Is this the greatest Easter painting of all time?

Les Disciples

Wishing you a very happy and meaningful Easter. In step with these wishes, I came across a 2017 post by Mike Frost that’s fitting and worth a read.  (link is here)

It's a tradition in some circles to greet one another on Easter Sunday with the phrase Christ is risen! The reply: He is risen indeed! Knowing the practice spans the centuries for more than 2000 years, I actually look forward to hearing it again today and knowing the rootedness of the tradition is millennia old sets the practice in the context of history and narrative that undergirds its meaning today. 

Yet, springing from a real place, real persons, and real time in history it's a helpful reminder to remember there was a day when the words were uttered for the first time. How incredible it must have been to hear in that day "He is risen!" - and to see again the Risen One - having "put death in its grave" - this side of the his cross and tomb!

Quoting the prophet Isaiah from more than 800 years before the birth, life, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ:

“He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.”

 So, to that end, may I say: Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed!

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Far Too Easily Pleased ...Indeed.

The following C.S. Lewis quote from the "Weight of Glory" is striking- at least too me. And, based on how often I've seen it shared over the years, it is to others, too.

This week it resonates true even moreso as I sift through puzzled thoughts triggered by seeing  - seemingly aimless and easily entertained - tourists wandering the "The Strip" in Vegas taking photos of sham Roman statues and sitting in the shadow of a faux Tour Eiffel whilst paying too much for a small Starbucks coffee to drink in the surprising state of being whisked away as imaginary actors in the Bellagio water show scene from "Oceans 11". I mean really?  ...this is enjoyable?


Admittedly,  I'm jaded by too many working visits to "grown up Disneyland", yet Vegas - at least the fake, plastic, neon bit- doesn't suit me well.  I find it akin to a Potemkin Village seeking to hide a collective pool of creaturely emptiness from a people intended for deep and abiding joy. Intended for joy, yet now broken and losing their way in the course of being led by the nose further into the innards of an ages old deceit.   


So, let me get out of the 105 Degree F  heat and back to work.  And, as I do, let me leave you with the fitting - and aforementioned- quote:

“If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desire, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” ---from The Weight of Glory, by C.S. Lewis

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Believe It or Not: A Telling Hermeneutic

"How can this strange story of God made flesh, of a crucified Savior, of resurrection and new creation become credible for those whose entire mental training has conditioned them to believe that the real world is the world which can be satisfactorily explained and managed without the hypothesis of God? I know of only one clue to the answering of that question, only one real hermeneutic of the gospel: a congregation which believes it." – Lesslie Newbigin

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Holy Love :: Offensive Cross :: Needed Win

With my thoughts turning towards the Lenten and Easter seasons and the continued shaping of our community, I'm often - and may it always be so - reminded that the benefits of the Gospel and Kingdom come only on the basis of the blood, death and resurrection of our King. Whilst being boldly loving folk and doing "good" things should lead us towards the peaceful fruits of justice, mercy, humility and the "blessing" of others - especially the "least of these", I cannot step over the stumbling block and offense of the cross which remains foolishness to some and the very power of God to others.

Seeking to anticipate the "sparks in the wind" sort of varied influences - especially the markedly heretical - that may contain the embers needed to influence, confuse or harm the folks of our community, I came across the following poem. It is an excerpt from Timothy Stoner’s The God Who Smokes: Scandalous Meditation on Faith (p. 30).

Certainly worth the read methinks.

Holy Love Wins

The love that wins is a holy love.

The love that won on the cross and wins the world is a love that is driven, determined, and defined by holiness.

It is a love that flows out of the heart of a God who is transcendent, majestic, infinite in righteousness, who loves justice as much as he does mercy; who hates wickedness as much as he loves goodness; who blazes with a fiery, passionate love for himself above all things.

He is Creator, Sustainer, Beginning and End.

He is robed in a splendor and eternal purity that is blinding.

He rules, he reigns, he rages and roars, then bends down to whisper love songs to his creatures.

His love is vast and irresistible.

It is also terrifying, and it will spare no expense to give everything away in order to free us from the bondage of sin, purifying for himself a people who are devoted to his glory, a people who have “no ambition except to do good”.

So he crushes his precious Son in order to rescue and restore mankind along with his entire creation.

He unleashes perfect judgment on the perfectly obedient sacrifice and then pulls him up out of the grave in a smashing and utter victory.

He is a God who triumphs . . .

He is a burning cyclone of passionate love.

Holy love wins.

