by Elizabeth | Apr 13, 2010 | Learning Story
For months, I have been biting off large chunks of Christopher J.H. Wright’s hefty The Mission of God. It is dense, rich, protein-laden meat for the journey of a disciple desiring the strength to walk what Nietzsche calls “a long obedience in the same direction.”*** Today, I bring a few of his thoughts on redemption and mission:
“How big is our gospel? If our gospel is the good news about God’s redemption, then the question moves on to, How big is our understanding of redemption? Mission clearly has to do with the redemptive work of God and our participation in making it known and leading people into the experience of it. “
Wright turns to the Exodus for a fuller understanding of what it meant to an Israelite to say she was redeemed:
“YHWH is not merely intent on liberating slaves but on reclaiming worshipers.”
“The spiritual dimension of the exodus, then, is that God makes it clear that his purpose in the whole process is that it should lead to the knowledge, service, and worship of the living God. The implication is that all three of these were difficult if not impossible as long as they were in the depths of bondage to Pharaoh.
In the exodus, God responded to all the dimensions of Israel’s need. God’s momentous act of redemption did not merely rescue Israel from political, economic, and social oppression and then leave them to their own devices to worship whom they pleased. Nor did God merely offer them spiritual comfort of hope for some brighter future in a home beyond the sky while leaving their historical condition unchanged. No, the exodus effected real change in the people’s real historical situation and at the same time called them into a new relationship with the living God. “
Redemption is about mission. It is exercised in our history and has implications for our past, present, and future. A disciple knows her stories of redemption. Do you remember stories of how God moved in an oppressive situation to free you from bondage so that you might know, serve, and worship Him?
***Yes, Nietzsche said this well-known phrase, and Peterson will be the first to tell you he borrowed it for his book on discipleship.
by Elizabeth | Apr 12, 2010 | Learning Story
We can’t go it alone as Christians. Christ stressed the necessity of being with fellow followers, both in his life and in his resurrection. Hear what Dietrich Bonhoeffer said:
“Christians need other Christians who will speak to them the word of God. They need them again and again when they are uncertain and downcast, for on their own they cannot help themselves without deceiving themselves about the truth….Christians come to each other only through Jesus Christ. Among people there is conflict, but ‘he is our peace’ (Eph. 2:14), says Paul of Jesus Christ, in whom the old, divided humanity has become one. Without Christ there is discord between God and humankind and among people. Christ has become the mediator and has made peace with God and among people. Without Christ we would not know God and could not call upon him or go to him. Without Christ, however, we would not know our fellow human beings, either, and could not go to them. The way to them is blocked by our own ego. Christ opened the way to God and to our sisters and brothers. Now Christians can live together in peace. They can love and serve one another, and they can become one. Only in Jesus Christ are we one. Only through him are we bound together.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I Want to Live These Days with You
by Elizabeth | Apr 10, 2010 | Learning Story
A few more thoughts on a life of discipleship:
Alan Paton, strong opponent of apartheid, was president of South African Liberal Party and Anglican clergyman. His most famous book, Cry, the Beloved Country, protests against the injustice of apartheid. He also wrote a book Instrument of Thy Peace, 21 meditations on the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. Here is an excerpt Richard Foster included in his book Spiritual Classics. It challenges us further on what it means to be a disciple:
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Prayer of St. Francis
We pray for many things, for loved ones, for one sick, for one dying, for health, for much-needed money, for success in examinations, for our country, for the peace of the world. We pray for forgiveness of sins, for conquest of one particular sin that defeats us, for help in some situation that frightens or threatens us. We pray especially hard — most of us — when our own safety or security is threatened.
I myself have done this, but now I wish to place on record that I am in unrepayable debt to Francis of Assisi, for when I pray his prayer, or even remember it, my melancholy is dispelled, my self-pity comes to an end, my faith is restored, because of this majestic conception of what the work of a disciple should be.
So majestic is this conception that one dare no longer be sorry for oneself. This world ceases to be one’s enemy and becomes the place where one lives and works and serves. Life is no longer nasty, mean, brutish, and short, but becomes the time that one needs to make it less nasty and mean, not only for others, but indeed for oneself. …
And I say to myself, this is the only way in which a Christian can encounter hatred, injury, despair, and sadness, and that is, by throwing off his helplessness and allowing himself to be made the bearer of love, the pardoner, the bringer of hope, the comforter of those that grieve. And I believe that if you allow yourself to be so made, you will be so.
by Elizabeth | Apr 9, 2010 | Learning Story
As I reflect this week on the question, “What now,” as in “What do we do now that Holy Week is over,” I have come back to a word that I have wondered about, “discipleship.” I had a hunch that it has become at the least unpopular, at the most, truly distasteful, in church circles.
I am launching a study, so of course I asked my youngest son, the Latin scholar, for word origins. He tells me the word “disciple” comes from the Latin “discipulus,” which simply means pupil. The original disciples were students of Jesus — they followed him to learn from him.
The word “discipline” comes from the Latin “discipulere,” “instruction given to a disciple.”
My conclusion is that as followers of Christ, we are all to be his disciples, to study him and learn from him, to submit ourselves to discipline, meaning “instruction.” In a broader sense, Webster’s Online Dictionary tells me, discipline means “training that corrects, molds, or perfects the mental faculties or moral character.”
Perhaps it is this definition that gives us trouble as Christians who trust in salvation by grace. We wrong-headedly begin to think that if we were saved simply because God loved us, we don’t have to do anything else. Of course Jesus did not seem to think this was the case. He tells Peter to “feed My sheep” three times. He tells the disciples to “go and make disciples of all the nations.” He tells the disciples that they will suffer but their suffering will turn to joy.
