Fasting

Our church community is still working our way through the Sermon on the Mount in Matt. 5-7. This week we're dealing with the section on fasting. We've challenged each other to fast in some way this week, whether it's one meal, one day, a media fast, whatever. During this time we are meditating on Psalm 91. My hope is that when we come together this Saturday night to talk about Jesus's words on fasting, that we will have fresh perspective on it.

Fasting is an interesting practice. It's been a habit of the church for centuries, done for the purpose of focusing on prayer and hearing from God. It's a way to sort of remind yourself that your place in the world, your very life, isn't sustained ultimately by food or the security of your next meal, but by the God who holds all things together. The temptation of food during a fast is an interesting dynamic. It's a temptation to take care of your own needs, to sustain yourself. The battle that takes place is whether I will find my sustaining strength in God or in what can only satisfy for a short time. It's no accident that in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus goes straight from talking about fasting into talking about those that seek to "store up for [them]selves treasures on earth...." Money and wealth provide the same kind of temptation that food does in a fast. If I can just create for myself a situation where I'm financially secure and safe, then all is well. Hoarding money is one way that we try and provide for ourselves, and to secure our own futures. For Jesus, the cure for self-dependence is freeing ourselves from the false belief that our very existence is dependent upon our own efforts. It's the very reason we fast - we remind ourselves that food is not what keeps us alive. It's why we try and become generous people - because it's in giving things away that we remind ourselves that our value and importance isn't based upon our bottom line.

This is the same idea that is going on with Sabbath. Sabbath is an intentional time of rest. We stop producing, stop working, and simply rest. This is really difficult for us some times. Why is that? It's because in stopping that we are forced to realize that the world goes on spinning even without our efforts. We realize that it's God who keeps things moving, not us. When we stop and rest, we remind ourselves of our need for God, and that our value and worth don't come from what we produce, but from resting in Him.

There are many disciplines like this within the Christian faith. Giving, fasting, resting, silence, prayer, the list goes on. Each one plays an important role in freeing us from the belief that we can do this thing on our own. Rather we are reminded of God's presence in the everyday, the normal, mundane parts of life and that it is He alone who keeps it all running. It's not my efforts, not food, not the constant producing, not my words, not anything else.

I would challenge you to participate with us as a church community this week. Deprive yourself of the things that make you believe that you are the God of your universe, and let Him show you that He loves you, he cares for you, and that the world will keep on moving with or without your efforts. And while your body says "feed me", let your heart be reminded that the One who sustains all things will sustain you as well.

Read More

Responding to Injustice

I had a great discussion last night with Story Church about the Christian's response to injustice. We were studying Matthew 5:38-42. In this passage, Jesus teaches that the old way of dealing with injustice was "eye for eye" and "tooth for tooth". This served a couple of purposes, I'm sure. One was to provide a very practical and easy to understand system of justice. You kill my goat, your goat gets killed as well. You take from me, you get taken from in equal measure. I'm sure it made people think twice about doing something when they knew that the punishment for their crime would be exactly the same thing they are doing to someone else. The other benefit of this system was probably to avoid what many people today call "the Myth of Redemptive Violence." That is, it kept things from escalating. Watch children for example - what happens when Billy takes Tommy's truck? Tommy hits Billy. Billy then bites Tommy. Of course adults aren't much different, just more sophisticated. The Old Testament law that Jesus is referring to kept people from believing the myth of redemptive violence - the idea that I can somehow achieve justice through a worse violence or offense than what happened to me. This is one of the reasons that many people have problems with the war in Iraq, or what is happening between Israel and Palestine right now in the Gaza strip. Sometimes the response to injustice seems to be a greater injustice than the one that started it all.

So in light of that, Jesus basically says that was the old system, but the new system for responding to injustice is different. In the kingdom, we don't play by those rules. When someone wrongs me personally, I don't respond eye for eye or tooth for tooth. But many people have wrongly (I think) interpreted this passage. Jesus is not simply saying that when someone hits you, turn the other cheek and let them hit you again. He's not saying to become a doormat and simply suffer through injustice. I believe that Jesus is teaching here a way to respond to injustice that boldly calls it what it is, while not continuing a destructive cycle of violence. The text refers to a slap on the right cheek - that is, a backhanded "You're beneath me" kind of slap from someone who thinks they are better than me. Jesus says in such a case, we "turn the other cheek." We force them to recognize us as equals - "If you are going to hit me, you're going to have to hit me like you would an equal." Now, Jesus is clearly NOT advocating fighting someone here in order to maintain your dignity. He's simply saying that we refuse to allow injustice to go unchecked. We force the one bringing about the injustice to face our humanity. If you keep going through this passage and recognize the cultural stuff going on here, it's clear that this is Jesus' message.

Now, back to our discussion last night. We started asking the question - what is the church's response to injustice? Without rehashing the whole conversation, it's exciting to me to be tackling this issue with people who really believe that the kingdom way of living is the answer to these kinds of questions. What do you think? How does the church respond to issues of injustice both locally and globally without playing by the rules of the world? How do we come along side of the voiceless, the oppressed, the poor, the marginalized and creatively say to the rest of the world, "this is not right"?

