God’s Fool

Now Jeremiah wasn’t cool, they all said Jeremiah was a fool. And Ezekiel wasn’t cool, they all said Ezekiel was a fool. And Isaiah wasn’t cool, they all said Isaiah was a fool. And Jesus wasn’t cool, they all said Jesus was a fool. And if Jesus wasn’t cool, and if Jesus was a fool, then I don’t want to be cool.

(Razor Light, Waterdeep)

You know the drill. If you could have dinner with one person, dead or alive, blah blah blah. For me, it’s always been an easy choice. I would love to dine with St. Francis of Assisi. He is my spiritual hero. And I don’t think it would take much to prepare the dinner, either. Perhaps some bread, a little wine. Nothing more.

Many consider Francis the most Christlike person since, well, Christ. There are many myths about Francis, such as him talking a wolf out of eating the sheep in a nearby village. Or the quote mistakenly attributed to Francis: “Preach the Gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.” Francis certainly used words when he preached the Gospel. But before he could speak, he had to gather a crowd.

His usual method was to enter a village and find the town square where he would begin to ring a cowbell and dance around like a wild man. Once he had attracted a crowd, Francis would teach about Jesus, about the joys of following Jesus in poverty and simplicity. Most people considered Francis at worst a mad man, and at best a simpleton. He was called by many a fool—a word that Francis liked. “God’s fool,” he said. “I welcome being called God’s fool.”

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Exquisitely Suited

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country, who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them. And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability; and immediately he went on a journey. Then he who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and made another five talents. And likewise he who had received two gained two more also. But he who had received one went and dug in the ground, and hid his lord’s money” (Matthew 25:14-18).

Winter's Whites

“Whatever God creates is exquisitely suited to its end.” These words by Andrew Murray have been ringing in my head and heart since I read them a few weeks ago. Packed up in them is so much rich encouragement — something we all hunger for and need. The struggles of life tend to erode any assurance we might have that we are formed in the hands of the Holy One for his pleasure and unique purpose and that in our formation he has fitted us perfectly to accomplish the deepest desires of his heart.

It’s easy to forget or ignore the talents or gifts he has bound up in us when the necessities of earning livings, paying bills and caring for our people press in on us, though he calls us to such practical pursuits in certain seasons of life to be sure. Perhaps we are painfully aware of the thing inside us that keeps demanding to be unburied, but we sheepishly throw a little more dirt over it and turn away. We are busy and besides, bringing it out and investing it will only draw scrutiny and we might fail. Maybe we have gone so far as to have fearlessly cooperated for an extended period in what God gave us to serve him with only to find it hasn’t exactly been a roaring success.

A few years ago at a time when I was tentatively scraping the dirt away from a talent I’d buried years before, I met someone who inspired me in a multitude of ways — from his walk with Christ, to a lengthy perseverance in his art, to a steady humility and a passion for the beauty of God’s creation. I also found him to be a man who did what few do and that is to take the scary, unsure route in life.Continue reading “Exquisitely Suited”

Church Year Spirituality: Practical Wisdom

By Chaplain Mike

The freest time in our adult life was after we were married and before we had children. Having graduated from college, we were no longer bound by a school schedule. We lived in a small, iconic Vermont village where the pace of life was slow, the program of our church modest, and our income too low to allow the pursuit of costly activities. We had no TV. Extended family demands were few. We could schedule vacations almost any time we desired and we had few events to attend. Life was simple, our calendar was uncomplicated.

We moved to Chicago after our first child was born. It was a new life, and calendar demands began to accumulate as our family grew. I was in seminary and working part-time. My wife worked full time. We had to arrange childcare. It wasn’t long before I was back in pastoral ministry, and we started dealing with school schedules for our children.

After we relocated again, this time to Indianapolis, white space on the calendar became more and more rare. I was on staff in a much busier church, our children became involved in various sports and extracurricular activities, and for the next fifteen years, the numerous calendars that merged into and became “the family calendar” ruled our life.

The school year calendar has been the basic template. Each new year began in late summer/early fall. It progressed through fall break to Thanksgiving, and then into the holiday program season, culminating the week of Christmas and New Year’s. School resumed in winter and kept us busy until Spring Break, which was also the time for Holy Week and Easter events. As school concluded in May and June, end of school year programs as well as spring and summer sports put additional demands on our schedule. And then we had to make arrangements for what the children would do over summer break. A few weeks in midsummer was the only “free” time—the only time available to get away or at least breathe for any length of time before it all started again.

