To God, though we have lost our way in life, we are never forgotten. God has a way of nudging back on life’s pathway. God utilizes people, providential situations, and circumstances to get our attention. There can always be a “welcome home” party for us in God’s eyes.
Author of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, J.R.R. Tolkien, once wrote,
Podcast: “Seeking Unity, Healing Wounds” – John 17:20-26
In the midst of the conflict of politics, economics, and culture, the idea of unity in American life might seem impossible to many. We watch television as pundits argue and clash over ideology and policy. We think our country and community is divided. Unity is impossible. However, in Jesus’ high priestly prayer he prayers for his disciples and for us – the believers who are not yet born! Jesus prayed that we all may be one. The misconception is that unity is when we all agree. Jesus shows us that unity is truly a community – a people called by God to be faithful to God and to one another despite conflict, disappointment, and fear. True unity is community lived out. The Christian community is one when we join in the work of loving, caring, and serving one another in Christ and not agreeing on every point of ideology. Differences will abound but it is the love of God and neighbor that makes us one.
T“The church is constituted as a new people who have been gathered from the nations to remind the world that we are in fact one people. Gathering, therefore, is an eschatological act as it is the foretaste of the unity of the communion of the saints.”
― Stanley Hauerwas, In Good Company: The Church as Polis
This article originally appeared with the Christian Citizen
When I was a pastor in a small town, there was a great sense of community. There were Memorial Day remembrances, firehouse breakfasts, ham dinners, the Holiday Parade, the annual Day of Prayer, Rotary meetings and community trash pick-up days. Many participated in community events regularly. However, a segment of the community was absent from those events. They were people from the emerging community.
What is an emerging community?
As a pastor, it was easy to see and meet the visible people in the community: the mayor, fire chief, bank manager, restaurant owner, school administrators and business association representative. Those visible people in the community were easy to identify and were regularly a part of community events.
As the years went by, I began to learn about people in the emerging community — people who were not easily seen but growing in numbers and presence. Individuals and people in the emerging community did not look or act like people in the visible community.
A pastor’s calling requires a pastor to be at a community’s connection points. Pastors ought to place themselves in places and spaces in town meetings, community groups, nonprofits and schools — the visible community. There are also times a pastor looks for the edges of the community, or places of growth. The new local moms’ group, the new restaurant that attracts people in their 20s, the growing food pantry or the recently moved assistance office — the emerging community.
Aspects of the emerging community that have a visible and immediate impact often are a welcomed presence. The new coffee shop that fosters connection points for people to meet and talk. The new workout studio that encourages people to be physically healthy, while joining others on the same journey. The new comic book shop that brings additional foot traffic to the streets. The community garden club that beautifies the town. The new neighborhood that is built.
The growth in the emerging community is not always welcomed by members of the visible community. Cries of protest ensued when a nonprofit sought to move into town to aid low- to mid-income families. Some members of the visible community expressed fear and anxiety about tax-revenue loss, zoning violations, decreased parking availability and increased car traffic. It took lawyers hundreds of hours and a state judge to decide that the nonprofit was allowed to plant itself in the community. It was a painful process.
Emerging communities often have different ethnicities, economic makeup, religions, cultural values or family status than that of the visual community. It is uncomfortable and risky to place yourself into an emerging community that looks or acts nothing like your own. Pastors and church leaders are called to such places, as Christ was called to such places. Jesus entered into emerging communities that had Gentiles, Roman officials, soldiers, sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes. His religious contemporaries and members of the visual community did not approve. However, Jesus often came into the emerging community with no agenda. He sat, ate and listened. Only when a challenge or injustice arose did Jesus bring in teaching or a guiding moral principle, usually with story. He sought to make relationships, rather than fulfill a goal of setting priorities.
Churches, pastors and church leaders must understand that the way forward for a church is to be in touch with the visual community and the emerging community. The missional nature of the New Testament calls all who claim Christ to be in those times and places of discomfort to bridge relationships and connections that yield spiritual fruit down the road.
As the nation is still comprehending how a person could walk into a church and kill over 25 people, The First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas is in grief and shock. Another American shooting – the worst in history. In 2015, Dylan Roof walked into a Charleston, SC church and killed nine people. The number of faith-based violence has increased from 22 deaths a year in 1991 to 74 in 2014. As the gun debate heats back up there is another debate stirring in congregations: Do we increase our church security? Do we need to be armed?
