Confession 9
June 30, 2009
Confession is an open profession of faith (Luke 12:8). It is also an acknowledgment of sins to God (Lev. 16:21; Ezra 9:5-15; Dan. 9:3-12), and to a neighbor whom we have wronged (James 5:16; Matt. 18:15) (source: dictionary.com).
There we have it.
In Exodus 19:6 Moses is given this revelation to tell the people of God: You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Peter is given a similar revelation to give to the new people of God who follow the King of kings in the new kingdom of God: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may proclaim the virtues of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Israel failed to live as a set apart people in that they chose not to be different than people of other nations in the inward part. They looked different (circumcision), ate different foods, practiced their religion differently, monotheistically. But this differentness was not sufficient in itself to set them apart from the nations. Flesh circumcision is not heart circumcision.
In the church today, what applied to Israel of old applies to us. We too are citizens of a kingdom whose way of life ought to shape our daily living because it has taken deep roots in our hearts. The way our king lived the kingdom life is not evident among us. Alas! The record shows we are not that different from kingdoms that are dark. Our light is dim in many places. We do marvelous things to reflect the marvelous light of Jesus. Would to God that the day would come when all we say and do, everyone of us who claims Jesus’ lordship would reflect the Marvelous Light.
Let us profess our faith openly in a way that is seasoned with the salt of healing not the pepper of acrimony (Colossians 4:1-6). Let us acknowledge our sin before God, and our neighbor readily before we are caught and have to. Let us show that our holiness is not skin deep but heart-love deep. We must not fail. We have a stewardship from King Jesus to not fail. This is our prayer of confession, O King of eternal glory. Amen. Christ, have mercy.
Rule of Benedict 32
June 29, 2009
In verses 44-47 St Benedict has a warning. He warns that the actions of our lives matter. The little things we do either move us in the direction toward God or away from God.
He says: Fear the Day of Judgment: be in dread of hell. Ardently desire everlasting life with deep spiritual longing. Keep death daily before your eyes.
Frankly speaking I spend little or no time reflecting on the first and last parts: judgment, death, and hell. I much prefer the middle part. I prefer to desire and long to be near God. Yet my actions, all of them, will one day be evaluated. The reality of this evaluation caused Benedict to earn his followers about the last things: Sin, judgment, death, and hell. To some these sound morbid. They seem to motivate by eliciting negative feelings. Yet there is a healthy way of viewing them. Those who are in Christ have no fear that they will experience any of these things outside of Christ. He is the judge and he will judge in mercy. Death, therefore, can be a daily reality and even at times welcomed out of longing to be nearer to our Lord.
Prayer: Dear merciful God, help us to conduct our lives in such a way as the dread of judgment and hell are far away from us. Yet keep us mindful that in your mercy, there is full assurance of justice. Awaken, reawaken, and constantly awaken within me a deep desire for the things that are above where Christ is seated with the Father. In gratitude I rejoice that the sting of death has lost its power in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen. Christ, have mercy.
Missio Dei 11
June 24, 2009
Missional Living is no special activity. Like spirituality (as per Eugene Peterson) it is local and ordinary. It is the normal Christian life (to borrow from Watchman Nee).
Local: Wherever I am. Whatever the patterns of my day-to-day life. Home, work, shop, church, club, bus, gas station, wherever. I am awake to the reality that I am an ambassador of Christ for kingdom living. Whoever is with me, before me, next to me are who I am sent to. The kingdom of God or the heavens is at hand. It is around us, it surrounds us, it is there for the taking, for the giving. I invite others into the Jesus life, which I am living. I behave in such a way that my life is inviting. I speak in such a way that my life is inviting. I enter the conversations that God has prepared for me.
Ordinary: Not special technique. No new methodology. The weather, the season, the sandwich I am eating, the book I am reading, the last mile I am jogging, whatever. It is not Tuesday night visitation, it is in the daily routines of life. The door opens. Serendipity. I act shrewdly as a serpent. I act harmlessly as a dove. I am awake to my surroundings. I pray for opportunity. I pray for God to make himself known in every situation. Didn’t our hearts get warmer when he spoke to us?
Normal. Not heroic. Not extra effort. Not extraordinary. It’s the way to live the dailiness of life as I live in Christ. Normal, open, genuine, unpretentious, always pointing upward. Take cookies to new neighbors, invite kids to come in for milk and cookies, baby sit for the couple next door, water their plants when they’re gone. Do it tenderly, do it without a care expecting nothing in return. Don’t manipulate, don’t have hidden motives. Love needs no reason.
