Why the Justice of God is Good News

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/

Google’s Search to Know Me: Social Media Algorithms and Being Known by God

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

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/

I Love You Dead: The Good News of Incongruous Grace

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/

Love Across the Political Divide

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/

Is Your Church A Racist Monument?

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

I Am Jonah

As a little girl, I learned that there was a prophet named Jonah that God rescued by sending a great fish to swallow him and carry him safely to land. As an adult, I learned that Jonah was, basically, a jerk who chose to run away from God rather than go and preach to his enemies, because he knew that God was going to have mercy on them and he didn’t want any part of that. Today, I learned that I am Jonah.

Read the rest at

https://www.1517.org/articles/i-am-jonah

Elevator Encounters

https://mbird.com/2020/09/elevator-encounters/

Ihave been in two heated race-related situations in the past six months. Both of them have happened at elevators.

Several months ago I was leaving a doctor’s office and looking for the restroom in the corridor. A black man walked out behind me with a name tag and a clip board and I assumed he was a doctor in the practice. I turned and asked him if he knew where the restroom was. He snapped back, “I don’t work here!” To which I responded, “Got it. Sorry.”

Then as he headed towards the elevator and I headed on a hunt to empty my bladder he yelled back, “Stupid white bitch thinks I work here!”

To which I yelled back, “Sorry!”

He did not respond. He got on the elevator, and I found a toilet.

Then just last week we were on a family weekend vacation and were standing at the hotel elevator bank with our children. We had already lectured them about how we cannot go bounding onto elevators with other people. There were signs up about one party per elevator and I was not interested in bringing a corona virus strand back as a souvenir…………………

Read the rest

https://mbird.com/2020/09/elevator-encounters/

Losing Our Religion, Finding Good News

https://mbird.com/2020/09/losing-our-religion-finding-good-news/

Aclergy colleague told me on the phone last week, “Our online worship numbers have gone down week after week even though I keep telling my people to invite more people, and to pray harder, and to read their Bibles. None of it seems to work … I feel like I’m losing my religion.” My pastoral training told me to listen attentively, to offer little (if any) advice, and to pray at the end. Which I did, faithfully. But what I really wanted to say was this: “Maybe losing your religion wouldn’t be such a bad thing …”

From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and the chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. (Mk 8:31)

But Peter? Peter wasn’t having any of that. “Um, Jesus, Lord, I don’t mean to interrupt but, are you out of your mind? If you’re the Messiah I’ve confessed you to be, then you know that you can’t die. That’s losing. And in the kingdom you promised us there’s supposed to be nothing but winning!”

“Pete,” the Lord calmly intoned, “get out of my way! You’re stuck on earthly things, but the kingdom is bigger and better than your feeble little head can imagine.” Then Jesus looks out at everyone else, “Hey, listen up. This is important. If you want to be part of this whole turning-the-world-upside-down endeavor, then your world needs to get flipped right now. If you want to save your lives, go find some other teacher. But if you’re willing to accept that this life ain’t much to begin with, that’s what actually leads to salvation. Because, in the end, you can try to perfect yourself, but it won’t even come close to what I can do through you.”

……………………

Read the Rest at

https://mbird.com/2020/09/losing-our-religion-finding-good-news/

Hate the Sin, Not the Book

“This is an intresting read. the stand out is the fact that Douglas tried to find the positive even with a history he disagreed with. This is the idea we were talking about last sunday”

— Pastor Cris

Reading works from the past can offer perspective—even when they say things we don’t want to hear.

SEPTEMBER 6, 2020

Alan Jacobs

Professor of humanities at Baylor University

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This might seem a very strange time to publish a book recommending that we read the voices from the past. After all, isn’t the present hammering at our door rather violently? There’s a worldwide pandemic; a presidential election is about to consume the attention of America; and if all that weren’t sufficient, we are entering hurricane season. The present is keeping us plenty busy. Who has time for the past?

But my argument is that this is precisely the kind of moment when we need to take some time to step back from the fire hose of alarming news. (When I first tried to type fire hose, I accidentally typed dire hose instead. Indeed.) As we try to manage our dispositions, we need two things. First, we need perspective; second, we need tranquility. And it’s voices from the past that can give us both—even when they say things we don’t want to hear, and when those voices belong to people who have done bad things. One of the best guides I know to such an encounter with the past is Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, America’s most passionately eloquent advocate for the abolition of slavery.

The Rest at

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/hate-sinner-not-book/616066

Albany man rescued from Lake George by priests on a floating tiki bar

LAKE GEORGE - It was a choppy afternoon on the lake and Jimmy MacDonald from Albany was paddling in a kayak.

As MacDonald tells it, he drifted away from his wife and step kids because he was taking pictures with his new smartphone "and not really paying attention."

As he tried to make his way back, the water got choppier, and he paddled harder before he tipped over and lost his paddle. 

He was in about 30 feet of water, his ill-fitting life jacket coming up over his head, and he was holding onto the kayak with one hand and his new $1,400 smartphone with the other. 

He says people -- other kayakers and canoeists -- were passing by in the distance, but the former amateur boxer's pride wouldn't let him scream for help. So for several exhausting minutes he kept trying to right the kayak.

"That's when I said, 'Alright, I think I might die today. I think this might be it.' I prayed to my lord and savior Jesus Christ for help," MacDonald said.

Greg Barrett is a captain for Tiki Tours.

"A lot of things aligned that day," Barrett said.

He typically pilots partiers, but not on this day.

