Scripture necessary for sermons?

It occurred to me that Paul uses no Scripture in the Acts 17 sermon to the Athenians.  He does, however, quote a Stoic poet.  Similarly, 1 Thessalonians, which probably was read as a sermon, quotes no Scripture either.

What are some possible reactions to these instances?
1. Paul and the author of Acts were inspired, you're not.
Fair enough.  You can probably hammer a nail with a crowbar, but why not use a hammer?

2. This shows that the word of God is more than just the written text.
I don't see how anyone can even question this.  The truths contained in Scripture can surely be presented in a different form than they appear in the biblical text.

3. It's dangerous to preach too much from what you think the truth is without referencing Scripture.
In other words, is repeated "topical" preaching without recourse to Scripture just begging for trouble at some point?  Do you almost doom yourself at some point to substitute your thoughts for God's? Of course, I would say we substitute our own thoughts for God's even when we're using the text.

But what are your thoughts?

5.4 Mission within a Mission

... continued from Monday
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From these observations in Mark, probably the earliest gospel, we conclude that the bulk of Jesus' message and proclamation of the good news was not about him.  It was about what God the Father was doing. It was about the kingdom of God, as I argued back in chapter 2.

At one point, Jesus seems to have sent his core disciples out to spread the word as well. In Mark 6:12-13, they go out preaching that people needed to repent, as well as healing and casting out demons.  In other words, their ministry mirrored that of Jesus. They were spreading the word that God was soon coming in judgment of the world and the faithless within Israel. God was reclaiming the earth from demonic powers. God was restoring the lost sheep among his people.

Jesus instructs them not to take food or a bag for begging (6:8-9).  The villages to which they preach are to support them but they are to take nothing extra away. They take sandals to protect their feet and a staff for protection, but not an extra shirt.  Their visit to a village was a test of that village's faith.  It was the duty of the village to welcome and support the disciple and, if it would not, the disciples were to "shake the dust off" their feet and move on (6:11).

Matthew's version does not actually tell of them going out and arguably blurs the mission the disciples went on during Jesus' earthly mission with the mission after Jesus rose from the dead. On the one hand, they are only to go to the cities of Israel.  They are not to go either to Samaria or the Gentiles (10:5). They are going only to the "lost sheep of Israel" (10:5). Because the Great Commission clearly involves all the nations (28:19), these instructions surely relate to the time while Jesus was still on earth.

Other parts of the instruction seem to relate to the time after Jesus' resurrection. It does not seem likely that any of the disciples were handed over to local councils or synagogues while Jesus was on earth (10:17). And they did not appear before Roman governors and kings until decades later (10:18).  The coming of the Son of Man before the end of their mission is puzzling (10:23), but reminds us of statements we find in Mark 9:1, 13:30 and elsewhere that speak of the kingdom coming in some way before the disciples' death.

The statement of taking up their cross also would have been quite puzzling before Jesus' death but would have been deeply appropriate afterwards. Matthew 10 thus seems to combine instructions both appropriate to the initial mission of the disciples during Jesus' earthly ministry and instructions that apply to the decades after Jesus' rising from the dead.

Luke remembers the mission of the disciples having some success.  Luke 10:1-24 tells of a slightly different mission, a mission involving 72.  The number 72 was probably symbolic of the nations and so hints of the mission to the whole world that would take place after Jesus' resurrection. But during Jesus' life, the disciples are amazed that the demons even have to obey them (10:17). Jesus tells them that this fact points to the demise of Satan's power over this world.  He was falling from the sky like lightning (10:18).

Mark remembers the disciples having some failures. They are unable to cast out one demon in particular in Mark 9:18. Jesus indicts them for a lack of faith.

If the mission instructions of Jesus in Matthew 10 seem to blur the mission both before and after Jesus' resurrection, it is possible that the gospels also blur the rejection of the cities where that mission was carried out.  The tone of Jesus' approach to Jerusalem is victorious.  He enters Jerusalem to a crowd that celebrates him as king.

But the memory of the cities around Galilee is one of rejection. "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes" (Matt. 11:21).  Similarly, Jesus says of Capernaum, "Will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades" (11:23).  Unfortunately, the final memory of the mission in Galilee is one in which these villages ultimately rejected Jesus as king.

Yoder's Politics of Jesus

I skipped through Yoder's famous book today and have been discussing it in broad strokes in a couple classes.  Many who come across this post may know much more about Yoder's thinking than I so I welcome refinement and correction.

I would summarize Yoder as follows.  God is the one who fights for us; followers of Jesus do not fight for themselves, especially not through violence.  Violence is never appropriate for a Jesus-follower.  The structures of the world, the powers of the world, are usually full of evil.  Our task as Christians is not to fight against the worldly powers but to give a witness by our voluntary submission to the hierarchies of a fallen world.

Yoder answers a number of objections to using the model of Jesus as a model for us to follow.  He of course also argues for a certain model of Jesus (thus Jesus didn't use his whip against the money changers but to drive the animals out of the temple).

• The objection that Jesus' ethic was limited to his years on earth, an "interim" ethic before a kingdom that was going to come in force later.
• The objection that Jesus' model was for a situation in which it was not conceivable to change the system.
• The objection that Jesus only provides a model for individual response, not for government, which more appropriately turns to God the Father as a model.

I suspect that Yoder is far more right than wrong, although he represents one end of the spectrum to me.  

• I accept the basic principles of Just War theory laid out by Augustine.  
• I believe that Jesus' earthly ministry was phase one and that in the second coming phase he will not be so meek and mild
• I do believe we should work for change more vigorously and engagedly with worldly powers when we can, although not usually with violence (I support Bonhoeffer's deviation in regard to Hitler).  I do accept reasonable force to protect the lives of others and, in some cases, in self-defense. 
• I do think that God the Father provides a better model for governance and justice rather than Jesus when he was on earth.

But what do you think?

