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here are some things i've thought about and scribbled it down. feel free to browse the ideas, and (if you have the time and energy) please let me know what you think. everyone's perspective is helpful. thanks. The Living Easter 4.27.03 God's pronoun 4.27.03 The Gospel and Power 3.12.03 On Kingdoms 3.18.03 God's initiative and our response 2.20.03 Strumming the Happy Medium 2.18.03 Humans: More than Biology 2.18.03 Others: An Anthropological Agenda for a Church Jesus' Teaching on Self-denial and Generosity: Mark 12:38-44 Conscientious Objector Statement The Living Easter 3.12.03 journal For the Christian, Easter is Resurrection! It is the incredible realization that Jesus is victorious over all, even death, and he has made that available to all. We meet every Sunday to gather as Church to celebrate this day. One Sunday, following the season of Lent and Holy Week, we give to recognizing Jesusí resurrection through special flowers, songs or other traditions. I had one thought this past Easter that maybe could be pushed farther. If there is one thing I think that the Easter as we have celebrated doesnít do adequately, it is that it puts all of the weight of Jesusí work on his death and resurrection. It is not surprising we simplify Easter to this event. It is the culmination, the fulfilling of everything Jesus was about. Paul's writings on salvation and dying to self are largely oriented around the cross. However, Jesus' entire ministry was oriented around Easter. He modeled for us how to live and share New Life. Jesus was all about bringing hope to the lost, freedom to those imprisoned physically, spiritually, through sickness and suffering, and the list goes on. Jesus taught, preached and healed: his ministry of reconciliation and newness was holistic. There is a lot we fail to learn if we only look at the end (meaning final and purpose). His ministry is our detailed example. We orient our lives around the whole: Jesus is still daily and complete resurrection! God's pronoun 4.27.03 journal As humans, we are limited beings. One of the limitations we have is language. We think about what we can articulate. When it comes to God and spiritual things, it is much easier for us to talk about our end (discipleship and response), because we understand it and can put words to it. One of these limitations is with our language is how to name God. Obviously, it is more important how we understand God than we actually call him. Arabic Christians would still say "Allah" is One, and Chinese would say Jesus is the "Tao" (the way). The challenge is to teach the understandings behind these limited words. When it comes to singular third-person pronouns, we have He, She, and It. God has historically been "He," but has been twisted to reinforce male-dominant culture or authoritarian character of God. We also notice that God has mothering qualitites mentioned in scripture, and women are created in his image as well. However, "She" also has problems. David Shenk writes in "God's Call to Mission" that "in many cultures God as mother suggests pantheism and earth worship. Such worldviews encourage fertility cults which erode the dignity of women. As participants in both local and global mission, I believe it is wise to refer to God in ways which are in harmony with the practices of the universal church." Today's New International Version (TNIV) of the Bible is the NIV without gender discrimination. God is God, and man or mankind is inclusive (humans, humankind, etc.). However, this makes God to be a distant and impersonal God. A pronoun is necessary to understand how God is relational with individuals. I'm open to suggestions. For now, I think it is healthy to stick to one "gender" for consistency and understanding of God. If Father is understood as caring Abba, I would like to follow Jesus' model: "Our Father, who is in heaven..." The Gospel and Power 3.12.03 journal Here’s a challenge I've been thinking about: to say that Jesus was the atoning sacrifice that God sent to the world in order to appease His holiness sounds like a blood thirsty and violent holy God. Why blood sacrifice to restore the relationship? Why not run a lap around the track or bake a cake for someone? The thing is, in our society, we don’t understand sacrifice. It’s not really in our history, it’s not really in our subconscious understanding of how things are resolved. I have heard the same is true in Japan and eastern countries. However, these cultures are based intensely on saving face, or avoiding shame. Instead of talking about the blood of the cross, they find meaning in the shame of the cross. But shame isn’t really something that makes sense in our culture either. What might make sense is punishment, thinking of Jesus as taking the punishment we deserved. However, this also somewhat twists part of God’s character in a way I am not settled with. As the punisher, He would be a aggressive and again, bloody God. So what makes sense and is true to the story of Jesus and character of God? I want to try to line out quickly the history of the world (small task, right?) in the thinking of the Gospel is the emptying of our power, to