Read and Watch video at

https://wnyt.com/albany-new-york-news/jimmy-macdonald-of-albany-was-rescued-from-lake-george-by-paulist-fathers-priests-on-a-floating-tiki-bar/5850670/

When the “Cart Narcs” Come for You

https://mbird.com/2020/09/when-the-cart-narcs-come-for-you/

Anyone who’s been to the grocery store is well aware of the temptation gnawing at you as the cart is emptied into the back of the car and an option is now presented before you. The cart corral is perhaps an aisle over, or maybe the sun has made its presence severely known that day, or possibly, probably, you’re just too tired from the day to even care. You could just leave it up on the curb. You could just abandon it in the empty parking spot next to you. Who would notice?

The Cart Narcs would.

Read the Rest at

https://mbird.com/2020/09/when-the-cart-narcs-come-for-you/

Learning in Coronatide: C. S. Lewis on Going Back to School

Taken from: https://mbird.com/2020/08/learning-in-coronatide-c-s-lewis-on-going-back-to-school/

on October 22, 1939, C. S. Lewis climbed up to the pulpit of the University Church of St. Mary in Oxford to preach about “Learning in Wartime” at the start of the school year. France and the United Kingdom were at war with Germany, and Poland had just been conquered. The day before, many of the students in attendance were required to register for the draft. The times were bleak, to say the least. While there are many differences between wartime and a pandemic, the view Lewis takes on how to proceed in the bleakest of hours is instructive for us as what seemed like a quick turnaround has become a more prolonged struggle.

In the midst of global upheaval of a different kind, when everything around us feels so uncertain, if not dangerous, something as simple as education can seem to be a trivial matter by comparison. This is precisely the question with which he begins his sermon:

What is the use of beginning a task which we have so little chance of finishing? Or, even if we ourselves should happen not to be interrupted by death or military service, why should we — indeed how can we — continue to take an interest in these placid occupations when the lives of our friends and the liberties of Europe are in the balance? Is it not like fiddling while Rome burns?

For that matter, how can we reasonably worry about anything except the pandemic? Why get married, have kids, build a house, or go to school when the future is so uncertain. It’s a fair question to ask, but one that rests upon an overly optimistic view of “normal’ life. Wartime, for Lewis, is not an anomalous time to live, an exception to the rule (we might say “unprecedented”).

The war creates no absolutely new situation; it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If [people] had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun. We are mistaken when we compare war with “normal life.” Life has never been normal.

The operative words in quarantine life have been “pause” and “delay.” Everything is put on hold until the coast is clear. Lewis might view this as a waiting for a certainty that will never come, an illusory desire for control over what cannot be mastered. Waiting for life to resume, we fail to notice that life is still happening. Taking a risk in such times, whether it be sending your kids back to school or visiting your parents, is enough to make one feel guilty. But life has never been ideal, and those waiting for a return to “normal” may never emerge from their bunker (even after a vaccine).

As Lewis sees it, the danger of quarantine life is not inactivity, but listless activity that amounts to nothing. A gap-year may feel like a gracious allowance to many. What we might actually do with that extra time is a mixed bag (Tiger King, anyone?). For Lewis, the frustration and restlessness we probably feel now is not a sign that we should immediately return to pre-pandemic activities, but a symptom that we have perhaps squandered the time we have been given.

If you attempted, in either case, to suspend your whole intellectual and aesthetic activity, you would only succeed in substituting a worse cultural life for a better. You are not, in fact, going to read nothing, either in the Church or in the line: if you don’t read good books, you will read bad ones. If you don’t go on thinking rationally, you will think irrationally. If you reject aesthetic satisfactions, you will fall into sensual satisfactions.

Would Lewis have socially-distanced and worn a mask? Certainly. For him, the duties of wartime necessity must be engaged. But he also cautions against an obsessive fixation on potential threats which precludes other worthy aspirations.

[W]e may have a duty to rescue a drowning man and, perhaps, if we live on a dangerous coast, to learn lifesaving so as to be ready for any drowning man when he turns up. It may be our duty to lose our own lives in saving him. But if anyone devoted himself to lifesaving in the sense of giving it his total attention — so that he thought and spoke of nothing else and demanded the cessation of all other human activities until everyone had learned to swim — he would be a monomaniac. The rescue of drowning men is, then, a duty worth dying for, but not worth living for.

In our times, the requirements of social distancing and mask-wearing are essential, but these are not a reason to get up in the morning. Staying alive is not a reason for living. The coronavirus has paused many aspects of our routines and vocations, while simultaneously providing new strictures within which to (yes) flourish. Whether it be in person or a hybrid classroom, education can still be one of many joys given to us. Being safe during coronatide is a social responsibility, but it doesn’t give us joy like the laughter of children, the voice of a old friend on the phone, or learning a new language. If the power goes out, we could sit in the darkness and stare at the lightbulb, but lighting some candles and playing a board game would be way more fun.

Our lives may have been altered, but God remains the unchanged. Grace does not wait for the perfection conditions, but comes to us when we least expect it. As Lewis reminds us, “The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.” This time we have now is such a gift. God does not follow social distancing guidelines: his gifts remain and he pursues us still — even during a pandemic.

Deferred Maintenance: Finding God in the Breakdown Lane

by SAM BUSH on Aug 17, 2020 • 8:30 am3 Comments

Earlier this week, right before dinner time, our refrigerator started to sound slightly off. Its normal low purr became something of a soft wheeze. When my wife made a passing remark about it, I shot back, “It’s fine! I think it does that sometimes,” as if I were defending the fridge for having been personally slighted. By some miracle, the matter didn’t escalate into an argument and we then ate dinner with our two boys (not peacefully, mind you, dinner was mayhem).

