From Knowledge to Wisdom

Guest interview with Frank Viola

This post is one of a series in a 'Blog Circuit' involving more than 50 other blogs (see the list below). These are my questions to Frank Viola about his book "From Eternity to Here: Rediscovering the Ageless Purpose of God" and Frank's personal answers.

Re Chapter 5 ekklesia the bride of Christ

AB: I appreciate the vivid parallels between Adam and Eve and Christ, and Christ and his bride and the vision of the beautiful, beloved Bride.

The church was born at the resurrection. the Bride of Christ existed as a spiritual body from that moment. We are part of her.

But how does this fit with the image of the Body of Christ with Him at the head? I try to live by this model in my relationships with fellow believers and in my understanding of how we are church together under the headship of Jesus.

I begin to feel schizophrenic if I also try to position myself as part of the already existing Bride of Christ who has a different relationship with Jesus than the Body of Christ.

So my question is, how do these two things hang together? If they were just metaphors, or models, that give us some insight on reality from a certain perspective, then it could work for me. But if we are saying these are two existing spiritual realities - the Body of Christ exists and we are part of him, and the Bride of Christ exists and we are part of her. Then I have quite some difficulty understanding where I am in the here and now and which way is up.

FV: I’m not sure it’s prudent for us to try to comprehend something as great as the ekklesia of God by the employment of the frontal lobe. Such spiritual realities refuse to fit neatly into Aristotelian categories. We know that the ekklesia is a multisplended organism, just as the Lord Himself is a multisplended Person. He is Lion and Lamb; King and Priest; God and Man; Alpha and Omega all at the same moment. He is a mystery and a paradox. In the same way, the church, which is His corporate expression, is His Body, His Bride, His House and His Family all at the same time. What the mind can’t bring us toward our spirits take hold of and soar beyond.

God's Purpose: the Bride of Christ

These are notes for a talk shared with our gathering of the saints on 3 May. Ruth, one of the saints in our meeting, had spoken on the Lamb of God at our previous meeting. She remarked how strange this idea seemed when she first became a believer and how difficult it is to explain to those not familiar with Christian jargon. So I went on from there to explore some other familiar yet strange concepts in Christian jargon using the message from Frank Viola's book "From Eternity to Here: Rediscovering the Ageless Purpose of God".

Opening comments
Maybe I only have one sermon. I think I have said some of this before.

Intro
Last time Ruth explained for us the symbolism of Jesus our Saviour being called the 'Lamb of God', and

• how strange that seemed to her when she first became a Christian in relation to the lambs on the Welsh mountains
• how difficult it would be to explain the 'Lamb of God' on the streets of Eindhoven.

This morning I want to go on from there and talk about some other terms, phrases or symbols we use

• on the one hand very familiar
• on the other hand very strange when we start to think about them or explain them
• and certainly problematic to explain on the streets of Eindhoven

I also want to try to put the sacrifice of the Lamb of God into the big picture by considering the questions:

• what is God's purpose?
• what is God aiming to achieve and how does the sacrifice of His Son fit in the plan?
• how could it be explained on the streets of Eindhoven?

Evolution and Genesis

A while ago in the corner of Facebook where I hang out a wave of "25 random things about me" passed through. People posted a list of things about themselves as a means of getting to know their Facebook friends. Among my 25 things I wrote:

"I think that someday we will understand how evolution and Genesis fit together."

That triggered some reactions, so I promised to expand on the thought.

Intro

In my personal epistemology I make a distinction between knowledge known by the rational mind and truths known by the spirit. The former is the scope of the science and logic, the latter falls outside the scope of science and logic. For science, spiritual truths are irrational beliefs. So it is difficult to have a dialogue between science and faith.

Evolution

Since the Scientific Revolution our knowledge of the universe has been exploding through application of the scientific method, logic, reasoning and mathematics. So we can explain more and more about how the universe works and we have applied that knowledge to the development of all kinds of technologies that have been both improving and destroying the way of life of millions of people.

Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity

I have really enjoyed reading "Reimagining Church". After the deconstruction of the traditional church in "Pagan Christianity" it is good to rediscover what should be taking its place by following Frank Viola through a whole series of "re-imaginings" of every aspect of church.

Frank is very thorough in his writing. All the major points are underpinned with references to the Bible or other writers. And there are lots of magnificent quotations from others so my book wish-list has grown. Yet he is easy to read and some of the time you can almost hear him speaking.

What comes in the place of traditional church is organic church. Church that carries the DNA of its Lord. Church that is a living body with Jesus at its head. Church that is modelled on the life of the community among the three persons of the Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit. This organic nature of the church has big implications:

• the church grows of itself
• it reseeds and plant itself
• organization and control is systemic, not hierarchical

Reimagining the Church Meeting

It is becoming more and more clear that the Protestant Reformers only did half the job. They recovered the truth of the priesthood of all believers but failed to restore its organic practice. They got stuck at the theology of salvation (soteriology) and did not move on to ecclesiology.

In Reimagining the Church Meeting Frank sketches this great vision of the gathering manifesting Christ:

"we gather so that the Lord Jesus can manifest Himself in His fullness. And when that happens, the body is edified.

"Note that the only way the Christ can be properly expressed is if every member of a church freely supplies that aspect of the Lord that he or she has received. ... The Lord cannot be fully disclosed through only one member, He is far to rich for that."

Christ is assembled in our midst as each of us is a part of the puzzle and as we fit together in our places ....  when this happens Christ is glorified and the principalities and powers are shamed. And this was the mission of Christ ... to (re)launch His Kingdom back on earth through His creatures together manifesting Him.

"the dominant thought in Paul's letters that the church is Christ in corporate expression"

- from human perspective the motivation is mutual edification
- from God's perspective it is manifestation of His Son

The paradigm shift of "Surprised by Hope"

So far I'm about half way into NT Wright's "Surprised by Hope".

On the one hand his account is a comfort. He is able explain how things hang together in a way that I find satisfying. I thought things were something like this, but I never found an explanation as clear as this.

For example in the relationships between the scientific world-view, the historical world-view and the Christian world-view.

On the other hand he raises a big challenge. He opens a vision of the magnitude of the paradigm shift brought about by the resurrection. The Kingdom of God has come and is coming. The consequences are not just life-changing but universe-changing.

So, how then should we live?

The resurrection led to fundamental changes in the lives of of Jesus' followers in the decades immediately following. Such fundamental change is not so apparent in the many parts of the church that I have passed through in my lifetime, nor is it in my own life.

Quotes, themes and thoughts so far:

Heaven is not the objective

This is a major element in NT Wright's teaching. And it turns a lot of current thinking in the church upside-down.

NOT "Jesus is raised, therefore we go to heaven"
BUT "Jesus is raised, therefore:
         - new creation has begun
         - we have a job of work to do contributing to the progress of new creation"

I find this one of the most clarifying points that NT Wright makes. The idea that the objective is "getting to heaven" and that all we have to do to get there is "believe", always seemed to me rather unsatisfactory. It devalued creation and our life here in it. Life becomes some kind of waiting game in which we are perhaps being conditioned for life in heaven.

Whereas, the explanation that it is the other way round, and earth and indeed the whole universe will be renewed (become heaven), is much more satisfactory. And, furthermore that the people of God are called to participate in the process of the now and coming Kingdom gives back meaning and significance to creation and life in it.

Beacons of an interbellum

The Saturday papers had a piece about the forgotten destruction of Tokyo. Atom bombs dropped on two other cities led to the Japanese capitulation on 15 August 1945. But several months before that 60% of Tokyo had been destroyed by conventional bombing.

The article includes survivors' accounts of the fire storm that raced through neighbourhoods of traditional Japanese wooden houses. Of people escaping from the flames by jumping into the rivers, only to freeze to death. Of people gathering in groups in the street so that they would not die alone.

One of the survivors crept out from under one of these piles of burnt people on the morning after.