Amazon announced a new product and service to their line-up: Amazon Key. Amazon describes their new product as the way to, “get your Amazon packages securely delivered just inside your front door. Plus, grant access to the people you trust, like your family, friends, dog walker, or house cleaner.” This is one of many products that have taken over our lives by Amazon or also known as the Amazonification of retail… and life.
Amazon has started putting large retailers out of business. With their free two-day delivery with Amazon Prime, tablets that push notifications of sales, Echo devices that can order Amazon products, and other devices that can order via their website, Amazon has put their delivery method in the hands and heads of people around the world. Amazon has created a virtual e-commerce ecosystem that we can’t escape. Now, Amazon is testing drones to deliver products faster. Amazon not only sells products but now services of professional cleaning, installation, plumbing and more on their website.
This is a takeover of Amazon’s brand force. It’s the Amazonification of life: a total and complete delivery system of goods, services, and information. Amazon has disrupted the way people get their “stuff”.
Amazon’s virtual staying power taps into something that is happening in every facet of our lives: virtual delivery and engagement of life… including our faith. Amazon shows us how Christianity has been disrupted by factors and forces of our technological and mobile connected world.
Traditionally, John the Gospel writer was the disciple whom Jesus loved. However, upon closer study, there is another follower of Jesus that is a stronger candidate that you have likely not considered: Lazarus.
The identity of the “beloved disciple” or the one John calls “disciple whom Jesus loved” is unnamed and has remained a mystery. Irenaeus and Eusebius both identified the beloved disciple as John as early as the second and fourth century respectively. Scholars, such as Raymond Brown, have written heavily upon John as the one whom Jesus loved. Despite the fact John does not self-identify nor names himself as the writer of the Gospel of John or the beloved disciple, we have relied on tradition and church history.
If we are to rely on the tradition of the identification of the beloved disciple, what about the internal evidence of scripture? Surprisingly, scripture does offer dramatic clues to the mystery of the beloved disciple.
If you have been to church in some point in your lifetime during Advent or Christmas, you’ve most likely seen an adorable Christmas play or pageant. Poor Joseph and Mary, often in bathrobes, are portrayed by children who are turned away by an “innkeeper” who lacks compassion. “No room!” is the line. The problem is, when you read the Gospel of Luke or Matthew, there’s no innkeeper or an inn. Such things are a Christmas myth.
Putting aside the adorable nature of children’s Christmas plays, the account of Jesus’ birth must be placed into context of where the birth of Christ took place: Bethlehem. The town of Bethlehem, thought to contain around 1,000 people at the time, was David’s hometown. Since it was David’s hometown, there was sure to be family present because of Joseph, along with other family, had to return to be counted for the census. We read from the King James Version of Luke 2:
4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) 5 To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. 6 And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. 7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
From the passage, we learn two things. First, Mary gave birth while in Bethlehem. Apparently, Mary and Joseph were there for some length of time. Second, Jesus was laid in a manger because there was no room in the “inn”. The trouble here is that the King James Version translates the Greek word katalumati as “inn”, but the translation of “guest room” is more accurate – as the New International Version renders the word. The interpretation of katalumati is more of a product of 16th and 17th-century European understandings of a guest room when the KJV was first published. Generally, “inns” in the time of Jesus were found in larger cities, not small towns, and inns were no place for a woman in childbirth.
We read later in Luke when Jesus eats his last supper the disciples gather in a katalumati – guest room, also translated, “upper room”:
As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters, and say to the owner of the house, “The Teacher asks, “Where is the katalumati where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?” (Luke 22:11)
In all reality, Jesus was most likely born in a house. Many assume that Jesus was born in some sort of stable, where animals were kept. However, in the time of Jesus, humble folks lived with their animals. According to ancient Near East culture expert, E. F .F. Bishop notes the the arrangement of people and animals:
“One of the Bethlehem houses with the lower section provided for the animals, with manger ‘hollowed in stone,’ the dais [or raised area] being reserved for the family. Such a manger being immovable, filled with crushed straw, would do duty for a cradle. An infant might even be left in safety, especially if swaddled, when the mother was absent on temporary business” (“Jesus of Palestine“, p. 42)
When I visited Israel in 2012, I went to Bethlehem to a site that recreated, based on historical evidence and archeology, a house that included a lower section for animals and an upper section for living quarters. At the lower portion of the house was a manager or feeding trough for the animals. After seeing such a home, the birth story of Jesus made sense – sans the inn and innkeeper.
