On this Memorial Day, we remember the men and women in the armed forces who died fighting to bring freedom and peace. On every memorial day, I am drawn to remember the Prince of Peace, who not only fought and died, but won the battle for us, to live the way we were meant to live. Today I post a quote on shalom from my teachings. Stay tuned tomorrow for a guest blog from Jane Gilbert at compellinggrace.blogspot.com for more thoughts on shalom.
“…Shalom is the human being dwelling at peace in all his or her relationships: with God, with self, with fellows, with nature. . . But the peace which is shalom is not merely the absence of hostility, not merely being in the right relationship. Shalom at its highest is enjoyment in one’s relationships. A nation may be at peace with all its neighbors and yet be miserable in its poverty. To dwell in shalom is to enjoy living before God, to enjoy living in one’s physical surroundings, to enjoy living with one’s fellows, to enjoy life with oneself…”
Nicolas Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace
One of the many sweet joys of the past weekend with the Westside Atlanta women was being introduced to ‘new’ music. I am preparing a Sunday school lesson for high schoolers on the importance of knowing the Word in resisting temptation. I am ‘memory-challenged’ now, so my best hope for remembering Scripture is through music like this. Enjoy Malachi 4:2 and 3:17 and God’s deep deep love for you in this song from Welcome Wagon:
Following yesterday, I post another paragraph from a paper written nine years ago in a grad class on “Postmodern Ministry.” While the landscape has changed slightly since then — how can the daily news of spill spreading not remind us of our sin-soaked hearts and invite us to return and rely on our Creator and Redeemer — the universals are the same. Here are a few more thoughts on ministering the gospel in any culture. Just substitute any subculture for “postmodern” and see if it makes sense.
“In many ways, postmodern ministry resembles any other type of ministry. It should be guided by the attempt to live out the greatest commandment and the great commission through the power of the Holy Spirit. The leading of the Spirit should mean our ministry is creative, multifaceted, variegated, and flexible. We must also remember that while the post-modern era represents a distinct cultural phenomenon, all of humanity shares certain unchanging characteristics which serve as points of contact. We are all created in the image of God with a love for story and a belief that there is something more than this world. Whether we name it or not, we all recognize our sinfulness and we experience guilt over that sin, while we desire cleansing from sin and freedom from guilt. Finally, we all have a longing to live for glory, for the ‘something more’ that we know exists, even if we do not know how to name it. As Christians, strangers in a strange land, belonging neither to ancient, modern, nor postmodern, we have a story to tell to a world that needs a good (and true) story.”
Let me be honest — I am post-challenged this morning, so I’m digging way into the archives. God has deemed me to be ‘disconnected,’ not emotionally but technologically, so I’m at Panera (YES, FOR THE SECOND TIME THIS WEEK) to munch a bagel and borrow their connection…I discovered this in a paper on Postmodernity and the Gospel that yes, I wrote back when the word ‘post-modern’ was the big buzz…that seems like ages ago. But — I smile — the gospel seems to have outlasted the p-m buzz. Read and think:)
Go there where you cannot go, to the impossible. It is indeed the only way of going or coming.
How odd that one of the originators of postmodern thought, Jacques Derrida, should express the paradox of Christianity in such eloquent language. Not that he intended to. Or did he? After all, he himself would say that we can’t really get at the origin. But this original thinker has encouraged me to play with language, so I will dare to suggest that Derrida’s words answer the Christian question: “What do I do with culture, or “the world” as the Bible names it?”
The Bible offers no easy solutions to the difficult question of what it means to live out our commission: “Go into all the world and make disciples of all the nations.” If we take the ‘world’ to mean ‘culture,’ we discover all sorts of mixed messages. We are told to be “in the world but not of the world,” and at the same time, we are told to “go into all the world.” We are told to be all things to all people, while we are also told that everything is permissible but not everything is good. Our great commission is coupled with the greatest commandment, to love God and to love our neighbor. What in the world are we to do?
It seems God has given us an impossible commission and an impossible commandment. And yet, as followers of Christ, we can and must go where we cannot go, to the impossible, because he went first – to the culture and to the Cross. As we ponder the most difficult, but not impossible question, of how to communicate the gospel to a postmodern culture, we are called to do as Christ did, to enter the culture and engage each individual as a person made in God’s image, to speak to the central story of the human heart, of loss and longing, of sin and failure, of redemption and glory. We have a story of great good news to tell to a broken and fragmented world that has lost its story. When Christians become “impassioned by the impossible” (to borrow another Derridean phrase), we are most ready to bring this story to a postmodern world.
[i] Quoted in John Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 41.
Ah, beauty. This photo, taken from the lovely place where we stayed this weekend for the Living Story Intensive in Highlands, reminds me of how much beauty there can be in ambiguity. It also reminds me that when all looks foggy, we have been given the imagination of the future, of the definition of beauty that will one day fully and finally rule in our lives. Read the introduction of Scotty Smith’s sermon on Daniel 7 from this past week, then download and listen to the whole service:
The Call to Worship God
Revelation 1:4-7 – Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spiritsbefore his throne, 5and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, 6and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power forever and ever! Amen. 7Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen.
We now move into the second half of the Book of Daniel—the section that has been taken hostage far too long by fruitless speculations and fanciful interpretations. These chapters are meant to inspire faith, not fuel fear. They are meant to propel us outwardly, into missional loving and living, not pull us inwardly, into “fort God” and cultural disengagement. These chapters are not filled with chest-thumping bravado, but with honest vulnerability and a testimony to the faithfulness and trustworthiness of God. Indeed, the conflict between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world is mercurial and messy, but the outcome is not in doubt. The story is not about our winning anything, but about our finding our place in God’s Story of ultimate triumph, redemption and shalom through the work of the Messiah, Jesus.
“Biblical apocalyptic is a revelation of the ending of this present age, which is an age characterized by conflict, and its replacement by the final age of peace. It shows us ahead of time the end of the kingdoms of this world and their replacement by the kingdom of God and of his Christ. This revelation is unfolded in complex and mysterious imagery, and has the purpose of comforting and exhorting the faithful.” Ian Duguid (Daniel – Reformed Expository Commentary)
For reflection:
1. What things do you fear about your life? Read the passage from REvelation and DAniel 7 and imagine what the outcome of these fearful places might be with the King moving into their midst.
(or, another way of looking at it…)
2. Where is there ambiguity in your life? (Where is there fog?) Where can you see the outline of God’s restoration beauty moving into ambiguity?
Elizabeth's passion to tell the Big Story of redeeming love through the everyday events and the oftentimes crises of life reveals the melody of God’s grace and the beauty of his truth. [read more]