There is bitterness on many counts. The suffering of the survivors has never been recognised or compensated by the government. Whereas those who suffered from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been cared for and compensated.

The bombing of Tokyo is hardly known or remembered, although it is estimated that 100,000 people died on the night of the bombing.

There is bitterness about the misleading propaganda the Japanese government used to fool the people.

The postwar constitution, imposed by the Allies, commits Japan to pacifist neutrality. Japan has no military forces but a self-defence force. This force was trained by the American General Curtis LeMay. For which effort he received a high honour from Emperor Hirohito. The same General LeMay had in 1945 ordered the bombing of Tokyo.

I went outside to make my Saturday visit to the supermarket. The morning sun shone on the peaceful street.

I stood, contemplating the peace. A baby boomer contemplating six decades of peace. My father, in his nineties, sits most of the day doting in his armchair. His most lively conversations are about his experiences in the war, Dunkirk, North Africa, Italy.

In my early decades I enjoyed Clement Atlee's National Health Service and free education. In my later decades I have enjoyed the open frontiers within the European Union.

So I stood at my front door considering the pretty red bricks that pave the street, the horrors of war and the profligacy of peace. And took my bike to the supermarket, passing the monument to the allied soldiers who died liberating this area from Nazi occupation.

Reference
Joan Veldkamp in "de Volkskrant" Saturday 16 August 2008

Matt Redman and Hillsong London in Zwolle

Mixed Messages About Church

On Saturday evening we were in Zwolle at the last concert in the Take it to the Streets '08 Tour by Matt Redman and Hillsong London. The Hillsong team was led by Peter Wilson.

There were maybe a couple of thousand standing in a big dark exhibition hall.

We heard some good things:

• We are the church, the People of God
• Believe that Jesus is the Son of God
• Believe and accept that what He did on the cross is enough to bring us into right standing with God
• Those who believe are the church, the Spirit of God is in them
• The mission of the church is to take this message to the streets
• Church is not
• an old building on the corner of the street
• an organization
• We who are gathered here to worship Jesus are the church

At some point some part of the message almost had me in tears. What point that was, I don't know now. But something of the greatness of God, His grace, His love, His truth, penetrated me and my spirit was challenged and lifted.

This is God. He is worthy of our praise. We are His people. This is His message. We carry it.

But it got confusing. "Church" apparently means several different things. And they got mixed.

The Hillsong crew said they were catching a flight home after the concert so they could be "at church" in London on Sunday morning. Is being "at church" more important that "being church"?

I wonder if, when they are "at church", they are in a building, maybe an old one on a street corner, as part of an organization. They have 120 people on worship teams - that takes some organization.

There was an altar call for those who felt called to decide to believe in Jesus for the first time. We all had our eyes shut so we don't know how many put up their hands.

We prayed for them.

... they needed to "find a good church"

So "church" is used for lots of different things. It's confusing.

As regards the music and worship, I didn't keep track of the playlist, but we did have quite a lot of of Matt Redman numbers. They seemed to be in Hillsong style rather than native Redman. And maybe I am getting too old for this stuff, finally emerging from my mid-life crisis. After all, we did hear a call for a new generation to arise and take the message to the streets.

I have the feeling it would be good if the dispersed church could come together now and then to celebrate together and worship God en masse. But I wonder if this is the format. I wonder what would be a format that all parts and generations of the people of God could join. I guess it will only happen when it is led by the Spirit of Jesus.

Thanks to Eric for joining me and sharing thoughts and experiences, some of which are included here.

Prayers of intercession

I was asked to lead the prayers of intercession in our Sunday gathering ten days ago. Normally as part of our prayers we pray for "the world" focussing on current issues. I found it daunting to pray for the people suffering from the disasters in Myanmar and Sichuan, China. How can we pray in the face of suffering on such a scale? Suffering that natural forces have arbitrarily delivered to millions of helpless people.