This is missional living: local, ordinary, normal Christian living.
Praying Colossians 5
June 23, 2009
1:9-13 is a prayer Paul prays. Prayers need no comments. They beg to be prayed. So I pray with Paul with the help of Eugene Peterson. I Pray this for myself. I pray it for family members. I pray it for those I work with. We pray it for our leaders. The prayer applies and is necessary to all of us.
… asking God to give you wise minds and spirits attuned to his will, and so acquire a thorough understanding of the ways in which God works. (And who could ask for anything more?)
We pray that you’ll live well for the Master, making him proud of you as you work hard in his orchard. Amen!
As you learn more and more how God works, you will learn how to do your work.
We pray that you’ll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul–not the grim strength of gritting your teeth but the glory-strength God gives. It is strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes us strong enough to take part in everything bright and beautiful that he has for us.
… May every thought and sentiment of this prayer be true in my life and all who are within my sphere of influence. I thank God for Paul who teaches us to pray as Jesus taught him to pray. Amen. Lord, have mercy.
Confession 8
June 22, 2009
Today I reflect on gluttony. Obesity in our country is skyrocketing and is a significant killer and disease promoter. More is better. Enough is a foreign and dirty word. There is an insatiable desire to take all kinds of things in, to consume and then to consume some more. We attempt to satisfy deep desires through gorging. Some want to attribute this kind of behavior (taking in more than needed while we can so that when we can’t we balance things out) in us to some primordial remnant in our DNA. The truth is, there is a whole industry that survives on our gluttony (taking in more of everything than needed). They have mounted an all out offensive against temperance. And we by choice oblige.
Beebe and Foster, in Longing for God, suggest that such behavior reflects a loss of confidence in God’s provision. We overwork to compensate for the fear of losing our jobs. We overeat… We over-consume… We supersize… If a little is good more has got to be better.
It used to be said by our ancestors that moderation is best. Beebe and Foster say temperance recognizes that there will always be more to come and that God will provide. This antidote to gluttony, temperance, when cultivated and practiced, enables us to trust and to hope in what we cannot see today. Future needs are left to God to supply and hoarding now or building bigger barns shows a lack of willingness to follow God.
Recently, I have reawakened to simply eating only what I need not what I want. A colleague said to me a little while ago when my order from the menu came in at half the amount I was expecting: “Perhaps they gave you what you need and not what you want.” Ouch. This way of looking at abundance is actually freeing. I don’t need a second helping. I don’t need another gadget. I don’t need another whatever. I need to rest in enough.
Prayer: Dear Lord, many of us are guilty of intemperance or gluttony in many of our activities in life. I confess that in my circles we minimize gluttony and use a “euphemism” for it (He has a healthy appetite, He Ioves to eat!). Forgive us our blindness. Satisfy us with yourself that we may be content. Amen. Lord, have mercy.
Rule of Benedict 31
June 21, 2009
Sabbatical from blogging is over. A time of rest and fasting from blogging was taken because one was needed. Hopefully, I will always be learning to live in his Sabbath rest. That is the challenge of exchanging the busy life with the contemplative life.
I resume the series I started quite a while back from Norvene Vest’s book Preferring Christ, which is a commentary on the Rule of St Benedict. Why be familiar with the Rule of Benedict? Because it is a foundational text on spiritual formation, and living in a Christlike manner in relationship to all.
The comments on the Rule are my own. These stem from a meditative reading of the text. The Rule itself is quoted in italics is from Preferring Christ. When I use Norvene’s comments I indicate so.
We continue the reading from Chapter 4 and verses 41-43:
Put your hope in God. Attribute any good that you see in yourself to God and not to yourself; but recongnize and always impute to yourself the evil that you do.
The injunction of hope is instructive and corrective to me and sheds necessary light on the the rest of the verses. Why attribute the good I see in myself not to myself but to God? Because my hope is not resident in myself but in God. Why should I take responsibility for the evil that I do? Again because my hope is in God and not in my ability to overcome evil on my own.
It seems as if the Psalmist anticipated Benedict with these lines: O Israel, hope in the Lord, for the Lord exhibits loyal love, and is more than willing to deliver. (130:7). An these: Patiently wait for God alone, my soul! For he is the one who gives me confidence (Psalm 62:5).
