Uncategorized

The wedding feast from a different perspective

/ Martin / Leave a comment

Richard Passmore recently posted an interesting interpretation of the Parable of the Wedding Feast (Matthew 22) on his Sunday Papers blog:

Just looked at this parable with a group and started with the question where is God in the parable?

If see God as with the poor and marginalised he is in the highways and byways. Using this as the startpoint you don’t have the option of seeing the king as god or the son as Jesus and could see the parable as a critique of organized religion or power.

The king is keen to make alliances with the rich farmers and businessmen so invites them to the party to impress them, they are obviously powerful as they have the opportunity and means to kill the servants the king first sent, and the king needs to subdue these people after they killed the servants by the use of force with armies not just a couple of people.

Then in order to not be seen as a loser the king needs to have some people come to the party so invites (coerces?) poorer people to attend. Tradition at the time suggests the grooms father provides the right clothes for the party guests but one person refuses to wear the clothes from the manipulative, politically savvy, violent and coercive monarch. One person refuses to play the game by the rules of the powerful and is cast out into the darkness with the outcasts.

Here we see Jesus as someone not willing to go along with the power plays of the day, someone who stands up for justice, who reads the motives of the powerful and stands outside of those systems. The kingdom is heaven is about putting other people first, standing up for righteousness, speaking out for the voiceless and living in a way that is radically different to (the) established ways of the world.

Interesting stuff.

Passmore sees Jesus as the one cast out of the party rather than the one in whose honour the party is being given!

If you think about it, this interpretation does sort of fit in with the Parable of the Tenants recorded the passage before it in Matthew 22…..

Any thoughts?

Read Richard Passmore’s article here – and don’t forget to read the comments 🙂

HT: Jonny Baker

Why, God, Why? Suffering & God’s Glory

/ Martin / Leave a comment

Suffering_jesus

Encouraging thoughts from Jeremy Berg on the glorifying of God through suffering:

When bad things happen in this world, and unjust suffering befalls the innocent, we often jump to the ‘Why’ question first.  The disciples lived in a world where it was popular to believe that disease, birth defects, and other forms of suffering were punishment for sin — either the person suffering or his parents.

Today, many assume the same thing: This suffering must somehow be God’s punishment. But this is not the kind of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ.  In this story, Jesus is asked why this man is blind – why, why, why?  Good question, yes; but wrong focus as far as Jesus is concerned.

Jesus doesn’t answer the ‘why’ question.  He instead focuses on what possible good, if any, can be made of this unfortunate situation.  The Bible teaches a different world view than the one of Karma or angry vindictive gods sending disease to punish sin……

We can bring … much glory to God when … in the crucible of suffering and pain, we continue to trust God and commend ourselves to his mercy.  For we serve a God whose greatest moment of glory and deepest display of love came during the most horrific moment of suffering of all — the Cross.

For those who are currently in the dark place of pain and suffering, remember that’s where God is able to meet us most powerfully and intimately.

He posts a great quote from Douglas John Hall which is worth repeating:

“The theology of Bethlehem and Golgotha—that is, of the enfleshment and the cross-bearing of the divine Word—directs us from the lonely and morbid contemplation of our own real suffering to the suffering of God in solidarity with us. Because God is “with us,” our suffering, though abysmally real, is given both a new perspective and a new meaning—and the prospect of transformation. Not through power but through participation; not through might but through self-emptying, “weak” love is the burden of human suffering engaged by the God of this faith tradition. Engaged is, I think, the right word. It implies that God meets, takes on, takes into God’s own being, the burden of our suffering, not by a show of force which could destroy the sinner with the sin, but by assuming a solidary responsibility for the contradictory and confused admixture that is our life” (God & Human Suffering: An Exercise in the Theology of the Cross, 113).

I love the thought that transformation of character takes place because God ‘engages’ with us in our suffering – how wonderful is that!

Read Jeremy’s full article here

Photo by Thomas Quine

Rethinking evangelism

/ Martin / Leave a comment

Frank Viola posted an interesting and challenging article about missional evangelism not so long back:

With few exceptions, every traditional church I’ve ever been a part of emphasized evangelism to be God’s grand goal. And every believer was divinely obligated to share the gospel with lost souls.

As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, this sentiment is fairly recent, harkening back to the teachings of D.L. Moody. Moody, who was a gifted evangelist, had his paradigm circulate through mainstream evangelicalism through Bible colleges all across America. (Moody Bible Institute was among the very first). His paradigm is now in the drinking water of modern-day evangelicalism.

A number of my friends on the missional church scene continue to work from D.L.  Moody’s paradigm despite that it’s been publicly refuted scores of times.

Last year, I was flipping through the TV channels and came across a very well-known pastor telling his congregation about the desperate need for them to evangelize. He went on and on, warning them that if they didn’t tell others about Jesus and bring them into the church, the building they were all sitting in would be converted into a furniture store. He told stories about this happening with other churches he knew of. He then went on to tell them that his ministry as pastor is to teach the sheep and motivate them to go out and bring others into the sheepfold. The saving of lost souls was their complete responsibility. If the church failed in this and the building was lost, it was their fault.

With every word, the guilt and condemnation piled higher upon the heads of God’s people in that audience. I felt sickened. Yet they took it like good Christians, and I suspect that it wasn’t the first time…..

