Waiting on Pentecost...6

Day 6. 1 Corinthians 12 v1-13

Some stuff we need to know basically. 'Concerning spiritual gifts...' They needed some help to understand the 'body' of Christ and how it worked.

Body building was the image that came to mind on reading this text. But actually, that soesn't completely help, because I recall visiting a gym years back and all you saw were those huge mirrors and people looking at themselves as they flexed their muscles on the weights.
Rather, I think Paul may prefer some exercise that isn't so self-centred. I also think that the nature and purpose of spiritual gifts for the building up of the body is intended in such a way that there are deeper matters such as respecting each other simply because we are 'members of the same body', not because of our particular gifts. Sometimes we are in danger of cur=bing otrhers gifts because we have such a body-building image that is so focussed upon the 'ME' alone sort of stuff, whereas my gifts are only any use when placed alongside others as a whole. When the body of the church exercises in this way the body is built up and made more and more complete as there is space and room and need for other parts still to be added.

1 Corinthians 12:
Each person is given something to do that shows who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits. All kinds of things are handed out by the Spirit, and to all kinds of people! The variety is wonderful:
wise counsel
clear understanding
simple trust
healing the sick
miraculous acts
proclamation
distinguishing between spirits
tongues
interpretation of tongues.
All these gifts have a common origin, but are handed out one by one by the one Spirit of God. He decides who gets what, and when.
12-13You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you're still one body. It's exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.

Waiting on Pentecost...5

Day 5. 1 Corinthians 3.

You are God's HOUSE

Just because you're in the kitchen and I'm in the hall doesn't mean we are not at the same party.

(from Small ritual)

Quality foundations are important. But these are the sort of things that take time and involve patience and a standing back at times, as much as participating in just the right ways too. Paul in this text uses a couple of images one being farming and the other building. are we content in our role in the house on the farm? What if I do all the land tilling and another sowing and then someone else comes along and waters it and gets all the benefits and glory of the growth and fruit? Similarly, digging foundations, hard labour... someone else builds on it. In my own expereince I recall several of us in church plants being asked a question to take away and ponder - what oif you were to be called away tomorrow to another place; could you leave? Initially there were plenty reasons for saying No way! so much to do... but then a dawning. I learnt to be content in what I was called to do and do that well, to my utmost... walk away then ? Well yes and content while hpeful that the sower and waterer would do their part well too.

Some other thoughts though reminded me of Small Ritual where there's some interesting stuff that will stimulate in this way more. check it out. The Nolli Plan for one.

Waiting on Pentecost...4

Day 5. 1 corinthians 12:1-13

Today Sunday we met for a gathering time. Over some lunch we chatted informally about the texts we had read and reflected upon so far. Nothing clever, but actually some rich depth of insights were shared. But what was also striking was the chance for people to grow closer and get to know one another better. It was encouraging to hear this expressed too.
I was especially struck by 2 stories. One of a hippie group of young people who came along to a church folks had previously been part of. Half naked they came week after week. Nop one in the church saiud anything nor reacted in shock, until one day the same folks all arrived wearing ties etc. they had been testing the church out and in time many came to key leadership positions and more. They played a part in the building up of that body in all its varied diverse parts. wonderful! What a challenge? I wonder how we would measure up?
I also was struck by another sharing of how they see thoose Christians who have impressed them, they admire and who have had some imprint on thier faith, would be those who have a gentle wisdom and manner. Added to this another spoke in terms of people who made or had 'room' in their lives for others out of the roominess they themselves know abiding in God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They were speaking in ways of what it is then to live the life and learn widom from God.
So we broke bread and shared such things, we heard personal stories too and there was an encouraging of each other that was so simple. We then prayed for Highgate Mission and wider.
next Gathering time will be at Wednesday nights Caim.

Waiting on pentecost 3...

