I am pretty excited to preach about God’s heart for the nations tomorrow morning–not least because I see how that heart is being manifest in our local church. What a joy!
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Goals for today: finish some key tasks for Desert Mission Anglican Church, play some games with the kids (they’re still home on break), read some George MacDonald while smoking a pipe
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You are God’s Delight
It’s the Third Day of Christmas. We remember St. John the Theologian.
He wrote:
“…the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14, ESV)
This is an indispensable part of the Good News: God delights in humanity! Why else would he become one?
God doesn’t become something he doesn’t love.
And—get this—God delights in you!
We are told in the Scriptures that—by the Spirit—the Word of God dwells in all who will receive him, which is our guarantee of eternal life.
God doesn’t dwell where he doesn’t want to be.
“Shed upon your Church, O Lord, the brightness of your light; that we, being illumined by the teaching of your apostle and evangelist John, may so walk in the light of your truth, that at length we may attain to the fullness of eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”
Promise & presence. Light & life. This is Christmas.
Photo: www.blessedmart.com/shop/hand…
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She preaches with passion
Over and against rulers with delusions of divine favor and power, Mary proclaims in her Spirit-inspired song that divinity is not found in those that think they already have it in and of themselves.
She preaches with passion: God is born by those that humbly, yet hungrily desire to receive him.
This isn’t heard as good news by the proud, the powerful, and the prosperous.
Yet those that have eyes to look for the Lord of Creation in places of humility, weakness, poverty, and profound humanity will find grace upon grace.
As the lowly are lifted and the high and mighty brought down, we see with clarity that all are in need and that all our needs are met Christ.
When this happens in the church, things begin to be as they should be.
They begin to be just.
God’s justice begins to be made manifest when, in the church, we find ourselves:
confessing one Lord,
living one faith,
sharing one baptism,
all at one-and-the-same Table,
all saying together,“Lord I am not worthy to gather the crumbs from under your table!
Say the word and I shall be healed!”We find God coming again to us, his church, as we bear his Spirit in our bodies and yield to his work: to nourish, to teach, to heal, to renew.
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The Cross is the Throne
The religious and political leaders around Jesus were right that his kingdom threatened theirs, because he was at every turn exposing the evil and destructive practices of those that thought their life was best when they pursued their desires at the expense of others.
When they bring Jesus to their Roman ruler to do their dirty work, he tries to shield Jesus by giving them a choice to release Barabbas, whose name means “son of the father,” or Jesus, the man claiming to be the true Son of God.
After all they had seen him do, after all they had heard Jesus teach, in the end worldly leaders choose Barabbas—the violent, failed insurrectionist. To them, his way is the way that makes sense.
So Jesus, the one who healed, redeemed, liberated, and gave life, is condemned to death on the Cross. And because Jesus is committed to the Kingdom of life and peace and will not move forward with violence, he is met with violence, and that Cross becomes the Throne of heavenly grace, where he loves and forgives, offering grace upon grace even to those that crucified him.
That love was the power that swallowed death in death, and it was the Spirit of Love that raised Jesus from the dead, never to die again, vindicating his kingdom of life and peace as the only eternally victorious kingdom.
John’s apocalyptic vision proclaims:
Jesus “…has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father…” (Rev. 1:6 ESV).
Our objections to the way of Jesus, our blindness to the futility of violence, our inability to realize a better kingdom than the kingdoms we were born in–it’s all been dealt with on the Cross.
The church has been made—by grace alone—the place where the Christ’s Kingdom of self-giving love is revealed first to the kingdoms of this world.
As priests in this world, we are witnesses together, just like Christ, to the Truth of who God is in Christ, and what his eternal Kingdom is really like.
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The Kingdom of Christ is fundamentally spiritual, but not merely spiritual
What makes a good king different from a bad king is the kind of power used and the way that power is used.
The thing that destines every king to fail is the unavoidable—and for every worldly king at some point irresistible—temptation to use their power to benefit themselves at the expense of others.
Devotional writer Jane Williams says,
“…what Jesus is offering as a description of his own kingship is truth—reality, you might say. Revelation calls it ‘the Alpha and Omega, who was and is and is to come’. If the actual reality of the world, from its creation to its end, is like Jesus, then this strange human obsession with power is an aberration. It has no ability to create, to redeem or to sanctify. Jesus’s challenge to Pilate’s kind of power is too slow and subtle for many of us, who long to use the weapons of worldly power to force victory for God. But if Jesus is the truth, then any other way is falsehood, and will fail. Reality, as it was and is and is to come, is shaped by a different kingship.”
Jesus lives as King over a kingdom that is certainly powerful, but he draws on a power not from this fallen world.
Jesus rules and reigns and fights battles in this world through the power of self-giving love and truth, which can only come from God himself.
His Kingdom is fundamentally spiritual in that it is conceived, birthed, and animated by the Spirit of Love who is God the Holy Spirit, but it is not merely spiritual because this Spirit takes up residence in his subjects, his followers, for the sake of the world.
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7 encouragements for the deconstructing
“Deconstruction” is the topic du jour in the Christian social media space right now. It’s the recognition that many former “evangelicals” America–especially younger ones, and in large numbers–are rapidly rejecting parts of their evangelical faith and culture.
As someone who has had my own unique deconstruction journey (and in many ways continue that journey to this day) I want to say to those currently in the process:
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I see you, and you are not alone, as disorienting, scary, painful, and disturbing as the process can be
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I know you are probably in this for good reasons. We all have certain beliefs and values that need to be deconstructed and some that need to be outright rejected
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To the extent you are deconstructing beliefs and values that do not align with the Jesus presented in the Gospel and witnessed to by the church catholic, you are on the right track
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There is room within the Christian family for those who doubt, question, and explore
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You are loved by Jesus. He is secure enough to welcome your questions, and close enough bear your uncertainty, and kind enough meet you where you are in this moment
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No matter how much you feel like you are falling apart, there is hope and a path for “reconstruction” and most of all Resurrection because (see #5)
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I’ll say it again, you are not alone.
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Pretty excited to release a collection of songs, p r o d i g a l, today.
Hit the link or stream below.
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Every opportunity to love
So thankful today that Jesus did what I could never do:
Every temptation, he resisted.
Every sin, he rebuked.
Every affront, he forgave.
Every blow, he absorbed.Every opportunity to love, he loved.
In this he condemned sin in the flesh,
dragging it to death as he himself died.But sin, having been denied in him,
could not destroy him, even by death of the body.The Divine Life in him consumed even physical death,
so he was raised, Resurrected, his body healed,
purfied, perfected–Spirit-soaked, through and through–
by the Lord, the Giver of Life.So every mercy, he pours out.
every grace, he gives.Every one, he saves.