receive the empowerment of God and live the Kingdom. So God creates the world. God is power, holy, love. (Actually, this all really does come back to theology or doctrine of God and his character). He creates the world as a way to express His love to something. He creates humans and as long as they follow the rule of the tree, they commune with God in the garden. But humans, with a little encouragement, take power into their own hands. The relationship with God is broken. The Old Testament includes stories of power. Where does the power lie? When in God’s hands, Israel is a super place and even a super power. But as soon as they take control, they interfere with the perfect allocation of power as God intended. They get a king, they lose wars, and eventually Israel is overtaken and Judah goes into exile. I need to check this one out more in depth, They come back when God takes initiative and moves in Artaxerxes to send Nehemiah. In the troubles of rebuilding the wall, we see that they were the powerless, but put in God’s hands, they found success (Neh. 6:15,16). Now let’s see how Jesus fits into this. This is the Upside-Down Kingdom. He is born as the humble king. He has come to preach good news to the poor, proclaim freedom for prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. In other words, restoration and blessing now. The invitation was to "come follow me" and experience giving up yourself to find a new and fullest life. But people were so stuck on themselves and their tradition it hardly seemed likely. Jesus’ life was so consistent, with authority, and convincing that many saw the kingdom he talked about and jumped on board. Jesus is our best example of how to empty ourselves of us and allow God/Holy Spirit to work and live in us. (He had some of head start in that he was born the Son of God) So on to this crucifixion. The is the culmination of what Jesus has been talking about, and the ultimate demonstration for us was that the Son of Man (emphasis on example to humankind) will be killed and in three days, rise (Mk 10:33-34). God’s love is the orientation of the cross. It is expressed in the placement of power. The work of the cross is that God takes initiates this power-surrender on behalf of humankind. In following this surrender, we are "saved" and "being saved." You could make the comparison that being born again/born from above is like us taking on an emptiness of human power as Jesus was born. The Holy Spirit then comes and is empowerment for those who empty themselves and receive it. How does this look for us? It is a change of mind, and opening to God’s initiative in our lives. It is recognizing the weakness of humankind, and in our weakness God’s power is made perfect-so when we are weak, we are strong (2 Cor. 9,10). On Kingdoms 3.18.03 journal On March 17, 2003 President Bush spoke to the world, giving Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave Iraq, or there will be violent consequences. Hussein has been labeled as our government as a wicked and dangerous regime holding power. Hussein, Bin Laden and his al Queda network believe the same of the U.S. Who are the real terrorists? Probably both. In thinking about nations and regimes of power, it is amazing how they come and go. The Incan empire in the Andes died out. The great Roman empire is now limited to stone and stories. Great Britain which "the sun never set on" is nothing so vast today. And the Cold War rival at one time, Russia, is no longer threatening. The U.S. is hardly over 200 years old. We are like a 16-year-old boy, who is young and fragile in a world much bigger than they understand, but continues to be arrogant, proud, and think they know it all (no offense Michael). The U.S. cannot be "invincible" forever. We are not so unique of a kingdom as we think, whether consciously or subconsciously. The Church has kingdom in its history. Constantine ushered in Christendom in bringing the faith into his government and country. The Anabaptist movement was not only a reaction to feelings of misdirection in the Church, but due to the social and economic conditions, was also reacting against kingdoms. These components were closely connected. Because infant baptism was a part of registering citizenship, adult baptism and the refusal to baptize infants were symbols of expressing loyalty and citizenship to another kingdom. This put the Anabaptist in a dangerous position, and they suffered greatly for it. But in this, they actually had a lot of things right in living faithfully in times as Jesus warned where they would be as "sheep among wolves" (Lk 10:3). Today followers of Christ remain a part of a greater kingdom that is not of this world (John 18:36). Earth and its kingdoms will pass away, but the kingdom of God is eternal. Currently the church in the U.S. experiences peace and security. Something has changed: is the church disillusioned or has it been the world’s moral and spiritual improvement? Jesus sent us into the world, but we are not of the world (John 17:16, 18). We need to continually ask God to show us what that means and empower us to be faithful to that. Jesus told us that we "will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains" (Matt. 