SOZO

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Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:34:04 -0800

O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from...

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 20:33:12 -0800

O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth: deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.-Lawrence Garcia

Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul?

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:06:00 -0800

Here is a great review of the book I am currently reading from Academia Church.

Momentary confession, Jesus on the pages of the Gospels—the champion for the poor and marginalized, the healer of the diseased, the denouncer of oppressive structures, and the reconstituter of communities—“Have I loved.” “But Paul?”—the author of draconian household codes, impossible ethical standards, and authorial affirming dogma—has often left me living out a type of Christianity that osculates between Jesus’ baptism and Damascus road. It is precisely such a dilemma that J.R. Daniel Kirk’s latest book Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul?: A Narrative Approach to the Problem of Pauline Christianity sets out to solve through a narrative re-reading of the Pauline corpus. Kirk states, “Such a positioning of Paul within the larger narrative sweep of Israel’s history… frames the invitation to rediscover the apostle on the following pages.”

Kirk begins this narrative rediscovery of Paul with God himself as understood not in the abstract categories of omni-this or omni-that, but “as someone who is at work within and even bound to the story of Israel.” In other words, before we can demonstrate that Paul is in continuity with Jesus’ ministry we must first ground them within the story they both understood themselves to be playing a part. This methodology is somewhat characteristic of how the rest of the chapters are constructed: (1) the story of Israel’s God and his people, (2) the story of Jesus as it relates to this foundational narrative, and (3) how Paul’s life and teaching fit neatly within the two. Albeit in a more concise manner, this is asserted by Kirk:

“For now the important takeaway is that Jesus as we meet him on the Gospels is not living out a self-contained story. He is acting out a final, climactic scene in the ongoing drama of Israel that stretches back to creation and comes to its promised resolution with his death and resurrection. And we see the same claim with Paul (15).”

It is when we place the various topics that Kirk brings to the table to be examined within this narrative framework—“Christianity as Community,” “Judgment and inclusion,” and “Liberty and Justice for All,” just to name a few—that Paul, time and again, is proven to be in harmony with Jesus as portrayed in the Gospel stories. Thus, the very things that so often characterized Jesus’ ministry that we pre-Paulinists so cherish can finally begin to shine forth from beneath the caricatures of the Apostle: justice for the poor at Corinth, inclusion of the Gentiles at Galatia, and recognition of women’s ability to play roles normally reserved for males. All actions we’d expect from our beloved Galilean! Moreover, what I appreciated as Kirk teased out this storied-coherence between Jesus and Paul was that it was done with exceptional exegesis, honesty at points of contention, familiarity with first century culture, and an open willingness to re-assess some parts of our texts, inspired as they are, which may themselves need to be rethought in light of this cruciformed narrative. Particularly striking was the conclusion in the second chapter:

“What it means, then, for us to be followers of Jesus is to live into the full potential of our God-given humanness. Or, put differently, we come more and more to bear the image of God that is the image of our older brother, Jesus. And this means that, like him, we will be agents of God’s reign. We will anticipate that not only our hearts but also our bodies, our communities, our justice systems, and our use of the earth will all become increasingly conformed to the pictures of self-giving, restorative love by which God has made himself known to the world in Christ (52).’

Perhaps, what struck me most was Kirk’s willingness to take head-on difficult topics such as women’s place in ministry and homosexuality that are inevitable subjects that must be raised in a project of this nature. Moreover, the sensitivity that Kirk illustrates while navigating between the conflicting texts, gaps in cultural milieu, and the wider Israel-shaped narrative in which our stands must make ultimate sense is nuanced and well-articulated. I can only promise that he re-confirms some positions, challenges others, and proposes all new ones that may surprise many. Nevertheless, regardless of what side of the debate you stand, one thing is for sure, that if we live out a narrative of hatred we “may even be showing ourselves disqualified for the eternal life that comes to those who love God and neighbor.” Words that should be taken with all the gravity implied in them.

Overall, this book serves as a healthy corrective for those who, like myself, see a polarized relationship between the Messiah Jesus and the Apostle Paul. If allowed to have its intended impact, what we will see in our scholarship, teaching, and preaching is the great unifying theme that the one creator God has and is inviting us all to take our role within this redemptive narrative that Jesus fulfilled with pierced hands and that Paul’s beautiful feet proclaimed. And maybe, just maybe, having finally put the book down find yourself saying, “Jesus and Paul have I loved.” I know I did.

