where can i find God in this 'christian' nation ? ..

i suppose i could leave it alone
walk away, head hung in disappointment, again
walk on
think ' maybe next time ' ..
but i won't
i refuse
i'm angry and i'm going to vent


i live in what's been touted as a 'christian' nation, and i can't find a 'church' ..
and i refuse to simply accept what is available; that's what some thinlk i should do - "no church is perfect", they say

i'm not looking for perfection ..
i'm looking for Jesus in the room, in the preacher, in the person next to me at the table
i'm lookiing for the spirit of Jesus
sniffing for his aroma
i want to taste him in the air

i am so very very tired of the same 'ol same 'ol
of creeds (some of which i disagree with, at points), of liturgical repetition without heart-mind engaged, of 15 minutes on 'pledging' and more to come in the next several weeks, of pomp and presentation and professionalism
i'm tired
and i'm angry
i am disappointed and very angry
i didn't sleep well, but i hauled my tired body out of the bed and made a valiant effort to find a group of people to engage with, to share, to worship, to discuss the majesty of our magnificent God

that's all
simple
.. . . . . . . . . ..      .

don't we see that God wants our hearts?
he wants me
the creedal repetition and read-prayers and recitations are, for the most part, vanity and futility
so too are the new-fashioned lights and bands and coffee counters and blue jeans, for the most part, because they are simply another made-up recipe devised to attract

God doesn't need creeds or attractive formats
God wants us, at the core of us, to be
simply be
be in the presence of God
be in the moment
be there to feel God, to experience God, to praise and thank God, to see God sitting there, next to me
God is not at all interested in our buildings or presentation
God is intimately interested in me, in you, in us
present
simply present
and open to God's spirit

i wanted to get outside and scream
really
i wanted to scream in frustration and the agony of being left with no opportunity again to share my passion with Jesus and experience that passion coming back at me, full force, no holds barred
i wanted to shout out " God! where are you??! "

i am at a loss for words
i can't adequately express how depressed i feel, how lost, how beaten-down, how frustrated

with all the 'christian' colleges and universities and seminaries
with all the churches
with all the trained preachers and pastors, doctors and masters and whatsoeveryouwannacallit ..
with all the money
all that, and Jesus barely gets in the front door
in fact, i figure he walks out too, just like me
and he stands there on the street outside that church building and cries out "Why?!! Why do you make my father's house into a place of business? This is a house of prayer! Out! Get out!"
i wish he would
i only fear that if he did, there would hardly be a place of worship and prayer to be found .. you'd probably have to go a long way to find one

God told israel that he wanted none of their sacrifices, nothing of their pretense
he was sick of it
because they speak of God, but they don't know God
he is in their mouth, but not in their heart
so he spit them out of his mouth
vomited-up their vanity
they made him sick

and the very same thing could be said of Jesus' people today
he warned us in the Revelation to John - "you're neither hot nor cold; you're lukewarm,, and i hate lukewarm - i will spit you out!"
Jesus said that
.... . .   ...  .

i'm spending my sunday sitting in a coffee shop with nfl on the tele and an unsettled spirit
unfulfilled
disappointed
depressed
upset
lost

i need fellowship
i need to see and hear and speak-to and touch and experience Jesus in a group
where God's Spirit overflows, oozes, permeates the atmosphere so strongly that it almost drowns me
where God is exalted and Jesus stares through eyes, staring at me in love, smiling

i need that

God is not pleased with what we're doing with Jesus
God is sick at our misrepresentation of who God is
and the religious intelligentsia are to blame, and the preachers and teachers and prophets and whatever
it's always been like that
somehow when people become leaders they forget who their leader is
the real leader
Jesus, the originator and completer of our faith
they forget they are but dust, looking for accolade and recognition and positioning themselves for power and influence and wealth
they become a stink in the nostrils of the God that calls them to serve
their stench displaces the sweetsmelling aroma of Jesus
they need to be baptised again, into the Christ, a new personage, a fresh anointing, a pleasing aroma to the God that cries out "Who will stand in the gap for me?"

