Christ the King - YrC

homiletics sermon, so really early, except this is the day I preached it.

Father, we thank you for the strength, the endurance, the patience, and the joy that enables us to share in the inheritance of the saints and be present to the kingdom of your beloved Son. Amen.

Today’s readings are from the last Sunday in the church calendar. The lectionary calls today Christ the King. However, unless our parish happens to be named Christ the King, we are unlikely to celebrate this in any particular way.

In truth, most of us are enjoying one last minute of calm before our lives are overrun with holiday parties, family gatherings, shopping and wrapping extravaganzas and just a general over consumption of everything. Each year we produce – collectively and individually – a great pile of lists of what we have accomplished that in more or less implied ways, identify what we hope to do differently next year.
Today, in this minute of calm, we can see that all this activity is pointing to something. It is pointing to our desires to be part of a community, to be loved, to be more than a worker in a job. I think the mere fact that we pile so much onto the last month of the year testifies to the importance we give to the end and the beginnings that follows.

So I find it a bit ironic that for Christians, at least liturgically and lectionary minded Christians, today is the end of the year. Today is the day we bring into sharp focus the now and the not yet of the kingdom of God.

Our readings today are shot through with images of kingdoms; kingdoms of safety and justice and righteousness. God lifts up good shepherds, good kings, good nations. Finally, God lifts up a son.

Colossians tells us, “For in Jesus, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself ALL things, whether on earth or in heaven by making peace through the blood of his cross.”

Some of these images are clearly, for us, in the past. I haven’t needed a shepherd lately; I am pretty squarely in the democracy camp. But there is something about that cross, that reconciliation that is ongoing, that is even now. It keeps working for us – as a literal image and as an ongoing action.

The now of God’s reconciliation is as present for me, a sinner, as it was for the thief on the cross next to Jesus. In that critical moment of Jesus’ ministry, the thief begs him. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” he replies. The thief believes that the kingdom is in the future, yet Jesus reminds us that it is also today.

Like the thief, we, in our Christian journeys partake in this ongoing moment. Sometimes it’s flashy and instantaneous, sometimes it gently unfolds, and sometimes it’s as graceless as a sticky clutch. But the reconciling of all things, in heaven and on earth, always happens. It is always, somehow, this moment.

This moment is both now and not yet.

It is now because we are here, in the presence of each other, in the presence of the table, in the midst of the Word. We are reminded in Colossians that all things were created in and through Christ. “He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church.” Here we sit; the church, the very body of Christ. The hands and feet and elbows and knees of the continuing reconciliation of all things. It is now.

And it is not yet.

Because in the midst of the lists and calendars and plans and parties and even a dentist appointment or two, we clearly see that the world is not reconciled to God. The world is clearly not at peace with itself. There are wars being fought, right now. There are clean up crews for hurricanes and earthquakes working as we speak. The world is not a kingdom of safety and justice and righteousness.

And yet, here we are, now, knowing that we are so beloved that God took on the flesh of a human so that we would feel that love without any boundaries.

Right now, between the end and the beginning of another year, we have this moment to compile our own lists and our own longings, for the now and not yet.

When did I act as the hands of Christ in the world?
How many moments did I use to reconcile rather than divide?
Can I reach for the not yet?
Can I live, even for a minute, in the moment of Paradise that Jesus promises even the guilty prisoner?
What can I do differently, now and not yet?

Tomorrow I start baking for the holidays. I start mailing holiday cards to people I don’t see very often. I begin rehearsals for the Christmas pageant. Tomorrow is a whirlwind.
Today.
Today is the day I will be in Paradise.

Audacity

The Gospel should be self evident from the sermon, but William Carey is a possibility in the Holy Women, Holy Men (Holy Smokes this is a lot of commemorations) trials to replace LFF.


“For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,” and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”

When’s the last time you moved a mountain?
How big was it?
How exciting was it?
Who did you tell?

William Carey moved a mountain. William Carey was born in 1761 in Paulerspury England, also known as the middle of nowhere, the place the Industrial Revolution forgot. His parents were weavers, they apprenticed him to a shoemaker, and he married the shoemaker’s daughter.

How in the world did he end up founding the Baptist Missionary Society? How in the world did he end up in India?
How in the world did he translate the Gospel into Sanskrit and Bengali and found a printing press that published in 44 languages or dialect of India?

“Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.”
William Carey lived his life by this. William Carey moved a mountain. William Carey knew why he was a Christian and what he was going to do about it.