5.3 Disciples Don't Get It

... continued from Friday
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We have some significant clues that there was somewhat of a disconnect between the expectations of Jesus' disciples and followers and how things actually played out.  For example, the Synoptic Gospels show us that Jesus' audiences expected the kingdom to come almost right away. They believed that Jesus' earthly ministry would culminate right then in his earthly kingship and the restoration of Israel (e.g., Acts 1:6). So Jesus' disciples probably did not know at first that they would live out the rest of their lives on the mission without Jesus on earth. Mark shows them repeatedly asking Jesus about their roles in the coming kingdom with no sense at all that Jesus was about to die.

First, it is apparently not until the end of Jesus' earthly ministry that his identity as messiah comes out into the open with his disciples.  It seems to be just before Jesus finally heads for Jerusalem that Jesus really raises with them the question of his identity and his explicit role in the kingdom (Mark 8:27-33). It is at this point that Peter for the first time confesses openly what he no doubt had suspected for a long time, that Jesus is the messiah.

Jesus agrees with them.  He is the "anointed one," the messiah--"christos in Greek."  To everyone's ears, this means he will become king and will rule over Israel.

But then Jesus shocks them. He is going to Jerusalem to die (Mark 8:31).  Peter immediately rejects this suggestion. That's not what the "anointed one" does, Peter is thinking.  The messiah doesn't die; he becomes king. Peter has no sense of Jesus' impending death, let alone a two thousand year lag in time between Jesus' earthly ministry and the coming kingdom on earth.

Two more times in Mark Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to die amid their complete lack of understanding. Just after Jesus tells them a second time that he is going to die, they argue over who will have the most prominent role in the coming restored kingdom of Israel (Mark 9:34). This happens even a third time. Jesus tells them what is coming and immediately thereafter, James and John ask Jesus for the most prominent seats next to Jesus in his coming kingdom on earth (Mark 10:35-40).

It seems a fair enough conclusion that the disciples might have thought Jesus' triumphal entry to Jerusalem was going to be the beginning of his rule on earth. Peter's denials were surely more about his complete confusion than any cowardice on his part.  He was probably ready to fight for Jesus, just not prepared for Jesus to surrender himself and be arrested. They apparently did not expect Jesus to die.

His resurrection also seems to have taken them by surprise. The women at the tomb are so flustered and confused by the absence of his body, they don't tell anyone at first (Mark 16:8).  And once the disciples are convinced, they resume thinking that Jesus is about to restore the earthly kingdom to Israel (Acts 1:6). So Jesus' death and resurrection seem completely off the radar of Jesus' closest followers.

From these observations in Mark, probably the earliest gospel, we conclude that the bulk of Jesus' message and proclamation of the good news was not about him.  It was about what God the Father was doing...

Creation and Alienation

... continuing the outline of a brief overview of Wesleyan theology... less unique in this section...
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3.1 The Story
I think I would start this chapter with the Christian story.  God created the earth, and it was good.  God created humanity in his image, and it was good. Adam and Eve sinned and not only did human nature "fall" but the creation as well.

The interpretation of the relevant biblical passages has not remained static over time.  For example, what is the image of God in Genesis?  In the original meaning, it was a kind of governmental or functional image.  Adam and Eve were the image of God because they ruled the land as God rules all things.

In Christian history, including Wesley, the image developed to be seen in terms of human characteristics like moral capacity or free will. These were things Christians had in common with God that on the other hand distinguished them from other animals.  The capacity for relationships is a more recent trend in the way in which humans are seen to be in the image of God, one that fits well also with the Wesleyan tradition. Christian tradition sees the image of God as marred to varying degrees within humanity because of sin.

3.2 The Condition
The Fall has been interpreted in the Augustinian-Calvinist stream of Protestantism as a matter of total depravity apart from the grace of God, and the Wesleyan tradition has historically stood in this stream.  Perhaps constructively I would rather say that any goodness in the creation is completely derivative from God and that the world currently is thoroughly alienated from him.

Purely from a look around us, it is clear enough that the world is alienated from God and in need of redemption and reconciliation.  We call it sin.  How did we come to be in this state?  Augustine and the Christian tradition in general, including Wesley and the Wesleyan tradition, has pointed to Adam, the first human.

Evolution has presented a significant challenge to the Augustinian tradition of the Fall, especially recent genetic challenges to the idea that all the genetic variation among humans could come from two individuals. This is a major issue for Christian understanding.  What does Christian theology do with evolution?  Are there models of Christianity today that can both remain orthodox and accept some form of evolution?

These are questions of where the current alienation of the world came from and our answers to them have implications for where the world is going to.  Nevertheless, the fallenness and alienation of the world from God is clear enough.  Whether we agree on the precise cause of the current situation, the situation exists and longs for a solution.

The Wesleyan tradition has generally thought of humanity having a "carnal" or "sinful" nature linked to Adam's "original sin."  I consider these to be pictures of the human condition more than literal descriptions. Perhaps a more helpful approach is to think of us as spiritually dis-empowered because our default condition is disconnected from God.  Our alienated state thus becomes more a matter of what we lack rather than some presence of evil within us.

God in Wesleyan Theology

Last Saturday, I threw out an outline of what a short overview of Wesleyan theology might look like if I wrote one.  On Sunday, I spun out the outline of a possible introductory chapter.  Today I thought I would brainstorm the outline of a second chapter on God. By the way, I guess Chris Bounds does have the workings of a short book of this sort. My "Wesleyan" theology is much more "constructive," while Chris' is much more "dogmatic." [1]
______
2.1 Trinity
A Wesleyan theology might emphasize the relational dimension of the Trinity over individualism. In particular, it might see love as fundamental to the nature of God, as a fundamental aspect of the Trinity's inner identity. These might not be uniquely Wesleyan, but they are probable emphases of a Wesleyan theology of the Trinity.

2.2 God as Creator
I'm not sure that a Wesleyan theology of God as creator would differ much from any other orthodox view. I personally see features like omnipotence and omniscience as functions of creation. For me, they primarily define God in relation to what he has created (this is part of my theology rather than a distinctively Wesleyan theology).  Omnipresence also is a feature of God in relation to the creation.

Where I personally would be perhaps a little unique is to see holiness primarily as a function of God as creator.  Holiness is, in its fundamental sense, God-ness.  It is sacredness.  In a fallen world, holiness can take on an added sense of purity.  But is it possible that, even if the world were not fallen, there would be the distinction between sacred space/time and the ordinary?