Day 3. 1 Corinthians 2

Once on the ‘firm spiritual ground’ (seems to relate to our earlier reading reflections too) Paul speaks of wisdom

but it's not popular wisdom, the fashionable wisdom of high-priced experts that
will be out-of-date in a year or so. God's wisdom is something mysterious that
goes deep into the interior of his purposes. You don't find it lying around on
the surface. It's not the latest message, but more like the oldest—what God
determined as the way to bring out his best in us, long before we ever arrived
on the scene. The experts of our day haven't a clue about what this eternal plan
is. If they had, they wouldn't have killed the Master of the God-designed life
on a cross. (The Message)

Strikes me that we, and as the Church, are all too often in the last decade or so turned on by the sort of wisdom that is fashionable, popularist, trendy and high priced. Such simulated faith though is all surface while he points and directs us to a Godly wisdom that is none of these, it is ‘Old’ and ‘goes deep into the interior of his purposes’. Now that is really something! Taught us in a personal way through Jesus Christ. Seems to me that we need to spend more time in such relationship and lessons than in seeking to be too clever or smart in our own terms with ‘fancy mental and emotional footwork’. In step with the Spirit we learn so much deeper things – this is wisdom –ears to hear and eyes to see and a knowing therefore what to do. The mind of Christ in us!

The way to this is by learning to indwell scripture, taking time daily to place ourselves there and wait so that in turn we live it out. Our wisdom will excite us, but...how far will it get us. Recently I have been reading Hans Urs von Balthasar and related books. Balthasar notes that often a Christian's whole life can be seen as living out just one verse of scripture. This can be vital to our calling/vocation as we revisit the text again and again and keep finding new dimensions to it. In this way we inhabit the text and it us.

What texts have shaped or are shaping you ? (providing that firm spiritual ground for missionary calling.)

You might like to visit Steve Taylor (Wednesday 25th May) who is asking -

What are the Scriptures that have shaped your emerging mission? What are the texts that have "read" you and formed who you are becoming in this postmodern culture ?

Waiting on Pentecost... 2

From yesterday… ANSWER- The man had hiccups. The barman recognised this from his speech and drew the gun in order to give him a shock. It worked and cured the hiccups - so the man no longer needed the water.

This puzzle has claims to be the best of the genre. It is simple in its statement, absolutely baffling and yet with a completely satisfying solution. Most people struggle very hard to solve this one yet they like the answer when they hear it or have the satisfaction of figuring it out.
It is a simple puzzle to state but a difficult one to solve. It is a perfect example of a seemingly irrational and incongruous situation having a simple and complete explanation. [from -mycoted]

I think so many things can be this way in life- left staring up at the sky too often and consumed about the wrong things, asking the wrong questions. Take yourself to the space/place of waiting and receive in order to share the good news to the ends of the earth. The answer again is so simple!

Day 2. Galatians 5:13-26

The film “Shall we dance” with Richard Gere and J-Lo sees a middle aged man drawn to a dance class with others as beginners. Dancing with the Stars too has highlighted a renewed dance craze. It isn’t easy to begin to learn the steps, to be ‘led’ in time to the rhythm of the music. There seems to much to co-ordinate with your body. In the film J-Lo takes Gere and shows something of the freedoms within the constraints of the steps and the music to give expression to that freedom and the deeper ‘passion’ evoked in the rhythms/beats. Gradually he and the other ‘2-left footers’ truly learn to dance. It becomes something from deep in their soul.
Strikes me that to be free as a Christian, to be empowered in life in the Spirit to live and walk and keep in step with the Spirit, then there are some ‘dance’ lessons I need to learn the steps to begin with (The Greek for 'walk' used here concerns ‘keeping in line, in tune, in step with), but then it goes deeper, there is a fruitfulness – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. All of these are of the essence of the Christ-like life in us and expression of faith in every Christian.
“If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit”

Waiting on Pentecost...1

We provide a simple daily text and Psalm for those who wish across Highgate. Last month our breakfast congregation (B@tch) held a day of prayer. I thought that this time we'd raise our prayer focus by waiting on Pentecost as a combination of daily reading and contemplation and Sunday lunches and Caim time Wednesdays.