24:6-8). But as all these things pass away, we have our trust and hope in a kingdom and God that cannot. God's initiative and our response 2.20.03 journal Our tendency as humans is to limit things to what we can think about and understand. So I have often thought more about my response to God more than his initiative. When I talk about my faith, it is easy to talk about what I am doing or who I have become. For Bible Study tonight we talked about what we can do to be more holy. We talk about practical things that we can understand and work on. The thing is: we will always fall short of a faith based on rules. We talk about God’s grace and then say "what can we do?" The weight of our faith needs to be on God’s initiative. I tend to doubt that God will initiate (I don’t understand Him), so instead of praying, I think about and analyze what I could be doing more effectively. How freeing could it be to say that: look I can’t do this "most right" so I need to pray for God to do His thing. Strumming the Happy Medium 2.18.03 for the weathervane (newspaper of eastern mennonite university) When I took guitar lessons, one of the most repeated phrases I was instructed was to "play at the happy medium." As many people who have played guitar know, strumming closer to the bridge or closer to the sound hole will make very different tones. But, you will hear the fullest and clearest tones if you find the "in between" that brings out the strengths of both points. I haven’t had guitar lessons for a few years, but in my other learning experiences, it seems there are always more things I’m finding that need to be carefully balanced. One of these that I have been thinking about is the unity of spiritual and relational, the horizontal/vertical, inner-life/outer-life, or however that idea makes sense for you. Different groups and individuals will tend to put an emphasis on one or the other, and we sometimes forget about one of these components. However, for us to be most effective, they cannot be separated. It is vital that they work together. We see another picture in Galatians 5:22-26 of a tree, with the Spirit and the fruit. So it is not only something to balance, but there is direction involved: the Spirit is the source. Without Spirit, we are simply a peace and happiness ideology. The connectedness of the tree shows that we need to be rooted to see "life to the full" come about. The Gospel of Luke stresses the role of prayer in Jesus’ life. Jesus often goes off to pray, reconnecting himself with his "Abba Father" (Lk 6:12, 9:18, 11:1). Next to Jesus, we have much more reason to spend time with God and grow in our personal spiritual lives. There is need to continually reestablish ourselves. I would also like to call attention to the end of the "fruits" passage: "Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other." It is necessary for all parts to work together, and if they aren’t, then we should check where our roots are so that fruit can grow again. Here at EMU, we have the spectrum of the peace and justice side and the spiritual side. It is easy to get caught up in "one or the other" of these directions. To be only concerned with peace and justice is draining and empty, and we can become spiritually overweight if lacking "exercise" of our faith. I encourage you to be all of the spectrum. Each area has a very important role and must be present. And like the guitar played carefully, it sounds beautiful. Humans: More than Biology 1.18.03 journal Response to Mr. Arbough’s workshop on counseling There are some very good things about counseling. There are some practical things you can do to be a better listener, ask better questions, etc. That makes sense to me. But I think there definitely more to it that the science and methodology of sociology and psychology seem to not address entirely through these counseling one-on-one’s. More than a product of strategy I react against implementation of formula to produce a social result. It seems fake. Life is so much more complicated than that. It is relationships. It takes time. It is hard and unpredictable. This comes back to the fact that humans are more than biology. More than a product of science to be who they are. The essence of humans is we are created by God, and in the image of God. We can not come to understand God completely, so we will never understand humans completely. This doesn’t mean of course, that we abandon study of humans. We study God even though we will never grasp him. But our academic work must move us toward truth, not trying to create truth. So what if we study psychology and see patterns that humans consistently react in a similar way to a specific cause. What do these patterns tell us? It helps us live better with others and it helps us know more of ourselves as who we are. The parallel can again be drawn to our study of God, who as we understand more, our greater knowledge and faith enables us to live more effective and godly lives. The final line is that we are humans, created and complicated. To deny the essence of humans that is greater than biology is to deny a central part of humans, and is counterproductive in understanding who we are.