2.3 God as Love
Any Wesleyan theology will emphasize God's nature as love.  Mercy takes priority over justice.  God's justice is formative in making people better.  It is protective in keeping the righteous safe from the unrighteous.  And it is final when there is no hope of redemption.  God's goodness is another way of saying that he always acts in love toward his creation, with his justice providing a loving framework for the creation.

I would say that my thinking on these things is more a working out of a particular Wesleyan perspective than anything like the Wesleyan perspective.

[1] These are technical terms.  "Dogmatic" theology is much more a matter of presenting a "deposit" of theology from the past.  "Constructive" theology tries to re-present and synthesize theology in the light of new elements in a never-ending discussion.  The former is more a given, the latter more dynamic.

The ends usually trump the means...

If you've heard the expression, "The ends justify the means," you've probably heard it in a negative context.  That is, "The ends don't justify the means."  This reaction is completely appropriate to the situation to which this saying is usually applied.  You are trying to help poor Joe get out of foreclosure so you break into rich Sally's house to steal some money.

These sorts of situations do pop up from time to time, but it occurred to me that most of the time, the means aren't the important thing, but the end.  That is, the most effective person (and usually the smartest person) is the one who is focused on the outcome rather than the process of getting to the outcome.

There are two important caveats here.  One is that there are immoral ways of getting to a goal.  That's where the saying, "The end doesn't justify the means," comes in.

A second important caveat is that process can be very important in effectively reaching a goal.  In fact, the real purpose of good process is to make it easier to reach the goal. The larger a goal, the larger an organization, the more important it becomes to have good processes in place. There are certain small church pastors whose churches will never get much beyond 100, if that much, because they are unable to set up processes that do not involve them at the center of everything.

But the bane of traditional institutions is not individual initiative and creativity.  Institutions--especially academic institutions--are notorious for loving process, for loving the means and never getting to the ends.  It's the all too familiar enjoyment of loving to talk about things without ever making a decision or implementing anything.  I have a saying, "Only people who don't like meetings should be allowed to lead meetings."

(I was in a meeting at a Christian college in Pennsylvania once and was fascinated that the President seemed to be an entrepreneur and the Academic Dean was a "process" type person--probably a good combination.  The President there, as I recall, was making the college move into the online arena.  Meanwhile, the Dean was dotting the i's and crossing the academic t's--it was fascinating to me.)

Process is only valuable if it gets us more quickly or efficiently to the goal.  Focus on process for its own sake is stupidity.  Most of the time, it doesn't matter whether you take Nebraska St. or Baldwin Ave.  But the person who cuts across the grass path will get there faster than the one who takes the pretty sidewalk that winds around. The ends usually trump the means in our day to day decision making.

P.S. I like to think that Hitler's early successes were because he was a good planner... and I would like to think that the ultimate Allied victory was because we were good improvisers.

Science Friday: Atomic Construction

... She also noticed that the atomic weight was written under each elements' symbol in the Periodic Table.  Each box had the atomic number at the top center of the box--so 6 at the top of carbon.  Then in the middle of the box was the symbol for the element--so a C for carbon.  Then at the bottom middle was the atomic weight.

So the number at the bottom of carbon on the Periodic Table was 12.0107 because almost all the carbon on the earth is carbon 12, with its 6 protons and 6 neutrons.  There's much less carbon 14, with 8 neutrons. She remembered that the book also wrote it slightly different some times.  Sometimes the C had two numbers written just to its left, the mass number on the top (like 12 for carbon 12) and the atomic number on the bottom (like 6 for carbon).

She got it.  It wasn't interesting in the slightest, but she got it.  It was certainly enough to earn her a good night's sleep.  Hopefully she wouldn't have any dreams about chemistry this time.

No such luck. She didn't actually realize she had fallen asleep.  She had laid her head down on the desk in her room and nodded off.  When she lifted her head back up, she thought she had re-awoken.

In reality, she was still asleep, her head still laying down on the desk.  So it didn't seem unreasonable that she started to shrink, smaller, smaller, smaller.  Soon the seat of her chair was a vast brown plain.  Then she was seeing what must have been the cells of the trees from which the chair was made.

Down, down, down, she fell into the nucleus of a wood cell, then into its chromosomes and DNA.  Then she was just falling.  It was a vast empty space until finally she spied a huge ball of some sort directly beneath her.  She bounced a couple times and finally was just sitting on top like she was on a bean bag.

"It's a proton," Spruce yelled up at her from a platform off to the side.  It didn't occur to her in the dream to ask how he got there.

"Yeah?" she asked.

"Yeah.  They're building a hydrogen atom.  Want to help?"

"OK," she said.  "What'll we do?"

"We need an electron.  Hydrogen.  Atomic number one.  One proton, one electron."

"Any neutrons?" Stefanie asked.

"Nope.  Just one and one.  Well, there is..."

"Here are some," she interrupted.  She had found a set of shelves with small balls in them, and with that, she lobbed one of them toward the big proton ball she had been sitting on.  The small electron immediately started swirling in a sphere around the proton nucleus.

"And that's how it's done," she continued.  "Hydrogen.  Next!"

"OK," Spruce said and looked down at his chemistry book.  "Looks like helium is next, atomic number 2."

"Isn't that the stuff you put in balloons for birthday parties, that makes your voice go high and squeaky?"

"Yeah," he answered.  "It's two protons, two neutrons, and two electrons."

"I didn't notice that panel before," Stef said.  Sure enough, there was a panel with a button for protons and a button for neutrons on it.  She pressed the proton button twice, then the neutron button twice and the four particles appeared.  "So now we just need two electrons."

Spruce picked two of the small electrons from the shelf and lobbed the one and then the other.  Both of them swirled together in a sphere around the four particles in the nucleus...

The curse of the blessed books...

My desk is wall to wall with books I have bought these last couple years as Dean of the seminary.  They are great books!  The books our students are reading are wonderful, and the ones we can only summarize are tremendous too.

What a curse for me!  I'm sitting here looking at some incredible stuff (just today I ordered the new Bonhoeffer biography by Metaxas and Yoder's Politics of Jesus, which I've never read but should have years ago).