Day 1. Acts 1:6-11 - the pattern is wait - receive - share.

one of the questions we asked how this pattern might change our life pattern, our church ? Probably like most I had a busy day. It is not easy to have such a pattern in your life in the face of all that is thrown at you, bombardments and all. It is especially hard for churches to exhibit this in the experience of decline and its atached crises. In this Acts instance a question is asked, but Jesus reply says 'it is not for you to know..." In other words some things are just not in our control and we needen't get worried or try and manage/control them. Rather, Jesus speaks of giving the Spirit; it is wisdom therefore to have a relationship, for this relationship will take us beyond ourselves and further than we could manage.

Left staring at the sky, fixated... their first task now was to wait. Many assume waiting means doing nothing and empty headed, no brain or energy life. that is not so. Waiting is a discipline that sets us in the right place in relation to God that we might receive and so go and share. Simply put. At Caim this week we read Colossians 2:20-3:5 (and went back to Col.1 as well) I think Paul gives expression to where we should be placed in relationship to Christ (see below)

Came across this as a teaser - have a think and I'll post again the answer, so that you get the lesson too.

A man walks into a bar and asks the barman for a glass of water. The barman pulls out a gun and points it at the man. The man says 'Thank you' and walks out.

:: ::

We look at this Son and see God's original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.
18-20He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he's there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross.
21-23You yourselves are a case study of what he does. At one time you all had your backs turned to God, thinking rebellious thoughts of him, giving him trouble every chance you got. But now, by giving himself completely at the Cross, actually dying for you, Christ brought you over to God's side and put your lives together, whole and holy in his presence. You don't walk away from a gift like that! You stay grounded and steady in that bond of trust, constantly tuned in to the Message, careful not to be distracted or diverted. There is no other Message—just this one. Every creature under heaven gets this same Message. I, Paul, am a messenger of this Message.(Message Trans)

20 Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this
world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules:
21"Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!"? ... 1Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (NIV)

Stretching the envelope... out of our comfort zone

Brett led us today. Mother’s Day he told us about Mrs Wesley and her 19 children whom she would seek to devote and hour each in a week. It was said of her that if when had her work apron over her head while sitting on the chair she was not to be disturbed.
Acts 8 was the text today (esp. v26-40). The early church lived in the tension of still following some Judaic practices and still living very much in that space. Yet its encounters with gentiles and other strata of society with the Gospel took it out of its comfort zone and placed them in places that they might not otherwise certainly have been in. The envelope was stretched for them; don’t just stop at the Samaritans(half casts with their own temple, but go to the ends of the earth, at the time Ethiopia (Kush the upper Nile areas), and so an out right alien. Furthermore, a eunuch, some one distasteful and representative of a group. For Philip like others this was all less than comfortable and not something they might previously have considered.
He told us also of John Wesley, reading some of his journal on being called to street preaching, taking him well beyond his comfort zone, and stretching the envelope in amazing ways that the gospel reached the poor and raised people who would follow.
We heard too though of how Wesley was never happy nor content on street preaching, but he did it all the same.

Brett repeated often the phrases that still ring for us of ways in which God’s Spirit today may be stretching our envelope and moving us out of our comfort zone(s). Perhaps there are things, people, places we are being called to beyond our comfort zone, that stretch the envelope and yet have significant and unknowable results well beyond us.
I think there is something of this for the church today, it certainly sounds a chord with us on Highgate where the envelope has and is stretched. There is something of such tension that I think is necessarily a sign of the missionary congregation.

So where are we placed?
Take your body and place yourself on the street, take yourself among others in pubs, clubs, hospital, shelters, jails.... go beyond the safety of 'church' . We live and move daily in the public sphere. Our spiritual ;ife is as much shaped by where we place our bodies: "present your bodioes as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship."