The father in our gospel today is someone else who wasn’t going to let a mountain get in his way. His boy was going to be healed, no matter how big a mountain he had to move. He heard about Jesus’ ministry and that the Apostles were able to do the same, and off he went. And when the Apostle’s couldn’t do it. Did he go home? No, he pushed his way right through the crowd to Jesus and said, Have mercy. I tried going to your disciples but they couldn’t cure him. Have mercy.

Not only is he so gutsy as to walk up to Jesus himself, he complains about the quality of service. And still, Jesus heals his boy.

William Carey called this: Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.

Jesus calls this faith the size of a mustard seed. When I compare a mustard seed, to a mountain, I realize that the operative word here is audacious. Possibly even obnoxious.

The kind of faith we are asked to have is not based on probability or likelihood or reasonableness.
It is something far removed from confidence, because it doesn’t come from our own abilities. In fact, it is so contrary to our own abilities that it takes a complete lack of embarrassment in order to live into it. Because if we are going to move a mountain, metaphorically or literally, our faith is going to look utterly ridiculous to someone who doesn’t have that sort of faith.

Are you prepared to act like a fool for Christ?

Because the apostles weren’t. When they asked Jesus why they couldn’t cure that epileptic boy, he told them, you don’t have enough faith.

I am guessing, the disciples had gotten a little confident. Cast out a couple of demons, move a bit of a molehill, and we all start thinking, hey, look what I can do.
But if I am doing it, faith isn’t.

Doubts.
Details.
Disbelief.

All of these can shake our confidence. If we aren’t careful, they will shake our faith, too.

Faith the size of a mustard seed can move a mountain. That isn’t very much faith. I think we don’t need to have Jesus himself lay hands on us to have faith the size of a mustard seed. I think I could have faith the size of a mustard seed. I think you could, too.

But a mountain. Really? Jesus isn’t just fooling around. He really means for us to move mountains.

And if we aren’t very good at it, we aren’t alone.
Jesus doesn’t just rebuke the apostles for not having enough faith; he rebukes an entire generation. “Faithless and perverse” he calls them. “How much longer must I put up with you?”

But if we want to be good at it, we can’t let embarrassment stop us.

William Carey didn’t. It seems William Carey wasn’t ever embarrassed, even if we, hundreds of years later, might wish to be embarrassed by him. The pamphlet he wrote in 1792, it was called “An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens.” That same year, he co-founded a missionary society, the “Particular Baptist Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Amongst the Heathen.” In 1793, he and another missionary were on a boat for India. Seven years later, they baptized their first convert.

There is a lot of faith in those 7 years. Because when all the missionaries that get sent to you die, and when wife has a nervous breakdown, and your child dies from dysentery and your printing press burns down and the East India Company doesn’t want you there, you know you are sitting on some mountain.

“Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.”

How many of us are living that kind of faith?
How many of us are an embarrassment to our family and friends?
How many of us are moving mountains?

“For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,” and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”

Sabbath - 8/19/2010 Proper 19 Yr C - RCL

(I do believe I have finally found the "offensive" sermon that Sara mentioned when we last spoke.)
Here is the email that I used to forward her a copy.

Sara,

Thank you for letting me preach. Now that more people have had a chance to meet me and my family, I will send some updates from time to time for the e-notes. And I will let you know about my meetings with the diocese when they start happening. If not sooner, I will see you at diocesan convention.

Blessings,
heather lee

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord. Amen. 

About 10 years ago, I came back to church. When I told family and friends about this, I got all sorts of responses. A strong theme seemed to emerge. Christians can’t do an awful lot, and they can’t do anything on Sunday.

“Can you say that word?”

“Aren’t you supposed to pray before you eat?”

“Well, it was on a Sunday, and I know you only go to church on the Sabbath.”

To be fair, the church told me plenty of things about how to fit in and what we didn’t do on the Sabbath as well.

“We will seat you between the collect and the first lesson.”

“Acolytes cannot wear flip flops and their shirts must never show above their vestments.”

Please come back tomorrow, the person who handles our assistance program is not here on Sunday.”

All of these examples speak to our assumptions about the Sabbath. One I expect every one of us shares is – Go to church on Sunday morning. And as glad as I am to see all of you, it doesn’t really answer the Sabbath’s most pertinent question.

Why are we here?

The gospel lesson this morning offers two explanations for why we are here and what the Sabbath is all about.