I close with a poem by Walt Whitman, first introduced to me by my good friend Bill Patrick.  It's not particularly Christian, but I feel this way sometimes...
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Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest of me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer. That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

5.2 Fishing for People

... continued from Wednesday
_________________
... It is less important to know the precise twelve as to notice the significance of the number twelve itself. ... the number twelve links Jesus' followers to the restoration of Israel...

Who were these individuals?  They were ordinary guys, the "salt of the earth."  The core disciples seem to be fishermen--Peter and his brother Andrew, James and his brother John (Mark 1:16-20).  They may even have been part of a fishing guild in Capernaum, directly on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee.  Jesus tells them he is going to show them how to fish for people. By this Jesus presumably means their mission is going to be to prepare the Jews in Galilee for the arrival of God's kingdom and the restoration of Israel.

John 1 remembers Jesus' first encounter with Andrew, Peter, and Philip being at the river Jordan, as they had all come down from Galilee to see John the Baptist.  John says they were from Bethsaida, just north of the Sea of Galilee (John 1:44) and also mentions another follower called Nathaniel. [1] But Mark seems to picture Peter and Andrew living in Capernaum. It is possible to harmonize these two accounts, but we cannot know for sure. Generally we shouldn't try to mix the gospel accounts because we often end up creating our own story that is different from all the gospel stories themselves.

Matthew is said to be a tax collector.  There were different kinds of tax collectors.  For example, it is possible that Levi, mentioned in such close proximity to fishing in Mark 1, may have been someone who collected taxes on the fish that the fishermen of Capernaum took in.  Alternatively, such men could have been toll collectors, who took money from those traveling from one tax area to another.

These individuals were obviously not liked and everything about the gospel portraits of them supports the notion that they accumulated wealth at the people's expense (e.g., Luke 3:13). They were responsible to give so much to those above them, but they also took their own cut for themselves. Jesus does not resist taxes--that's Caesar's business (Mark 12:17). But he opposed tax collectors getting rich off the people's backs.

We don't know much about the other core followers of Jesus.  James the son of Alphaeus, "James the Less" in contrast to James the son of Zebedee, seems to have the same father as the tax collector Levi (cf. Mark 2:14).  Perhaps tax collecting was the family business.  We think of Thomas because of the tradition in John that he initially doubted Jesus' resurrection (John 20:24-29; cf. Matt. 28:17), but we don't know much more. One named Simon is called "Simon the Zealot" (e.g., Matt. 10:4), which at least raises the possibility that he later participated in the Jewish revolt.

Judas Iscariot is of course the follower of Jesus that betrayed him by telling the leaders of Jerusalem where to find him at night.  There is no certainty about the meaning of Iscariot.  It may refer in some way to the village or area that his family was from, but we do not know for certain where that was. It is at least possible that it was in the very south, which might suggest Judas also met Jesus as he went to see John the Baptist...

[1] Later Christian tradition equated him with Bartholomew, but this may simply be the pervasive urge of later interpreters to try to harmonize the biblical accounts, usually done rather credulously.

Diversity and Worship

I've been privileged to be around a number of discussions lately about diversity in the context of worship. I have opinions on diversity in a faculty and in student bodies. But I've heard a number of perspectives lately on diversity in worship.

One perspective is that of the "homogeneous principle"--groups tend to "thrive" when they are full of like-minded individuals.  I've worded this carefully.  I've put "thrive" in quotes because potentially we are only talking about thriving in certain ways, thriving in number or thriving in terms of the pleasure of the group. Diversifying a group is hard work and like tends to attract like.

Perhaps more significant is the phrase "like-minded individuals."  A colleague of mine has suggested that a multi-ethnic group can actually be a homogeneous group because everyone there is like-minded in the sense of loving multi-ethnic groups (I'm not sure he has put it quite so well as I just did, however ;-)

Still more voices are those who would say we are not looking like the kingdom of God if we have a completely white or a completely black or a completely Hispanic congregation.  I heard a student respond today that she lives out in the country and there is hardly anyone but white farmers in her community.  "Does it make us racist that we have an all white congregation?" she asked.

The thoughts that have emerged in my mind as I've sat on the sidelines of these debates are two-fold.  First, who if anyone are we excluding?  Second, what are we missing out on?

1. Who are we excluding?
One of the great insights of this diversity discussion is to realize the privilege the "in group" often has without even realizing it.  We may not notice the inadvertent challenges the "out group" may face.  I would like to think we're mostly past overt discrimination (although we're not).  Hopefully gone are the days when anyone thinks women are by nature more gullible than men or that a man is of course always going to be more suitable for leadership (we're not).  Hopefully gone are the days when someone really thinks that Germans are a purer or more noble race than the Polish or Africans (we're not).

At least most of us at least know we shouldn't say such things (when we are prejudiced, we're now more likely to give some other reason for the prejudice than admit it).

Where we are now is less about overt exclusion but inadvertent exclusion without intending to.  I may not mean to exclude my Lutheran friends when my Wesleyan friends and I are laughing hilariously about Wesleyan things. And I may not mean to exclude the African-Americans who live on the other side of 38th Street.  Or maybe my respectable, masters degree, middle class congregation doesn't mean to exclude the people on welfare within a few hundred feet of the church.

But I may very well not notice that such people do not feel welcome at my church.  I may be excluding them by accident.  I may be so comfortable with "my type" that I don't even realize I have inadvertently made others feel unwelcome.  It is a matter of omission rather than commission.  I probably don't mean to exclude the women in the congregation by talking about "him," "he," "a man," "him," "he," "him," "he." But that doesn't mean that some of the women in my congregation don't feel ignored.

I suspect the most important question here is "In what ways might we as a congregation inadvertently be  unwelcoming to others who are not like us--not just in terms of ethnicity but in terms of social class or political party, etc?"  The "unlike" may not want to come, but we must be a place where the "unlike" would be welcome to come.

2. What are we missing out on?
There still seems to be something wrong when my little group is not in community with other believers near-by who are different.  Why am I not talking to the Baptists or Methodists or Catholics in my town? I should be, surely.  Why is my mostly white church not in fellowship with the Latino/a or African-American church nearby?  Why don't we worship together every once and a while?