The next morning, the fridge was squealing. It got to the point where I had to speak up a bit in order for my wife to hear what I was saying. When the stainless steel elephant in the room could no longer be ignored, I conceded: “I think we should probably have someone take a look at it, I guess!” She looked back at me with a knowing, loving, slightly irritated look, reminding me that I was a very lucky man. Six days later and I still have yet to get in touch with a repairman.

Judging from the lines at the dentist, mechanic, and veterinarian, we’ve all been deferring maintenance. Routine checkups are being delayed indefinitely because we now have the ultimate excuse to not do things: You could die! At the very least, the pandemic has made most of these chores inadvisable and, yes, possibly life-threatening. The World Health Organization recently advised putting off visiting the dentist for routine care until Covid-19 rates drop or until researchers know more about the risks involved. Perhaps your teeth whitening is, in fact, a matter of life and death, but I happen to know a certain someone who already has been following this public health protocol for a couple of years now.

Pandemic or no pandemic, there are things that aren’t being fixed that need to be. The roof is leaking, but we’ve put buckets across the floor. Our knee hurts, but we don’t mind limping a little, and people seem to hardly notice anyway. We feel overwhelmed, but virtual therapy feels awkward. We’re in dire need of good news, but the church is closed. In many ways, delayed maintenance is our usual modus operandi, but our capacity to meet the bare minimum is at the lowest it’s ever been. If we had been required to file our taxes on time this past April, it might have led to the collapse of modernity.

Deferring upkeep in our lives during Covid-19 seems to be a microcosm of how we deal with inadequacy and judgment. The reason why I denied that my fridge needed to be fixed in the first place is twofold: 1. I don’t want to be the type of person that needs his fridge fixed (thank you very much); and 2. the necessary steps it would take to fix it are beyond my mental capacity at the moment. Life is hard enough as it is and a broken fridge may be all it takes to send me over the edge.

When modest crises present themselves, we might attempt a quick fix and hope for the best, but Lord knows the piper will always get paid and any delay will only accrue interest. In other words, you can fight the law of life, but the law will always win. Life, ultimately, will not be managed, but endured.

I recently left my job of ten years to pursue graduate school. Clearing out my office felt as if I was having an organ removed. Even voluntary surgery requires a recovery process. While talking about this new transition with a friend, I tried to evade the dramatic undertones of what I was going through. “It’s been a little stressful, but I’m trying to name it. I don’t want it to build into a big blowup,” I told her. To which she responded, “You know, it’s OK if it does.” It didn’t occur to me until then that the loss that I was feeling would, in fact, lead to some sort of a blowup if I ever wanted to allow myself to fully grieve.

Of course, there are various degrees of “blowup.” There’s the inconsolable crying while watching a survival show (this can be classified as an acceptable blowup). Then there’s the screaming at a guy who you think is driving too fast on your street (less acceptable). The hope is that the blowup is executed in a safe manner, preferably with someone you love and trust. In the areas of our lives where we have deferred maintenance, let us hope that the car doesn’t break down on the highway in front of an eighteen-wheeler. Then again, even then, it may just be OK if it does.

It’s been said before that God’s office is at the end of your rope. When the car breaks down, when the tooth decays, when your mental health deteriorates. The place that feels God-forsaken is sometimes the very heart of grace, or, at the very least, the gateway to true healing. As Kafka once said, “You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.” Kafka may be right, but I think it’s too much to ask people to try to not avoid suffering. Avoiding suffering is in our very nature. We will inevitably keep the crises of our lives at bay as long as possible, even if that may only delay the wideness of God’s mercy rushing in to meet us there.

The good news is that God works all things together for good. All things means all things. All things also means that one particular thing — whatever it is — that you happen to be putting off right now. He is working that out — as well as the subsequent breakdown — for good. How can we trust this? Because God did not hold back from the sufferings of the world, but instead was lifted up and drew all of it to himself. Jesus’ death was anything but a quick fix. On the Cross, God used his broken body to restore the world once for all.

In truth, I will not call the repairman today. Like most things in my life, I will prolong getting the help I need until it is much too late. In those moments of brokenness, may I trust that the help of God will “come with succor speedy.” There is no queue to wait for God’s mercy. When we pick up the phone to call we find he’s already arrived at our door, wrench in hand.

Who Is My Neighbors - John Nunes

Source article: https://www.canadianlutheran.ca/who-is-my-neighbour/

“11 min Read”

By Rev. Dr. John Arthur Nunes is President of Concordia College (Bronxville, New York).

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As if the loneliness of isolation weren’t enough, now we are gripped by the fear of anarchy and what feels to some like the collapse of western civilization. As tough as these times seem, I believe that the Holy Spirit relentlessly is present to help the Church navigate with confidence and hope these difficult days: “We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls” (Hebrews 10:39).

The twin crises of COVID-19 and rising mainstream awareness of racial injustice have tested our faith and rattled our settled ideas of normalcy. From Port of Spain, Trinidad to Uranium City, Saskatchewan life on our continent is challenged. Yes, I say stretching from the Caribbean, because people from Panama to Greenland geographically-speaking are our North American “neighbours.” Our current moment—whether because of social distancing or social unrest—retrieves for us an ancient question with biblical precedent: “Who is my neighbour?” (Luke 10).

Reimagining Neighbourliness

When I attended Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary (CLTS – St. Catharines, Ontario) in the late 1980s, Dean Roger Humann led a spiritual retreat based on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s work Life Together. How can communities of faith ground our lives together in the place where grace is funded? Humann proposed, only with Christ at the centre! I remember our discussions including this volume’s cautionary note: that there was a destructive power when humans wrongly love even good things. For example, lovers of community, and nowadays, lovers even of diversity end up destroying what they love. Those, on the other hand, who reserve their love for Jesus Christ fortify community.