I found some words and thoughts that I could use in Sinéad O'Connor's song "Watcher of Men" from her "Theology" album. This is based on fragments from Job. And so my prayers for the world became:

We pray for the world

We think of Asia.

Lord we pray for all those suffering from the devastation of the cyclone in Myanmar and the earthquake in China. Tens of thousands of people washed away in the cyclone as it tore across the Irrawaddy delta. Tens of thousands buried and injured in the sudden earthquake in Sichuan province China. We cannot comprehend the magnitude of the suffering.

Like Job, we are inclined to say to you God:

"Oh watcher of men
Do you have eyes of flesh?
Is your vision like man?
Are your years the years of man?"

Do you see this suffering? For it is beyond our comprehension.

But with Job we say

"I spoke without understanding
Of things beyond me which I did not know
And now I've heard you with my ears
And I've seen you with my eyes
Therefore I recant and relent
For we too are but dust and ashes"

And so we bow before you in intercession in the face of this great suffering. We pray for those who are helping the victims. And we pray for those in the Myanmar government who are preventing help getting to the people.

Lord in your mercy
Hear our prayer

Somehow I felt that first I had to express anger and frustration to God. "Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see this suffering?" With the implication "do you care"? Before being able to recognise that He is sovereign. And accepting that He sees the big picture that we cannot grasp. Only then it was possible to intercede for those who are suffering.

Wandering from Frank Viola to NT Wright to Sinéad O'Connor

Stream of semi-consciousness

Took a couple of weeks off work recently and tried to do too many things at once.

The main target is painting some of the house and disposing of some of its contents. This is progressing.

But there are many distractions and other matters of interest and duty. Maybe all my life I have had difficulty applying myself to a task.

Frank Viola

I have been listening to some interesting stuff while painting. Firstly a talk by Frank Viola "Developing a Narrative Ecclesiology" that he gave at a conference in the Bahamas in October 2007. I bought it from PTMIN on CD a while ago. It includes a very interesting explanation of Paul's ministry and a theory that Paul's "thorn in the flesh" was the leader of a legalistic group from Jerusalem, ex priests who went round all the churches planted by Paul teaching the need for the Law of Moses including circumcision and undermining Paul's authority.

The conference session where he gave the talk was apparently in parallel with a seminar by NT Wright and Frank was frustrated that he could not be at that seminar himself and very appreciative that a few people did not go but came to hear him instead.

"Great Hatred, Little Room" - peace in Northern Ireland

Been reading Jonathan Powell's "Great Hatred, Little Room" on the history of the Northern Ireland peace process, after a tip by banstead on Flickr.

Powell was Tony Blair's Chief of Staff and deeply involved, for ten years, in the public and private processes of negotiation with Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin, and various Unionist leaders including David Trimble and Ian Paisley, along with the Irish government lead by Bertie Ahern.

The story gives detailed insight into how the negotiating processes worked, mainly what was going on in the confidential contacts and the secret meetings that led to the public meetings and public agreements (and disagreements).

There are anecdotes about the people and the circumstances. You get the impression that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness really felt at home in 10 Downing street. Powell tells how on one occasion he urgently had to get Adams and McGuinness in from the back garden where they were playing with Tony Blair's kids and trying to ride a skateboard down the path. A photograph of the incident would have given a totally misleading impression of the public relationship between Sinn Féin and the British Government.

The story of the negotiations is told in a welter of detail. So it seems like an endless process, repeatedly covering the same ground, with progress measured in imperceptible steps, and successes followed by immediate setbacks. It is clear that endless patience and determination were needed. Part of the motivation for writing the book is to explain why and how success was achieved so that lessons can be learned for resolution of conflicts in other regions of the world.

Achieving a lasting peace in Ireland is positioned as a major mission for Tony Blair. He was convinced a settlement was possible and was determined to keep on talking until it was achieved.

The Shack

"The Shack" William P. Young (Updated 2008-01-16 20:58 CET)

After "The Time Traveler's Wife" more fiction about love. This time the love of God.