Read More

Story Church

So I suppose it's time to put an official post on here about our church plant here in Durham. We've made some progress in the last week or two making things official. We've been incorporated with the state, we have a bank account opened in the church name, an IRS tax number - you know, all the fun stuff. So anyway, the church name is Story Church. You can view the website by clicking on the name, or go to www.storychurch.org.

So far, there are around 20+ of us including kids who are meeting together each week in my home for dinner, some hang out time, and a bible study centered on Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5-7. It's been really exciting to see this thing take on a life of its own as it grows in such an authentic, organic way.

If you are in the triangle area and looking to get involved in a church, feel free to send me a message. I'd love to meet up for coffee or have you come check out our group sometime.

Read More

Surprised by Hope Part 2

A while back I did a post about N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope and promised a second post later. Well, I almost forgot but some things I've been thinking about lately have brought it back to mind. So here goes.

What is God's purpose for the world as a whole? Think about it, that question is probably what drives the way you live. It's a question that Wright brings up as well. There are two common responses to this question. The first is what Wright calls the "myth of progress." This is the idea that the purpose of humanity is to continue to grow, develop, and improve our current state until we arrive at some sort of utopian existence. You can see that this idea is quite attractive. We are constantly changing. We are learning new things as a culture. Technology is advancing and learning to deal with disease and sickness and food shortages and much more. We are better educated than ever before. Many Christians buy into this myth. We are told, and in fact we often believe, that if we can just control things enough, this world will get better. It's the "hope" offered by politicians. Vote for me, and all your wildest dreams will come true (thank you Pedro). Things will get better, we'll all be wealthier, healthier, and happier. And of course, if your particular candidate doesn't get elected, then your march toward utopia has taken a serious hit and will have to wait for at least the next four years. The problem with this myth is simple really - it isn't true. Not only that, but it doesn't have any ability to deal with evil in the world. How do we explain new atrocities like what happened on 9/11 or the genocide of Darfur, or the rise of nuclear threats, or greed in America, or father's abandoning their families, etc.? If the world is progressing forward, why are more people dying than ever before of needless disease and poverty? More on this to come.

The second thought that many have to the question of God's purpose for the world is this: The world is decaying and dying. The existence of evil and the cycles of life and death show us that we were made for something other. A world without space, time, matter, a world of pure spiritual existence. This idea says that eventually we will get rid of our mortality and our physical limitations and finally arrive in a sort of spiritual state. It also implies that therefore this world will pass away and be destroyed. This idea originates with Plato and his idea that the present world is simply a shadow of things to come. This idea is also popular among many Christians. I think of the more recent sticker, bracelet, t-shirt campaign seen on many Christian's cars and selves that say "Not of this World." While the phrase is clearly biblical, the implication is that "I'm leaving this place behind anyway so screw it." Maybe not those words exactly. But you get the point. The material world is bad, the flesh is bad, and the non-physical spirit is ultimately what is good. Someday all the "bad" will be gone and we'll be left with what is "good." "I'm saved and I'll be leaving this place and going to heaven when I die." This idea just isn't biblical. In fact over and over we hear about heaven coming to earth and the two being united in the New Jerusalem. We hear of God's plan of redemption for all of mankind. Paul says that all of creation groans in anticipation of this event. So where does this idea come from? It has close ties to Gnosticism, which was clearly shut down in the early church. It's as though this world is at best irrelevant, and at worst a dark evil place (Wright, 90). It seems to me that we see strands of this within modern Christianity today as it translates into how we live. Let's take morality for example. If I buy into this view of the world then my goal is simply to keep myself pure and far removed from the reaches of the splash of the pool of sin. I think this is what Jesus is addressing in the sermon on the mount. He confronts the Pharisaical teachings of the law over and over. "You've heard that it was said don't murder, but I tell you that hate is the issue." "You've heard that it was said don't commit adultery, but I tell you that lust is the issue." His point is this - we can try and control the flesh all we want. We can avoid doing specific things. But that doesn't make us righteous! The issue that we must still deal with is the heart. In fact in Matthew 15 we see Jesus saying "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile you; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile you" (TNIV). In other words, it isn't the physical stuff that is bad, it's our hearts and how we respond. So the idea that the physical world is evil and I'm just passing through - it just isn't biblical.

So what is the hope of Christianity? What is God's purpose for this world? Early Christians didn't believe the world was progressing toward a utopia. They also didn't believe it was getting worse and worse and that they ought to escape it. "They believed that God was going to do for the whole cosmos what he had done for Jesus at Easter" (Wright, 93). RESURRECTION. REDEMPTION. RENEWAL. If God's plan and purpose for the world is redemption, how can we believe that He will in the end scrap the whole thing and start over? The hope of Christianity is that God is in the process of redeeming, reclaiming, renewing, rebirthing, and recreating all the time. As followers of Jesus, the one who put this plan into action in one redemptive act, we partner with him in the redemption of all things. We claim this world for Him, as we bring hope and healing to people, to the creation itself, and ultimately we help to bring about the very thing Jesus taught us to pray for - "Your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven." May it be so!

Read More