who indeed

WHERE can i find it

i had it once, or something close to that, in a church on the other side of this country, a church in a circle, a church where the circle led to the centre, and Jesus' scent was in the air, a sweet aroma that fills the air
i miss that
i hope they never change, and that anything or anyone that threatens that is deposed and cast out before the smell of Jesus is gone, another house of prayer biting the dust

i quit my whining
but the anger remains, albeit somewhat lessened by my venting

so, here i sit, on this sunday, banging my head ..

i shoulda been there, in God's place, with his people, breathing-in a refreshing breeze from the heart of Jesus
.. not today
not today

how tragic

hall 6 .. christian accountability

over the last several days, and with more to come, i have been publishing quotations from douglas john hall's book The Cross in Our Context ( fortress press, 2003 )



" If, traditionally, contextual theological thought has been rare in North America for the colonialist and other reason adduced earlier, it is discouraged today by the heavy burden of guilt that such analysis is likely to inflict upon us. Rather than question the rectitude of our way of life, we will ignore incontrovertible economic, environmental, geopolitical, and other statistics, minimize the extent of our consumption and waste and its effects upon the biosphere, and consign to exaggeration and scare-mongering all those who demand of us a rigorous accounting and a change of lifestyle. " ( p49 )

.............................................................

" As Bonhoeffer insisted in all of his writings .. the Judeo-Christian tradition is an extraordinarily ' worldly ' faith, which, if we are serious about it, will not provide for us  - will in fact deny us - an escape from the terrors of finite existence but will instead beckon  us toward an immersion in creation the like of which we should never have chosen on our own. " ( p55 )

hall 5 .. context

" Systematic or dogmatic theology has been slow to learn the lesson of contextuality, especially its place-component, and one cannot avoid the conclusion that a ( if not the ) predominant reason for this lies in the character of the enterprise as such. The very adjectives systematic and dogmatic .. betray a predilection to permanency. It so easily happens that a ( right and good ) desire to "see the thing whole", to integrate, to describe connections, to honor the unity of truth, and so on becomes, in its execution, an exercise in finality.
.. the thing that prevents the theological answer from assuming the status of the absolute is the human question, which is never silenced, and the situation, which keeps changing. ( p45 )

" .. entering into the specificity of one's own time and place is the conditio sine qua non of real theological work. Without that participatory act and identity, theology invariably lapses into mere doctrine. The world that the disciples of the crucified one are obliged to take seriously is first of all that world that is their own. " ( p47 )

authority ..

" .. since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive, but each in his own order: Christ, the firstfruits; afterward, at His coming, those who belong to Christ.

Then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to God the Father, when He abolishes all rule and all authority and power, for He must reign until He puts all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be abolished is death. For God has put everything under His feet. But when it says “everything” is put under Him, it is obvious that He who puts everything under Him is the exception.

And when everything is subject to Christ, then the Son Himself will also be subject to the One who subjected everything to Him, so that God may be all in all. "
                      ( 1 Corinthians 15. 21-28 )


think about that .. .


anything strike you ?

hall 4 .. gethsemane

" The Friday event [ Good Friday ] must be seen as the culmination of the movement of the Creator toward the creation. Here the decision to be God-with-us is brought to its final test. Gethsemane, that cross before the cross, displays in the most dramatic and poignant terms the excruciating pain that such a final step entails: pain for the man who is our representative and priest; pain for the God whom he also represents. " ( p39 )

" .. what Jesus of Nazareth struggles with at Gethsemane, that second Garden of Temptation, is not simply whether he will or will not submit to the execution that his human enemies have been planning for him, but whether he will or will not reaffirm the divine decision to be Emmanuel. "
( p39 )

" .. in our Good Friday remembrance of [ the crucifixion ] , Christians celebrate the victorious decision of the Christ to traverse this final sad portion of the Via Dolorosa, to take that final step toward the world God loves. For all the pain of it, it is also a triumph over pain - the pain, namely, of the decision that has preceded it, the decision to go that far.
When this is understood, the victory of the Christ is not reserved for Easter Sunday; it is already fully present at Golgotha. " ( p39 )


......................................