That principle has stuck with me and worked for me everywhere I’ve been in the ensuing thirty-plus years. Truth endures, doesn’t it? My point is, as we ourselves endure our hard struggles (Hebrews 10:32), we do not need novel strategies; we do need to do old things in new ways, and answer ancient questions, like “Who is my neighbor?” with faithful reimagination.

Our renewed neighbourliness arises only as we continue to orbit our lives around the source and summit of our faith, Jesus Christ. He is the axis that holds all things together (Colossians 1:17). Through the inevitable zigzag course of our days, we hold firmly to the One who holds us in “the confession of our hope without wavering” (Hebrews 10:23). How do we keep being held? By participating regularly in God’s Word, in the Sacraments, and in the fellowship of the faithful. By dwelling in Christ, we will reinforce our habits of faith during these trying times even as we discover innovative ways to be forces for good and for God in increasingly diversified communities. To be the witnesses for peace and the workers for justice we are called to be, we must first “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) in the One who calls us.

Since human persons are the crown of creation, all people are offered the saving gift that Jesus Christ lived, died, and rose to procure. Humans are able, by grace through faith, to uniquely know and love their Creator. Therefore, we regard all persons as our neighbours—without any exclusions or exceptions! We value all persons as bearers of the dignity accredited to those both made in the image of God, and, in whom, as believers in Christ, the image will be fully restored. Finally, we anticipate the renewal of creation, the healing of the nations (Revelation 22:2), where race is finally and fully transcended. 

“Humans are able, by grace through faith, to uniquely know and love their Creator. Therefore, we regard all persons as our neighbours—without any exclusions or exceptions! We value all persons as bearers of the dignity accredited to those both made in the image of God, and, in whom, as believers in Christ, the image will be fully restored.”

North American society seems to be moving in the opposite direction, as we increasingly dishonour, disregard, and disrespect our neighbours with blatant brutality. Social media tends to aggravate our rage and outrageousness. Stuck in a painful state of hyperpartisanship, we demonize each other and impose demands that are non-nuanced and non-negotiable. As religious faith fades, politics gains an inflated sense of religious ferocity. Even among those who profess belief, theology too often gets twisted to form a thin veneer of proof passages as cover for their group’s cultural ideology. We are meant for more than this as a people and as a Church. If we still possess the will to pursue a pathway forward, it will need to include a new neighbourliness led by Christians: respectful listening, principled civility, reasoned dialogue, mutual sacrifice, decision-making with an eye toward the common good, and as James Hankins from Harvard University puts it much better than I: “the ability to recognize the value of what others value.”

I palpably remember as a student how proudly I admired the neighbourliness expressed in the old CLTS Academic Calendar. I was magnetized by what these words suggested as possible: that St. Catharines was located near the urban centers of Toronto, Hamilton, and Buffalo, New York, and that the area congregations were reflective of “the ethnic and linguistic diversity that is typically Canadian.” What a bracing vision, to celebrate pluralism as “typical,” an indubitable fact.

Race as Fiction. Racism as Fact.

The most recent racial unrest in the United States has captured the attention of the mainstream culture in North American life, a stratum in which most Lutherans are located. Many are becoming more aware of what others have long known—the persistence of the structural evil of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and the chronic lack of access afforded too many African-Americans. Many are recognizing the gargantuan work yet to be done in addressing systemic corruption, unequal economic opportunity, urban violence, mass incarceration, and the treatment of minority neighbours.

“It has always struck me as ironic that the majority of the world’s population qualifies as “minority.” Obviously, this term refers more to power dynamics than numerical demographics.”

There may be similar opportunities in Canada among so-called minorities. I say “so-called” because Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) comprise the vast majority of the world’s 7.8 billion people—conservatively 80 percent. The proportion of “minorities” in the U.S. and Canada will only grow as time goes on. Pew Research already reports that the most common age for white people in the United States today is 58, while for “minorities” it is 27.

It has always struck me as ironic that the majority of the world’s population qualifies as “minority.” Obviously, this term refers more to power dynamics than numerical demographics. Because of this, I have an academic friend who uses the term minoritized rather than minority. He is referring to groups of people who have been assigned minority status. What makes this more ironic for Christians is that race is a theological and biological fiction. Genetic differences are as significant within so-called races as they are between so-called races. Yet, racism is a fact. Racism makes negative judgments about human worth, intelligence, or superiority based on phenotypes, that is, “organic, genetically transmitted differences (whether real or imagined) between human groups” (LCMS CTCR report on “Racism and the Church”). 

Shattering Stereotypes

One opportunity for Christians in Canada to engage in the work of social justice and evangelization is among our First Nations’ neighbours. The word “neighbour” derives historically from near-dweller; to be a neighbour requires proximity, getting close to others in order to get to know them. Social distancing is the opposite of neighbouring.

Rhonda Kelman is the Executive Director of BC Mission Boat Society. She described for me in a recent Zoom conversation what could be acquired only from getting close to those who are different. Her “stereotypes were shattered” through her work among First Nations peoples living in remote communities along Canada’s British Columbian coast. As she shares the love of Jesus in word and deed, she “listens and learns,” and is awakened to the many false assumptions that people have regarding the religious practices of these communities. “It’s not about animal worship,” Kelman maintains, “I’ve heard [First Nations] people ask, ‘How can I have my culture and Jesus at the same time?’”

In other words, how are we to understand the ways in which culture and Christianity intersect? While becoming Christian certainly implies entering into a reverential framework that is distinct from this world, it also always entails cultural forms that are of this world—like language, music, ways of relating to one another, and even notions about time. During this moment of rising intercultural consciousness, we have a chance to learn about our own cultural blind-spots that falsely blur culture and theology. No matter who we are, our way cannot be the only way to come to the only One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 1:14).

