"Psychologically, "sheep" also refers to a primitive aspect of one's own personality, the instinctual ability to try to discern and recognize the "true voice" and distinguish it from false ones. (John Petty, in Progressive Involvement, May 9, 2011).
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I remember years ago sitting in McDonalds while my youngest climbed around in those bacteria infested tubes. I know that his now fine health was partially developed then and there. The exercise his immune system received has served him well. I'd let him crawl, jump, slide and make instant friends. Occasionally he'd run over to get a drink, or to snag some fries. Usually the burger or nuggets were eaten before he could play. Need to eat the nutritious stuff first, right?
I would let him crawl around with all the other hooting and hollering kids. Screaming and crying. Laughing. Shrieking. I would read, write sermons, check the news. The blanket of kiddie sounds was great for my concentration. I could think, reflect, and even pray. Some profound people listen to birds singing, waves crashing, or the sounds of rippling brooks. Some desperate folks (I been one of them from time to time) use a white noise app. I simply found the cacophony of wild children good as the wild sounds of nature.
Without fail however, when he found some innovation that made him a star among four year olds, he call, "daaaad!" I think I almost always heard it the first time. Though I was concentrating on work, I'd look up from time to time to make sure he was safe and following the rules. I wasn't totally absent.
But he'd call, 'Daaad" and I'd look up, see him jump, and slide and crawl and smile.
He was always a tall kid. I remember the day he could no longer enter Play Land. The height chart on the side that indicated how tall a kids could be to enter. While he was only about seven or eight, he passed the height requirement and those days were over.
But what amazed me at the time about those small adventures is that I was able to hear his voice. It wasn't that he was louder. He was just my kid. I knew his voice. When his voice called through the din, I heard it.
I heard him.
I knew his voice and the sound, the tone, the pitch, the cadence of his speech - I knew it all I needed to know, instantly.
There are days when God's voice breaks through. My own broken body and dreams get so loud as I try to solve the puzzle of my life. My concentration forms around the urgency of my daily moments. I grow deaf. Then I hear something. A turning leaf, the wind in my face, a memory, a smell. Then I can hear the Good Shepherd above the noise.
I heard him. I knew his voice and the sound, the tone, the pitch, the cadence of his speech - I knew it all I needed to know, instantly.
I just had a weird experience. I kind of fell into it and wanted to kick myself for even trying it. It is one of those experiences that I warn others not to do. But I did.
I (almost) got into a Facebook debate with someone I didn't know. Now I know them virtually, and virtual is good enough, for now.
But like most all Facebook politically oriented posts, this person placed a link to a new article. The news article lacked citations, did not define key terms, provided no discussion or alternative views, and made spurious conclusions without following the rules of reason. And I was like a trout with a woolly-bugger calling my name. I took the bait. I pointed out the intellectual faults and lack of sound reason used in the posted article. An I thought I was not only right, but had actually helped set someone straight.
Within a few minutes I had people accusing me of hate and support of nefarious individuals of whom the article in question had spoke disparagingly. Another suggested that if I didn't agree with the original person who posted the article I should unfriend them rather that being critical of them.
The message was clear, which I knew all along but had forgotten. Facebook loves echo-chambers in which your own thoughts are liked and then reflected back to you. Comments are intended only to elaborate the agreement.
It is sad. Because I think I could get along with most anyone. I find that there is common ground with almost everyone.
If we take time to build a relationship, even if it is about mundane stuff, we're better prepared for disagreement on substantial stuff.
There are lots of people I would not agree with in politics and religion. But we also see each other every Friday night at high school football games. Our love of our kids who play, the joy of the sport, and the fun and the excitement are unifying. I'm happy with that. And as long as we share the common ground of caring for our kids, about the school and the way it creates student-athletes, then I don't really care as much (or the same way) about the things which would divide us.
The difference being that I am among friends. People with whom our relationships are stronger than the differences which separate us.
Many years ago I read Stan Grenz' book, Beyond Foundationalism. After reading it, I had the pleasure getting to know Professor Grenz. We first met at a Friends pastors gathering. With his Baptist persuasion and my Anabaptist persuasion, we enjoyed bearing the anomalies of ritual among our friendly non-ritualistic Friends.
