Can It Be?
April 5, 2010
We celebrated Easter Sunday yesterday. The churches were full. Unusually full. Many have done their duty nodding their allegiance by their twice a year obligatory attendance at church. How large a percentage of “Christians” is this worldwide is hard to estimate. Vestiges of Christ remain among many in Western “Christianized” societies. Now life can go back to its usual drabness in the midst of a chaotic dog-eat-dog world.
Knowing Christ is life. Life that is stamped eternal, in kind and content. Life that saves from drab existence. “Salvation is life,” says Dallas Willard. A life that God infuses in us by various instrumentalities the chief of which is the Holy Spirit of God. Eugene Peterson calls this life Practicing Resurrection.
Those who practice resurrection life have God’s life: self-initiating, self-directing, and self-sustaining. They don’t have this life from within. It comes from without, from God. But when life comes to humans from God (Regeneration, or Salvation as life) is takes on the characteristics of God-life. This God-life is the activity of God penetrating “the darkened world of the human soul and begins to act in it and around it” (from Spiritual Formation as a Natural Part of Salvation, quoted from D. Willard in Life in the Spirit: Spiritual Formation in Theological PErspective, ed. Jeffrey P. Greenman and George Kalantzis, IVP Academic). This life invasion is the stuff of poetry, and song. Charles Wesley wrote of it (Willard quotes this stanza from Can It Be That I Should Gain) to describe this salvific living:
“Long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin an nature’s night; thine eye diffused a quick’ning ray, I woke, the dungeon flamed with light; My chains fell off, my heart was free; I rose, went forth and followed Thee.”
Now that the resurrection celebration has taken its rightful place on the calendar, and the crowds have finished their Hosannas, I pray that resurrection life will take its rightful place every minute of our existence, who remain as church people. Let’s arise with Him, go forth, and follow Him, demonstrating that by loving God and loving others we are truly practicing resurrection.
Rule of Benedict 16
March 3, 2009
Rule of Benedict, Chapter 2:11-15
Therefore, when anyone receives the name of abbot he is to govern his disciples by a twofold teaching: that is he must show forth all that is good and holy more by deeds than by words; declaring to receptive disciples the commandments of the Lord with words, but demonstrating the divine precepts to the stubborn and the simple-minded by the example of his deeds. And it should be seen in his teaching and in his actions that those things contrary to the law of God are not to be done, lest while preaching to others he himself be found reprobate (1 Cor 9:27); and God say to him in his sin: How is it that you receive my justice and declare my covenant with your mouth, when you hate discipline and cast my words behind you (Ps 50:16-17)? And also this: How is it that you can see a speck in your brother’s eye, and not notice the plank in your own (Matt 7:3)?
Lectio: This passage reminds me of Paul’s words when he said in 1 Cor 11:1 “Be imitators of me as I am of Christ Jesus.” Leading the people we serve by modeling imitation of Christ is the cry of the heart. Paul, the abbot of Christ’s followers in Corinth, is confident not in his own model of ministry, or one which is borrowed from somewhere, but the model he believes is Christ’s model of being and doing. Surely until I have imitated Christ I cannot truly model discipleship to him.
Dallas Willard insists on asking us: Who is your teacher? If you are a disciple, who teaches you the life of a disciple? Who’s your model, whom do you imitate? What do you think of this statement: The main task of a leader, pastor, abbot, is to become like Christ so others may also become Christ-like. That’s the first calling.
Have we made calling the ministries we do such as preaching, or teaching? while neglecting the higher calling of imitation of him?
Do you ever struggle with the question? Or not? What do you consider to be your main role as a leader of the people of God?
Prayer: Lord, make me like you. Train like you, live like you did, relate the way you did, love as you did, live for others as you did. Till others see Jesus in me, Lord make me faithful be to thee. Amen. Christ, have mercy.
Road Runner Christianity
September 28, 2008
The first cartoon I ever saw (no cartoons in Lebanon where I grew up) was Road Runner frustrating the living Acme out of the Coyote who tried heroically to out speed him for a few ounces of meat on spindly bones. Road Runner always outsmarted Coyote and “out sped him. These two did life with dizzying speed. Road Runner could put it in overdrive anytime he saw danger approaching from Coyote. I was impressed with the cartoon. I watched it every Saturday morning. But then I was only 19 years old. Overexposure worked!
