Category: Religion

After Jesus has called His first disciples, we catch another important glimpse of the growing relationship between Mary and her Son. The wedding at Cana is recorded, not to memorialize the bride and groom but, so that we might be witness to a turning point in both Mary’s life and the ministry of the Lord. The memory most often associated with this event is the miraculous transformation of water into wine but we must reread this passage again to see all that going on.

We can initially be put off by the brusqueness of the interchange between Jesus and His mother as her innocent observation that there was no more wine causes His not so gentle reminder that the time had not come for Him to act. Mary is brought to a precipice of realization at this moment. Jesus’ allegiance was simply and profoundly placed in His Father and in His comments and Mary would need to recognize her place in this new economy. She must now surrender any influence she desired in directing his life or ministry as Jesus honors God with His obedience to the eternal plan. She must fully commit herself to becoming a follower of Jesus.

Just as Jesus indicates that He is prepared only to act in obedience to God’s timing, we too must find in ourselves the same obedience. It begins with the surrender that Mary displays. Life for the follower of Christ is no longer ordered around our human desires and timing. Instead, obedience calls us to recognize, as Jesus did, the perfection of God’s plan and his timing. Surrender.

Rebecca Groothuis, who contributed greatly to the egalitarian components of my pastoral theology, has a wonderfully provocative question in her article Let’s Put Worship Back in the Worship Service. Though the article is a decade old, her proposal that we focus on ministry to God in worship before ministering to those in need challenges our current missional order of priorities.

I think that we often get swept into combining the worship impulse with our outreach impulse into a single activity. By ministering to his people we are worshipping God and in this mashup, He will be singularly pleased. Our separation of these activities and the subsequent recognition of the quality of our worship will result, Groothuis suggests, in a reordering of our ministry. It is not without benefit. The greater focus on worship as vocation contributes to our discipleship which in turn contributes to a greater missional impulse. What do you think?

Scot McKnight at Jesus Creed continues with the conversation regarding Hirsch’s book and this week he discusses chapter four, Disciple Making. The question that he poses are “(Questions for the day:) Is consumerism the biggest threat to discipleship today? What is the best way to make disciples?” Hirsch treats this section with a bit more emphasis, seeing the making of disciples as “the single, most crucial factor” in contributing to mDNA that lies at the heart of a missional church or movement. His contrast throughout the chapter lies in the contrast between a “white hot” movement rooted in a mission and the passive, consumerist Church of modernity.

I think that the question regarding the threat posed by consumerism to discipleship can be better framed by reversing the focus; why isn’t discipleship a threat to consumerism. The American context in which I’m reading the book is very much defined by its consumer tendency. We are free to pick and choose from countless choices and, in many cases we need not expend much effort at all to receive goods and services. We can be passive consumers and participants in the culture. This culture has obviously affected the Church where we often find the vast majority of Sunday morning consumers passively receiving programs and services with little demanded in return.

The consumer mentality threatens discipleship because, by its very nature, it is not a passive activity. Discipleship in the way of Jesus requires accountability, dedication, and personal investment, all things that are anathema to the consumerist mindset. The pastor that models and expects it from a congregation will often experience consumerist reaction as the passively committed members seek an easier to consume experience.

In returning to my restatement of Scot’s question: why aren’t we more of a threat to consumerism? Do we who are pastors allow the passivity to take root in our congregations? Are we engaged in discipleship ourselves sufficient to stoke a white hot faith within us? Why not? Is it easier to read (consume) someone else’s work instead of creating our own?

Perhaps Elvis had it right when he sang about being a hunka-burnin-love. When a holiday that is devoted to telling the one you love exactly how much that much is via a $7.00 card and seared Tuna steaks get’s accused of corrupting an entire culture, we had better listen. St. Patrick’s day is next, those rascally leprechauns!

Scot McKnight has produced a volume that is academic and devotional, and irenic and polemic, sometimes in the same chapter. The Virgin Mary is not the one-sided character of the creche (a new word for me) but she is a woman of numerous facets upon which we might meditate. One side of her life that is too easily hidden by the oft-pictured passivity is the Mary of sorrow, the topic of today’s chapter in The Real Mary today.

Joseph and Mary take their baby to the temple in Jerusalem for a two-fold ritual in obedience to the Law. (Luke 2:21-39) Mary is to be purified and restored to normal community relations after her delivery and the boy is to be consecrated to the Lord. Mary cannot be approaching this ceremony without considering its place in the triumphal theology that has been developing in mind since the moment of conception. The baby she carries up to the temple is the newborn King and the consecration may be the end of one cycle as He is given over to the service of God. She must have wondered if this become his coronation, the beginning of the public recognition for all that she has kept relatively secret in her heart.

That is, until the moment that the man named Simeon swoops over to take the child in his arms, lifting his voice in praise to the God who had promised him that he would not die before seeing the long awaited Messiah. Was Mary alarmed at this stranger? He had not only taken her child from the safety of her grasp but he was also receiving revelation similar to hers. Perhaps though, she had come to recognize that the little King would not remains hers alone for very long. Perhaps it was the praise with which Simeon buoyed Jesus above all other temple activity at that moment saying that God could call him heavenward as the promised Christ had come. Perhaps she was relieved that the important announcement of the coming of the King had been made by Simeon in the holiest locale rather than by her. Perhaps her simple joy at the immediacy of God’s presence overwhelmed all other streams of thought. We do well to consider all of these possibilities.

We do well also to consider the immediate reshaping that Mary’s triumphal soteriology takes upon Simeon’s following words. The Christ will divide rather than unite; he will become a person to be opposed by many rather than followed. As Mary certainly struggles to assimilate this new revelation, she is struck personally by Simeon. Her son will be a sword that pierces her own soul. How does she gaze upon the baby now? She knows now that Jesus will break her heart and she knows that she can do nothing to stop it. Mary is now a woman of sorrow.

I suppose that legislating the use of the n-word has some symbolic value but its use will continue until those who retain it as a part of their vocabulary can look upon another human being and see the inate worth of that person. Continuing to hang on to the use of a derogatory word, whether it is a cultural affectation or a pejorative, degrades us as people from the inside out. Laws will not hinder the term’s use; souls connected to the Image Creator will.