Posted by Chris on Feb 24, 2010 in
Life 
Jesus’s audience were first century Jews. They survived off subsistence farming, building with wood and catching fish. They woke up with the sun, worked while it was day, spent evenings and Sabbaths with friends and family. They lived in villages with a few hundred people and arranged marriages for their 12 year old children.
They were part of a diaspora with a rich history of laws and prophets. They shunned non-Jews and heretics. They were suffering under a foreign pagan government who oppressed them, and pagan social institutions were that undermining their worldview. Jesus teachings, miracles, life and death addressed the wants, needs and cultural artifacts of his audience.
After Jesus death, the audience quickly changes. Representatives of the entire Roman Empire hear the message in their own language at Pentecost. The majority of the New Testament, the writings of Luke and Paul, are tasked with re-presenting Jesus to the broader Roman culture.
Often people simplify Jesus teachings to only deal with heart issues. Though there are repercussions for the individual, statements about murder and adultery in the Sermon on the Mount are scathing reviews of a fallen culture. Cultural norms allow for hatred and lust to rule one’s life, as long as technical laws aren’t broken.
As Paul shares the truth about Jesus, he is constantly co-opting language of the Roman Empire, showing that Jesus is the true power that Caesar pretends to be. Much of his life and writings are focused on destroying Jewish racism and idolatrous Roman nationalism, and inviting all people into Jesus’s Way.
A necessary, but often ignored step in developing a Jesus Way of Life is studying the water where we swim. Studying the Bible to learn what to think may not penetrate a cultural lifestyle in which sin is normal.
This is why from the beginning God’s people have been nomads, wanderers, and refugees. A Jesus Way may often mean swimming upstream; knowing and paddling against the water we find ourselves in.
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Posted by Chris on Feb 23, 2010 in
Life 
At some point, probably around the time of the Enlightenment, churches became convinced that what you think shapes what you do. The way to lead people to be like Christ became teaching them what to think.
Churches organized to become educational institutions. Sunday mornings (and nights) centered around didactic three (or more) point sermons, along with classes on Sunday morning and Sunday night, workshops, seminars and retreats, all teaching people how to think right.
In the 80s and 90s there was a big push to be more creative, entertaining and relevant in presenting how to think. In the past decade, much was made of creating space in the church to have more space for discussion — discussing what to think.
Thinking is an incredibly important part of being human. Our ability to reason sets us apart from the animals. Who really wants to throw away our advances in medicine and technology and go back to a pre-Enlightenment world? But we make a huge mistake in assuming that thinking alone is the sole force in shaping a person’s life.
The earliest name for Christ’s Church was “The Way.” The early the people of God were not a group that just knew what to think, but a community with a way of life, shaped to look like Jesus, the Way, The Truth and the Life.
The next few posts will explore what would it mean to recapture a peculiarly Christian way of life.
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Posted by Chris on Jan 7, 2010 in
Church,
Culture I finally got a chance to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, an angsty film that falls short of the book’s entrancing sense of obsession and fear. While an otherwise mediocre film, the director does a great job of capturing the anti-climactic death of the great wizard Dumbledore, who, weak from a fruitless mission, chooses not to go down in a blaze of glory, and is simply pushed out a window.
Dumbledore’s death is reminiscent of Obi-Wan’s final salute and parting words to Darth Vader, “You can’t win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”
Neither Dumbledore and Obi-Wan make it through the end of the series, but both leave a legacy, and inspire others to carry on their own work. It’s not to different from my favorite non-fictional superhero, Jesus. In giving up his life, he brought the exile of Israel and mankind from God to an end, and opened up the door for the Holy Spirit and the Church to carry out his mission.
This is a tough lesson to learn. I want to fight for what I believe is true, no matter what the cost. If you betray the principles you are fighting for, it doesn’t matter if you are right, and a well aimed defeat can be as strategic as a hard won victory.
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Tags: A Jesus Way, books, Dumbledore, fantasy, Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, Jesus, Kenobi, leadership, movies, Obi-Wan, sci-fi, Science Fiction, Snape, wizards
Jesus’s audience were first century Jews. They survived off subsistence farming, building with wood and catching fish. They woke up with the sun, worked while it was day, spent evenings and Sabbaths with friends and family. They lived in villages with a few hundred people and arranged marriages for their 12 year old children.