Kelman speaks glowingly about experiencing welcome and hospitality among her First Nations neighbours. “I am amazed that we are invited and asked to go into their communities, especially in light of what they have suffered from church-based Residential Schools: sexually, physically, emotionally, having everything stripped away from them, not even being allowed to use their language.” 

It is heartbreaking that Inuit people, for example, have experienced intergeneration trauma which contributes to the highest suicide rates in the world, as Helen Epstein writes in The New York Review of Books, and that in some communities “over half the population uses drugs… including anything sniffable: starter fluid, spray paint, nails polish and gasoline.” Who is my neighbour?

Three Splashes of Inclusion

Irrespective of your politics, Canada seems historically to have striven to be a place of welcome and inclusion. As the former president of Lutheran World Relief, I had the opportunity to travel the world, meeting and getting to know many global neighbours, especially those living in poverty. As a whole, Canada seems unique in valuing hospitality toward new neighbours. My family was blessed to be welcomed to Canada from Jamaica in the 1960s, and then to Pilgrim, Hamilton in the early 1970s.

Sadly, some of this spirit seems to be dissipating. Perhaps this is in reaction to the ideological pressures of aggressive progressives. Perhaps it’s due to the nostalgic streak among some conservative types pining for a mythical era of monochromatic simplicity. Perhaps it’s an unhealthy influence from your politically divided neighbours to the south.

Whatever the socio-political motive, our identity in Christ’s mystical body must transcend categorization. As baptized believers, we are new creations! And that matters more than any label. Likewise, we have a new view of our neighbours, seeing them not merely as labelable categories. Reborn, “we regard no one according to the flesh” (2 Corinthians 5:16). What God does for us in three splashes of water obliterates all distinctions. Who we are daily remade to be in the name of Father, Son, and Spirit outweighs any category like Métis, fundamentalist, racist, single-parent, Quebecois, steelworker, Latina, divorcee, Marxist, bishop, learning-disabled, or any of the pigeonholes in which we find ourselves placed. We are called into the world from that eternal-life-giving font by the perfect love that drives out fear (1 John 4:18).

Despite what feels these days like chaos and crisis, the Holy Spirit keeps our eyes riveted on Jesus Christ. The ordinary places in which we pray, play, live, love, and work comprise the neighbourhoods in which God has assigned us to live out our baptismal identities. We follow our Redeemer and Rabbi who was, as my former professor Rev. Dr. John R. Stephenson eloquently puts it, “the carpenter’s son, becoming not a garrulous member of the chattering classes, not a businessman in search of quick profit, not even mayor of the town, but a quiet, methodical, reliable carpenter alert to the needs of His neighbours.”

Forgiveness Forty-Eight Years After John Lewis Was Attacked

Source Article: https://mbird.com/2020/07/forty-eight-years-after-john-lewis-was-attacked/

Astop-you-in-your-tracks story of (and reflection upon) sin, repentance, reconciliation, and hope from the late congressman John Lewis’ final book, Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America, which we discuss on the forthcoming episode of The Mockingcast. Even if you’ve heard about the incident elsewhere, it’s worth reading Lewis’ own words on the matter:

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Diffusing the fury of violence by obstructing and redirecting the intention of an attacker is itself an act of love … Having compassion for your attacker means you harbor no malice and seek no retribution for the wrong that has been done. It is an offering of love that asserts the victim’s self-worth. It makes room for the inner working of his or her soul that has a way of invoking a quiet insistence to do what is right.

This brings to mind the one and only attacker, of the forty times I was arrested and jailed, who apologized to me for his actions. Almost forty-eight years after that now famous Freedom Ride stop in Rock Hill, South Carolina, that left Albert Bigelow and me so badly bruised and bloodied, Elwin Wilson, one of our attackers, wanted to come to meet me.

Wilson had apologized to other Freedom Riders during ceremonies honoring them in South Carolina and had mentioned his wish to find the men he had beaten up that day in Rock Hill. I welcomed him to Washington and as we sat, Wilson looked deep into my eyes, searching my expression, and said he was the person who had beaten me in Rock Hill in May of 1961. He said, “I am sorry about what I did that day. Will you forgive me?” Without a moment of hesitation, I looked back at him and said, “I accept your apology.” The man who had physically and verbally assaulted me was now seeking my approval. This was a great testament to the power of love to overcome hatred …

Wilson has said publicly that he is glad to be able to count me as a friend today, and he has expressly mentioned his gratitude that we did not press charges that day. His life and the life of his family could have been changed forever if South Carolina had actually tried and convicted him. But beyond that, had he been tried, it would have added a layer of justification to the rationalization that always accompanies guilt. If he had been publicly vindicated, which would have been the likely outcome, it would have been more difficult for him to come to the point where he eventually believed an apology was in order, and more difficult for him to feel love.

Elwin Wilson also said that he was glad we did not have any weapons that day. If Albert Bigelow and I had inflicted harm in Rock Hill, we would have fueled the flames of violence instead of putting them out. Any sense of remorse would have had to compete with the fire of anger. Instead of a possible reconciliation, revenge would have been the product of that violent confrontation in Rock Hill. But because we met this man in love and offered him our respect despite his obvious hatred, it gave him nothing to justify his anger. He left that day only to review it in his mind so many times over the years. The resonance of our innocence made room in his own soul for the realization that he needed to ask for forgiveness. I was surprised to hear him clearly restate forty-eight years later the essence of what I had said to the police officer as I declined to press charges almost half a century earlier: “We’re not here to cause trouble. We’re here so that people will love each other.” That was how he put it. The impact we left was undeniable.