Malcolm

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:26:05 -0800

Malcolm

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Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:27:51 -0800

What changed Paul? The finest biblical scholar of our time...

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:24:31 -0800

What changed Paul? The finest biblical scholar of our time answers the question quite clearly and wonderfully. If you do not know NT Wright you should. Do not let critics keep you from his insights.

Charlie Chaplin’s final speech in The Great Dictator.

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:46:42 -0800

Charlie Chaplin’s final speech in The Great Dictator.

The Gospel

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 22:24:25 -0800

I begin where Romans begins – with the gospel. My proposal is this. When Paul refers to ‘the gospel’, he is not referring to a system of salvation, though of course the gospel implies and contains this, nor even to the good news that there now is a way of salvation open to all, but rather to the proclamation that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth has been raised from the dead and thereby demonstrated to be both Israel’s Messiah and the world’s true Lord. ‘The gospel’ is not ‘you can be saved, and here’s how’; the gospel, for Paul, is ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’.

This announcement draws together two things, in derivation and confrontation. First, Paul is clearly echoing the language of Isaiah: the message announced by the herald in Isaiah 40 and 52 has at last arrived. Saying ‘Jesus is Messiah and Lord’ is thus a way of saying, among other things, ‘Israel’s history has come to its climax’; or ‘Isaiah’s prophecy has come true at last’. This is powerfully reinforced by Paul’s insistence, exactly as in Isaiah, that this heraldic message reveals God’s righteousness, that is, God’s covenant faithfulness, about which more anon. Second, since the word ‘gospel’ was in public use to designate the message that Caesar was the Lord of the whole world, Paul’s message could not escape being confrontative: Jesus, not Caesar, is Lord, and at his name, not that of the Emperor, every knee shall bow. This aspect lies at the heart of what I have called ‘the fresh perspective on Paul’, the discovery of a subversive political dimension not as an add-on to Paul’s theology but as part of the inner meaning of ‘gospel’, ‘righteousness’, and so on.

For Paul, the announcement or proclamation of Jesus as Lord was itself the ‘word of God’ which carried power. Putting together the various things he says about the preaching of the gospel, the word, and the work of the Spirit, we arrive at the following position: when Paul comes into a town and declares that Jesus is Lord, no doubt explaining who Jesus was, the fact and significance of his death and resurrection, and so on, then the Spirit is at work, mysteriously, in the hearts and minds of the listeners, so that, when some of them believe in Jesus, Paul knows that this is not because of his eloquence or clever argument but because the announcement of Jesus as Lord functions as (in later technical language) the means of grace, the vehicle of the Spirit. And, since the gospel is the heraldic proclamation of Jesus as Lord, it is not first and foremost a suggestion that one might like to enjoy a new religious experience. Nor is it even the take-it-or-leave-it offer of a way to salvation. It is a royal summons to submission, to obedience, to allegiance; and the form that this submission and obedient allegiance takes is of course faith. That is what Paul means by ‘the obedience of faith’. Faith itself, defined conveniently by Paul as belief that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead, is the work of the Spirit, accomplished through the proclamation. ‘No-one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.’ But this already jumps ahead to my fourth point, and before we get there we must take in the second and third.

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Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:50:33 -0800

Heaven defined

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:06:00 -0800

Heaven is God’s dimension of the created order (Genesis 1:1; Psalm 115:16; Matthew 6:9), whereas ‘earth’ is the world of space, time and matter that we know. ‘Heaven’ thus sometimes stands, reverentially, for ‘God’ (as in Matthew’s regular ‘kingdom of heaven’). Normally hidden from human sight, heaven is occasionally revealed or unveiled so that people can see God’s dimension of ordinary life (e.g. 2 Kings 6:17; Revelation 1,4-5). Heaven in the New Testament is thus not usually seen as the place where God’s people go after death; at the end, the new Jerusalem descends from heaven to earth, joining the two dimensions for ever. ‘Entering the kingdom of heaven’ does not mean ‘going to heaven after death’, but belonging in the present to the people who steer their earthly course by the standards and purposes of heaven ( cf. the Lord’s Prayer; ‘on earth as in heaven’, Matthew 6:10), and who are assured of membership in the age to come.

tinaxo: My daughters first hardcore song!!! BRUTAL!! haha

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:46:55 -0800

tinaxo:

My daughters first hardcore song!!! BRUTAL!! haha

The Kingdom New Testament

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:42:26 -0800

My wife is doing AdvoCare, check her out!

