Our goal is?

The reading in Col. 1:1-11 this week reminds me that righteousness is not for one specific group of people. It belongs to all of us no matter what profession or enterprise we are involved in. Being with Christ demands certain responsibilities and one being the pursuit of holiness. We are being renewed in knowledge into the image of our Creator. The goal for our lives is to leave behind us the love for the world and acquire a love for the principles of God. The irony is you will do better in life once you let go the former ideals as the only things to strive for. The worry, anxiety, and tension that comes through striving for things in this world are crippling and a bondage. The freedom that comes when we let them go and walk bravely, the risk of allowing another to take control is uplifting and rewarding. At school we are perpetually reminded that we ought prepare ourselves for the future. The best way one can prepare is to prepare the heart first. One can gain many skills and technical know how, but that doesn’t make you captain of the team. That is what religion is all about, it prepares our hearts so that when we do whatever it is, it is done with the correct motives and does not just have our own glorification as the goal. Being a Methodist, this is a passage that is just up our street. “Scriptural holiness” is one of our doctrines. The disciplined struggle, together, towards a more righteous world is the means through which we seek to glorify God in all things and make Christ known.

Position filled

The thought today following on the previous two submissions is the extent of our understanding when it comes to comprehending the ills of life from the eyes of the Christian. Who are we to question or surmise what God is doing in all situations. We quickly take the seat of our Creator and act as if our minds are in tune with all God does. Only when we take on the position of ‘Creator’ do we find ourselves in the position to criticize what is. It is one position we cannot possibly occupy. One job application we will never be able to fill. There is no point in putting together a C.V. The position of Creator is taken.

Gone soft or what?

Again I am confronted with the thought that all that happens is the will of God. I realize that much of the pain that does happen is a learning curve for the Christian. However, I cannot imagine a God allowing certain atrocities to happen. God may not want it to happen, but allows it. No loving being who has the power to do something for his child would sit and watch that child burn to death, be raped by another, be tortured for a truth, or become senile. But, have we become soft? Have we got it into our minds that our lives should be easy and without conflict? Maybe that is what happens once the Christian achieves what they strive for in God. A community that is loving, caring, patient, kind, could become oblivious to the realities of life outside this domain. It settles into the dream forgetting the pains it took to achieve it. Liberty has been fought for not only by careful prayer and well considered word, but it has come by the sword. The dark forces of society have been resisted with armies and in battle fields to defend what it calls civilization, for some Christendom. But, again have we become soft? Jesus was not warrior of gun metal nor shell. Jesus took on the act of being betrayed to highlight the higher ideal, the greater reward that seeks no pleasures in this life but a hope that is beyond. Breaking the pattern of sword against sword he died to build a Kingdom not won by barbed wire or mortar but won by the few who hold the hope of a world just beyond.

Sacrament of the moment

The ‘sacrament of the moment’ a concept coined by de Caussade an eighteenth century writer has important meaning for our perception of the Christian journey. It focuses on the now of our lives and not the has been or should be thought avenues. Everything that is happening at the moment in our lives has either been allowed by God to happen or has been purposively instituted by God. This seems all fine when the things going on in our lives are great but not so when they are traumatic and bloody. We possibly have to get out of our comfortable cocoon created by our longing for the comfortable and realize that we are to respond to God even in the dirty parts of our lives. Those moments that look plain may have meaning, the time when you are in grief, you are lonely, you are feeling rejection, those moments can be converted into a sacrament if we allow them to. If we recognize that God is in every moment and has not vacated the premises.

Making space

Sacred space takes on new meaning in the light of the reading by Hawkings in the Guide to Prayer for all God's people (Upper Room books) pg 239. When we spend all our energies on ourselves there is no space for God. When we spend our energy in others we leave space for God to move in and work in our hearts. The closer we are to people, the closer we are to God, the further away from God we are the further we are away from people. This sacred space is often sought for in the quite places of our ‘quite times’ but maybe the sacred space is found as we are spent for others.

