeply shocking response. The locals, His old boyhood friends and neighbours, are offended and say,
“Where did this man get the wisdom and these miraculous powers? Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” [Matthew 13.54b-56]
How distressing to us that Jesus could be the Messiah, the human incarnation of God, second person of the Trinity for thirty years and no one at home noticed! No one in Nazareth smiles knowingly and says, “I always suspected there was something strange about that kid.” Instead they wonder where he got all this messianic stuff. Somehow Jesus could be fully God and blend into Galilean society – hardly the most pious or sophisticated culture – without creating a ripple. This perspective on the incarnation bothers us because it dangerously invites us to follow Christ in all his ordinariness as well as His righteousness. The incarnation demands that we neither retreat into a holier-than-thou Christian ghetto nor give ourselves over to the values of secular culture. And let’s be honest: this is the most dangerous place of all. It is easier to imagine and embrace a closed fundamentalism that retreats into a Christ-against-culture mindset. We can picture Jesus there, all holy and pure, unsullied by the world around Him. We can also understand the capitulation to our host culture that some christians make. It would be easy to join those christians who abandon themselves to materialism, greed, and selfishness.
When responding as exiles in a post-Christian world, we are used to seeing some respond with despair and grief (the fundamentalists) and others with assimilation to the dominant values. What is much more disturbing to us is the example of a God who does neither, but instead answers with a fresh, imaginative, theological response. Jesus neither slides into compromise and sinfulness, nor fulfils our expectations of the holier-than-thou guru. The fact that both Matthew and Mark include this episode in their biographies of Jesus is remarkable. The story almost completely undermines claims about the divinity of Jesus. It is included because it is a dangerous memory for followers of Christ. We are called, like Christ, to be godly, but we are expected to live it out fully in the midst of others. There is no more dangerous path than the one trodden by Jesus.’
wow. wow. wow.
to sum up my feelings on the circle overlap – for me the fact that Jesus had to eat and drink and go to the toilet makes Him human and not God (God doesn’t have to do that) and the fact that He performed miracles and was resurrected makes Him God and not human (humans can’t do that) but the fact that He did the miraculous stuff while doing the every day stuff while limited to a human body makes Him both God and human with bits of overlap. semantics perhaps but perhaps also not – he showed that it is possible to live that life which is the thing that needs to hit me squarely . between the eyes, and does.
Quiet.
Except for the wind, whistling past me.
Signalling its presence with the effect it has on
A chocolate paper, at my feet
Now gone, blown on
Blown against the side of the bridge
Where i am standing
Forced against the cold metal
It flutters its resistance
But it is held there
And it can not resist
‘Resistance is futile’
So they told me
So You told me
On that day long ago when i chose to walk across that bridge
To You…
But that was so long ago
And today finds me here
Standing on the edge of a different bridge
Wondering if i have the strength of will.
And as i look over
And peer down,
Down, down into the depths
That wind
Which i can feel
As it launches its cold breeze at me, wave after wave
Lifts suddenly
And with it rises that paper
Carried into the air
And it is flying
Flying, flying
Up.
Up, and away
As if engaging in some kind of impressive spectacular aerial dance
This way and that it is blown
Twirling.
And tumbling.
Faster and faster, and on and on it goes
Being lifted once more as another gust lifts it up once again.
And as i watch
Fascinated, mesmerised
I sense from deep within
The very hint of a smile
And the vaguest impression of a peace closing in
On me
Maybe even for me.
Still.
It feels like everything around me has frozen in time
And now starts up again in slow motion
The bridge, That insignificant chocolate paper
The wind.
Me.
You…
You?
And suddenly, i snap out of it
As in an instant, the wind dies.
I watch as the paper is brought to a halt in midair
And quickly begins its plummeting descent
Down and down it goes
But i have long since ended my observation
As i quietly pulled myself away from the shadowed edge
And am once again walking, slowly
Across the bridge
Back to You.
don’t drink
don’t smoke
don’t be gay
don’t have an abortion
don’t say fuck, shit, bloody, damn, bitch
don’t have sex before you are married
don’t get drunk
don’t dress that way
don’t listen to that kind of music
don’t watch pornography
don’t dance provocatively
and so on…
or…
Be known by the Love you have one for another.
hm, tough choice.
i am not saying i agree with or condone or am promoting some or all of the top list of things that the church are often known for railing against. i do think some or a lot of them are things Jesus is definitely against.
i am saying that Jesus specifically told His followers to be known for love.
to be recognised by love
by service of one another
by taking care of widows and orphans and the sick, imprisoned, hungry, thirsty, naked, strangers.
characterised by forgiveness and the fruit of the Spirit which were listed as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
that’s something worth dying for.
heck, it’s something worth dying for.
that is, if it is okay for me to say ‘heck?’
just finished reading a chapter in shane claiborne’s latest ‘Follow Me To Freedom’ – leading and following as an ordinary radical and just so encouraged and challenged by some of the stories he shares of how some people he knows get creative with their talent or vocational training and end up changing or shaping a neighbourhood – i remember one story from ‘The Irresistible Revolution’ where he spoke of some people who had a water bottling company in the States and used the profits to dig wells across Africa (so America’s greed feeding Africa’s need)
‘I’ve got friends who are teaching kids to do sound design so that they can create their own hip-hop. We’ve got friends that used to develop fancy condos and are now making affordable housing out of recycled cargo containers like the ones on freight trains – crazy, creative ideas. Some other friends of mine started a fair-trade T-shirt company where they rescue women out of the sex trafficking in Calcutta to make the shirts.
Many of the folks in these examples used to run their own businesses just to make profits for themselves, but every single one of them says they have never looked back. They are more alive and full of joy than ever before. Deep down, all of us know the joy of giving, and that we were made to care for others. Even the drug dealers in my neighbourhood, while they are still making some terrible choices, often surprise me by bringing one of the elderly women a rose on her birthday or buying all the kids ice-cream. These are the places where Jesus seems to point out the glaring contradictions, like when He said to the religious elite who were looking down on others, “The tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the Kingdom ahead of you.” [Matthew 21.32] We are made to love and be loved….
One congregation we are connected to in the Philly suburbs now has a Vocation and Imagination evening every month where folks share creative ways they are using their gifts and redefining their careers in light of God’s kingdom and the needs around us.’
From the chapter ‘Something Bigger (Seeing That This Is Not Just About Us)’ [Follow me to Freedom – shane claiborne and john m perkins)
Another story from ‘The Irresistible Revolution’ was about a masseuse who would offer a morning a week or something to give free foot massages to the prostitutes in the area…
the question we should all maybe be faced with is, am i using what i have for me or am i using it for we?
Irresistibly Fish 