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:55:44 -0800

My wife is doing AdvoCare, check her out!

N. T. Wright on the Second Coming of Christ

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:04:00 -0800

N. T. Wright on the Second Coming of Christ

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 and "rapture"

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:29:00 -0800

Paul is using familiar imagery of a greeting committee going out to meet a returning king and to welcome him into the city. It is much like the liturgy we find in Psalm 24:7-10. As the king and his entourage return to the city, the herald goes before the king and blows the trumpet to alert those on the city walls that the king has arrived and should be properly welcomed. Then the greeting committee goes to meet the king outside the city walls and he and those with him are ushered into the city.

Paul’s converts in Thessalonike would be likely familiar with his imagery of a royal return since they knew very well of the history of Philip and Alexander, the kings of Macedon.

This text, like all these other texts, must be interpreted in terms of what the first audience was likely to understand them to mean, not in light of later Christian theological schemas of which early Christians were ignorant.

As for the ever popular issue of “rapture,” it needs to be recognized that this theology did not arise before the nineteenth century as part of what is called dispensationalism and was popularized through the Scofield Reference Bible. There is no historical evidence that the early church believed in such a concept. To the contrary, the early church took texts like Mark 13:20 to mean that the church would go through the final tribulation while awaiting the second coming of Jesus.

Excerpt from

Shaping The Understanding

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:49:12 -0800

From Pisteos International Daily

as we venture forth into the new year, a helpful reminder about how to approach the New Testament, with an eye towards the original receiving communities…

As responsible readers and interpreters of Scripture, we approach the text of the New Testament letters in the manner of first century hearers in a predominantly oral/aural culture, and sensibly hear them as direct and pointed communications that are meant to critique and praise, while at a time and place that would have been entirely appropriate to the early church, which was the table of fellowship, as Christ’s people sought to distinguish themselves from their communities through their faithful enactments of the wonderful vision of the eschatological messianic banquet (heavily influenced by Isaiah). Correct placement of the meal table in the life of the church, and a highlighting of its importance for faith and practice from the time of Jesus until now, is so crucial because it is an overt and subversive confession of the rule of God in Christ that is being portrayed by this relatively simple action. Unfortunately, most of us have given far too little thought to this idea.

This occasions a quick reminder that it is not only the letters that make a request to be heard from such a position, but the Gospels are also designed to be heard as theo-dramas—-scripts for performance through recitation—-that will instruct their hearers about Jesus in a standard and uniform way. Though in this day we have the privilege of approaching all of Scripture privately and individually, the Scriptures were to be heard in a community—-a community that shared a basic story that stretched back to the first words of Genesis. Jews who heard the content of the Gospels and the letters of the New Testament were thoroughly immersed in the story of their people, shaped by what seemed like an endless procession of exile and exodus. Gentiles who heard letters and the stories that would come to be codified in the Gospels were in need of instruction (and incorporation) in the story of Israel (as the family of God, and not simply Israel per se) so that they could make sense of what they were hearing. That is the position in which the vast majority of Christians find themselves. We must bear in mind that all would hear the words that would eventually come to be called the New Testament, as part of a community shaped by Greco-Roman culture and customs, in a world ruled by a Caesar.

If we do not, or if we are unwilling to make the effort to understand the world in which the church was birthed, shaped as it was by Greek culture and Roman power, we will be lost. If we do not, or if we are unwilling to make the effort to understand the world of Israel and Judaism into which Jesus spoke, which demands our utmost attention and concern so as to avoid a lazy and misguided retrojection of our own culturally-shaped worldviews (whatever that culture may be), then we will merely find a Jesus of our own making, constructing power-exerting truth claims that are designed to benefit ourselves, our cultures, our countries, and our bank accounts, and that exist primarily to justify the ability to go about our own merry way, with little to no modification of the ways in which we interact with this world.