We are praying

I grew up in a tradition that placed the ‘quite time’ as a paramount part of ones spiritual routine. If you weren’t having your ‘quite time’ you weren’t in touch with God or self. The ‘quite time’ was an ubiquitous term that necessarily implied the reading of scriptures and prayer. The power of the ‘quite time’ was the ability to prioritize the other activities of life in order of importance. The time alone with God was regarded as the crucial element that should precede all other. It was that moment that would streamline and guide ones focus and direction for the day. The ‘quite time’ was very much a ‘me and God’ thing. It was about my ‘personal relationship’ with the Maker. One left the time alone with God with a sense of awkwardness at times, realizing that whatever happened there would now have to be applied in real life. It was the moment where you could dream you dreams, have your say and sense in your hear that it was all possible. The place of refuge is always a necessary place to find in the hurly burly existence of contemporary humanity. Others have grown up in a world of corporate prayer - The Morning Prayer and Evening prayer regimen. Up to chapel twice a day for prayers as a community is still practiced in numerous quarters of the Church. The bells will toll at many a monastery today, bringing the faithful to their knees in quite and communal prayer. Collective song, prayer, quietness and recitation will affirm their ‘community relationship’ with God. To be just to all, the incorporation of both means of worship is important for our spiritual make-up. The sense of being unique as an individual is bound up within the uniqueness of the Godly community. God is me and us focused.

Family Growth

Family - a model for Church growth. Amongst all the other ways we acknowledge we can do Church, the fundamental building blocks in a Church are the relationships that comprise the whole. It is better to strengthen relationships than it is to strengthen programmes. The family growth model could be the answer in creating a paradigm that continually puts the focus back onto the Church as family whose role is to equip each other to fulfill their part in the greater picture of things. When Melluish speaks about building the family unit he speaks about being a team, having family time, setting family jobs, create family traditions, being together. The translation into Church growth dynamics is obvious. When Church members work as a team, spend family time together, differentiate their Godly chores, establish traditions that bring family identity the roots of that Church would be strong and long lasting. The young would grow from that Church with a sense that it is family. They would be sad to leave its precincts and they would return each holiday to share their good and bad news. Family is family for life.

Grandmother logic

The patterns set by parents for their children in the younger years are the habitual center for life. That subconscious guide that prompts us along the road of life is often the voice of our parents, although not their voice now but ours. We often find ourselves returning back to the paths of our younger days or spending as much time as we can away from them, all depending on our experience. The more time we spend nurturing our young children in the church the better chance we have of them returning to its doors later in life. ‘Family time’ could be a key pillar in ensuring the future success of the Church. I wonder if we saw each other as a Grandmother, Father, Brother, Mother, Sister of each other in the church what a difference that would make. The biblical injunction that the Church is our family is an important one. Many of us know that our family life back home is dysfunctional in some way. Work constraints prevent us from spending the amount of time we ought with children and spouse or we are a single parent struggling to be a role model for our kids. If we see ourselves in the Church as family we can often fill the gap for others. It could be that our greatest ministry is finding how and with whom we can be a family member with. Who needs to be mothered, go and mother them? Who needs the wisdom of a grandfather, go and be a grandfather?

Family Time

Mark Melluish an Anglican priest from the UK came and spoke to the Christian community in Hilton about a month ago. In short he has a dynamic and innovative ministry in England and has put together the “Family time” course. I am reading the book this week (thought I would give Bonhoeffer a weeks break) and I must say it is a fresh and simple guide for Christian family’s today to make the most of that precious time you have as family. In reading it I have somehow got into the thought of how relevant the precepts of this book are for the “Family” called Church. Maybe it is because I have no children and the subject is not directly relevant for me. The same precepts and principles that pertain to building a strong family are just as relevant for the congregation who desperately need to call themselves ‘family’ in the prolific change and shifts of our day and age. “Family Time” needs to be inculcated into the very fabric of our members. Congregant's need to make quality and quantity time with the other members of the family. Young people of the Church need to see the relationships between adults as their model for life. As much as parents are the role models of their kids life so too are we the Church the role model for those young children. Building family traditions, having fun together, performing our necessary chores, spending time together, accepting the difference in each other, encouraging each other, helping each other through failure, are these not all very much Church family priorities?

Holiday sojourn at an end

I have returned from a great two week holiday. We went to the Grahamstown festival and getting there we almost got stuck in snow at Underberg. For those reading this from anywhere else outside of South Africa will learn that it is not always a red hot poker sun that bakes our African heads. We also experienced what it is like to camp with our rooftop tent on the Wild Coast. It is just that, 'Wild' The scenery from the hill tops over the sea is spectacular, the cliffs disappear into raging white waters below. Then back for a typical South African experience, we went to a house in Ramsgate to be robbed of most of our valuables. Strange thing is it was five years ago in our new church in Pretoria that we were also cleaned out. Eureka, we love South Africa, you are never bored! Sorry no photo's, they are being viewed by somebody who has not the slightest clue who we are and what on earth a South African Land Rover is doing in 1 meter thick snow? Will start posting soon. Got to get sermons done.