In it, we find Jesus teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath. This is something he doesn’t do very often. It’s sort of like being a guest preacher in church on a Sunday. And in comes a woman who is not really socially acceptable. Maybe she comes every Sunday, sneaking into the back pew and leaving early. Maybe she just came because she heard Jesus was going to be there. And Jesus, who isn’t a regular, who isn’t doing his regular Sabbath routine, notices her. He notices a woman, a woman who is in pain, and he is moved by his compassion for her suffering to walk right up to her and heal her. “Be healed, be forgiven, be loved.”

And she was.

And maybe she started dancing and clapping her hands and singing.

And maybe she wanted to join the vestry and the altar guild and the healing ministry team and all those other things we say we want to happen for a visitor in our church on a Sunday morning.

I want that. I have been relieved from suffering on a Sunday morning and I want everyone to feel that at least once in their lives.

But I have been coming to church for a long time now, and I think I know how that synagogue leader feels, too.

I’ve been exhausted at the end of a very long week and just wanted some peace and quiet – someplace to pray where I don’t have to think to hard about it.

I’ve been annoyed by contemporary music during a Rite 1 service.

I’ve been angry at God for the ability of an outsider to see and to fix things that I can’t see or I can’t fix.

I’ve been laughed at and shamed for being totally wrong.

And I’ve noticed this happens in the gospels a lot. We do the right thing and Jesus tells up we have it totally wrong.

Jesus doesn’t do this because the Pharisees and the synagogue leaders are bad people. He does it because they are, in fact, hypocrites. They have forgotten that there is a WHY WE ARE HERE to go with the HOW WE DO THINGS.

Jesus isn’t mad at them for keeping the Sabbath, he is angry because they have forgotten why we have one.

Now, I am fairly certain that in my library at seminary there is a right answer for the question ‘Why is there a Sabbath?’ Unfortunately, I left all those books in Berkeley. But that’s ok, because I think Isaiah gives us the answer.

“If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath, from pursuing your OWN interests on my holy day,” says the Lord, “then you shall take delight in the Lord and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth.”

Which sounds to me like perspective. The Sabbath offers us perspective. It reminds us that we are lovers of God and why we are followers of Christ all the other days of the week. Which is the exact opposite of a break from being lovers of God and followers of Christ. And we have a choice of what to do with that perspective. We can apologize for the last six days, or we can get some perspective in preparation for the next six days.

We can practice Sabbath through our fear. As the letter to the Hebrews reminds us, we can be like Moses and the Israelites at Mt. Sinai – too scared to climb the mountain, too afraid to be vulnerable before God and accept God’s miraculous healing. We can learn to be complacent about the things we cannot change.

Or we can watch out for the things we can. Instead of cowering at the base of Mt. Sinai, we can climb Mt. Zion. We can be like the woman, stooped over but willing to take a chance. We can be like the crowd, witnessing a miraculous change in the life of our neighbor. We can be like Jesus, empowered to reach out and heal all that is within our power to heal. Mt. Zion, the letter to the Hebrews tells us, has a party going on. And it sounds like a marvelous place to gain perspective.

It sounds like a place, where maybe there is dancing and clapping and singing and all those things we say we want to happen on a Sunday morning.

July 8, 2010

A meeting and commentary

the magical words were achieved. in fact more magical words than i expected.

"i am trying to figure out how i can help you."
"the bishop told me that you asked to make an appointment with him and i think that is a good idea" the rest was "although --- is leaving and so things will probably be on hiatus for awhile.' which i already knew and expected.

so do i know what is happening next. no, still no. but i am hopeful that after i meet with the bishop he will have some idea of how i might take steps to wander back on the beaten path.

what i really want to put on facebook, because it is hilarious. i was talking to --- about the panic disorder, and she said that was good and to keep it up because i come across, when i get that way, as fragile and narcissistic. I may or may not feel fragile, but I never feel narcissistic. I think that the fact that I am pretty disinterested in this and sort of look at the whole thing as a bug in a jar is good. But between this interview and the strides I am making with --- at school-I may be able to move beyond this after all.

Reply

That's awesome.

Oakland is starting to burn, I think I am going to go watch.

Holy Wednesday

On the night he was betrayed he took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his friends, and said, “Take, eat: this is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me.”