Why is it that we have a Haitian congregation using my sanctuary on Saturday but my white Sunday morning congregation never eats with them, never worships with them ever?  Something seems wrong that we could be so close, be one in Christ, and never talk to each other, never worship together, never eat together.

Do we have to worship together all the time?  Does a congregation need to have a mixture of all races, genders, and social classes?  Something would seem deficient if a congregation were all female.  Something seems more kingdom-like when people of all "tribes and nations" are worshiping together.

But perhaps the bottom line is that we are missing out on something when we are not in fellowship with other believers in our community.  There seems something unhealthily inwardly focused, almost self-centered not to want to connect with other believers around us.

When others are excluded, intentionally or otherwise, when we cut ourselves off from other believers, it is hard to say we are thriving as a congregation, even if we have tremendous numbers.

Apprentices of Jesus 1

Throughout the book so far, I have tried to set Jesus' earthly mission and message clearly against the background of the arriving kingdom of God to the earth. The first chapter showed how John the Baptist likely preached that God was about to come to judge the earth and restore Israel. The second chapter showed how Jesus' preaching of the coming kingdom fit right into this context.  The third and fourth chapters talked about how Jesus' mission to the poor, the sick, and the demon possessed was in part about the restoration of all God's people, as well as the defeat of spiritual forces that stood in the way of God's rule.

This chapter is about how Jesus recruited others to participate in his mission.  Here we especially think of his "disciples."  The word "disciple" in Greek (mathētēs) is related to the word for learning (mathēteuō).  So the gospels remember Jesus' followers as "learners" or as apprentices.  As Jesus' apprentices, Jesus' disciples followed him around and learned his ways so that they could continue in his footsteps. They were Jesus' students who followed rabbi Jesus around and learned his ways and understanding of God.

Jesus had many followers. Stories about Jesus feeding five thousand and four thousand at a time make it clear that far more than twelve followed him around. At one point a group of men dig a hole in a roof to let a paralyzed man down because there was no room in the house (Mark 2:1-12). Soon Jesus stays out in deserted places because so many are following him (Mark 1:45; 3:7-9; 4:1; 5:24).

Among these many followers, Jesus picked twelve in particular.  The gospels give slightly different names in their lists of who these twelve were (Mark 3:16-19; Matt. 10:2-4; Acts 1:13). [1] John never even gives a list and indicates that many of Jesus' followers left him at some point. John is very symbolic in its presentation and may be indicating that many of Jesus' early followers stopped following him because they could not accept his death and resurrection as part of the plan (John 6:53-66). [2]

It is less important to know the precise twelve as to notice the significance of the number twelve itself. In Matthew 19:28, Jesus tells the disciples that they will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. This statement makes explicit something we might have already guessed, that the number twelve links Jesus' followers to the restoration of Israel. The fact that Jesus does not include himself within the number of the twelve puts him in a different category, namely, as messiah. [3]...

[1] The traditional way of handling the slight differences in the names of the twelve is to say that some of the disciples had more than one name, for example that Thaddeus in Matthew and Mark is Judas in Acts or that Levi in Mark 2:14 is Matthew. It is of course possible. From a standpoint of truth, it is preferable to live with the uncertainty. In real life, we would not harmonize details in this way but simply say that the sources do not completely agree on the precise names of the twelve.

[2] Many interpreters of John do not actually think that the "beloved disciple" who stands behind the Gospel of John was one of the twelve. Certainly the Gospel of John never identifies him as one of the twelve.

[3] So E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism...

Government and the Poor 7

... continued from yesterday
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... Christians can only justify capitalism if they think it is an economic system that can help the most people while not oppressing the rest.

Another question that is sometimes brought up today is whether it is the task of the church or the government to help those in need. Certainly it is our task.  That is to say, "to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin" (James 4:17). We have seen that the New Testament unanimously expects those who are able to help those who are in need.

Should the church help those in need?  It seems common sense.  If we can organize our individual efforts as believers to help others, why wouldn't we?  Certainly the churches of the New Testament did.  Acts 6 tells of an incident when a certain segment of the church was being neglected in the daily distribution of food.  These were widows within the Greek-speaking Jewish immigrant community in Jerusalem. The incident tells us that there was a daily distribution, and that it was a Christian value to reach everyone in need within the community.

When Paul met with James and Peter for their first real sit down, their main request of Paul was that he remember the poor (Gal. 2:10). Accordingly, Paul expended great efforts some years later collecting an offering from the churches he founded to take back to Jerusalem (2 Cor. 8-9).  Paul himself primarily worked so that he would not get entangled with the strings of patronage--taking the support of a church like Corinth would have indebted himself to them in his mind. The giving of the Philippian church was more about them doing what they should do rather than about his need (Phil. 4:17).

1 Timothy 5 would later speak of a well developed system of taking care of widows within the churches of Ephesus. It was thus a Christian value of the early church to take care not only of those within each Christian community but within other Christian communities as well.  Acts 2 pictures an early church that even sold its excess property to give to those who had need (Acts 2:45). While most of this good was done within Christian communities, Paul says, "as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers" (Gal. 6:10). Doing good is not limited to the church.

But what of governments?  Is it the business of government to help the poor? Here again we get into arguments about economics and political theory, with some arguing that government involvement is counterproductive. Some would argue that governments do not help others well but instead make matters worse. Many of these arguments involve expertise in areas beyond the scope of this book.

What we can do in this book is describe the overall Christian values. The first is that there is nothing in Scripture that opposes human authorities helping those in need. Indeed, the Old Testament considers it to be a virtue of the king to take care of the poor.  Psalm 72 implores the king to "take pity on the weak and needy and save the needy from death" (72:13). Romans 13 describes the Roman state as a potential agent for the good of the citizens of Rome (13:4) and does not set limits on what good the state might do.