Whereas the TTW was about passionate, erotic love between a man and a woman, with a dialogue that now and then verged on the ordinaire, "The Shack" is a vision of God's love for a person as experienced by a man in a deep life crisis.

This is a rare gem, fiction that portrays God and is carried by a gripping story line. I read through it rapidly first time round because it is a story and I wanted to know what happened - how does it end. Now I am going back over it appreciating the detail. Yesterday morning there was no need to get up. I curled up in bed reading and was in tears over the passionate, gentle love of God as told in this story.

The start of the book seemed a bit slow and dry with the change of writing style from Audrey Niffinegger in the TTW. But it became a gripping story after the scene setting.

The account of his meeting with God is very effective. (Avoiding spoilers here.) God is people. God relates. And as Mack's issues with life are worked through in his long weekend with God a whole range of common religious and theological misconceptions are brought to light, including:

• the nature of the church,
• Bible study,
• free will and its effects,
• God's time travelling!  ;-)
• atonement and salvation - but such religious jargon never crosses anyone lips,
• the character and purpose of God,
• the theology of the Trinity.

They all arise throughout the weekend as Mack gets to know God and begins to see his own life and his attitudes a God sees them.

And there are lovely details all along the way. For example, God listens to all sorts of music, not just religious stuff:

Quote on Knowledge and Wisdom

"We don't develop spiritual maturity by accumulating knowledge, but by increasing in godly wisdom. This kind of wisdom comes from above and cannot be gained by academic study."

"Hiddenness and Manifestation: What Is Really Happening When God Doesn't Seem to Be Present?: Pt. 1 (Being with God)" by Graham Cooke ISBN 1852403578, Sovereign World (2003), Paperback

Compare James 3:17

"But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere." (NIV)

Love time by time

I haven't read much fiction recently. A while ago The Time Traveler's Wife came in my direction and I have just finished reading it.

This is a beautiful love story set in modern day Chicago. The lovers are Henry and Clare. Their author, Audrey Niffenegger, brings them to life and love in an intense yet gentle fashion. They are beautifully formed, completely credible characters making their lives in artistic and academic circles.

The twist in the story is, of course, the time travelling. Henry suffers from a genetic condition that causes him to be displaced in time (and space) at unpredictable moments. As a result their relationship builds over an even longer span than normal. In the opening of the story Clare is a child and Henry is arriving in her time now and then from some years in the future when he is an adult.

Yes, it may sound weird. Yet Audrey Niffenegger introduces the whole process in a credible way, so that from the beginning the attention is not on the technicalities of the temporal displacement, but on the characters, their lives and relationships. The reader does have to pay some attention to the metadata heading each scene indicating the date and the ages of Henry and Clare. But, once you get the hang of it there is no real distraction from the story.

So I am left in wonder. Wonder at the human condition in which such love between a man and woman can grow and flourish. Wonder at the human imagination that can produce such a story, carefully crafted, holding our attention, bringing us to tears and joy as the characters live through the pages of the book and in our minds and imaginations so vividly that you would not be surprised to meet them on a visit to Chicago.

Love like a morning cloud

I was caught this Sunday morning by the prayer of penitence we used in our gathering:

Lord our God,
in our sin we have avoided your call.
Our love for you is like a morning cloud,
like the dew that goes away early.
Have mercy on us;
deliver us from judgement;
bind up our wounds and revive us;
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

It is from the CofE Common Worship. It references Hosea 6.

3 Let us acknowledge the LORD;
   let us press on to acknowledge him.
   As surely as the sun rises,
   he will appear;
   he will come to us like the winter rains,
   like the spring rains that water the earth."

4 "What can I do with you, Ephraim?
   What can I do with you, Judah?
   Your love is like the morning mist,
   like the early dew that disappears.
   ..."

In my sin I have avoided God's call. My sin puts a gulf between me and the Lord. I use that to hide, to postpone heeding His call, to carry on with my own thing. Now and then I repent and recommit and enjoy a bright morning of relationship with God. But my love is indeed like a bright cloud in the early morning sky, and like the early dew - disappearing in the heat of the day, when the normal daily business gets going - forgotten.