If we allow ourselves to form spiritual opinions that do not take into account of, through the hard-won knowledge of broad-ranging and far-reaching study, the social, historical, political, economic, and cultural norms of Jesus’ day (and Abraham’s day, Moses’ day, David’s day, Daniel’s day), and instead, retreat into the weak and indefensible position of being led into all knowledge by the Spirit (Jesus is reported to have spoken of being led into all knowledge by the Spirit, and He spoke such words to a group that was well aware of and ensconced within the story of Israel, past and present), then our opinions will be nearly worthless. They will be nothing more than a personal mythology of God that causes us to hear the words of Scripture from within the echo-chamber of our own mind, reinforcing, without challenge, subjective definitions and notions of spirituality and of that which is pleasing to God and demanded by Him. Too often, this leads to attempts to control the actions, behaviors, social interactions (and probably money) of members of a church community, which is far less complicated then instructing so as to inspire the members of a church community to figure out how they can go into this world as effective ambassadors of the kingdom of God, serving others in the way that Jesus suggested was tantamount to serving Him (providing water, food, and clothing, while visiting the sick and those in prison).

A complacent and ironically dogmatic ignorance of the world into which Jesus spoke, and of that world which also shaped the words that Jesus used and the way that His words would be understood, often leads to an unwarranted separation from society—-a retreat, waving the white flag of surrender, when the responsibility is to be bold ambassadors for God’s kingdom through the spoken and lived-out proclamation that Jesus is Lord, and an ungrounded and unfounded insistence on personal holiness (defined by a series of “do’s” and “don’t’s”) constructed at the whims of an authoritarian figure. Rarely, will self-sacrifice be the model of the church community that is asked to prize ignorance. In such a community, it is likely that the only self-sacrifice demanded will be that of the community sacrificing its goods (time and money) for the enrichment of its head, as an “us against the world” mentality is fostered and new covenant boundary markers are raised (in defiance of Jesus) as an impenetrable wall that does little more than impede the advance of God’s kingdom. The banner of such a community becomes their own perceived spiritual superiority, which flies in the face of the ideals of the believing community espoused and encouraged in the New Testament.

2012 Declaration

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 11:14:23 -0800

“This is what it looks like, today, when Jesus is running the world. This after all, what he told us to expect. The poor in spirit will be making the Kingdom of heaven happen. The meek will be taking over the earth, so gently that the powerful won’t notice until it’s too late. The peacemakers will be putting the arms manufacturers out of business. Those who are hungry and thirsty for God’s justice will be analyzing government policy and legal rulings and speaking up on behalf of those at the bottom of the pile. The merciful will be surprising everybody by showing that there is a different way to do human relations other than being judgmental, eager to put everyone else down. “You are the light of the world,” said Jesus. “You are the salt of the earth.” He was announcing a program yet to be completed. He was inviting his hearers, then and now, to join him in making it happen. This is, quite simply, what it looks like when Jesus is enthroned.” -Simply Jesus p231

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Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:39:52 -0800

Salvation Means Creation Healed

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:32:32 -0800

The Bible promises the renewal of all creation—a new heaven and earth—based on the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For centuries this promise has been sidelined or misunderstood because of the church’s failure to grasp the full meaning of biblical teachings on creation and new creation.
The Bible tells the story of the broken and restored relationship between God, people, and land, not just God and people. This is the full gospel, and it has the power to heal the church’s long theological divorce between earth and heaven. Jesus’ resurrection in the power of the Holy Spirit is the key, and the church as Christ’s body is the primary means by which God is reconciling all things through Jesus Christ. Jesus’ ultimate healing of all creation is the great hope and promise of the gospel, and he calls the church to be his healing community now through evangelism, discipleship, and prophetic mission.

New Exodus (Excerp from "Simply Jesus")

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 07:59:00 -0800

This would, in the other words be the new Exodus. Work through the seven themes once more. The tyrant would not be the Jerusalem leaders (though they, in love with their own wealth and prestige, were in league with the dark powers), not even Rome (though Rome would nail him to the cross), but all the powers of the Accuser, up to and including death itself. The leader would be, of course, Jesus himself; that, we must assume, is why he chose to make his decisive move at Passover-time, knowing that it would lead to the death of the firstborn, the beloved son, a hint he dropped in one of his last parables (Mark 12:6-8). The vocation would be the vocation he had marked out for Israel in the Sermon on the Mount: going the second mile, turning the other cheek, loving enemies, and praying for them even as they nailed him to the cross. The inheritance would not, now, be a restored holy land, but the whole world, the uttermost parts of the earth, which had been promised to the Messiah as his inheritance and then promised again to the servant as the realm to which he, through suffering, would bring God’s justice.