Hans Frei , a theologian wrote
“… the embodiment of the Easter story’s pattern in our lives means… a new way of governing our bodies. That is how we are in touch with the story.”
(The Identity of Christ p171)

Public mission through public art

Art reveal and discloses new insights and experences, opens up the world we live in. Theology and the arts have an ongoing relationship which offers churches a new creative edge for sharing the Gospel, especially through installations. So... I think the public space for this is worth engaging, hence worth trecking along to Opawa and getting some insights.

Opawa Baptist Church, Peter and Joyce Majendie are presenting a one day seminar entitled, "From Inspiration to Installation: Public mission through public art."

Peter and Joyce will share their knowledge gleaned from years of practical experience, including;
1. moving from ideas to creativity to implementation
2. art, creativity and mission
3. using public spaces
4. mobilising volunteers
5. working with media groups
This seminar is part of a Pentecost weekend experience that will include art, creativity and spirituality seminars, cafe and live music.

For more go to Steve Taylor

The Message in a public sphere

The church was in darkness. Only candle light on a central table at front. In the background Arvo Part’s Speigel im Spiegel quietly, gently playing over and over and on right through the whole worship time at the Caim. Our text - Acts 8 v1-8
It caused us to consider persecution for faith beyond us as well as the message in the public sphere. In the face of persecution in Jerusalem they scattered and became missionaries. Philip’s mission taking the Gospel to Samaria and ‘joy’ coming to the city in the face of oppression was the other part of this.. The challenge to us was, as Brueggemann puts it

“The gospel is too readily heard and taken for granted as though it contained no
unsettling news and no unwelcome threat. What began as news in the gospel is
easily assumed, slotted, and conveniently dismissed.” (Finally Comes the
Poet: Daring speech for proclamation, 1989).

So taking it on from there I have been pushed to consider further ways in which we dress up the good news in ways that actually cover it up. Do we actually love the trappings more than the gospel itself? Do we believe any more that the gospel is plausible? Where is the daring speech in the face of whatever it is that hounds us today as the church? What is our reticence with all of this?

I’m not saying we need to go to the public square and shout at people, but how do we share the message in ways that ‘joy may come to the city we are in as response to the gospel proclamation?

I also had a piece to write recently on 'Creating a culture attractive to non-church people.' Needless to say I didn’t like that whole phrase in many respects so opted rather to turn it into cultivating the congregation as a hermeneutic of the gospel. My point being that we should be in the patient and humble, but no less demanding work of ‘cultivating’ and seeking a depth of plausibility in faith rather than mere relevance which seems to me to be breeding more and more simulated experiences of gospel and is façade at its cheapest and weakest. Jason Clark has some interesting things on this that has stimulated response too. worth a look at especially his recent on cultural neutering: which echos my own thinking somewhat and I look forward to what he will go on and say.

Yet in trying to avoid the neutering process we can actually perpetuate it. We
may create a new emerging church subculture that is as culturally neutering for
modern church people and postmodern people outside the church. Relevance is
important, but in many cases it is can be largely superficial and focused on
re-branding and marketing, however unintentional. Without an examination of the
things we believe, and our message, the church becomes obsessed with the
acceptable and trendy, and can become more self-focused and irrelevant.(Jason Clark)

We offered prayers first picking up a nail(s) and placing them on the table a symbol of our prayers for oppressed, those who suffer injustice etc. and then there were some scattered small coloured squares all over the floor. People also were invited to come pick up as many as they wished of whatever colour and before they left to place these on the table as a symbol of our prayers for the church in the world in all its colourful parts. These interactive prayers for others coming from our text caused a waiting around the table (yet again).

When I looked more closely too it was the small expressions of these prayers left symbolically that struck me - ways in which clusters of coulour squares were set out, ways the nails were made into sign of a cross or left side by side; all placed upon a cloth we'd used and written names on and had stains of red juice on...
and so we went out into the night and I look at Pentecost and consider more and more how we might make some public display on that day at least. Any ideas? Our theme that day will be

"What is going on here?"

(ps. got fed up of blue blogspace so decided a change was needed. I think its brighter and clearer!)