Grace & Peace,

-T

Read entire originating post: Holy Love Wins

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A Needed Glimpse @ Nehemiah

For the Love of God , a daily devotional designed to walk a person through the Bible in a year, remains a helpful compliment to the M'Cheynne Reading plan. Sunday's commentary was particularly striking. Partly because of the pastoral context and needs in our community. Partly because of the tendency to drift that remains a resident lure in my own heart.

Reflect: A Swim Upstream Awaits

ONE OF THE MOST STRIKING EVIDENCES of sinful human nature lies in the universal propensity for downward drift. In other words, it takes thought, resolve, energy, and effort to bring about reform. In the grace of God, sometimes human beings display such virtues. But where such virtues are absent, the drift is invariably toward compromise, comfort, indiscipline, sliding disobedience, and decay that advances, sometimes at a crawl and sometimes at a gallop, across generations.

People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.

Click here for the complete post. (D.A. Carson:For the Love of God: The Gospel Coalition)

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A Seamless Robe & Theology's Common Grounding

“When you encounter a present-day view of Holy Scripture, you encounter more than a view of Scripture. What you meet is a total view of God and the world, that is, a total theology, which is both an ontology, declaring what there is, and an epistemology, stating how we know what there is. This is necessarily so, for a theology is a seamless robe, a circle within which everything links up with everything else through its common grounding in God. Every view of Scripture, in particular, proves on analysis to be bound up with an overall view of God and man.”

J. I. Packer, in The Foundation of Biblical Authority (Grand Rapids, 1978), page 61.

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Ed Stetzer - A LifeWay Research blog on theology, missiology, missional church, church planting, church revlitalization, and innovation.

Ed Stetzer - A LifeWay Research blog on theology, missiology, missional church, church planting, church revlitalization, and innovation.

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Hoppin' Who?

What are your New Year's day traditions? Growing up from southern roots, I can tell you mine. Lunch time New Years day sees the table set, the family gathered and HOPPIN' JOHN on the table. At least amongst coastal southerners, it's a South Carolina Low Country practice with African and Carribean beginnings that predates the mid 1800s.

Sadly, eating Hoppin' John was originally considered a symbol of good fortune and thought to bring good luck to everyone back in the day. (I really would prefer that the traditional meal not be rooted in superstition.) Nonetheless, it remains as a connection to a regional and agricultural coastal Carolina heritage.

So, just what is Hoppin' John? Well here's a recipe and a link to an article from the Seattle Times (originally from the Charlotte Observer) that will shed a little light on the matter. Plus, it sets the field peas and rice dish - served with collard greens- in a global context of other "for the sake of prosperity" meal choices from around the globe.

So, eat well, enjoy your meal, and put your confidence wholly in God.

Grace and Peace

-T


HOPPIN' JOHN

From "The Glory of Southern Cooking," by James Villas (Wiley, 2007).

¼ pound slab bacon, cut into ¼-inch cubes

1 small onion, finely chopped

1 stalk celery, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

2 pounds black-eyed peas, fresh or frozen

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Red pepper flakes to taste

Hot, cooked rice

3 large ripe tomatoes, chopped

1. Fry the bacon in a large saucepan over medium heat until crisp. Pour off all but 1 tablespoon of the fat. Add the onion, celery and garlic and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes.

2. Add the peas, salt and pepper, red pepper flakes and 3 cups water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover and simmer until the peas are tender but not mushy, about 1 hour. (It may take less time for frozen peas, so taste them after 30 minutes.)

3. Drain the peas, then serve over hot rice topped with chopped tomato.

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Joy in the Trenches (A Razz to the Self-Righteous)

OK. Time to check in before May hits the books. Two thoughts strike me.

First, the earlier pastoral challenges (as one elder amongst others who altogether are charged to lead, protect, and nurture) remain but there is encouragement in seeing the faithfulness of our folks. This is particularly true in the case of a young woman in our fellowship who, whilst in the midst of relational challenges with a key person in her life who is living markedly out of step with God’s Word and persisting in a destructive direction, is staying the course of obedience to Christ – amidst tough circumstances.

Seeing Christ increasingly formed in her is overwhelmingly a source of deep joy. Granted, I hurt (and we as a community hurt) for her (and the erring one, too); nonetheless, what would otherwise be a wholly terrible happening is being redeemed by her obedience to Jesus and the instruction of the Scriptures.

Christ is getting glory and the on-looking village sees a glimpse of Christ engendered courage and grace that somehow allows our sister to find the strength to love a stiff-necked loved one as Christ loves her rather than acting to destroy a things or run away. Humbled and exhorted I am. May her tribe increase?