100 today

100 posts to date and still singing. The weekend of my 40th was well spent. (There will be no posts for the next two weeks for those listening)

Built on a Word

Our faith being rooted in the Judaic Christian Religion takes for itself the understanding that God reveals himself predominantly through the “Word.” In the beginning was the “Word.” The “Word” that is sharper than a two edged sword. I have always understood the “Word” to mean Jesus, his full message and not just his words. The complete act of God in the revelation of Jesus, his death, teaching, example, and resurrection as ‘all in all’ the “Word.” The truth of the matter is that in the Church there is a high prominence placed on the preaching of our faith as the central conveyor of God’s Word. Bonhoeffer stresses the humiliation of Jesus as the “Word” who associates himself voluntarily with the word of human kind. Although the preacher stands up with words that are certainly not adequate of God, God chose to speak through this weakness of humanity, this was the real incarnation, to be subject to weakness.

mini me or pro me

Martin Luther wrote, “ So it is one thing if God is there, and another if he is there for you.” We can speak about God as being outside of our existence but another thing to speak of God as having a relationship with me. I get tired of hearing the word ‘relationship’ in the Church. We get told umpteen times that it is all about ‘relationship.’ The problem is that we know its importance but most of us are completely baffled as to how this relationship works out. I preached yesterday on the ‘sheer silence’ that followed the wind, earthquake and fire that confronted Elijah and how he had to come to terms with the silent Universe as a vehicle of God’s communique. A relationship with God is a different kind of relationship and in some parts the analogy of human relationships suffices but the relationship with God is often beyond our comprehension. Bonhoeffer uses the term ‘pro me’ to describe the Christ event, the God-man Jesus is never to be understood as separate from the church, the community, you and me. Listen to it, “God is only God pro me, Christ is only Christ pro me.” It sounds a little egocentric of us to say this, but he makes the point (I think!) that the Christ event, the death and risen Lord is a contemporary experience, thus not for a relationship with humanity before our time, but for us now.
If this gives you a headache on a Monday morning, then as one of my deeply spiritual members will say, “don’t pray, take an aspirin!”

Not How, nor What, but Whom?

We had a great birthday bash last night. We sat with blankets outside as the weather got a tad frosty. The fires were burning to keep our backs warm as we ate Kate’s soup, the Lamb was succulent and delicious and Anne’s pears soaked in wine with custard were something else. It is good to celebrate life when you can. Nobody else does it for you, unless you are fortunate?

Bonhoeffer is grabbing my attention. The contextual theology (thoughts about God that are instructed by the contemporary situation) that we are bombarded with in our theological seminary’s has almost replaced the classical theological of Christology, Atonement etc. It is refreshing to dialogue with the theological masterminds of yesteryear. Bon. (for short) suggests we ask the question Who? And not How? Or What? when confronting the person of Jesus. The error according to Bon. is to know Jesus as an influence in history, a power that has shaped the world. The other error is to see Jesus as an ideal that is imposed through a God who transcends into our history from outside of it. This thinking uses questions like How? and What? but forget the most important point of Christ and that is Who? The person rather than the power or influence is most important. How we know Christ is to recognize Jesus dead and risen. Only when we profess Jesus risen can we ask the question Who? The presence of Jesus is thus now, not history, not an influence once come into the world. So when next in prayer, maybe spend a little time on the question Who? and see where it leads you. Not what he has done for you or what he can do for you, that is all about power not person. Let his person fill us with His presence and let us find our center there.

W.W.J.D vs. M.T.P.F

Today is the day of the big party. We are having an ‘Asterix’ theme to it. The spit-braai will turn in the center of a horse shoe of tables where the folks of the Barbour clan will frolic!

Reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s early thoughts on Christology. These are lectures of his from the Berlin University. He was unable to finish them due to the war, but a helpful student was able to fill in the gaps. I think the fourth part is unavailable. Nevertheless, the thought that made me think this morning was this. The difference between the person of Jesus and the work of Jesus. Any theologians reading this article (unlikely) please excuse the poor extrapolations of Bonhoeffer’s thoughts by a small village pastor. Bonhoeffer suggests we cannot know the Christ from his works alone, we need to know the person of Christ. Christ must reveal himself (in person) to us through prayer before we will appreciate his works. The works of Christ remain ambiguous until we encounter the person of Christ. Martin Luther said that you cannot tell a good man by his works. “Everything depends on whether a person is good, if they are good, the work is good, even if does not seem to be… the work may seem good but it could be the work of the devil.” Luther was making sure that justification by faith alone was paramount and that no inference from a persons work and deeds is taken as the starting point. Some things may even seem evil, but coming from a good man (person of faith) it can still be God’s work. Another critical point Bonhoeffer makes and I think it is worth meditating on is this.. “ Jesus’ work leads to despair in me because I cannot imitate his pattern. But, if Jesus is the Christ, the Word of God, then I am not primarily called to emulate (copy) him, I am encountered in his work as one who could not possibly do this work myself.” How many sermons leave one feeling, “O boy, I will never match up to Christ!” Bonhoeffer is helping us appreciate that we never will. We are not expected to take his works as the starting point of our faith and build our lives copying that. We are called to seek the presence of the revelation of the person of Christ. The encounter of the divine person will shape our lives accordingly. Lets then think again how we do it. According to Bonhoeffer the W.W.J.D (What would Jesus do) may not be the best way to go about things, It should rather read M.T.P.F (Meet the person first.)Technorati Profile