In the months after that weekend retreat, I began to look forward to the bridges that might be built between divergent streams of Christianity through the work of Grenz and Franke. Though not lined out in Beyond Foundationalism, there seemed to be realizations, or awarenesses that could heal many of the rifts that exist between traditionalists and progressives, between liberals and conservatives, between fundamentalists of various stripes. What was lacking were the practices to put those convictions into action.
One of the immediate confusions that arises, even among this concern, is the use of the language. We have many terms we can use to either positively identify ourselves. The statements simply begin with "I am" and give a description of ones self, a belief, or an experience. I am a guy that likes to cook and ride a bike. There is no real statement being made about anyone else. Just me. I could go further into the things I believe, my theological convictions, my voting practices, and how I get rid of squash beetles. And all of this provides a good deal of information. Alternatively, we also have lots of descriptors we use to negatively identify ourselves. "I am not" begins the sentence and one goes on to use language to similarly clarify.
But then there seems to be divisive language. Where we assert who we are by making it clear that we aren't like those others. In fact, too readily speaking of "traditionalists and progressives" or "liberals and conservatives" become a shortcut to pigeon hole and divide. I have never felt like I am fully part of one camp or the other. As we struggle with a culture caught up in polarities, slogans, and brash responses, I worry that I too get sucked into this familiar, comfortable and careless divide.
Alas, Stanley Grenz left this world before this important missiological and ecclesiological work could be completed.What kinds of settings, encounters, and activities would help us to look more deeply at the ideas laid out in Beyond Foundationalism and begin to generate Christian leaders whose practices reach beyond the comfortable and careless labels of "liberal" and "conservative"? Looking forward to living the reality of actually being one in Christ.
I've become fascinated by our weakened ability to listen intelligently. Many more times than I wanted to keep track of in the past cycle of elections, people, not just candidates stopped listening. I'm not sure if they ever intended on listening.
Listening can feel like a slow process. It may not be all that that slow, it is just that the pace is being determined by others. Listening feels like waiting, it feels inactive. It is especially that way when one is listening to something disagreeable, incorrect, challenging, or not fully thought through. We want to refute, correct, defend ourselves, or critique. But what if we were just to listen? What might we hear?
"Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice," Jesus said. Notice that Jesus doesn't tell us that the truth is the possession of any one. It is the other way around. Truth possesses us. We are held in truth, but perhaps only to the extend that we get ourselves tuned to its ring.
Today I was talking to one of our students who is volunteering at a senior residential facility. He is studying to become a health care administrator so he can eventually work there. As he was telling me about the pure enjoyment he receives from listening to the residents. They talk about family. They talk about trips. They tell stories of the land, its changes and the transitions in their lives and the life of the community. But these residents often feel cast off and alone. My student described the deep appreciation the residents have for those willing to spend time and just listen.
Much of this kind of listening is slow and deliberate. For those of us who keep trying to be active and get things done, this kind of listening feels like a waste of time. We know that it isn't a waste, but there is often an ambivalence that keeps us swaying between getting tasks done, stating our own opinions, and moving on to the next subject. But for the residents at this senior living center, the greatest gift seems to be listening.
Why does such listening have to be limited to such times and places? What happens when we live in a society that has placed so much value on correct answers, knowledgeable opinions, and quick responses and relinquished the responsibility of actively listening well? What all do we miss when so much of what we say and hear becomes derivative drivel lacking any insight?
We need to learn to listen again.
Everyday upon waking, we have three questions to respond to:
Who am I? What do I have to offer? And, who is my neighbor?
When these questions are asked by followers of Jesus Christ, the answers are transformative.
As each day opens up to unimagined diversions and distractions, a guiding intention for life must be in place.
Then the curves and detours are navigated, not with dread and fear of what lay behind the next corner.
Anxiety is reduced simply because we know what we are here for. We have a purpose.
We have experienced times, though, in which the old approaches of the church fall woefully short of satisfying the apparent needs of the day. Participation in church across the country continues to decline.
Financial support for congregations and denominational agencies is flagging.
The role of the church in society has changed.
Culture has become more complex and multifaceted.
Religious and spiritual concerns of people have become more individualized and pluralistic.
Facing the challenge of making the reign of God real among our neighbors and communities has become more complicated.
Sometimes we just try to work harder doing the same things we have done before. A definition of insanity… In these experiences, joy wanes, freshness is lacking, but transformation is waiting as we hear God again.
As our calling - as we have understood it - seems less effective, we may grope to "discover" our call, our vocation.