What Elwin Wilson did took courage. He could have simply made amends in his heart, but to publicly put aside his differences and admit his error is unique and bold. By doing this, he demonstrated so poignantly for all to see that love that opens its arms to help heal the pain of another’s suffering — not violence in self-defense — has the power to ultimately disarm the attacker, preserve his or her integrity, and enable the truth to do its work. Love that meets the separating action of violence with forgiveness affirms that our ultimate and eternal unity is transformative.

May My Virtue Signals Be Transformed Into Love

Article Taken from Mockingbird Ministries https://mbird.com/2020/07/may-my-virtue-signals-be-transformed-into-love/

by AMANDA MCMILLEN on Jul 13, 2020

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”

— 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

There is a difference between being motivated by love and being motivated by self-justification, and we can usually feel the difference. When we send an email to a co-worker that was a bit harsh, we may be extra nice and accommodating to them the next time we interact — maybe to apologize in humility (a motivation of love), but also maybe to feel like we aren’t terrible people (a motivation of self-justification). These motivations are hard to pin down, and the things we do could be motivated by both forces at once — they often feel that way to me.

I remember complaining to my husband once about the ways that politicians drive me crazy by divisively deciding they’re right with no room for conversation or listening to other points of view. He listened and then reminded me that sometimes people aren’t trying to be divisive — sometimes they’re trying to be loving and they just think their policies are the most loving, and so they fight for them. His reply gave me pause and reminded me that whether it is politics or everyday life, there are different motivations for the things we do. And it isn’t necessarily up to us to determine if someone else’s motivations are right or wrong — God is very capable of knowing the hearts of others without our input. (Though as soon as He asks for my input I am READY to give it.)

But no matter our ability to differentiate between good and bad motivations for the things we do, we are still guilty. This is what the law tells us: “No one is righteous, no not one.” We are guilty of selfish motivation and self-justification. Feelings of guilt convict us of sin, a blessed and painful reminder that we are humans in need of a savior. But if we forget (as is so easy to do in this world) that we do in fact have a forgiving savior, we may do whatever we can to feel less guilty than we are.  Here we find our never-ending tit-for-tat approach to balancing the scales and desperately trying to feel like good people. But this is a tiring game with no end in sight that only starts fresh the next day, with the next mistake we make. (The internal dialogue is anxiety-inducing: “Did I offend that person? How do I prove to them that I’m ‘good’?”)

I have been seeing this lately all over social media. There are a lot of great conversations happening around racial inequities in our country — conversations that are rooted in love — and there are also a lot of puffed-up shows of solidarity that are more about being seen as righteous. Resounding gongs and clanging cymbals. It’s not always clear which is which, and I don’t know that it’s my place to decide, but we all know they’re both out there. I am certainly guilty of being another clanging cymbal. Again and again we see the human urgency to self-justify and prove our worth “that I may boast.”

Guilt can convict us of real sin that invites repentance, but self-justification likes to see that feeling fade, and naively hopes it will never return. Feelings of guilt do return because, of course, we are guilty of many things. We feel convicted of sin, self-justify by doing something that makes us seem moral to others, feel better about ourselves (via “virtue signaling”), and then the feeling of guilt dissipates, and we hope we are on the “right” side again. Then it’s back to normal life.

This pattern of guilt, self-justification, boasting, and then indifference, is cut to it’s core with the words of St. Paul to the Corinthians about the nature of love. Good works that come from guilt or self-justification are not patient or kind. They are not selfless, but rather fully focused on self. They will not bear all things or even last very long because as soon as we feel that false relief of self-justification, we can drop the act.

But good works coming from love — those are the real deal. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, these are the kind of good works we don’t think twice about, the kind of good works that don’t puff up, because they are born of love — genuine interest in our neighbor’s well being — instead of self-promotion. This kind of love is an act of God in us, a death of self and a resurrection within.

Self-justification is not actually what justifies us. It does no good to seem better than we are. As St. Paul writes, “man is justified by faith alone, not by works.” It is the imputed righteousness of Christ to ourselves that justifies us and calls us “good,” whether or not our best and worst actions have pure motives. This is why, when we find ourselves face-to-face with our sin, feeling the heaviness of guilt in our hearts, we can afford to give up the act of self-justification — not because we righted the wrong on our own, or even apologized. Being justification by faith frees us from the anxieties of self-justification and the endless search for perfect motivations. We are given this free gift of grace that we do not bring about, but only accept, dumbfounded, tears in eyes.

Love does not envy or boast, and we do not do it well. But God does it perfectly, on a cross. His righteousness is now ours and there is no need to prove a thing. From this death comes life, and from life comes fruits, like love.

#GospelResistance [From MBird.com]

From: https://mbird.com/2020/07/gospelresistance/

Thankful for this post by our good friend, Jason Micheli:

On Twitter today, the hashtag resist trended in dizzying directions, linking causes as disparate as police brutality, cancelling Tucker Carlson, and even cancelling cancel culture. #Resist was also linked to standing up against “oppressive” mask orders in localities hit by surges in the coronavirus. Given the ubiquitous yet ambiguous nature of the word, it would behoove us as Christians, I believe, to ask what it means to resist, biblically-speaking.

The Apostle Peter uses the word to exhort the elect community, “Be self-controlled and alert. Your Enemy, the Devil, prowls around like a roaring lion … Resist him, standing firm in the faith.” Peter puts it in the imperative, antistete — “Stand against him!”

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus commands those whom he has called to love their enemies. That Jesus orders his disciples to love our enemies suggests that Jesus expects us, like him, to make enemies. The problem, though, is that too often — at least in a liberal denomination like my own, United Methodism — the enemies the Church stands up to resist are everybody’s enemies: racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia. It’s not that those issues are not urgent. It’s that the distinctive form of our Christian witness becomes unclear if we’re simply resisting what you need not be a Christian to resist.