The question is thus one of whether in fact a particular system of doing good for those in need truly helps them in the long run or not.  Christians will no doubt disagree on how effective governments are at such things.  But if a government could effectively help those in need without bringing other harm in the process, Christian values would say that it was a good thing. And certainly no individual or church is normally in a position to help as many people as a well organized government. [1] The Bible indicates it is a Christian value to try to help. If the powers that be could help as well, nothing in Scripture prohibits it in theory.

[1] If we take the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean or the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, no individual or church was equipped to bring help to the area with the speed or effectiveness that the United States government did.  In fact, most help organizations in the United States would have difficulty surviving without financial assistance from the government.

Faith

Yesterday I spun out what an outline of a short, 120ish page overview of Wesleyan theology might look like.  Today I wanted to brainstorm what the outline of the first chapter might look like.  The first chapter is usually introductory.  It gets definitions and presuppositions on the table. It might be a little shorter than the others, say 10-15 pages.

Here are some thoughts.

1.1 What is Wesleyan Theology?
Here I would give some history.  John Wesley was an Anglican minister, founder of the Methodist tradition.  Anglicanism was a kind of middle ground between Roman Catholicism and high Protestantism. So Wesley was influenced by Martin Luther's focus on individual faith and salvation.  He took the position of Arminius that God wanted everyone to be saved and that anyone could be saved, an argument that played out on the ideological turf of John Calvin. But Wesley also valued the sacraments and the authority of the church in a way that looks catholic to many today.

In America, Wesleyanism played out in the 1800's as revivalism.  Wesley himself had emphasized certain experiences of God a believer might have in his or her life, and the American frontier emphasized these, including one in which a person became perfected in love.  There was an emphasis on the necessity of a godly life after conversion with the possibility that you could "lose" your salvation if you did not walk in faithfulness to God. These were all trajectories set by Wesley's theology.

So Wesleyan theology is a form of theology that is orthodox in that it holds to the common creeds of Christianity.  It is Protestant in that it recognizes the fallibility of the visible church and the validity of its critique by Scripture and the founding principles of Christ.  It affirms the primacy of God's grace and the importance of individual faith.  It is Arminian in the sense that it believes anyone can be reconciled to God.

Within these streams, the Wesleyan tradition believes that faithfulness is an essential for continuance in God's grace.  It is optimistic about God's desire to transform us into godly people and to transform the societies of which we are a part.  There is thus an experiential emphasis in the Wesleyan tradition that arguably provided the fertile soil from which the Pentecostal movement later sprung.  

1.2 The Role of Experience
One of the influences on Wesley was his encounter with a group called the Moravians.  They were Pietists who emphasized the possibility of a personal assurance that a person was right with God.  It was quite unusual in those days, especially for Calvinists, to think you could be certain whether you were one of the chosen or not. Wesley himself found the peace they felt about their eternal destiny quite striking, and the idea of assurance was to become one of his major preaching points.

Experientially oriented Christianity has its dangers as well.  We are probably more often than not mistaken about what we feel is right when we don't bring our heads into the equation.  Perhaps a better way to say it is that God wants us to be in relationship with him.  Relationship implies that we have encounters with God.  The model of relationship is an excellent lens through which to explore Wesleyan theology and I would use it throughout any book of this sort.

The wisdom of recognizing the key role of the non-rational has become clear as postmodernism has passed by and brain study has progressed.  The way we think about the world is not the way God thinks about the world.  We do not have all the data nor can we organize it in all its complexity.  History is the story of shifts in paradigms and how we think is much more about the subconscious than conscious mind.

It thus turns out to be insightful to focus on the "heart" over the "head" in theology.  A robust theology cannot merely focus on what we believe with our conscious mind but include the deep person within with its motives and deeper intentionality.

1.3 The Role of Reason 
As a child of the Enlightenment, Wesley's thinking was very rational and Reason played a significant role.  Again, postmodernism has highlighted the centrality of faith in what we believe. Everything we believe about just about everything requires faith.  We must start therefore with faith.

Some streams of Christianity right now are heavily "presuppositional."  There are some things you just don't question.  This was not the spirit of Wesley.  He was more of the mind that the evidence would not blatantly contradict what we believe as Christians.

A fruitful middle ground is the tried and true "faith seeking understanding."  We start with the faith of the church but we recognize that our minds are fallible and limited, and the Protestant principle implies a certain revisability.  The evidence may not demand a verdict, but we wouldn't expect it to blatantly contradict the verdict of faith either.

A Wesleyan Theology

Someone asked me if there was good book to introduce Wesleyan theology.  Sad to say, I don't think there is.  I had H. Orton Wiley in college and enjoyed it, but it's hardly coffee reading.  The Nazarenes have had a couple options in the past and I want to commend them for that, but I suspect they are getting a bit of a dated feel like a shaggy carpet and paneled walls.  I see that Will Willimon has recently come out with one for the Methodists, no doubt focused on John Wesley.

I'm not a professional theologian.  I'm always amazed at how little I know about theology when I talk to people like John Drury and Chris Bounds.  But maybe because I don't know as much, I suspect I write more engagingly and relevantly than most of those who are. I don't plan to write a Wesleyan theology, but as usual I got to thinking, "If I were to write a 120 page overview of Wesleyan-Arminian theology, how would I approach it?"

First, I think I would write each chapter in layers.  In each chapter, I would start with what most historic Christians have thought, then move to ways in which the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition might contrast with other traditions, and end with some of the variety among Wesleyan-Arminians themselves on that topic.  It would in the process point out similarities and contrasts of the tradition in relation to other groups like catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, Pietism, anabaptism, evangelicalism, and Pentecostalism. We potentially share similarities and have differences with all of these.

Second, I think I would structure the book in terms of the story.

1. Faith (preliminary comments on what we can know and what is important)
2. God (including the Trinity)
3. Creation and Alienation (including some reflection on how evolution might affect this topic)
4. Revelation (much bigger than Scripture, God's movement toward us, including Israel, culminating in Christ)
5. Reconciliation (with Christ as the center; individual, corporate in the church, church as agent of change in the world)
6. Restoration (the resolution of the story in final salvation and judgment)
7. In the Meantime (Christian living as we live in the world, ethics, focus on the Spirit)

Finally, key elements that would distinguish the presentation as Wesleyan-Arminian might include things like 1) an emphasis on relationship, intention, and experience, 2) emphasis on prevenient grace, on the fact that God takes the initiative to come to us, sense that he comes toward everyone, 3) optimism about reconciliation and what God wants to do now in the world on every level.