Read the full article here.

I have deliberately linked to this article a few weeks after it was posted – mainly because I wanted to see how the comments developed.  They are definately worth the read – so make sure you get through them as well as the article itself.

Accountability Groups – an update (1)

/ Martin / 1 Comment

Ltg-triangle

Just over a year ago I posted an article on this blog about Accountability Group Questions.

The main purpose of the original post was to summarise some of the lists of accountability questions that have been used over the past few hundred years within a small group discipleship setting, because, at the time, I was investigating lists of questions that could be used to foster accountability within my own discipleship group.

The questions that I decided to use were the Church Multiplication Associates ten questions listed on the Life Transformation Group (LTG) ‘red’ card, which are as follows:

1. Have you been a testimony this week to the greatness of Jesus Christ with both your words and actions?

2. Have you been exposed to sexually alluring material or allowed your mind to entertain inappropriate thoughts about someone who is not your spouse this week?

3. Have you lacked any integrity in your financial dealings this week, or coveted something that does not belong to you?

4. Have you been honouring, understanding and generous in your important relationships this past week?

5. Have you damaged another person by your words, either behind their back or face-to-face?

6. Have you given in to an addictive behaviour this week? Explain.

7. Have you continued to remain angry toward another?

8. Have you secretly wished for another’s misfortune so that you might excel?

9. Did you finish your reading this week and hear from the Lord? What are you going to do about it?

10. Have you been completely honest with me?

The LTG approach focusses on what is catagorised by Neil Cole as the ‘DNA‘ of the gospel – Divine Truth (D), the repeated reading of 20 to 30 chapters of the Bible on a week-to-week basis in order to hear God speak through scripture, Nurturing Relationships (N), accountability with one or two others in a small group setting and Apostolic Mission (A), prayer for others with the deliberate expectation of sharing the good news of Jesus with them through ‘incarnational’ witness.

I will openly admit that adopting this approach has revolutionised my Christian walk, brought me closer to my Lord on a daily basis, and made me much more conscious of my selfishness and sinful motives and actions.  It is actually quite amazing that it does this – and this is not only my experience but also the experience of a number of other people I know who have subsequently started or joined LTGs as a result of our first group a year ago.

One thing, however, that I want to highlight is how, between us, we have ‘developed’ the questions to fit our own use and purpose.  We haven’t changed them, as such.  This was a deliberate decision, mainly because we knew that we would be tempted to change or remove the more challenging ones.  However, we have developed or more specifially, embellished how we ask the questions in order to make them more wide ranging and all-encompassing.

Most of the people who have joined or started our LTGs, so far, are more mature Christians, or at least have been Christians for a number of years.  As such, the feedback is that although the questions are all relevant, most of them seem to have a negative (or at least neutral) rather than a positive slant ie checking to make sure you haven’t done something bad rather than encouraging you to do something good.  This is fine, and certainly from my own experience the questions have become a constant reminder for me to stop and think before I act, making me much more aware of what I do and how I treat others.  But, as I and others with me have realised, they end up acting as a buffer to stop destructive and sinful behaviour rather than a springboard to enourage constructive and compassionate action.

Therefore, for each of the questions we have added a counter-question to spir us on to perform ‘good deeds’ through active forgiveness, mercy and grace, generosity, and deliberate compassion and encouragement etc.

For instance:

1.  Have you shown a spontaneous and/ or unwarranted kindness to someone this week?

2.  Have you valued female contributions in your life, and deliberately shown love, physical affection and care towards your wife this week?

3.  Have you been generous in your financial dealing this week, and given to others as you have seen need?

4.  Have you spent time with people you love, listened to them and valued their company this week?

5.  Have you gone out of your way to encourage someone this week?

6.  Have you celebrated overcoming addictive behaviour this week?

7.  Have you show grace and mercy to another this week?

8.  Have you blessed someone that you find difficult this week?

9.  What did you learn about Jesus this week?

10.  Is there anything we should pray about this week?

These counter-questions are not to replace the accountability questions but to add to them and encourage us to live out a life of incarnational love as well as mission – and although it’s early days, they do seem to add to the overall positive nature of hte LTG format.

What do you think?  Would you consider using similar counter-questions in your accountability groups?

 

Duke Convocation 2010

/ Martin / 1 Comment

Duke_divinity_school

Audio recordings of the main lectures and worship services from the 2010 Duke Divinity School Convocation Conference are now available.

The conference was entitled ‘The Living Witness: Tradition, Innovation and the Church‘  – the introduction to the conference on the Duke website is as follows:

How do we witness to the timeless truth of the Reign of God in this age of rapid-fire change, an age in which a cell phone is hopelessly out of date before the contract expires?

Such a challenge requires us to take risks, to innovate, and to explore our work across many disciplines – all in ways  that remain grounded in our Christian tradition and are framed by theological reflection.  Explore the future of Christian witness to God’s unfolding reign in the world alongside respected leaders and creative scholars from across the church—including Bishop N.T. Wright, journalist and author Andy Crouch, pastor Rob Bell, and Bishop Vashti McKenzie in addition to Duke Divinity faculty.

Download the various talks for free from here.