The discovery of a calling is not like constructing a building or crafting a work of art.
But more like a child find her way home by listening to her parent’s call, closing the distance the voice become clearer.
Discovering a call, it would make sense then, begins and ends with listening to a voice.
A call is not a committee’s work to forge and wordsmith, but a people’s work of listening.
Rather than crafting a vision and mission statement, we can actually listen and receive. Listen to the voice that grants us our identity, and find out what that is calling us toward.
As we hear God calling us to engage in God’s mission, we find that we already have a mission statement.
It has come from God.
Jesus didn't speak in terms of vision and mission statements. He granted us an identity, and he told us what to do with it:
"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven (
).
Jesus has granted us an identity and a purpose in life.
Growing out of our God-given identity, we come to understand who we are and what we are being called to do.
We take stock of our resources, and discover who our neighbors are.
Listening to God, to each other, and to our neighbors, we begin to hear outlines of God’s mission and our invitation to join.
Reflecting on these listening experiences transforms our understanding of our identity, our calling, and who is around us as neighbors and partners.
Through a series of conversations with scripture, your congregation, and your community, we can help you begin to distill and refine what you are hearing.
We will help you listen to the word of God by dwelling in the Word.
Dwelling in the Word is a specific corporate spiritual practice of encountering scripture as a living voice speaking fresh insights to our present experiences.
We help you listen to one another in the context of listening to God’s.
This will lead to a greater sense of clarity about what God is speaking into being through the community of faith.
Then we guide you in listening to the wider community to understand the needs and hopes which surround us, but not only in order to do good things for others.
Rather, we listen to the wider community to hear what God is already engaged in beyond our activities.
And in the process, in unexpected places, we find partners in extending the grace of the kingdom of God.
As we listen, we begin to hear God’s calling for us.
Instead of ending with a written mission statement, you will continue with an awareness of the mission God is calling you toward.
As this awareness grows new forms of congregational life will be considered as God’s Spirit transforms individuals and the congregation’s structures and systems.
As you begin to live into your new identity and call, helpful resources, practices, and structures to move forward will be developed, such as:
A new awareness of God’s missional calling for your congregation does not end with ideas and awareness, but lives on in new practices and structures.
And many of these behaviors and practices are going to be unique to each individual church and parish.
From Latin, "eccentricus" derived the Greek, "ekkentros" meaning out of the center.
εκκεντρικός
Out of the center.
Out of
align
m
ent
Not quite like "normal".
Some eccentrics are famous, wealthy and reclusive billionaires. Others live on the streets and speak to passersby with emotion and confusion. But the vast sum of eccentrics are all around us. Literally, around us, not in the center of us.
Recently I have had fun in my Introduction to Psychology class. I begin my first lecture by trying to define what we mean when we speak of the "self." Where is your "you" and my "me"? I try to lace my lectures with simple experiments that students can perform with minimal preparation. One that I find particularly interesting deals with the attempt to locate the self.
William James wrote about the self as that to which we attach ourselves. In Richard Lipka's book, The Self: Definitional and Methodological Issues, he lines out the three selves James works with. First, the "material Me (body, clothes, family, home, property), the social Me, and the spiritual Me," (page 45). In his 1890 publication, The Principles of Psychology, William James spoke of the self as:
In its widest possible sense, however, a man's Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank account.
The first experiment we do is a variation on the kid's games of "Sweet and Sour". This game tests the expectations we have for reciprocity. The rule of reciprocity, an expectation that my actions toward another will affect in the other a response. In the game, Sweet and Sour, one waves at people driving past. My kids have played on the street and in the back seat our car on the highway. As someone sees you, you wave at them. If they ignore you, they are considered sour, if they wave back, they are sweet.
But the shortcoming is the we extend ourselves to all those we acknowledge. And from those we acknowledge, we expect reciprocity. But first, there are the many we do not see. We miss them for lack of time, or attention, or interest. Second, there are those we do not see, because in seeing them, we might not like what we feel; whether it be obligation, confusion and misunderstanding, or even disgust.
When we come out of our centers, edge ourselves to the threshold, to the liminal spaces will we be able to respond, with reciprocity, to those acknowledge us? What stories might we tell of "living on the edge"?
...if you don't know what...
...God cares about.