Oh well, can't write everything...

Science Friday: Atomic Numbers

It continues.
________________
... Meanwhile, Spruce continued to talk to himself.  "It's the protons that tell you what element it is.  That's because it's the only particle whose number is always the same no matter what form the element comes in."

Stefanie carefully removed a piece of parsley from a delicious strip of fettuccine.

"You see, we normally think an atom has the same amount of protons and electrons.  When it does, it has no charge or a neutral charge.  The negatives of the electrons outside the nucleus balance out the positives of the protons in the nucleus."

Stefanie next eyed a strip of fettuccine with some extra Alfredo sauce on it.  It looked absolutely delicious.

"But some atoms can give away some of their electrons or borrow some from another atom.  When that happens, the atom can become an ion with either a positive or negative charge.  So you can't count the electrons to decide what kind of an atom it is.  The number can change."

"That's interesting," Stef said, eyeing a lovely bit of broccoli.

"You can't count the neutrons," Spruce continued, "because the same element can come with different numbers of neutrons.  They're called different isotopes of the element."

"What's an element again?" she asked, not noticing that Spruce had used the word repeatedly.

"An element is a kind of atom.  So gold is an element, a particular kind of atom.  Silver is an element, a particular kind of atom."

"And diamonds are a kind of atom," she said.

"No, I think diamonds are made up of carbon atoms or something."

Oooo, Stef thought, a mushroom.  It had been hiding under several fettuccine noodles.

"So that's why they use the number of protons to identify an atom, because if you change the number of protons, you've changed the kind of element."

With no more fettuccine, broccoli or 'shrooms on her plate, Stef finally was forced to look at him.

"And I need to know this why?"

"The number of protons in an atom tells you the atomic number," Spruce answered. "It tells you which element it is.  You know the periodic table, that chart on the inside of every chemistry book?"

"Yeah?" and indeed she did.  There had been a huge one in her high school chemistry room, a picture full of boxes stacked on top of each other, like you were looking through the walls of some huge condominium with a tower on each end.

"The periodic table starts at the top left with the number 1 and moves across each row with the atomic number counting up one by one.  The first row only has two boxes on each end, numbers 1 and 2."

"So you're telling me number 1 has one proton in its nucleus and number 2 has two protons in its nucleus?"

Spruce was actually surprised she had paid that much attention.

"Yeah, hydrogen has one proton and helium has two.  Then the next row keeps counting up: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10."

"Why does it skip the space in the middle at the top," Stef surprisingly asked, having stared at the chart a time or two in high school.

Spruce thought like he was about to say something profound and finally came forth with his answer.  "No idea"...

Jesus and Capitalism 6

... continued from Tuesday
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... He intervened when the weak were enslaved beyond their control. His impulse to heal is the impulse we should have toward those in distress in our society.

I hinted above that a society as a whole can "help" the poor by the way it structures itself.  For example, capitalistic systems, if they are set up well, seem to be able to help a society overall.  Many would argue that capitalism at its best makes it possible for more people to have more.  The question of how to set up economic systems to maximize the benefit to the most people is a question for economists and historians. It is not what a book like this one is about.

But what a book like this one can do is clarify the values that a Christian should have.  What would Jesus do, when setting up an economic system?  He would set up one that "loves" the most people the most, while not forgetting any individual in the process.  He would oppose any system that tended to impoverish some in the process of giving massive excess to others. Would Jesus set up a capitalistic system, if he were setting up a human economy?  The answer can only be yes if it meant that more people would benefit and that others were not neglected in the process.

Normally, we do not have much control over such things.  Few of us have any say on what the economic system of a country is.  From time to time, it does become part of the mix of topics in politics.  One politician says that one way of doing things will make things better, while another says it will make things worse.  Again, few of us are competent to know who is right, and even economic experts can disagree.

What is important is to be clear on the goal of loving and not harming our neighbor.  If an economic system only causes a few individuals to accrue massive wealth while those who work "in their fields" struggle, Jesus would reject such a system out of hand (cf. James 5:4).  You will find no support for such a system in the New Testament.

And it seems important to recognize that the way a system is set up has implications for how money is distributed.  Money is not property, not in the modern world.  The value of money goes up and down, as does the price we charge for something. Some of the most influential factors in the modern economic world have to do with gambling and speculation. The wealth accrued by a good bet on the market is not the same as a goat a family plans to eat for supper.

As we have seen, the New Testament looks negatively toward those with massive excess of wealth. One parable in Luke may even applaud a manager who, without his master's permission, writes off debt owed to his master.  It seems to applaud him even though he does it for selfish reasons (Luke 16:1-13). The reason this parable seems so strange to us may be in part that we do not realize the strongly negative underlying view of wealth that Luke has.

The Bible never connects its prohibitions on stealing with this sort of person. Indeed, a better argument can be made that it saw this sort of person himself as a thief.  Most people in the Roman world had barely enough to feed their family and pay whatever they might be obligated to pay the powers that be.  Stealing from this sort of person was not a violation of some abstract philosophical sense of property.  It was taking the goat from which the family got its milk and cheese.

Again, the point is that the follower of Jesus will always keep in mind the fundamental value of helping those in need.  There is no inherent virtue to capitalism.  Quite the opposite, it is based on a principle of self-interest that tends to move in the opposite direction of biblical values (e.g., Phil. 2:3).  Christians can only justify capitalism if they think it is an economic system that can help the most people while not oppressing the rest...

Prejudice and Stereotypes

I don't have time to write much today, but here's something based on a post in a course, after we read a short story called, "Revelation," by Flannery O'Connor.
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One concept in sociology that has been helpful to me in processing social prejudice is in group/out group. When we are talking about someone in our group, we tend to accentuate their positive characteristics. When we are talking about someone in an out group, we tend to accentuate their negative characteristics.

It's a fine line to walk for me personally. There are cultural differences between different groups. Such differences can be prized by one group and devalued by another, just like I might value characteristics that are my strengths while devaluing characteristics that are my weaknesses.