The negative frame of the word makes it all the more critical we understand, in Gospel terms. It’s riskier to be against something because the very act of resistance, drawing lines between good and evil, righteous and unrighteous, risks obscuring the offensive, counter-intuitive Gospel that God has elected us to proclaim. How do we practice Christian resistance without resisting the radical inclusiveness of the Christian kergyma?

Done, not Do — that is the Gospel.

The Gospel is not Become a Better You. The Gospel is Christ has Died for Unrighteous You. Christ was cancelled for the sake of every last deplorable. While we were yet his enemies, Paul announces, Christ Jesus was crucified for the justification not of the good but of the ungodly.  And notice, the apostolic Gospel is not that Christ Jesus was crucified for the repentance of the ungodly. No, on account of Jesus Christ and his shed blood alone, God declares even the ungodly to be in the right — righteous — before God.

The Gospel is more inclusive than anyone who does not know scripture could imagine.

God is not just a God on the side of the poor and oppressed, the righteous and the peacemakers. The Gospel makes the offensive claim that God is also on the side of the irreligious, the immoral, and the unjust. The Gospel is Good News for victims, yes, but also for the victimizers; for the oppressed, of course, but for their oppressors, too. How many churches have you seen with signs out front that say “Crooks, Adulterers, Liars, and Xenophobes, Welcome!”

The Gospel proclaims the exasperating news that the Living God is for us to such an excessively prodigal degree it’s difficult to know how we are to be against in a manner that does not shroud our message. It’s tricky business, knowing how to be against when God in Jesus Christ has not left us anyone, not a single soul, he is not for — to hell and back. As Karl Barth says, there is not one “No!” we can say to someone to whom God has not already uttered a final and decisive “Yes!” How do we resist the sin of racism, for example, without also resisting the uncomfortable news that every last racist in every one of those viral videos we’ve seen in the news this summer is a sinner whom Christ has not only died for but justified?

Will Campbell was a Baptist preacher and a civil rights activist, who died a few years ago. He’s the author of Brother to a Dragonfly and Up to Our Steeples in Politics. He won the National Book Award for the former. Campbell grew up in Amite County, Mississippi, where his family’s Baptist church had Bibles in the pews whose covers were emblazoned with Ku Klux Klan insignia. Ordained at the age of seventeen, Campbell went on to study at Yale and, upon graduation, he took a position as the campus chaplain at the University of Mississippi in 1954. He resigned two years later in the face of death threats over his support for Civil Rights and school integration.

During the Civil Rights movement, Will Campbell was acclaimed by many and accursed by many for the radically inclusive nature of his ministry. He simply refused to resist racism in the terms of Us vs. Them given to him by the culture. On more than one occasion, he counter-intuitively pastored the families of those victimized by Klan violence but also the victimizers, murderous Klansmen and their families. In his 1962 book, Race and the Renewal of the Church, Campbell was critical of how he and his peers had initially entered the resistance movement. “There were no innocent people involved in the civil rights movement,” Campbell wrote.

All of us — black and white — were guilty in that all of us were sinners. We all stood in desperate need of the message of judgment and redemption. […] Even those engaged in the new and dramatic protest movements, even we must also hear the Gospel of the Lord who burns and heals. We have moved into Christian social action from the wrong point of departure.

Campbell goes on to lament how he and his activist peers initiated their resistance efforts from the wrong starting point, solidarity with the suffering of the victims, “which is no different from the secular view of social action and carries with it a superficial sentimental understanding of the depth of humanity’s depravity.”

Critiquing his own form of resistance early on, Campbell writes that he and his peers should’ve taken as their point of departure, not right and wrong, good and evil, righteous and unrighteous, but the one reality we all share.

Sin.

“We’re all the ungodly,” Campbell said.

All of us are captive to the Power of Sin, Campbell meant. The chains of bondage just appear different depending on our color or creed, our station or situation. Thus, solidarity with victims is not enough. We must see one another, but most of all ourselves, as potential victimizers.

We’re all captive to the Power of Sin.

In Jesus Christ, God has not left us anyone — not a single person — whom God is not for because every single one of us is yet in bondage to an Enemy from whom Almighty God is determined to set us free.

Christian resistance is intelligible only as it relates to the Power of Sin and Death. The Apostle Peter exhorts the elect community to resist not our neighbors or our fellow citizens, not political parties or social policies per se but God’s Enemy. Even the baptismal liturgy presupposes the entrenched opposition of an occupying Enemy, the Devil, against which the human race is powerless without aid from another realm.

Of course, a neighbor’s racism, a fellow citizen’s violence, or a callous social policy can all be ways our collective bondage to the Enemy manifests. But — this is important — they do not make our neighbor the enemy. The enemy is the Enemy. And in one way or another, we are all in its grip. As the Apostle Paul puts it, “Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against … the cosmic powers of this present darkness” (Eph 6:12).

Your neighbor is not the enemy.

The Enemy is the enemy.

We’re all prisoners of the same Pharaoh. The Devil’s laid different chains on me than on you maybe, but we’re all in the same situation, waiting on the final redemption of our Lord Jesus Christ. But just because we’re all prisoners waiting on our Rescuer to come back in final victory does not mean that we don’t try to knock down some walls, bust some chains, and dig a tunnel to freedom from behind Rita Hayworth.

Just as we acknowledge at our baptisms, Christ has elected us to resist the spiritual forces of wickedness in our world. But our Christian resistance should never be tinged with self-righteousness or hate but tempered by the knowledge of our own captivity and therefore by humility and pity and compassion.