To this day, I find myself shaped by that calendar. I can’t help feeling that fall is the beginning of the year, and the summer its end. The winter holidays mark the annual half-way point. This is the basic pattern for families in our culture. For the vast majority of my life it has been the pattern I’ve followed. Year after year after year, this schedule has formed my life’s habits.

That is what calendars do. Continue reading “Church Year Spirituality: Practical Wisdom”

Church Year Spirituality: The Main Thing

By Chaplain Mike

For to me, to live is Christ (Phil 1:21)

And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. (Heb 12:1-2, NLT)

Joan Chittister calls following the Church Year, “the attempt to live the Jesus life over and over again all the years of our lives.” It can enable us to pursue what Michael Spencer called, “Jesus-shaped spirituality.”

In his book Mere Churchianity, Michael compared the evangelical church today to a pecan pie without pecans. We advertise that we’re the real deal, but look closely, and you may discover that Jesus has left the building.

What evangelicals in North America call Christianity is largely disconnected from Jesus as he appears in the four Gospels. I have argued for the past decade that American Christianity has evolved into a movement that Jesus would not recognize if he were to show up next Sunday.

…Like the ancient Hebrews, evangelicals are in the midst of a kind of exodus. It’s a mass Jesus defection, a sweeping Jesus Disconnect that is sending former evangelicals to the ranks of nonbelief or toward other Christian options such as Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

…It’s not that evangelicals preach about Muhammad or Buddha or Krishna. It’s more that they are interested in so many other things, like gays, the culture war, the coming election, creeping socialism, how to raise better kids, how to beat stress, gays, and how many people got baptized last month. They also are intent on other things such as vision, leadership, and destiny. Stop by any number of evangelical churches on Sunday morning, and you’ll hear about all of these in terms that seldom mention Jesus and that totally miss what the Jesus movement is supposed to be about.

We haven’t been keeping the main thing the main thing. I believe that ordering our personal and corporate lives according to the Church Year can help us do that. It can help us keep our eyes on Jesus.Continue reading “Church Year Spirituality: The Main Thing”

Church Year Spirituality: Living in God’s Story

Church Year Banners, by Chinn

By Chaplain Mike

In our introduction to this series, “Church Year Spirituality,” I gave five primary reasons why I think it advantageous for Christians to form their spiritual lives — their walk with God through Christ — around the liturgical year.

  1. It enables us to live in God’s story.
  2. It keeps the main thing the main thing.
  3. It recognizes that one’s calendar forms one’s life.
  4. It links personal spirituality with worship, family, and community.
  5. It provides a basis of unity and common experience for Christians everywhere.

Today, let’s talk about the first point; what it means to be people who are…

Living in God’s Story

Spiritual theology, using Scripture as text, does not so much present us with a moral code and tell us, “Live up to this,” nor does it set out a system of doctrine and say, “Think like this.” The biblical way is to tell a story and invite us, “Live into this – this is what it looks like to be human in this God-made and God-ruled world; this is what is involved in becoming and maturing as a human being.” We don’t have to fit into prefabricated moral and mental or religious boxes before we are admitted into the company of God. We are taken seriously just as we are and given place in his story – for it is, after all, God’s story. None of us is the leading character in the story of our lives. God is the larger context and plot in which all our stories find themselves. (Eugene Peterson)

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Church Year Spirituality

By Chaplain Mike

Next Sunday is the final Lord’s Day in the Church Year. Christians who follow the liturgical calendar will begin a new year of living in the Gospel with the commencement of Advent on Nov. 28.

The diagram on the right gives an overview of the annual Church calendar.

