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The Absolution I Didn't Want [Video][Read]

It’s easy to slip into thinking about forgiveness solely in terms of our authority over it.

Last week at the annual Here We Still Stand Conference, during a conversation with Matt Popovits, I unintentionally stepped into something I wasn’t quite ready to receive. The moment was caught on video, which you can watch above if you would like. While I was trying to get Matt’s thoughts on the psychological effects of the law in general, I used a specific example from my own life - mom guilt - which quickly led to my shaky voice and quiet tears. For reasons I can’t fully explain, all of the pressure, changes, anxiety, and depression I’ve experienced in the past eight months dumped over me at that moment. Both my admittance of guilt, followed by Matt’s pronunciation of absolution, caught me off guard. I wasn’t ready for either, and to be honest, I did not enjoy any minute of it.

For months, I’ve been wrestling with the new balance of motherhood and work. One of the reasons I started working in the theological realm and decided to go back to school to receive my masters in theology was because I was tired of seeing women in theology do nothing more than shed tears about motherhood. And yet here I was, doing precisely that, on camera. I was in front of God only knows how many people and in a situation, where at least momentarily, I had no control.

It’s so easy to slip into thinking about forgiveness solely in terms of our authority over it.When we offer it to people, we think it’s on our accord; when we receive it, we think it’s because we feel ready to be at peace with whoever or whatever has wronged us. In other words, we operate according to the assumption that forgiveness functions (successfully or not) based on our control, our emotion, or our ownership. But Christ doesn’t wait to give us his word of forgiveness until we are rationally, emotionally, or physically contrite, and sometimes he doesn’t even wait for us to recognize what this word is before he pronounces it on us.

Christ’s word of absolution may come before we are ready. We may even misconstrue these words into more law and more guilt. But that doesn’t change the fact that, in Christ, the declaration that we are forgiven and that we are made righteous is both good news and true.

“Giving absolution and receiving it are just two sides of the same faith coin in which we trust God will continue to keep his promises.”

At first, I didn’t hear Matt’s pronunciation of absolution as good news for me. But others did for themselves. That’s how powerful God’s promises are - once they are unleashed on the world, we have absolutely no control of how, when, or on whom the Spirit will use them. All that we are promised is that they will take effect. We see this in the conversion of the Syrophoenician woman whose faith, as theologian Jim Nestingen is fond of saying, came from the rumor of Christ. She believed before she even spoke to him! God’s word is so living and active that it goes to work in secondary and tertiary ways; in ways that surprise us and in ways we will never see.

Hearing that Matt’s word had impacted others, in turn, impacted me. I don’t want to claim that the multidimensionality of absolution is always this black and white. To do so would be to wrongly assert, again, that the fruit of the Holy Spirit is limited to our own experiences and our own authority. We cannot assume to know when or even for whom forgiveness will function - we are only commanded to faithfully hand God’s word over to others and also to believe his words when they are delivered to us. Giving absolution and receiving it are just two sides of the same faith coin in which we trust God will continue to keep his promises.

So, just as Matt did, we hand out forgiveness when we see someone in need of it. Sometimes this happens in response to a co-worker’s apology. Sometimes, it follows a friend’s confession that they’ve messed up their marriage. Sometimes it’s needed to comfort the conscience of a loved one stuck in the clutches of the law’s terror, and sometimes it is essential after a new mom unintentionally unloads her guilt.

When we hear the words of forgiveness in Christ in our own ears, whether they are intentionally said to us or to another, we must believe they are true and true for us.

God’s word has the power to forgive, to create faith, to comfort the guilt-laden and downtrodden. This much is certain.

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Why the Justice of God is Good News

the Jesus of the Gospels talks about judgment in no less scathing terms than the boldest of the Old Testament prophets

Read Orginial at https://mbird.com/2020/10/why-the-justice-of-god-is-good-news/

Just a few decades after Jesus’ resurrection, a wealthy shipbuilder from the southern coast of the Black Sea in modern-day Turkey stretched the insights of his favorite Christian teacher — the apostle Paul — toward what he understood to be their logical, magnificent conclusion: that the God and Father of Jesus Christ was purely, exclusively gracious, without one iota of wrath or judgment to his name. Enamored with what John Barclay has called “the singularity of nothing-but-benevolence,” the shipbuilder set out to reform the church in Rome in accord with his radical “perfection” of grace.[1] The shipbuilder’s name was Marcion, and he was eventually condemned as one of the first and greatest Christian heretics…………..

Read The Rest at https://mbird.com/2020/10/why-the-justice-of-god-is-good-news/

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Freedom and Why We’re Afraid of It: Dave Zahl [Video]

Here We Still Stand is a Two Day Digital Celebration of The Freedom of the Christian: The theme of our 2020 Here We Still Stand Conference is The Freedom of the Christian.