Secondly, two village "brothers in Christ" made the marquis (actually the tavern events email reminder that goes out weekly into the community) at the local pub. How about that! I am absolutely tickled to bits. The note read, “A and B, of XYZ church, share their musical talents and acoustic styling this Thursday at the Tavern”. Wow. A church making the pub mailer- how sweet is that?

Seeking to be friends – and make friends- to our village neighbors, a number of our folks faithfully gather at the village restaurant and tavern and hang out most Thursdays. Moreover, we really love our neighbors and miss their company when a weekly meeting is thwarted for one reason or another. Likewise, we are grateful to the owners for providing a “third place” – really the only one in the village since our beloved coffee house closed- for our community and it is brimming with folks whom Christ loves. Therefore, we seek to know and love them, too.

Surprisingly, some “Christians" in the village –maybe moralists, legalists, or the self-righteous are better descriptors- view our presence there as a “bad witness”. Well, to tweak a comment from the gospels (tweaking it to shift the subject from the poor to the pompous), the “self-righteous” we will always have with us. So, let's get on with the mission and love as Christ loved. Certainly, we must practice loving respect for all; yet, in this matter the moralists can just get over it. Where our neighbors are – there we will be. So, let the criticisms continue. For me, I pick the publican over the Pharisee.

Anyway, I hope to write more often but working, loving my family, serving my neighbors, and doing the work of a co-laboring shepherd and participant in the Body of Christ do really compete for attention and time to write. And you know what- I’m glad it is so.

How I love the trenches. For, in them, I find the nurture of my Savior and joy in following His way for His glory, the good of His people, the blessing of others.

All the Best to you and yours,

Thom

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Dr. King, a Jail, and a Timely Admonition

I'm not sure it's an exception to the norm but, as a progenitor from a small southern town, I spent time reading the sermons of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr whilst in the early days of my spiritual wrestling to live out my faith in a culture that was swimming (and I mean vigorously so) upstream against the current flowing from the headwaters of Christ's example and commands in the scriptures.

My roots, without question, sprout from the scriptures, His Spirit, regeneration, the influence of my father, and the nurture of the body of Christ; nonetheless, the example and words of an exemplary man who was murdered when I was seven can inform my practice in the context of life into which I was born and the broader context in which I now live.

So, when I came across the following excerpt from Dr. King's writings from a Birmingham jail, I was struck again by the relevance of his words. May it resonate for you, too.

Read and enjoy- even more- change and lead.

"There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.

Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators"' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an arch defender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are." -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Letter from Birmingham Jail

Thanks to Austin at emergingtruth for his post that set this recollection in motion. It's a good reminder to challenge the status quo.

I don't know your ecclesiology; but, it seems reasonable that if a group of people, gathered for a purpose, miss the example of Christ, they may be called many things but a church - faithful to "obey all Christ has commanded"- is not on the list of monikers they should embrace.

“It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick.”
-Richard Foster

(Foster, Richard. Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth. San Francisco; The 25th Anniversary Edition: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998.)

The issues (albeit racism is still more of an issue than we may admit) today may vary; however, are we not called to be a people of God (with local expression) about the purposes of God, in step with the Word of God, and empowered by the Spirit of God, in a culture to whom we are called and set apart to serve? If this is true, drifting at ease with the status quo is not an option. Why? The gospel changes everything.

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The Areopagus at Star Coffee

This week of work came to a close with a Saturday to spare before returning home. I’m looking forward to getting back but, with the day free, seizing the chance to hang out in Heidelberg is a good option.

It’s not the Areopagus at the invitation of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, however, Star Coffee, in the Altstadt, seems like a good place to get a feel for the city.

Hanging out with the locals is a practice I cherish. It’s a good one, too – at least if you’re more into people than castles. Lingering to read, to chat, to people watch, and take in the relational and local context environs is a good way to check the pulse of most communities. Heidelberg is no exception. It is buzzing with folks meeting, engaging, gazing to listen, and smiling – for the most part – at least it is so today.

I think Paul would add Star Coffee as a point of contact - along with synagogues and the marketplace in his practice of initiating in the culture - if he were here in this slice of time. Who knows? He may have ordered a double espresso macchiato and enjoyed a chat with a few of the folks lingering here, heute?

I know it’s not exactly preaching or reasoning with the Jews in synagogue but I really don’t think café preaching is on the list of best praxis for “how to engage the people of Heidelberg at Star Coffee”; nonetheless, I suspect he’d hang out - maybe frequently-here anyway. And, I bet, if he’d keep at it long enough, he’d find numerous invitations to visit the Areopagus of numerous hearts here in Heidelberg.

Tschüß

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