I’ve got much more to say on this topic, and I will add a few thoughts tomorrow and more in the coming weeks. For now, I will conclude by going back to one of the Wright quotes from last week. He suggested that we might consider “taking up” something for his season, just as we fasted from something for Lent. I have decided to “discipline” myself by silencing some of the techno-noise that has become such a part of my life and using that time to read real books more. I am beginning with one hour of solid reading of one book every day (as opposed to internet reading, in which I read parts of this article or blog and parts of others, or study, in which I am appropriately gleaning from several sources at one time.) One chair, one book, one hour. I have done it three out of four days this week so far, and it has been so RELAXING. I love to read, and I began to wonder when I forgot how much I loved it. It is a discipline for me, and my hunch is it has something to do with discipleship. Oddly enough, it is also a gift to me from God.
What do you think? Do you think discipline and discipleship have become “distasteful” words to the Christian? If so, why do you suppose that is?
Have you ever experienced discipline as a gift (“The Lord loves whom he disciplines…”)? How so?
What new “discipline” might you take up with the power of resurrection moving you?
by Elizabeth | Apr 8, 2010 | Learning Story
“The dead Jesus Christ of Good Friday and the resurrected Lord of Easter Sunday: this is creation out of nothingness, creation from the beginning. The fact that Christ was dead did not mean the possibility of his resurrection: it meant the impossibility; it was nothingness itself. There is absolutely no transition, no continuum between the dead and the resurrected Christ other than the freedom of God, which created his work from nothingness in the beginning…He, who is the beginning, lives, annihilates the nothingness, and creates the new creation in his resurrection. From his resurrection we know about the creation, for if he were not raised, the Creator would be dead and would not bear witness to himself. From his creation, however, we know once again about the power of his resurrection, because he remains the Lord of the nothingness.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer “I Want to Live These Days with You”
by Elizabeth | Apr 7, 2010 | Learning Story
This week we are reflecting on what Resurrection means for how we live our daily lives. Today, a post from the past on what it means to take up our cross.
Tom Wright wasn’t writing on the mission of motherhood, just the mission of Christians and our answer to the popular philosophy of Gnosticism in our culture. I added a few thoughts on how these words speak to moms. What do Wright’s words say to you about kingdom living? If you want to read the entire article by Wright, go tohttp://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Lambeth2008.htm
“… in the Bible you discover ‘who you really are’ only when the living God, the creator, is rescuing you and giving you a new identity, a new status, a new name. The Bible is itself the story of, and the energy to bring about, the redemption of creation, ourselves included, not the discovery within ourselves of a spark which just needs to express itself. Gnosticism hates resurrection, because resurrection speaks of God doing a new thing within and for the material world, putting it right at last, rather than God throwing the material world away and allowing the divine spark to float off free. And it is resurrection – the resurrection of Jesus in the past, and of ourselves in the future – which is the ground of all Christian ethical life in the present. Christian ethics is not a matter of ‘discovering who you truly are’ and then being true to that. It is a matter, as Jesus and Paul insist, of dying to self and coming alive to God, of taking up the cross, of inaugurated eschatology, of becoming in oneself not ‘what one really is’ already but ‘what one is in Christ’, a new creation, a small, walking, breathing anticipation of the promised time when the earth shall be filled with God’s glory as the waters cover the sea.”
N.T. Wright, The Bible and Tomorrow
Wright points out that our culture often tells us to ‘look inside’ to find that ‘inner creativity’ to make an impact in the world. Thank God, a M.O.M.’s (Moms of Mission) core story tells me something different – it’s not from within me but from without that the power for transformation comes and has come. I don’t have to look for the perfect parenting program or school them in the latest educational approach or use the correct disciplinary method to grow children God’s way. It is not entirely up to me to do it right. I can admit that I’m weak, broken, mean and confused. I can do all of this because of the gospel story which tells me that resurrection has changed me and will change me. On dark days, the power for hope comes from remembering resurrection – Christ was raised from the dead, and in that moment, he made me a new creation. And not only that, but it is through Christ’s being raised to life that my kids will be raised – TO LIFE!
As a mom on a mission, I must remember the resurrection, and I must act on this memory. Wright tells us that the resurrection is the ground of “Christian ethics,” but what are “Christian ethics”? Not to worry – it’s just a high-falutin sounding phrase that means simply ‘how we behave as Christians.’ How do we behave as Christian moms? We become in ourselves not just what we really are; no indeed, we become what we really are IN CHRIST, which is a whole different matter. And in doing so we recognize that these little creatures we are trying so desperately to raise, are, like us, new creations. Wright says we are a ‘small, walking, breathing anticipation of the promised time when the earth shall be filled with God’s glory as the waters cover the sea.’
So then, how shall we live as Christian mothers on a mission? Should we use organic, reusable diapers? Maybe, because that might reflect good stewardship of the earth. On the other hand, the washing might weary us so that we would be irritable and ornery subduers of our children, so maybe not. Should we homeschool or public school? Yes. Should we make them learn to play the piano? Maybe. Hopefully, you get the point – because we are imagining a day when all things will be made new, the decisions we make as mothers on a mission should be based on listening very carefully to the story God has written in us and in our children. It should be based on listening for the Spirit’s call to kingdom living and giving. What cultures is my family meant to cultivate? What neighborhood do I live in? What neighborhood can I give in? These questions are far more important than whether to bottle feed or breast feed, though those aren’t irrelevant. Whatever we do, it should reflect the fact that we are living in anticipation of a different day, a day when all things will be made new.