Viva Jesus!

Thanks for all the birthday wishes. I have never in all my life been so inundated with phone calls and best wishes. By the end of the day I was swamped by exhaustion and collapsed into a post birthday coma. I have a family gathering tomorrow night around a spit braai (barbeque for those far off). My wife loves to stoke up a party if she can, but I suppose the ripe age of 40 deserves a thoughtful celebration. Got up early this morning, 4.30am, not so good with anticipating social events, picking up people from airports and all that kind of thing.

I was given Bonhoeffer’s book on Christology which I am plowing through. “For the working class world, Christ seems to be settled with the church and the bourgeois society. There is no longer any reason why the worker should encounter Jesus Christ. The church is all one with the fossilized sanctions of the capitalist system…. Up with Jesus, down with the Church.” He had his suspicions about the church being the purveyors of God’s way. The church too often bolsters up the status quo. It does this by stopping to ask the critical questions of itself and its new clothing. Why should we have any encounter with the risen Christ when our social world is idealized and classified as Christian. When we the church have ordained this society as good, why meet with the risen Christ? It is to hide with leaf and choice bitten fruit again. To run away from the shame of calling our way Godly and our systems ordained. Let Jesus rock our church, our world, our capitalist structures, not with worship bands but by the dismantled gloss and dross of our idealized world. To hear the revolutionary speech of the risen Lord, to undress, take off the uniforms of the world, and put back on our naked selves the clothing of Christ.

A real mystery

Well, say no more. It is my birthday. Forty years back on this day I was brought screaming into the world in the capital city of South Africa, Pretoria. It always amazes, the vicissitudes of ones life. What seems like a minor decision turns out to be the eventual succession of your life’s work and purpose. A decision I made in 1988 in a Air force barracks to serve God in mission, took one phone call and my life moved off in another direction, toward a social world of faith, church, mission, and ordination. It could have turned out so differently, but lets not go there. We don’t understand the greater picture, we get glimpses of it now and again, our world is wrapped up in the greater dream, the mystery we seek. I found myself criticizing a couple who drift from one church gathering to the next, they are always going up for prayer and accepting altar calls for this and that. They are searching for a touch of the almighty mystery that will transcend and satisfy but I am afraid they will keep searching for the taste of that they just cannot reach. But, why not, should we stop seeking the infinite and conclude our job is done, our lot is satisfied? The search needs redefinition.

Only God opens our eyes to the reality that is before us, that the reality is in fact the mystery. We are so used to the existence we breathe we call it normal, real, mundane and routine. But, look a little closer and you realize that this is the miracle, this is the life we so longed to find, it is the gift we have been waiting for all these years. It just took you a little longer to see it. The longer I walk this journey, the less I need to find other worldly abstractions. The more I embrace the silence, that is God, and my reality which is the mystery, my joy is complete and my heart is satisfied.

Sic transit gloria mundi

I am not a man of ancient languages nor for that matter modern ones. I am still trying to get English under my belt let alone Latin. I picked up this Latin phrase in a commentary on the story of Naboth’s vineyard, which should rather be titled with this caption which means, ‘Thus passes the glory of the world,’ or in more common understanding, ‘Fame is fleeting.’ King Ahab grabs hold of the deceased Naboth’s vineyard but the moment of glory soon turns to his own demise for allowing such an atrocity to happen. God is seen in and behind the words of this story, not influencing the free will of the characters but certainly passing judgment on their choices. Ahab’s blood is soon to be licked up by the dogs in the same place that Naboth was slaughtered. He got what he wanted but the joy of possession did not last long. It is an old tale retold in many a tradition, a tale that warns against greed and getting things without considering the ethics of the means. It cautions us in how we use our free-will and the limited power we have. Each of us have a ‘power zone’ if you want to call it that. We can have sway and influence within a certain radius around us. For some it is vast like King Ahab and Jezebel. They can call a fast and stir a nation into action. For others their only sphere of power and influence is the home, brothers and sisters, or ones children. This story plays itself out in the micro narratives of our lives. The tragic stories of fathers who abuse their children, mothers who neglect their children for the sake of their own interests, children who manipulate their parents with vain threats just so they can get what they want. Why this story of Naboth is so intriguing is just because we can identify its tale in our own sorry backyards.

