Month: April 2007

The Dangerous Act of Worship: The Real Battle

We’ve all heard of the ‘worship wars’ and maybe even participated in the battles. Often, the skirmishes have centered around guitars versus the organ, hymns over the praise chorus, or even robes being more godly than the polo shirt. All of this, Labberton continues in The Dangerous Act of Worship, serves as distraction from the real battle within the body, the ease with which we forget our neighbor. The fracas over our personal preferences becomes somnolent, inducing a deep sleep that avoids God’s call for His people to seek justice in the lives with which theirs intersect.

Mark laments the ease with which the Church has forgotten her vocation. We have fallen asleep to the needs of our neighbor and, as we have turned inward within our fortress sanctuaries, we have forgotten that “our suffering world longs for signs of God on the earth.” He puts this omission in sharp relief by reminding us that Jesus’ command in Mark 12:29-31

(These) commands set the agenda for lifestyles of worship. No allegiance of love is ever to be greater than our allegiance to God. In God’s being and purpose, these are not rival allegiances. Love for God comes first and leads us to love our neighbor. In fact, failing to love our neighbor throws serious doubt on whether we are loving God.

We are challenged to expand our notion of worship from that hour on Sunday morning to include every twenty four hour in which we draw breath. Worship that loves God includes love for all of His creation and Creations. If our worship is limited to the verses of How Great Thou Art without recognizing the human-greatness in God’s eyes of our neighbor, we are slumbering. Worship that experiences the heart of God feels the burden he carries for our fellow man and woman who are suffering injustice in the world He made. Only when we awaken to this, are we fully engaged in worship.

What do you think?

 

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Interracial Marriage is a Sin?

According to these guys and their horrible misappropriation of the Bible. Hey guys, can you turn to Galatians 3:26-28? What is it going to look like in heaven boys, especially at the gathering described in Revelation 7:9? Is everybody going to be separated by skin color?

Lord, forgive me a sinner….

 

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Interracial Marriages: A New Trend?

This Associated Press article was making the rounds of the net news over the past couple of days and appeared in the Denver papers Friday. It makes the case that, while interracial marriages were out of favor for much of the history of the U.S., the increasingly diverse population of the country has made these unions much more common.

While the trend toward racially mixed marriages is on the rise, they have not grown any easier. I have been married to my lovely Asian wife for twenty four years and it hasn’t always been easy. There can be familial difficulties and  challenges with entire groups who disapprove. The children of these marriages face an additional challenge in choosing how they will racially identify. Our son has decided to be Asian but could just as easily identify otherwise. I’m happy to see that he didn’t shy away from that choice and, in fact, takes great pride in his Korean heritage.

But, it’s here where the article falls short; why are we still labeling couples this way? My wife and I don’t wake up every morning and reflect on our interracial status any more than a caucasian couple looks at one another and says “Hey! We’re both white!” It appears to me that the author tipped their hand early on in the piece as to why he goes to such great lengths to highlight the difficulties that the couples face, he wants to support his early assertion that the racial divide is bigger than ever. The division of the races becomes a self-perpetuating issue guaranteed to make someone think twice before crossing any of these invisible racial lines as they think about the supposedly insurmountable challenges that an interracial relationship should bring their way. And the circle of dischord turns round again…

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A New Way of Teaching

I’ve been teaching at Regis University since the early 90s, with all of my courses being classroom based. I love this environment and the ability to interact with the students, getting to know them and their educational goals so that I can contribute to their growth. Recently, I was recruited to teach in the online environment and participate in our distance learning offerings. 

All instructors are introduced to the system through an intensive, two week course in conducting and constructing your courses online. I’ve just finished week one, which sharply curtailed the amount of writing I have been able to do on my blog, and my attitudes toward the process are slowly shifting toward the favorable.  Having taken some online classes in the past, I found that they gave the student too much of an invitation to procrastinate until the last minute thinking that the anonymity of the online world shielded their study habits. What I’ve discovered is that keeping student’s involved is more a product of course design than the environment itself. It will be interesting to see how this works out at the end of next week.

The Dangerous Act of Worship: What’s at Stake?

Mark Labberton, the author of the demanding The Dangerous Act of Worship, answers this question quite simply; Everything. All that we are, have as potential, or hope to become is wrapped up in our worship of God. Yet, with all this in the balance we concern ourselves with such mundanity as guitars versus the organ or KJV rather than NIV, all the while avoiding the suffering, poverty, and injustice that surrounds us. Labberton paints a vivid picture of the church as slumbering, unwilling or unable to waken itself.