Is the rest of the prayer enough? Is it enough to ask God to have mercy on me, to deliver me from His own judgement and to heal me? Doesn't repentance mean and require more than that? Is not repentance a radical change and determined commitment? Something that will last longer than the morning dew and a bright morning cloud?

Time Travel

Been time travelling.

My parents, in their nineties, are preparing to move from the family homestead of more than fifty years, to an apartment. My mother is boasting that she has not thrown out even a bus ticket since 1950. So I joined my brother and sister in getting some momentum into the process of emptying the house. My childhood and teenage years were in that house in that city. But that is a lifetime ago. Going back there raises so many memories that it is like going back in time. An effect reinforced by all the junk, stuff, books and memento's being brought to the surface. (My mother presented me with a fairly comprehensive collection of my artwork from primary school. A salutary confrontation.)

And the journey was seamlessly handled by the interconnecting components of the travel machine. Rather like the round green door of Bilbo's house, from which the road leads down and onward to a myriad places, the travel machine begins at the bus stop two minutes walk from my house. The bus stopped to pick me up on time at 13:54 on Friday and delivered me in eight minutes to the intercity station. As I ascended to the platform the intercity to the airport rolled in. Just time to grab a cappuccino from the Kiosk before the train departed - the marketing machine nibbled at me "normal cappuccino, sir, or would you like the winter cappuccino with a hint of cinnamon?".

There were only a few students in the afternoon train. Having been visiting university open days with Sophie in recent weeks, my mind has been wandering over the choices I made at that age. Another aspect of the time travel effect. I passed the time on the train with the opening chapters of "The Time Traveller's Wife".

Trying out SlideFlickr.com

This is just to try SlideFlickr.com. Here is my current set of photos of Eindhoven.

Prayers on today's lectionary

Today I led prayers at our gathering based on the readings offered in the Revised Common Lectionary.

Intro
We are doing something a bit different in our prayers today. I have taken a few verses from each of the readings in the lectionary for today and made a prayer from them. The focus is on our relationship with God, so the prayers are mainly intercessions for ourselves as individuals and as a gathering of believers.

Let us pray:

  "I will put my law in their minds
    and write it on their hearts.
    I will be their God,
    and they will be my people.

    No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
    or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,'
    because they will all know me,
    from the least of them to the greatest,"
    declares the LORD.
   "For I will forgive their wickedness
    and will remember their sins no more."   Jeremiah 31:33-34 (NIV)

Lord, you have offered us forgiveness as we confess our sins. But still we hold you at a distance. We do not have only your law on our hearts and minds. We are busy with worldly things and those too occupy our minds and direct our attention from you. Help us to recognise all our sin and confess it so that there are no barriers between us and you, so you can fulfil your promise to be our God and we commit to being your people. Undivided. Only for you. One God. One people wholly and only committed to your law and with your way on our hearts and minds and brimming over our lips so that we do not need to be taught your way. Your way becomes our very nature.

Lord, in your mercy
Hear our prayer

Blogging Jeremiah on Flickr

Early this year I received a camera from my family for a birthday present. And then I discovered Flickr. And got hooked. So I seem to spend more time in awe of the amazing pictures uploaded by photographers around the world, than using my own camera.

In May I participated in the 24 Hours of Flickr Day. And on 07/07/07 I shot photos for that project. The 24 Hours of Flickr book was published a while ago. The selection of photos for the 07/07/07 book is just now appearing.

This weekend via Firefighter with a camera I found the little Bible pool with a beautiful collection of pictures of Bibles and texts from the Bible and the Torah. Click here to watch the slide show. I was inspired to make a contribution to this group based on the passage from Jeremiah that I read at our gathering this (Sunday) morning.

As the footnote shows, the translation of some words in the passage is doubtful. And a comparison some of the main translations into English (easily done on BibleGateway.com) shows quite some divergence.

