Food and Clothes for Jed Smith School

May 13th, 2008

We have started a new program where we provide clothes and food for students at our partner elementary school, Jed Smith School.

In talking with the administrators at the school we learned that the students get fed breakfast and lunch during the school week, but often go hungry over the weekends. So we now have a group of volunteers who provide backpacks of food the children can take home on Fridays. If they bring the backpacks back to school the following week, we fill them again for the next weekend. We also have a clothes closet where they can get clothes for themselves or family members for free.

It is taking off like crazy. We can only meet a small amount of the need, but we hope to expand the program. You can see some pictures HERE.

Brian

Pentecost: Like Christmas but Bigger

May 13th, 2008

Everybody understands Christmas and Easter. These are the big feasts of the church that have become a part of our American culture and their meanings are clear. But the feast of Pentecost, which is very important to the church, is not as well understood. For me Pentecost is just like Christmas, only bigger.

In Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus who, in his being, connected the human and the Divine. In Jesus, we see God with us. Jesus was so closely connected with God’s Spirit which dwelt within him that his human nature and the Divine nature within comprised one being. God’s love for us and God’s loving sacrifice was made physical and manifest in Jesus.
After modeling this deep, inner, abiding communion with God, and after offering his life in love for the world, Jesus commissioned his followers to carry on his work. He promised that God’s spirit would dwell within them in the same way God’s spirit dwelt in himself. The feast of Pentecost (50 days after Easter) marks the birth of God’s spirit within us. It is just like Christmas in that God’s spirit is made manifest in a physical way. It is bigger that Christmas because it happens on a grand scale. Instead of God’s spirit enfleshed in one human, God’s spirit is enfleshed in many, many humans. On Pentecost we celebrate the fact that we are all bearers of God’s spirit in the world and we honor our call to embody this spirit for the love of the world. In a sense, the world becomes filled with many Jesus-es.

While we may never perfectly embody God’s spirit in the world because we keep getting in our own way, that doesn’t take away from the fact that God is dwelling in us and we have the lovely obligation to be in communion with God and with the world around us.

Pentecost, which we just celebrated, shifts the focus from God in Jesus to God in us. And it challenges us with the question, what will you do with the gift of your life filled with God’s spirit.

Blessings,

Brian

Camping on Wright’s Beach

May 11th, 2008

Our family went camping with families from my son’s 5th grade class.  The weather was perfect.  His teacher has been organizing this trip for many, many years (he’s the guy in the picture holding the dog.)  Laura brought along a friend.  We had a great time.  There are pictures on the Photo Albums page.

The Subject of Love

May 11th, 2008

Here’s more from Cynthia Bourgeault’s Wisdom Jesus.: 

“God is not the object of love, God is the subject of love.” 

 I often think of God as an “other” outside of me that I should look toward with love.   But according to Bourgeault, God is not some external “object.”  Rather God is the subject of Love.  God is in reality the source of love.  So any love I have for God, or for my children, is really flowing from Godself.  I am participating in the love of God when I love anybody or anything. 

 

From Wisdom Jesus

May 8th, 2008

I’m heading out to a American Leadership Forum retreat followed by a camping trip w/ my family and my son’s 5th grade class.  We are going to the Northern California coast.  I won’t be able to post anything until next week.

I’ve been listening to Cynthia Bourgeault’s Wisdom Jesus.  It is great series of teachings.  I’ll write more later but I want to share two quotations.  The first is from Thomas Merton:

 At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is, so to speak, His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely…. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

Conjectures of A Guilty Bystander. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966. 140-142. Reprinted with permission of the publisher and of the Merton Legacy Trust.

 The Second is from Cynthia Bourgeault:

 The goal of contemplative life is unitive seeing: not so much “union with God” understood as wanting God to the exclusion of all else, but rather, gradually coming to realize that really there is nothing that is not God. (Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening)

Blessings,

 

Brian

Catholic or Protestant?