Priest and author Fleming Rutledge tells the story of how when she was young and newly in the throes of the social justice movement, she complained to Will Campbell about racists. After listening to her rant, Campbell laughed and replied, “Fleming, we’re all racists!”

We’re all racists, or something.

We’re all captive to the Power of Sin.

Will Campbell could laugh at our common affliction because he was convinced that in Jesus Christ God had not only justified the ungodly, he would one day return to redeem the ungodly and, in rescuing us, remake us.

Leadership Podcast with Victor Belton and Scott Gress

In this episode of The Coaching Leader, we welcome Rev. Dr. Victor Belton. He has served for 30 years at Peace Lutheran Church Decatur GA, has served 12 year...

In this episode of The Coaching Leader, we welcome Rev. Dr. Victor Belton. He has served for 30 years at Peace Lutheran Church Decatur GA, has served 12 years on the Board of Directors of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS), was Leadership Campus Pastor and Regional Representative of Concordia College Bronxville New York and now serves as Mission Facilitator for the FL-GA District LCMS.

Pastor Belton shares his insights and wisdom related to the injustice and sin of racism. He gives practical wisdom and advice for leaders and church leaders while also broadening our perspective to make the necessary changes.

Martin Luther on Responding to Pandemics

From Paul Baldasare, Jr., President of St. Andrews University:

Martin Luther on Responding To Pandemics

Sixteenth century Reformer Martin Luther wrote almost 500 years ago about responding to pandemics. When Luther was confronted by questions about how to respond to The Black Death Plague, he responded in words that should serve to inform our approach to the pandemic crisis our nation and the world is now facing today.

In a letter to Rev. Dr. John Hess, found in Luther’s Works, Volume 43 p. 132, as “Whether one may flee from a Deadly Plague,” Luther writes:

“I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance inflict and pollute others and so cause their death as a result of my negligence. If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me and I have done what he has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others. If my neighbor needs me however I shall not avoid place or person but will go freely as stated above. See this is such a God-fearing faith because it is neither brash no foolhardy and does not tempt God.”

Today in the 21st century, the faithful should go and do likewise.

Be Careful About Calling Caesar Lord

https://wyehuxford.com/2020/07/01/be-careful-about-calling-caesar-lord/

By Wye Huxford

A few months ago, I decided it was time for a revisit to those seven letters to seven different churches that are at the opening of Revelation. My idea in deciding to do this, in part, was that I’m confident when this current time of turmoil in our culture – over the pandemic, over justice, over politics in general – is over, we will be living in what I’ve been calling “a coming new world.”

When I read these seven letters, written to churches who were facing rather turbulent times, I wondered if I could learn some of the “potholes” the church might avoid in order to please Christ on the one hand, and make an impact on the world on the other hand.

One of the potholes I discovered – present in some way in each of the letters – is the temptation to confuse politics and faith, a temptation often born out of fear. The Emperor Cult was a big deal in the late first century, and the pressure had to be intense to conflate one’s faith in Jesus as Lord with at least nodding your head at the idea that Caesar was Lord.

This issue may be the most dramatic in the letter to the church at Smyrna. (Revelation 2:8-11) Smyrna was awarded the privilege to build a temple to the Emperor Tiberias among the cities of Asia Minor. John Stott, in a great little book, titled What Christ Thinks of the Church, ponders “Did the Christians refuse to sprinkle incense on the fire that burned before the Emperor’s bust? Of course they did. To do so would be idolatry . . . their unwillingness to conform was interpreted by the common people as a disgraceful and even treacherous lack of patriotism.” (page 37)

If you read this letter, you find Jesus using three pretty big words to describe what life was like for these believers: tribulation, poverty, and slander from the enemies of Jesus. It is easy to see how their refusal to call Caesar Lord could be the cause for all three of these difficulties. Never one to hold back the truth, Jesus also lets them know that there is more to come. We know from church history that Jesus’ words were true – the story of Polycarp is but one among hundreds that could likely be told. (If you would like to read about Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna in the middle of the second century, click here.)

It seems that perhaps fear of tribulation, the struggle of finding a job if you refused to say Caesar is Lord, and dealing with the nonsense talk of those who slandered followers of Jesus was a challenge for believers in Smyrna.

If you notice the way Jesus introduces Himself in this letter, it becomes apparent he wants to communicate to them that He knows what He is talking about. “The first and the last, who was dead, and has come to life, says this . . .” He is no arm-chair theologian who can repeat all the right ideas and assume that’s enough. He is a “been there and done that” kind of Savior. He never asks more of us than He Himself hasn’t already given.

In this coming new world, we will likely still need to contend with the aftermath of the global pandemic that, as of this writing, has claimed over 500,000 lives worldwide – 128,000 of those in the United States. We are faced with the even greater challenge of taking the gospel seriously enough to speak truth about issues of justice and fairness. But we can’t be content to just speak truth; we must act such truth out. That’s going to be complicated. Many suggest that the aggressive consumerism of the pre-pandemic world will need to be adjusted downward. That’s challenging. Higher education – the area of our culture that has prepared men and women for the sophisticated world of work for decades – is facing great challenges in terms of financial sustainability, accommodating masks and social distancing, and a host of other issues.

To Smyrna, Jesus said, “Do not fear!” And that is coming from the One who “was dead, and has come back to life.”

In this coming new world, we cannot allow fear to cripple our witness to the hope that is found in Christ. That will require making sure we aren’t calling our own “Caesars” Lord, but with great faith and commitment, declaring – perhaps on bended knee – that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

It doesn’t matter who our particular “Caesars” may be; the moment we conflate that Caesar with Jesus as Lord, we have stepped in a really deep pothole.