Richard Foster was interviewing John Ortberg on a series they were doing on the disciplines of the Christian life. Ortberg answered one of Richard’s questions about how to devote some time to the practice of the disciplines. Ortberg remembered Dallas Willard’s best advise to him: “Be ruthless with eliminating hurry from your life.” Ortberg swears by this advice as one which saved his life as he stepped out of the boat of hurry!
Is yours a Road Runner life in Christ? If inventory were taken of your schedule would there be any need to declare a missing road runner mentality from your life? At missional order we are committed to a slower life. We will struggle together with you in eliminating hurry from our lives. All of us are succeptible to hurry and eliminating it from our lives, if desirable, must be done intentionally. There will times of concentrated road runner hurry in our lives. Too much of it and danger lurks in the shadows of our paths.
The last 24 hour road runner schedule I’ve been guilty of (they say confession is good for the soul).
Saturday: 5:30 drive to Kansas City from Topeka to speak at a newly formed Arabic Congregation (70 miles). The preacher was long winded and the meeting which started at 7 didn’t get out until 9:30 or so. Home by 10:30 or so (70 miles). I gained three minutes of time by setting the cruise at 75 miles an hour. From about 10:30 till midnight I prepared for preaching the following day. I did some reading in Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care (a great resource, by the way) and prayed through many of the issues I was reading about. Copmline followed.
Sunday morning I finished a sermon I was going to preach later in the day on Sunday. Hurried through morning prayer. I pricelined a hotel room in Wichita for the night. Went to Sunday School at 9:30, left to preach in Topeka at 10:30. Came home at 12:30, ate lunch, and packed to go to Wichita to preach at a great international church at 4:00. Got out by 6. Supper at PF Chang in Wichita. Read through a couple of articles while eating on a topic I am writing about for a counseling course I am taking (OK, if you must know it’s about religious obsession or scrupulosity). Now I am writing this post about how not to hurry life from my hotel room! Will do compline just before bed.
OK, don’t cry for me people. No one to blame but hurry itself. The tyranny of the urgent is a disease and we need help with the remedy. I admit that there are seasons of life when hurry seems inevitable. God gives grace and mercy. But let’s not play with fire. Can a man hide fire in his bosom and not be burned?
So here are my top 5 quick tips (just kidding with the quick) on how to eliminate hurry from your life:
1…
2…
3…
4…
5…
Help! Should I call the ACME for a package of 5, add water and see what sprouts up? Or do you have any suggestions on how you have eliminated hurry from your life?
If you find you have to squeeze a sacred rhythm in, need time to focus on continuous spiritual formation, live missionally daily, and hold a full time job, you should call Willard and demand a recant on his advice to Ortberg!
Hearing the Bible Missionally
September 25, 2008
Dallas Willard has said that our churches are full of converts who do not intend to become disciples. Another way to put it would be this: Our churches are full of people who are there to receive the benefits of grace without knowing that they are receiving such blessings “in order to be a blessing.”
In such congregations, mission tends to be one of many programs done by the community, rather than to define the very purpose and character of the community. Mission sermons are preached now and again in order to mobilize action or resources for a particular outreach. People know that mission is a theme of the Bible, and they expect to hear about it now and again. But discipling is rarely focused on mission. It is primarily understood, where it is talked about, as a process of personal spiritual growth. . . .
Where missional renewal is happening, different kinds of questions are brought to the Bible. Congregations are open to being challenged, to looking hard at their deeply ingrained attitudes and expectations.
The missional approach asks: How does God’s Word call, shape, transform, and send me . . . and us? Coupled with this openness is the awareness that biblical formation must mean change, and often conversion. Christian communities may discover that their discipling will require repentance and that their way of being church will have to change.
– Darrell Guder in Treasure in Clay Jars: Patterns in Missional Faithfulness
-
Subscribe To MO