Nevertheless, the main line of the passage is clear. God, speaking through the prophet, is lamenting over His chosen people who have broken their relationship with Him and gone off to serve and worship worthless false gods.

And the people are suffering as a result. The power and blessing of God is no longer available to them to bring healing.

A tragic situation that brings tears to the eyes. So much loss. So much opportunity of fellowship with a loving God has been wasted and lost by the people turning away in stubborn rebellion. 

Scary Bad News

Despite the fact that my family classify me as a "doom and gloomer", I actually think that I have a naive optimistic view of the world. That partly comes from being a baby boomer - growing up in the fifties and sixties of the 20th century, it seemed that the normal course of events in the world was for things in general to get better. In the UK we had free schooling, free healthcare from the National Health Service and in the sixties The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Radio Luxembourg and stereo record players. And it was possible to hitch-hike from my home in Edinburgh to the south of France.

The only serious doom and gloom bit that I recall was a few days around the Cuban Missile Crisis when I was outside school looking up at the sky and wondering whether there were actually US and Soviet nuclear bombs being delivered over our heads by ICBM. Well, of course, there was the assassination of John Kennedy. That was a serious break in the everything gets better all the time trend.

Anyway, three news items last weekend put me into a doom and gloom perspective on world affairs:

The Bush regime has the characteristics of a Mafiosi organization Jan Tromp, the Volkskrant's correspondent in the USA, is moving on after four years. He had a feature article in Saturday's paper that was an inventory of evidence of the corrupt, secretive, deceptive, anti-democratic and illegal activities of the Bush regime. Now, of course, we knew this already. Ages ago I joined the kids on a Stop Bush demo.

kinda self-explanatory.    Originally uploaded to Flickr by jillwrites.com.

But, somehow, the extensive matter of fact inventory of known evidence wiped away all hope that somehow things might come right in the USA, in the end.

European Body Life Conference 2 - Purpose of the Church

The themes of the European Body Life Conference and "God's Ultimate Passion" form the basis for a talk for our gathering this morning. Here are my notes:

I have mentioned before a book I have been reading "God's Ultimate Passion" by Frank Viola and some of you know that I went to a conference in early June where Frank Viola was the main speaker and his presentations were an introduction to the themes of the book. So  .... it will not be surprise that I am sharing this morning some things I am absorbing from these sources.

I am also working from the three readings we had this morning.

• Isaiah 5:1-7 About the love of God for His people and how he would like the relationship to be. His disappointment.
• Paul from 1 Cor 12:12-31 About the Body of Christ and its parts and their functions and relationships.
• Jesus in Luke 12:49-56 with some tough statements about the conflicts and divisions He is bringing and the signs of the times
  

The Context
I think the reading from Isaiah provides us with some context for consideration of the themes of the other readings. It is talking about a landowner with a vineyard on his land and the care and effort he put into establishing and cultivating his vineyard. And his disappointment that it did not yield any good fruit but only bad.

What more could have been done for my vineyard
than I have done for it?
When I looked for good grapes,
why did it yield only bad? (Is 5:4 NIV)

The writer is very explicit about this story being an image of God, the landowner, and His care and love for His people represented by the vineyard.

The vineyard of the LORD Almighty
is the house of Israel,
and the men of Judah
are the garden of his delight.
And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed;
for righteousness, but heard cries of distress. (Is 5:7 NIV)

We can see here in microcosm the story of the OT. God created in love, hope and expectation. He looked forward to relationship with mankind. But mankind fell into rebellion and out of relationship with God. But God still hoped and loved and sought ways of recovering the relationship. Until, as in this passage and the remainder of the chapter - He considers giving up and laying waste to the vineyard and threatening the people of Israel with destruction and exile.

We know that in the end God offered the ultimate means of salvation, reconciliation and restoration.

So this image of God's love and care for His creation, although in many times and many ways He has been disappointed and frustrated with the response to His love and care, ... this image provides a context for considering the themes of the other readings.

The Purpose of the Church
Some propositions about the purpose of the church ...