But that doesn't mean that the characteristics are never real. My strengths often have corresponding weaknesses and vise versa for the person whose strengths are in areas of my weakness.  Surely it can work that way for cultures in general, that some cultures have strengths that may have associated weaknesses.

So it seems to me that cultural stereotypes are not always wrong; they can even give a jump start to communication and understanding. BUT, in the hands of most of us they are inaccurate, imbalanced, and a subconscious way of making me feel better about myself at someone else's expense. Most of the time, stereotypes are vehicles for prejudice rather than for understanding.

Bottom line: I need to give every specific individual the right to show and tell me who they really are, not to impose on them my own assumptions.  Further, I need to give every individual the space to change as well, regardless of what they might have been or done in the past.

21st Century Christianity

Here are some features of Christianity that I believe have staying power, despite strong streams to the contrary at present.

1. A genuine love
Forms of Christianity right now that focus on what you believe focus on the most superficial part of the human brain.  Our motives are deep, and our choices are what define us.  What arguably matters most to God is our "heart," our intentions toward others as they lead to our choices and our actions. This focus is real. This focus is genuine. This focus shows up in life. This focus will persist.

2. Interest in the whole person
You cannot neatly divide up a person into mental, physical, and spiritual.  A person's eternal trajectory may be the most important aspect of his or her life, but God is genuinely interested in the whole person. For those who are "burned over ground," the frontal assault to try to convert is counterproductive. Christianity that will persist will need to build relationships, be genuinely interested in the whole person (meaning physical, social, economic, and needs of all kinds), and let issues of spiritual trajectory arise in God's own time.  This principle carries over to being interested in God's world as well.

3. Focus on trajectory, not event
Christianity that will persist will be less interested in mile markers than in the direction a person is traveling.  This includes the person who has made a confession of faith--God does not weigh a person by where he or she has been but by where they are going. It can become a myopic preoccupation.

3. Focus on reconciliation over justice
The picture of justice as God's dominant characteristic pictures an immature God.  Because love is God's ultimate character, God's sovereignty does not point to his right to condemn anyone he wants for whatever reason but to his right to forgive anyone he wants for whatever reason. Justice in the modern sense is a good, but one might argue that even true justice aims at reconciliation and protection.

4. Views all people as full participants
Artificial distinctions between men and women, between races and social groups are at best distractions, at worse fallenness trying to disguise itself as godliness.  The roles we play should ideally come from the gifts God has given us.  Christianity that will persist will be color and gender blind.

5. Scripture as our story
Fundamentalism is strong because it plays to simple understanding and simple answers, not to mention frequently base emotions.  It creates an idol of words and mistakes words for the Word, Jesus Christ.  In Scripture Christians find their story.  They find God walking with his people in the past.  Christianity that will persist will live in full recognition that we must "work out our salvation with fear and trembling" as we make our way through life, recognizing the constancy of God from the past--revealed especially in Christ--but also his principle of meeting us in flesh, of incarnating truth and ethics in specific contexts.

What is "Helping" the Poor 5

... continued from Saturday
_________
... To be sure, there are, I believe, legitimate claims to be made that far more people overall prosper under the type of capitalist systems we find in the Western world today. But many seem to lose sight of this fact, that the ultimate Christian justification for capitalism is the conviction that it helps more people in the end. The danger is that we come to mistake Rand's "selfishness" as the Christian value itself.

When we begin to talk about something like capitalism, we begin to get into the bigger sense of what "helping" might mean.  I can help one specific person on one day by giving her a fish.  At the end of the day, I have one less fish and tomorrow that person will be hungry again.  If I could teach others to fish, so the adage goes, then they will be able to get fish for themselves.

This is of course a modern proverb.  It presumes that there are plenty of fish to find if we will only fish for them.  It is not a proverb based on the way people generally thought at the time of the Bible, which was more in terms of a limited amount of "good," a limited amount of resources.

But today it does seem that my prosperity need not take away from yours.  Sure, there are cases of this sort.  If there is a certain dividend in a company for the year, it can only be divided a certain way. And there are times where work is hard to find. I write this book as the United States seems to be emerging slowly from the most significant recession since the Great Depression of the 1930's. There are lots of people right now who know how to fish but can't find a pond.

But in general, the proverb rings true for our context today.  Jesus and the New Testament would not want someone to go hungry today. But surely it is even more loving of our neighbors to teach them to fish, to help them find a job, to help them stand on their own, maybe even to give them a job.

As we hinted above, the cycle of poverty in some cases has left some not wanting to fish.  I am convinced that Jesus would not say, "That's their own choice.  Let them experience the consequences of their own actions."  The reason I do not believe Jesus would say this is twofold.

Most importantly, psychology would lead us to question whether in fact they are free to make another choice.  Poverty can be a sort of addiction every bit as powerful as alcohol or drugs.  It is very difficult when you have never been addicted to anything to realize the powerlessness of the situation. I am convinced that Jesus would come alongside people in such situations to find a way not only to give them a fish for today, not only to teach them to fish.  But as the first order of business, I believe he would heal them so that they want to fish in the first place.

The second reason I believe Jesus would not leave such people alone is because mercy was more important to him than justice in our sense of the word. [1]  The focus of his mission was to reclaim the lost sheep, not to discard them because they had got themselves into a mess.  We do not find Jesus saying things like, "Let them stew in their own juice."

How to lift up those enslaved to a cycle of poverty is far beyond my capacities. I do suspect we are almost talking about a kind of miracle, just as it is so difficult for a person addicted to alcohol or drugs to stop. For the purposes of this book, I will be happy if you will at least recognize what Jesus' values were.  He did not leave the demon-possessed as if to say, "If you had been righteous, a demon would not have been able to take you over."  He intervened when the weak were enslaved beyond their control. His impulse to heal is the impulse we should have toward those in distress in our society...

[1] "Justice" in the sense of the Old Testament prophets was not about punishment for wrongdoing but primarily about "social" justice, seeing that widows and orphans were taken care of, while making sure that those that oppressed them were brought low (cf. Micah 6).