Here We Still Stand is a Two Day Digital Celebration of The Freedom of the Christian: The theme of our 2020 Here We Still Stand Conference is The Freedom of ...
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Google’s Search to Know Me: Social Media Algorithms and Being Known by God

While the law of social media tries to figure us out and make us meet its demands, the Gospel frees us from the churning machine of algorithms.

I got a Facebook account in 2008. It was before the age of selfies and smartphones, Snapchat and Instagram. Then, it truly was a social network — simply a tool for connecting, and everything was fairly innocuous. I was in eighth grade, and my friends and I posted albums containing way too many pictures of our sleepovers and vacations. We wrote inside jokes on each other’s “walls.” Things got really interesting when Facebook added the private messenger and the like button.

That was twelve years ago — saying that makes me feel old — and now there are dozens of options for social media. What was once a tool for connecting now feels like a Pharaoh demanding more time and energy every day from its users. Make sure you post often, but not too much. Make sure you use the right hashtags, but not too many. Make sure you use a filter, but look authentic. It’s a delicate balance we’re all constantly trying to strike. Every platform has its own law we have to obey, or else we get punished by the algorithm. And it seems like while we’re trying to figure these platforms out, they’ve already got us figured out.

Read the Rest at MBird https://mbird.com/2020/10/googles-search-to-know-me-social-media-algorithms-and-being-known-by-god/

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I Love You Dead: The Good News of Incongruous Grace

In Luther’s words, “God’s love does not find but creates that which is pleasing to it.”

Love in the Ruins. The title of Walker Percy’s 1971 novel captures the book’s setting and theme — Thomas More’s Utopia this is not. But the phrase also catches a moment in the marriage of its protagonist, Dr. Tom More:

“Don’t you see,” says his wife, “people grow away from each other … We’re dead.”

“I love you dead. At this moment.”

“Dead, dead,” she whispered…

“Love,” I whispered.

The poignancy of this exchange is the paradox, the surprising where, when and who of this whispered love: it is “in the ruins,” “at this moment” of despair, this dead end, and it is “love” for “you” — for the “dead.”

……………………..

Read the rest at
https://mbird.com/2020/10/i-love-you-dead-the-good-news-of-incongruous-grace/

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Christians Must Learn To Keep Politics In Their Right Place

When politics becomes a cultural force, it provides a venue for self-expression, self-affirmation and a source of community that can ultimately divert politics from its right and just aims.

Earlier this week, we at RELEVANT ran an excerpt from a new book by Cameron and Stuart McCallister on a healthy Christian posture for the upcoming election. The piece connected and left a lot of people wondering about what that might look like on a practical level.

One way to get that question answered is to pick up the McCallisters’ book Faith That Lasts and read more of their argument. But we also thought we’d put in a call to Michael Wear, a former staffer for President Barack Obama who founded a consulting firm called Public Square Strategies LLC to help businesses, non-profits, foundations and Christian organizations navigate the tensions between faith and politics. Here are some of his thoughts about what direction politics is heading in the U.S. and how Christians can resist the tide towards defining themselves in terms of their political beliefs.

We ran a piece on how Christians should be politically engaged without putting their hope in politics to save them. But how do you actually do that?

Politics has become an even more prominent cultural force. When politics becomes a cultural force, it provides a venue for self-expression, self-affirmation and a source of community that can ultimately divert politics from its right and just aims.

…………….. Read the rest.

https://relevantmagazine.com/current/nation/christians-must-learn-to-keep-politics-in-their-right-place/

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ALZ Building Progress

photos of Progress

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Crafters Group Photos

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Love Across the Political Divide

You can laugh when you know with humility the limits of the truths you hold so dearly.

Life is not politics.

That has not been so obvious in these months. Everything is qualified (or disqualified) by whether you want the President to be our president or not. There is less and less tolerance, more and more nullification of any validity of any credibility depending on what you believe is best for our government. People speak of revolution and “saving our country” and fascism — when we are having an election in a month.

Read the rest at

https://mbird.com/2020/09/no-sense-love-across-the-political-divide/

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Is Your Church A Racist Monument?

Article written by a personal friend of Pastor Cris. Fellow LCMS pastor who has been working in North City St Louis. This is also the first location of Coli’s First Teaching Job. This is a Large National Magazine. Congrats Chris

Article written by a personal friend of Pastor Cris and fellow LCMS pastor who has been working in North City St Louis. He is also working in the location of Coli’s First Teaching Job. This is a Large National Magazine. Congrats Chris

Chris Paavola also works with Lutheran Hour. https://thred.org/

—— read here

During the Great Migration, millions of Black Americans fled the violence of the Jim Crow south for a new life in northern cities. In response, thousands of white Americans left their diversifying city to resettle in homogeneous suburbs in a reactionary migration known as white flight. Left behind in the systematically segregated communities of color was something white families couldn’t take with them– their churches.

White Churches………………………….

Read the Rest at

https://relevantmagazine.com/faith/church/is-your-church-a-racist-monument

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