" We, whose movement in one way and another has always been away from the world, whether into our own private little worlds or to some theoretic superworld of our own devising - we, through our 'baptism into his death' ( Rom 6:1f ), are being directed toward the world where his life is being lived, hidden among the lives of those especially whom the world as such seems to have denied fullness of life ( Matt 25:31 ff ). " ( p41 )

hall 3 .. theology of the cross

" The Theology of the Cross .. is nevertheless first of all a statement about God, and what it says about God is not that God thinks humankind so wretched that it deserves death and hell, but that God thinks humankind and the whole creation so good, so beautiful, so precious in its intention and its potentiality, that its actualization, its fulfillment, its redemption, is worth dying for. "  (24)

"The divine determination to "redeem my people'' has, as we may say, a long history. That it is perhaps even inappropriate to assign that decision to time has been the rationale of all who insisted the incarnation was planned before the foundation of the world - though such  a concept runs counter to the biblical assumption  that human history is predicated on human freedom and not predetermined. In any case, the when of the divine decision is not as vital as is its character as decision. God's unconditional commitment to the world is not the consequence of destiny - is not necessary, as if by the sheer act of creation the Creator were bound to see the creation through to the realization of its full potential. God, in the biblical tradition, is with us voluntarily - through love alone. And this quality of volition, which is the origin and essence of what the bibilcal tradition means by grace, must be borne in mind in all dimensions of theological reflection, particualrly when that reflection has to do with the suffering that such a commitment entails - and it always entails suffering, whether it applies to Jesus Christ or to his disciples. " (37)

hall 2 ... theologia gloriae

" [Luther] names that against which he is directing his critique theologia gloriae. The closest we may come in contemporary English to what Luther intended here .. is the term triumphalism. "
" Triumphalism refers to the tendency in all strongly held worldviews, whether religious or secular, to present themselves as full and complete accounts of reality, leaving little room for debate or difference of opinion .. "    (17)

" Prophetic religion or faith, as we have it exemplified in the tradition of Jerusalem, engages in the ongoing critique of the purely human tendency to deify fondly held views of the individual or the group; the human word, however wise or sacred, is never to be equated with the Word of God. But without this dimension, religion (including Christianity as religion) suffers badly from the deep psychic need of finite humankind to find security and permanency in expressions of belief from which all ambiguity, all relativity, and all doubt are expunged. "   (18)

" The theologia gloriae .. overwhelms the human with its brilliance, its incontestability, its certitude. Yet just in this it confuses and distorts, because God's object in the divine self-manifestation is precisely not to overwhelm but to befriend. "   (20)

hall

over the coming days i intend to share some of my favourite quotations from a book i read by douglas john hall, the cross in our context

while it was not an easy book to read for the technical brilliance of the man ( in terms of his mastery of the language as well as his knowledge of scripture ), it was a venture i enjoyed; i intend to revisit ..

" .. no 'theology of glory' will be able to bring closure to the question " What are people for ?". For that anxiety, the only answer that will suffice is the participation in our lives of a God who shares the question, whose Presence gives us the courage of hope. " 

(133)

imagine .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. `` `` `` `` `` `` ``

imagine you're hit by a bullet ..
try to bring your imagination to bear enough to bring yourself to seeing you being hit by a bullet
try

............................................................................................................

can you ?
even a hint of it ?
as if you were standing there knowing you were going to be shot ..
try it

............................................................................................................
anything ??