"Father, forgive them for they know not what they do" (Painting - Asian woman's resource center. Isn't it great!)

A moody King

"Let justice roll down like waters" ... Amos 5:24 (Painting - Asian woman's resource center)

This morning the “Witness” had as its headline, “No taxis, small march.” Things don’t always work out the way they should in the game of power and politics. The supposed support by the taxi associations turned in upon itself as many protesters could not get to the lunchtime march.
This week I am preaching on Naboth’s vineyard, that so vivid a story of land issues and political machinations. It is such an African story as the possession of land is not just a property purchase but a sense of being one with mother earth and the ancestors. The issues in this story also evokes poignant memories of forced removals in the Apartheid era. Where entire settlements were broken down and moved to other areas and out of the way places because of the segregation act. The Naboth story is also about politics and warped power, those who have and those who have not. It is about ‘tribal’ and ‘urban’ clashes, where King Ahab demands land to increase his wealth, his land and ultimately his power. The issue may not be around wage increases, but the issue revolves around the understanding of who owns the land. Naboth stood his ground with the assurance that it was divinely allotted to him, his clan. Giving up the land would break his religious vows, it would trample on the covenant between his people and their God. The obsession for land and power turns sour in King Ahab’s stomach. He his found sulking on his bed when the infamous Jezebel, the queen gets ear of the situation. Although she is wickedly cunning, she is also misled by the pouting King who only passes on half the information. The information that is inflammatory, not the deeper and more theological arguments that were given to him by Naboth. All she heard was Naboth wouldn’t give the King his land. With that injustice to a Monarch’s pride, the queen sets out to destroy the life of Naboth and the land issue she thinks is resolved. Half information is usually the cause for much evil. Half truths of newspapers, half truths of gossip, half truths afforded by politicians, these bits and bites of information form our opinions, lecture our attitudes and ultimately steer our actions. Lets not play into the hands of such and evil, half truths and greed.

Strike it unlucky

We in South Africa are being crippled by a national strike. Today in Pietermaritzurg the headlines read “ Total City shutdown, 30 000 to march on CBD; fears municipal workers might join strike.” There are no children at school, there is barely a nurse left in the hospitals, the police and defense force are threatening sympathy strikes. This is a complete meltdown of an orderly society. I don’t want to chew too much on opinions already clichéd by editors of newspapers and social gossip columns. Who’s to blame is not an easy answer to give. There is a new elite in South Africa who if one can generalize have lined their pockets with tax payers money. Corruption and exploitations of government funds is rife. The few have again taken from the many. This is what the strike is all about for me. The forces that are in battle in South Africa are between the powers of opportunistic wealth and the powers of the disempowered working masses. It is an unprecedented voice against the greed of some. But, like all good stories the villains are not easily discernable. Power, in what ever clothes it likes to dress itself, can become as ugly as the powers it detests and tries to mitigate against. The worker who decides to go to work is threatened with her very life. The teacher’s who we entrust our children to are foaming rabid at the mouth. Hospital workers are dancing restlessly outside hospitals with jovial glances whilst bodies who’s hearts once beat are being wheeled down empty corridors into the morgues. The villain is also on the other foot by the looks of it. So where is the redemption is such a stalemate? Does justice have to be so cruel and to what ends will justice fight until it realizes it has turned face and become the one infringing on others rights?

These solutions do not lie in the answers constructed by well-heeled politicians and neither are they answered by those obsessed with equal footing. Justice in itself is not enough to heal a country. The religious will tell you that you are seeking for peace in the wrong quarters. Justice without love is not worthy of the glory it seeks. It might gain the world through all the protests its embarks upon, but without Love it is nothing. It is a Paul may say, a mere clashing gong, but it will lack the treasure it really seeks. The other lesson the religious would argue is that the desire for possessions above love is the cardinal mistake of the human soul. The soul that seeks for fulfillment in the values, hopes and dreams of the physical world will often find themselves in places of dire disappointment and disillusionment. This worldly dream is stilted and always has a end. The hope of a new world order needs to transcend the confines of this world, it needs to reach up into the beyond and declare a world that is not dependent on the human ego, but rather transformed and bent by a greater Justice system that calls on its adherents to lift the ‘rights of others’ above our own.
"Do justice ... love kindness ... walk humbly with your God" ... Micah 6:8