May 7th, 2008

Here is another thought on the Roman Catholic church’s insistence that we choose between being catholic or protestant, beyond my initial shock.  (http://blogs.deanbaker.org/?p=148)  I think part the desire for us to choose on the part of the RC magestrium is because ecumenical dialogue is strained because the Anglican church is introducing innovation that are hard for the Roman Catholics to abide, like women priests and bishops.   In their mind, us choosing traditional, apostolic, first millenium Christianity would mean going back to our male (non-gay) priesthood and would make it possible for us to have closer communion.  What is funny, however, is that within the Anglican Communion, it is the conservative evangelical protestant side of the church that is trying to get us to move in a more “traditional” direction.  The only way we would move to a more traditional priesthood would be for us to choose Protestant. 

Strangers Bring us Closer to God by Sara Miles

May 7th, 2008

This is from NPR’s This I Believe

Until recently, I thought being a Christian was all about belief. I didn’t know any Christians, but I considered them people who believed in the virgin birth, for example, the way I believed in photosynthesis or germs.

But then, in an experience I still can’t logically explain, I walked into a church and a stranger handed me a chunk of bread. Suddenly, I knew that it was made out of real flour and water and yeast — yet I also knew that God, named Jesus, was alive and in my mouth.

That first communion knocked me upside-down. Faith turned out not to be abstract at all, but material and physical. I’d thought Christianity meant angels and trinities and being good. Instead, I discovered a religion rooted in the most ordinary yet subversive practice: a dinner table where everyone is welcome, where the despised and outcasts are honored.

Read it al HERE.

 

Evangelical Manifesto

May 7th, 2008

A group of Evangelical leaders have just published a manifesto.  Here is one of their stated intentions:

For those who are Evangelicals, the deepest purpose of the Manifesto is a serious call to reform—an urgent challenge to reaffirm Evangelical identity, to reform Evangelical behavior, to reposition Evangelicals in public life, and so rededicate ourselves to the high calling of being Evangelical followers of Jesus Christ.

It covers basic theological tenents:

As Evangelicals have pursued this vision over the centuries, they have prized above all certain beliefs that we consider to be at the heart of the message of Jesus and therefore foundational for us — the following seven above all:

First, we believe that Jesus Christ is fully God become fully human, the unique, sure, and sufficient revelation of the very being, character, and purposes of God, beside whom there is no other god, and beside whom there is no other name by which we must be saved.

Second, we believe that the only ground for our acceptance by God is what Jesus Christ did on the cross and what he is now doing through his risen life, whereby he exposed and reversed the course of human sin and violence, bore the penalty for our sins, credited us with his righteousness, redeemed us from the power of evil, reconciled us to God, and empowers us with his life ―from above.‖ We therefore bring nothing to our salvation. Credited with the righteousness of Christ, we receive his redemption solely by grace through faith.

Third, we believe that new life, given supernaturally through spiritual regeneration, is a necessity as well as a gift; and that the lifelong conversion that results is the only pathway to a radically changed character and way of life. Thus for us, the only sufficient power for a life of Christian faithfulness and moral integrity in this world is that of Christ’s resurrection and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Fourth, we believe that Jesus’ own teaching and his attitude toward the total truthfulness and supreme authority of the Bible, God’s inspired Word, make the Scriptures our final rule for faith and practice.

Fifth, we believe that being disciples of Jesus means serving him as Lord in every sphere of our lives, secular as well as spiritual, public as well as private, in deeds as well as words, and in every moment of our days on earth, always reaching out as he did to those who are lost as well as to the poor, the sick, the hungry, the oppressed, the socially despised, and being faithful stewards of creation and our fellow-creatures.

Sixth, we believe that the blessed hope of the personal return of Jesus provides both strength and substance to what we are doing, just as what we are doing becomes a sign of the hope of where we are going; both together leading to a consummation of history and the fulfillment of an undying kingdom that comes only by the power of God.