Perhaps the strongest evidence for the myth of an “inn” in the Christmas story is that Luke uses another word for a rental inn. Luke used the Greek word, pandocheion, to describe a place one could stay for a price. In the story of the Good Samaritan we read in Luke 10:34: “He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an pandocheion (inn) and took care of him.” If there was truly no room in the “inn”, Luke would have used pandocheion in the Christmas story.
Imagine for a minute, every one of Joseph’s family is in town for the census, the house is full with guests and relatives, and Mary has to go through the very painful and messy delivery of a baby. With the guest room and main living areas full, Jesus was placed in a manager to sleep – as Luke describes. Ancient Jewish customs and cultural behaviors were not have allowed Mary to stay in an ancient version of a Motel 8. Mary was most likely cared for and surrounded by people in a time of great expectation of Jesus’ birth.
With this perspective, your Christmas nativity scene in your home or church is still accurate, but imagine it as a home – not a stable. It should give us comfort and relief knowing that after everything Mary and Joseph had been through, they were among family, and well cared for with all the extended family around to hold the newborn Christ child.
In the wake of tragedy it has become an automatic social media response for many Christians: Our thoughts and prayers are with… I know, I said it on social media after the shootings in San Bernardino, Sandy Hook, and Aurora. Maybe you were like me and wanted to express your grief and wanted to respond.
However, not everyone sees “thoughts and prayers” as a helpful expression of grief in the face of tragedy.
After the shootings in San Bernardino, The Daily News featured several Republican politicians’ Twitter posts expressing their “thoughts and prayers” for the victims with the headline “God isn’t fixing this”. The response from many Christians was sharp and curt.
It seems that mass shootings are growing. According to The Washington Post, there have been 351 mass shootings in the United States this year alone. That’s 351 “thoughts and prayers” to shooting victims on Facebook and Twitter feeds. To many observers, politicians who claim to be Christian and use “thoughts and prayers” on social media and yet do nothing about reasonable gun control laws, are seen as tone deaf.
As a pastor, I use my own Facebook and Twitter feeds to express grief, sadness, and lament in times of tragedy. I read the “God isn’t fixing this headline” and sat in contemplation. I wondered, “How does the world see Christian “thoughts and prayers” on social media? Is that all we are as followers of Jesus? Thoughts and prayers? Continue Reading…
In an age where Millennials in church are a scarcity, long term church members often find trouble with how to relate to newer church goers. No matter if the young people are Millennials, or Gen-Xers, younger church goers and members must be encouraged and allowed to take leadership roles. With 66% of Millennials in church say that churches are hypocritical, church leaders need to understand that cultural church language and behavior are important.
With all of these considerations, here’s what send Millennials in church running from churches in frustration:
The hype surrounding millennials has been heavily documented. You know the millennials. Those trophy-for-everything-kids who live with their parents. The millennials who grew up as the “me” generation. Millennials, with their technology, social media, and heavy cell phone use. As employees, millennials are high maintenance, liberal, and self-serving.
Everyone thinks they know the millennials, but they don’t. Here’s why.
It seems every year there is an outcry from Christians who bemoan culture’s lack of acceptance of Christmas displays and call it the War on Christmas. Kirk Cameron is the latest to defend Christians from a supposed secular atheist attack with a candy cane and Jesus snow globe. Even Chuck Norris is getting in on the War on Christmas with a drop kick of truth!
If there is a War on Christmas, then there must be casualties.
A War on Christmas means that people are not free to worship or celebrate Christ’s birth, right? Where are the storm troopers coming into churches and shutting the place down? Why use such charged language of “war” like “war on terror”, “war on drugs”, and now “War on Christmas”? Rumor and speculation of a “war” via talking heads does not make a War on Christmas.
The truth is that there is no War on Christmas.
Every year I struggle with a Christmas ritual that millions of parents have no problem with: a visit with Santa Claus in a season that is about Jesus. How can Jesus and Santa get along?
Why do I struggle? For some parents, Christmas and Santa Claus go together like white and red striping on candy canes. You cannot separate the two. Santa is everywhere and just about every culture. For others, Jesus and Santa are a clashing pair like fruitcake and tofu. Many Christians lament telling the myth of Santa Claus to their children because they believe it sends the wrong message of Christmas: The holiday is about getting presents from a jolly fat guy and not the celebration of Christ’s birth.
At the same time, parents do not want to be a Grinch about Santa. Nobody likes that kid in school going around telling everyone that Santa isn’t real. Parents are then confronted with the reality of explaining how and why Santa is not real. Either parents go with the flow of Santa or become Santa haters.
There is a better way to involve Santa Claus into the Christian mythos that does not sacrifice the person of Jesus Christ.
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