  • Advent is the season when we prepare for Christ’s coming. (4 weeks)
  • Christmastide is the season when we celebrate Christ’s incarnation. (12 days)
  • In Epiphany, we remember how Christ made God’s glory known to the world. (up to 9 weeks)
  • The Lenten season leads us to the Cross, the climactic event in Holy Week, which concludes Lent. (40 days plus Sundays)
  • Eastertide (the Great 50 Days) celebrates Christ’s resurrection, new life, and his ascension to glory. It concludes on the 50th day, Pentecost, the day of the Spirit’s outpouring.
  • The Season after Pentecost (or Trinity, or Ordinary Time) is the time of the church, when by the Spirit we live out the life of the Gospel in community and in the world. (up to 29 weeks)

I don’t know why so many Christian groups think they need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to “discipleship programs.” This time-tested annual pattern for the life of individual believers and the Church together that is focused on Christ, organized around the Gospel, and grounded in God’s grace, is sheer genius. It is simple enough for a child. It offers enough opportunities for creativity and flexibility that it need never grow old. Each year offers a wonderful template for learning to walk with Christ more deeply in the Gospel which brings us faith, hope, and love.Continue reading “Church Year Spirituality”

Jonathan Fisk on Luke 21

The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem A.D. 70, Roberts (1850)

Today’s Gospel
• Luke 21:5-19

I had a busy day Saturday on call for my work, so I did not get to hunker down and deal with the text satisfactorily to give you a decent message this Sunday. So…

Here’s a message by Rev. Jonathan Fisk of St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church in Springfield, PA, which I think gives a good take on Jesus’ emphasis in Luke 21. The style is contemporary; the message is solid. Premillennial dispensationalists—this is not your grandfather’s prophetic discourse.

You can subscribe to Rev. Fisk’s YouTube channel and view more of his messages here.

Luke 21:5-19 (NIV)—

Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. But Jesus said, “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.”

“Teacher,” they asked, “when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?”

He replied: “Watch out that you are not deceived. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and, ‘The time is near.’ Do not follow them. When you hear of wars and uprisings, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away.”

Then he said to them: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.

“But before all this, they will seize you and persecute you. They will hand you over to synagogues and put you in prison, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name. And so you will bear testimony to me. But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. Everyone will hate you because of me. But not a hair of your head will perish. Stand firm, and you will win life.

iMonk Classic: The Little Brothers of Saint Archie Bunker

Classic iMonk Post
by Michael Spencer
Undated

We didn’t crawl out from under no rocks. We didn’t have no tails. And we didn’t come from monkeys you atheist pinko meathead.

It ain’t supposed to make sense; it’s faith. Faith is something that you believe that nobody in his right mind would believe.”

• Archie Bunker

I used to watch “All In The Family” with my dad. It was strange. Strange because my dad was the virtual clone of Archie Bunker (and my mother the twin of Edith), and all the comedy- which I increasingly found both hilarious and truthful- usually went right past him.

Archie was perhaps the greatest practitioner of the art of argumentation ever portrayed on stage or screen. He had all the necessary gifts. He believed himself to be more knowledgeable on any subject than anyone else in the room. He had a vocabulary that ran circles around a normal person. He was never daunted by logic, compassion, or mercy. No, he pressed on, wagging his finger–or cigar–in your face, making his points, calling Mike a meathead or the neighbor an idiot or worse.

Archie loved an argument the way most people love dessert. At the slightest provocation, he bullishly inserted his opinion and denigrated yours. Reality, facts, common sense, sheer numbers of opponents—none of it made a dent in Archie. Inventing and redefining terms was an art form with him. It was Archie who explained that male behavior was determined by khromostones, and later discovered both his-mones and her-mones. When he found humility, it was always his special variety: “The only thing that holds a marriage together is the husband bein’ big enough to keep his mouth shut, to step back and see where his wife is wrong.”

I’ve decided that Archie Bunker is the patron saint of Christians who can’t stop making their point. Christians who love to argue. Christians who can’t stand it that someone somewhere disagrees with them. Christians who are caught up in theological controversy like University of Kentucky basketball fans are caught up in defending their team. Christians who have to correct everyone the way obsessed Lord of the Rings fans must correct any deviation from the Holy Canons of Tolkien. Christians who can’t rest easy if someone somewhere is not understanding, reading, or getting “it,” whatever “it” happens to be.Continue reading “iMonk Classic: The Little Brothers of Saint Archie Bunker”

Saturday Ramblings 11.13.10

Jingle, jangle—hear that ramble? It’s time for Saturday Ramblings.

Tales from the crypt? At Rome’s Catholic Church, the youth pastor has turned a crypt into a night club, complete with a live music stage and a bar. Gee, Martha—we might all become Catholics yet.

Or maybe we’ll just become Irish, like Bono. Just in case any pre-teens exist who don’t know who Bono is, a new book is out to explain that the superstar musician has “faith in God.” Sigh…

Continue reading “Saturday Ramblings 11.13.10”