Prayer: What a wonderful gift you have given, O Lord. You know how to give perfect gifts for every occasion. On the occasion of boasting you remind me not to steal your glory. On the occasion of my failure you remind me there is hope for me. Amen. Lord, have mercy.
On Pride
June 17, 2009
This is an unusually long blog post for me. It is the result of cogitations during the last couple of weeks.
Why am I at times like this?
I think much more about myself when I should be more mindful of others? I cause pain to those I love. I’m a chicken when it comes to standing up to those who hurt others. I act stupidly. I make a mess in my life by having unhealthy appetites. Why is speaking badly of others so at home on the tip of my tongue? Why is my soul so broken?
Dare I ask it? Why is yours? Neither you nor I are the first to struggle with answers to our experience of pride.
When asked what is wrong with world, G.K. Chesterton responded with this shortest essay ever written: “I am.” The reason he was so sure of his response is because of a realistic view of his own sin, which is first and foremost a power inhabiting our physical bodies. Long ago, one of the early Christians told us that sin “tends to make that which is cease to be.”
Jeff Cook sees sin as a parasite in need of a host, which we willingly supply. As a power sin cannot exist on its own. Just like the demons in Jesus’ parable, sin takes up residence in the house of a willing host.
Early in the life of the church all kinds of saints tried to understand the reality of sin and its manifestations. So they created lists of the most essential elements of sin. One author called these elements “wrong thoughts.” Others prefer to see them as challenges to our faith. Another named them deadly sins. History finally settled on naming seven of them: Pride, envy, sloth, greed, lust, wrath, and gluttony. In these all other sins known to humanity originate. Violence and murder come from anger or wrath. Cheating and hording come from greed. You get the idea.
Why do some call these seven sins the deadly sins? Well, cogitate with me for a moment. For example, a person who is totally possessed by pride, or his heart is strongly grasped by it, will be affected at the deepest levels of his being by his arrogance. Its tentacles extend to all aspects of his life. The way his perceives everything is affected by his high view of himself and low view of others.
Do you own shares in this sin? Are you a club member in the sin of pride? Is pride running and ruining your life? We all naturally love ourselves and self-love is mandated by our Lord “love your neighbor as yourself.” But when I exaggerate this love of myself or pervert it into contempt for others, I am full of pride. Pride or arrogance is a debilitating, death-thirsty disease, gone on a rampage in us. If pride is leprosy, I pronounce myself unclean. Well, thank God that he owns all the shares in the business of raising dead people like me from the grave of pride. He raises me up in order to be free of pride as he was free of it.
The proud think they contribute more than they do. They believe they are more important than they really are. Because their own self blinds them, they are unable to recognize the contributions of others. They believe that if they think highly of others somehow they are thinking less of themselves.
One who knows wrote: “Pride is the cause of the most damaging fall for the soul. It induces the Christian to deny that God is his helper and to consider that he himself is the cause of his own virtues” (Evagrius of Ponticus). Another, who struggled with pride for a long time wrote: “pride made the soul desert God, to whom it should cling as the source of life, and to imagine itself instead as the source of its own life” (Augustine of Hippo).
Jeff Cooke adds: “the more I make my life, my well-being, my enlightenment, and my success primary, the farther I step from reality. Thus the hell-bound do not travel downward; they travel inward, cocooning themselves behind a mass of vanity, personal rights, religiosity, and defensiveness” (The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes, p. 34).
The elder son in the prodigal son story is the epitomy of this kind of pride. It destroyed his ability to connect with his father and his brother. Pride is the one sin that makes everyone ill and especially the one who has it.
When you find pride in yourself, or in others, you will also find much private thinking, much time spent alone because of disdain of others, and much lone ranger activity.
Christianity in North America suffers today because millions of individual Christians have decided to go it alone without the church. Believing they are right, they do their own thing without any accountability, any submission to authority, deeming themselves captains of their own souls, masters of their own ships, with the determination to seek their own destinies apart form others. Pride moved into their neighborhood, and became a virtue. Jesus and me and a few others and the h… with the rest of you…
If an implosion of Christianity were to take place in the West, we will find pride as the fuse that lit the movement.
The antidote of pride is humility, the subject of a future article. Meanwhile, think through with Jesus about the damage to your soul that pride is wreaking (read Luke 15:11-32; Luke 16. There are great lessons about pride here). Walk a little with the master. Look full into his wonderful face. The things of pride will grow strangely dim.
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