if you were able to generate some kind of feeling about it, even if you know it wasn't like the real thing, it was a poor imagining ..
even if
take that same effort and imagine there is a God
a God that lives and moves and has being
a God in whom we live and move and have our being

try
as if God was standing there looking at you
this is God

imagine it

and you are face to face with God
what do you imagine God to be like ?
with what words would you describe ..
" God is .. "
not what God looks like, but what is God like
to you

and after you've tried to look into the face of God
what do you imagine you would say
to God ?

what indeed ..

i need no other argument, i need no other plea; it is sufficient - Jesus died, and he died for me
[ an old hymn, adapted ]

i stand there
i can only stand there
there is no other place to stand if i would look God in the face, for this Jesus is the Way
i stand there
i have no defense other than this
i am his brother, he is my advocate before all accusers, and there is none better because he's been the distance
he has arrived

where are you ?

you looking to the tele preacherboys ?
listening to them ?
you looking to your church ?
your pastor ?
your christianity ?
your theology ?
your ministry ?
your calling ?
your history ?

look no further, friend
those things are not the last Word on anything
there is one Word only that matters
and he sits at God's right hand right now

there's where my faith is
my hope
my love
my life

i follow that man
and him alone

Jesus is my master
the only one to whom i account
and the day he looks me in the eye i want to have a clear conscience
clean
i love him for what he has undertaken and undergone for me and for us and for all humanity
i owe him everything
and he is right there with God
now
God's commander in chief
king of kings and lord of lords
the IAM
the IAMWHOIAM
Jehovah himself
Yahweh
Messiah
that's the one i follow
you can tell who he is - he has a nail scar on each hand and one incredible smile
and he's looking me straight in the heart
in love with me

how could i ever ever not
i owe him everything

.............................................

imagine ..
just try
maybe God's standing there waiting for you to approach
maybe God's been trying to get your attention

maybe it's time for you to get real

maybe it's time to stop playing christian
stop playing church
stop playing hymns
stop playing prayer
stop playing

God isn't playing
Jesus is not playing
they're real

imagine ..

then do something

You Are Being Led

" You Are Being Led

Ripening reveals much bigger or very different horizons than we realize. The refusal to ripen leads to what T.S. Eliot spoke of in “The Hollow Men,” lives that “end not with a bang but with a whimper.” I hope that you are one of those people who will move toward your own endless horizons and not waste time in whimpering. Why else would you even read this? Perhaps these meditations may help you trust that you are, in fact, being led. Life, your life, all life, is going somewhere and somewhere good.

Ripening, at its best, is a slow, patient learning, and sometimes even a happy letting-go—a seeming emptying out to create readiness for a new kind of fullness—which we are never totally sure about. If we do not allow our own ripening, and I do believe it is somewhat a natural process, an ever-increasing resistance and denial sets in, an ever-increasing circling of the wagons around an over-defended self. At our very best, we learn how to hope as we ripen, to move outside and beyond self-created circles, which is something quite different from the hope of the young. Youthful hopes have concrete goals, whereas the hope of older years is usually aimless hope, hope without goals, even naked hope—perhaps real hope. Such stretching is the agony and the joy of our later years.

Old age, as such, is almost a complete changing of gears and engines from the first half of our lives and does not happen without slow realization, inner calming, inner resistance, denial, and eventual surrender, by God’s grace, working with our ever-deepening sense of what we really desire and who we really are. This process seems to largely operate unconsciously, although we jolt into consciousness now and then, and the awareness that you have been led, usually despite yourself, is experienced as a deep gratitude that most would call happiness. Religious people might even call it mercy. "

end quote

rohr
        [underline mine for emphasis]

my cross .. take it up, embrace it

as i read dj hall's comments on death ( see previous post ) and thought about the truth of how we have turned the dread of it into something palatable to the human event, even the christian human event, i remember the Hebrews passage ( ch 2 )
since the children have flesh and blood in common, Jesus also shared in these, so that through His death He might destroy the one holding the power of death—that is, the Devil— and free those who were held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death. 
 a lot of ' death ' in those few words ..