In this first chapter, Mark establishes the foundation upon which he wants to ignite a change in our worship practices. He uses the familiar passage from Micah (6:8) to center his idea of true worship:

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

His thesis, teased out in the remaining chapters, is that we as the Church have fallen asleep to the call for mercy and justice. We should be awake, as our Lord Jesus was fully awake.

Jesus, if anything, was and is awake. That’s the shock for those who encounter him in the Gospels. He came to make a world of those who are awake-awake to God, to each other and  to the world. Waking up is the dangerous act of worship. It’s dangerous because worship is meant to produce lives fully attentive to reality as God sees it, and that’s more than most of us want to deal with.

What do you think of his analogy of the Church asleep and the contributions of her leadership to its slumber? Is your congregation focused on comfort or justice? I’ll be interested in exploring this further with you.

 

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Coming Down from the Hillside – Good Friday Reflection

When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.

When Jesus clambered down the hillside after delivering the final words of His sermon, we can feel the silence envelop him. All those eyes and ears that had been challenged to a radically new way of living in the Kingdom of Heaven heard and saw the quiet as well. There was nothing further to be said, His authority had been so complete that the people were amazed. What must have run through their minds? Were they angry at having been deceived by their teachers, who said one thing and did another?

Our meditation today on the Cross, where Jesus gave the greatest sacrifice for all of humankind, points us back through the whole of the Sermon on the Mount. Just as He lived out John 15:12-13, His ministry leading up to the cross gave example to all of the words of His sermon. Are you and I able to say the same thing? Our belief governs our actions and our trust in Jesus and His promises drive how radically we live out our vocation.

This is a somber day, marked by the candle being extinguished and the darkness instantly surrounding us, but it is not a day without hope. Sunday is coming…

 

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The Watchman by Robert Crais

 

 Joe Pike in love? Joe Pike stringing together more than three words?

    The man of the perpetual sunglasses and moving forward attitude comes alive in the best Crais novel this year. Pike has been a partner character in Crais’ Elvis Cole detective series where he has served as the hyper-intense specter who appears out of the mist when Cole’s wisecracking can no longer save him from trouble, and he needs both muscle and muzzle. His intensity was known, but this novel fully fleshes out the man Joe Pike.

    The usually silent Pike comes to life as The Watchman, contracted to protect a Paris Hilton-like debutante whose life spirals out of control when she and her Aston Martin are at the wrong place at the wrong time. Crashing into a car that appears to back out in front of her, Larkin Conner Barkley sets in motion an explosive series of events that leads to her being hunted by men with no identification but plenty of bullets. Joe is called in to protect her and he takes the job seriously, despite Larkin’s protestations. The mission always comes first in Joe’s world.

     As with all silent heroes, the biggest mistake that the pursuer can make is to make him angry. After a pair of safe houses are exposed and become shooting grounds, Pike suspects everyone and everything and begins the process of sorting truth from fiction. He enlists Cole to help him exam everyone involved with Larkin and their motives and, together, they peel back the layers to discover who is really behind the threat to Larkin’s life. Every page that is turned pushes Pike forward, following the tattoos on his biceps.

     The Watchman is a fantastic read sure to satisfy. Though Pike has been introduced to us in the Cole novels, spending time with him and his thoughts gives him new depth and dimension to his character. All of the personal background that we had prior to this book comes together now to paint a picture of a man of honor, compassion, and an intensity that burns off of the pages. His interaction with his fellow brigands in the gun shop alone will cause you to play and replay the dialog in your head just to hear the sound of his voice. Joe Pike is a character with a long career ahead of him.

Stay Groovy!

 

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Higher on the Hillside – Lent Reflection 26

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Jesus the Encourager begins the closing thoughts of his incredible sermon. He knows that the radical challenges that he has issued regarding the transformed nature of His followers in the upside-down kingdom of heaven will only be taken up by a few. Surely, some must have wondered why he doesn’t make the road home easier. The answer of course, is that He is going to by sending the Paraclete in His place to guide those who believe down the narrow road.

These meditations grow shorter as the time grows closer for our remembrance of the cross and all that it means. Each brings us nearer to a realization that we are fully dependent on the grace and mercy of our Glorious Lord. None of us has the power to change our hearts on our own, we must submit them to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. The wide road tempts but the Spirit guides us down that rocky narrow way, the only one that leads back home.

 

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