This morning I was reading a wonderfully short blog by Scott McKnight, entitled "The OT's Most Important Command"* It got me thinking on a couple levels.
Leaning on the work of Walter Brueggemann (and who wouldn't?), McKnight reveals a little know fact in the Hebrew language. There are no adverbs. Brueggemann explains, "I’ll give you a little Hebrew grammar.... Biblical Hebrew has no adverbs. The way it expresses the intensity of the verb, it repeats the verb. So if it says give and you want to say “really give” it says “give give” right in the sentence–”give give.”
This little lesson in grammar is not without a point. So if one wants to find a high priority command, look for lots of verbs repeated. With this in mind, Brueggemann says the most stressed command in the Old Testament is not what people might think.
How about,
So before I reveal what McKnight wrote from Brueggeman, let me ask if we really know God well enough to share God's priorities? As a missional conviction, we need to be in mission where God has initiated mission. We look in our neighborhoods, along our sidewalks, where we work and where our kids go to school. We hope to see God active in our worshiping communities and active outside them as well. But we can be blind to what God is doing because we are seeking the actions of God in the wrong places.
If we know God's priorities, might we discern God in action in those places where God's priorities are made manifest?
Missional discernment needs people who know God. Prayerful, reflective, spiritual people who seek the heart of God in a living, personal relationship.
But missional discernment also needs to know about God. To have learned about, acted upon, engaged in the biblical narrative revealing God in action, let's us know this God we are seeking to know deeply.
Often I have thought we need to "know God" more than "knowing about God". But I'm rethinking that. Without knowing about God, we might be chasing a relationship with a god of our own creation. We need both knowing, and knowing about.
So, according to Brueggemann, what is the Old Testament's most important command?
"In
, you get a law about seven years. It’s called the
Year of Release
. It says that at the end of seven years, if a poor person owes you money, cancel the debt." As Brueggemann explains, "[The law] says to not be hard-hearted (or tight fisted) about granting poor people space to live their lives, because you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord God brought you out into the good place." Scott McKnight adds, "So grammatically, the Old Testament scripture with the
most emphasis
as in “you must must must must
must
do this” is a passage about forgiving debts."
God cares about releasing debts. This is big. Very big. And it let's us know where God's heart is.
*
(
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/12/12/the-ots-most-important-command-brueggemann-style/
)
There's an experience I often have when I preach. As soon as I get done, I often think of other things I should have said. There have been times I have felt compelled to walk back up to the pulpit and say, "oh yeah, one more thing." But I haven't. Yet.
Matthew 11:2-3:
When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
I was impressed by the reality that humanity missed figuring out who God's messiah was the first time, reminding me of the question as to whether or not we'll figure him out at the second coming.
In psychology, there is a condition called inattentional blindness. We tend to be blind to things we don't have a category for in our experience. We can be blind to the degree we are in denial about what we don't wish to see. But most interesting, is the blindness to things we don't know we should be looking for.
The popularized version of this condition has circulated on the Internet. Daniel Simons from the University of Illinois developed the test. His explanation of it can be found at the
. There a number of videos there to become familiar with the concept.
But in terms of theological discernment, how do we attend to God's presence? Do we see, or do we merely look at what is taking place around us? Daniel Simons mentions that those who claimed not to see the gorilla in the experiment, actually had their eye on the gorilla for up to second, but claimed not to see it. We can
look
at something, but if we don't
see
it, then is was never there. Looking at and seeing are not the same.
How can we discern our lives and culture so as to answer John's question from prison: is Jesus the one, or shall we expect someone else? If John has trouble seeing God's messiah in his own community, would there be potential difficulty for us to do any better than John? How is God showing up, in unseen ways, in our communities now?
Even if God were in a gorilla suit, we still might not see.
"The peculiar character of the Christian faith [comes] to expression in conflict with the things that are socially axiomatic. If Christianity, according to the will of him in whom it believes and in whom it hopes, is to be different and to serve a different purpose, then it must address itself to no less a task than that of breaking out of these socially fixed roles." (Theology of Hope, pg, 324) |
| Richard Dadd: Flight Out of Egypt |
I was struck while, hearing the lectionary reading a few weeks ago from the book of Acts and the story of Pentecost. Peter and the disciples were thought to be drunk. I imagine people laughing and dancing, seemingly a bit socially confusing. 
And my favorite red-winged black birds with referee-whistle chirping 