' we ' evangelical protestants have managed ( both in the sense of arriving at, and in the sense of working to that end ) to refocus the obvious injustice and wicked manipulation of the human state by the satan into a future-focus, an ' it-will-be-alright-in-the-end ', which, while creditable in its own right, reduces death to a doorway to paradise
it is, after all
but we dare not undermine that disruptive force that dogs us on this liferoad, moreso in our later-in-life period ..

Jesus' ministry of the cross drove hard at initiating reconciliation for us, and that reconciled recreation of the human state deals with death, not by suppressing it or otherwise by-'passing' it, but by facing it head-on in all its horror as it sucks life out us, the very imago dei

modern theology tends to avert this admission at a huge cost to itself, for only by taking up our cross, our own place and instrument of death, can we finally be disciples of Jesus
he didn't use those words lightly; he wanted us to see the reality in all its darkness, understand that sobering end, embrace a life soaked in atrophy and decay, a worldlife of death that was never God's intention

that's the balancing act that must take place in me ..
while seeing my state and that of all humanity as currently wrapped in burial clothing, we for sure see too the hope, by faith, of God's re-creation, life out of death, out of nothing
surely Jesus is our forerunner and faith-full high priest, and ours is to trust him, hope in him, see his life through the death that is ours

we do see Jesus —made lower than the angels for a short time so that by God’s grace He might taste death for everyone— crowned with glory and honor because of His suffering in death. For in bringing many sons to glory, it was entirely appropriate that God ( all things exist for Him and through Him ) should make the source of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For the One who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters ..
see the progression: Jesus is exalted because he suffered death, suffered in dying, suffered in the path to that dying death, and that was appropriate for him who embraced our humanity; we are his siblings ..
thus, the implication is that we too suffer, must suffer, as humans
he honoured that condition by immersing himself in it, and then using it as a referent for following him

we look forward to the recreation, certainly
but that's only one side of our lifecoin
as NT Wright often avows, we are in the ' not yet ' stage
the kingdom awaits; it is our hope; but the twisty debilitating road that leads there is fraught with distress at our own human condition, and the required compassion that accompanies that as we look to recognize Jesus in the faces we meet and to be Jesus in their eyes and lives .. no greater calling exists

there is death, and there is the embracing of death, the alter ego to the recreated life that sings sweetly in Jesus-tone
we might well be careful not to downplay or dumbdown the 'value' of that, for ultimately it is in dying that we live .. anyone that will save their life will lose it, but anyone that will lose their life for my sake, finds life .. Jesus

apostle Paul, a much-denigrated apostle in modern theothink, once said that his is to fill up in himself the sufferings of Messiah Jesus for the sake of Jesus' Body, the Church ..
who are we to take any lesser view of life in this deathlife we call ' life ' ?

and so .. when i see death in my life, the death of my life, the death of what i thought was my life, even the seemingly to-me laudable and commendable lifethings that i thought were Jesus things ( and maybe was right in seeing them to be so ) - when those things die i must embrace their dying as a part of my journey into life for Jesus' sake, for mine is not to be overly sorrowful or regretful, but balancing - take and embrace the death of them in hope of new life, tomorrow .. or the next day

God is still working on reconciliation; i need to be involved in that work as well as open to the reconciliation of me

may my dying be seen as life to someone else, in someone else
may Jesus be exalted and may God get the glory

.. .. .

O Love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe, that in thine ocean depths its flow may richer, fuller be.

O Cross that liftest up my head, I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust, life’s glory dead, and from the ground there blossoms red Life that flows from Thee.
[adapted from an old hymn]

dj hall on death ..

windblown .. .

it's cold out, and blustery
the leaves trying to hold their own, vigorous gusts trying hard to dislodge them

sometimes it's cold in, and blustery
i try to hold my own as vigorous gusts try hard to dislodge me
tossed, fluttering this way, then that
shaking at my roots
scared ? ..


" The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”


sometimes i get scared at what God is doing  ..


" .. anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God. "

blow !
just blow
then breathe
on me ..