Seventh, we believe all followers of Christ are called to know and love Christ through worship, love Christ’s family through fellowship, grow like Christ through discipleship, serve Christ by ministering to the needs of others in his name, and share Christ with those who do not yet know him, inviting people to the ends of the earth and to the end of time to join us as his disciples and followers of his way.

At the same time, we readily acknowledge that we repeatedly fail to live up to our high calling, and all too often illustrate the truth of our own doctrine of sin. We Evangelicals share the same ―crooked timber‖ of our humanity, and the full catalogue of our sins, failures, and hypocrisies. This is no secret either to God or to those who know and watch us.

 

It also covers tries to shift evangelicalsim away from a close connection with the political right.  Here is how it addresses the topic of religion in the public square:

 

 

We repudiate on one side the partisans of a

 

sacred public square, those who for religious, historical, or cultural reasons would continue to give a preferred place in public life to one religion which in almost all most current cases would be the Christian faith, but could equally be another faith. In a society as religiously diverse as America today, no one faith should be normative for the entire society, yet there should be room for the free expression of faith in the public square. Let it be known unequivocally that we are committed to religious liberty for people of all faiths, including the right to convert to or from the Christian faith. We are firmly opposed to the imposition of theocracy on our pluralistic society. We are also concerned about the illiberalism of politically correct attacks on evangelism. We have no desire to coerce anyone or to impose on anyone beliefs and behavior that we have not persuaded them to adopt freely, and that we do no not demonstrate in our own lives, above all by love.

 

We repudiate on the other side the partisans of a

 

naked public square, those who would make all religious expression inviolably private and keep the public square inviolably secular. Often advocated by a loose coalition of secularists, liberals, and supporters of the strict separation of church and state, this position is even less just and workable because it excludes the overwhelming majority of citizens who are still profoundly religious. Nothing is more illiberal than to invite people into the public square but insist that they be stripped of the faith that makes them who they are and shapes the way they see the world.

 

In contrast to these extremes, our commitment is to a

 

civil public square — a vision of public life in which citizens of all faiths are free to enter and engage the public square on the basis of their faith, but within a framework of what is agreed to be just and free for other faiths too.

 

 

I think it is a very interesting document and I look forward to reading it more thoroughly and being enriched as people discuss its content.  Reading it makes me wonder, what would a manifesto of my faith look like?
You can read all 20 pages HERE.

 

 

 

Choose This Day

May 6th, 2008

The Anglican Communion is a mix of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism with a special affinity for the mysticism of Eastern Orthodoxy.  I love the fact that our tradition gets to embrace the best parts of all of these traditions.  Which is why I find this article absolutely fascinating:

Anglicans must choose between Protestantism and tradition, says Vatican
By Anna Arco
6 May 2008

The Vatican has said that the time has come for the Anglican Church to choose between Protestantism and the ancient churches of Rome and Orthodoxy.

Speaking on the day that the Archbishop of Canterbury met Benedict XVI in Rome, Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council of Christian Unity, said it was time for Anglicanism to “clarify its identity”.  

“Does it belong more to the churches of the first millennium -Catholic and Orthodox - or does it belong more to the Protestant churches of the 16th century? At the moment it is somewhere in between, but it must clarify its identity now and that will not be possible without certain difficult decisions.”
Read the rest HERE.

The Pope is telling us we have to choose?  Why would we do that?  We like our messy hybrid catholic/protestant faith.  That’s like telling a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup it has to choose to be chocolate or peanut butter.  Why?

Sermon: What’s After Resurrection? - Year A Easter 7/Ascension

May 6th, 2008

After 40 days w/ the resurrected Christ, the disciples ask, “When will you restore the fortunes of Israel?”  In other words, “This resurrection is nice and all, but when will you get around to doing something practical, like lowering the cost of gasoline?”  This sermon explores the implications of the resurrection in our lives.

To listen to an MP3 recording, click HERE.