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)