In a few minutes, we are going to break the bread, as we have done for 2000 years. In this chapel, we repeat this ritual 5 times a week, in most Episcopal churches, once a week, in some other churches, monthly, or quarterly or yearly, but this remembrance is our remembrance. It is to remind us of this concrete event between Jesus and his disciples. It points us to the events we will commemorate in full over the next three days.

We read about this last meal today, but I expect tomorrow is when most of us will more fully celebrate it. The rituals are prescribed but the forms will vary. Tomorrow, the brave among us will strip off one or more shoes and socks, and let someone in our parish, good friend or stranger, wash our feet, and then we too, will turn and do the same for another good friend or stranger. Tomorrow, we will celebrate the last meal around an altar, around a Seder table, around a dinner table. Tomorrow we will celebrate, even if somberly, because we all know what will happen over the following three days.

But that is tomorrow. Tomorrow is a world away, a lifetime away. Today is still a day in our regular lives. Tomorrow, we will read both the beginning and the end of this story, but today, we have Judas.

Who will betray you, Jesus?

"It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish." So when he had dipped the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas son of Simon Iscariot. After he received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, "Do quickly what you are going to do."

John doesn’t offer an account of the institution of the Lord’s Supper. Other gospel writers do that. But we, and I expect even John’s audience already know that this is what is going on. We already know that this bread is Christ. That this oil is blessing. John presents us with this little vignette of Jesus offering himself to his own betrayer. And what are we to do with it? With Judas?



When I learned this story as a child, Judas was the villain, I imagined him as a Vaudeville villain – pointy waxed moustache and striped pants. I heard in this story; ‘Judas was born bad’, ‘he was always evil’, and ‘Jesus kept him around because he needed a fall guy’. As you can imagine, I never noticed the Eucharistic imagery in this part of the story.

Besides archetypal anti-hero, what do we even know about Judas? We know he was an apostle. We know he was reasonably responsible – after all, he carried around the money. We know that he was the guy who brought the authorities to Jesus. After that, there is a lot of speculation, and the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles and some of the Gnostic literature offer a lot of different tales, which mainly tell us that people were really trying to work out what it meant for Judas to be an apostle and a bad guy.

Judas was not just anyone. He was not just one of the seventy or one of the crowd. Judas was, as I said, the guy who was in charge of the money. And Judas was an Apostle before he brought the authorities to the garden, and he was an Apostle after Jesus was crucified. I think that it is important for us to remember, that Judas did not lose his Apostle-ship because of his sins, because Satan entered into him, to use the language of the Gospel.

We don’t either.

How often do we do things that seem like the lesser of two evils, or the best possible solution to an impossible situation, or sometimes, I know it was wrong, and I just did it anyway, because I wanted to. Sometimes, the money is too good to pass up.

How often do we stand in the communion line, waiting to receive the piece of bread, the drink of wine, the blessing of oil, and think about balancing the checkbook, or think the person in front of us could have used confession before coming up here, or, Lord have mercy, when is this service going to be over, I have stuff to do; I have a paper to write, I have a committee meeting to plan for, I have a doctors appointment to schedule; I have something clearly more urgent than staying awake just one hour in Gethsemane, more important than staying focused for a 45 minutes chapel service.

How very, very often, Satan enters into me, when I am standing in the communion line. And if this isn’t embarrassing enough, Jesus dips that bread, hands it to me, and tells me, “do quickly what you are going to do.”

Jesus knows, even as he is uniting himself to us, to become one with him and his purpose, that we are going to fail, that we are going to get impatient and forgetful and vengeful and make our choices based on such enlightened principles as, it seemed like a good idea at the time. It is not just our best that Christ asks that we bring; it is also our worst.

Jesus knows the good and the bad that I bring to this body of Christ called the Church. Jesus knows that I am doing my best, even when my best doesn’t even impress me. Even so, Jesus knows that my intentions count, so I need to keep coming back, yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly or even daily, to the table. Jesus offered Judas bread, on the night he was betrayed, offers me bread, on this morning when I betray him. Knowing full well that betrayal will happen, Jesus dips the bread and hands it over.

Tomorrow, we set into motion the crucifixion. Tomorrow, we wash some feet, we eat a meal, strip an altar and retell the institution of the miracle we celebrate today. Tomorrow we prepare to remember the really big corporate sin that God used to turn the world upside down. Today, we remember the little sins, the every day sins, the I don’t wanna sins, the sins of omission, the not really that bad sins, the sins of good intentions. Today, is a day like any other day, and there are a lot more today’s in the year than tomorrows. Today, is the day we have sinned against God, in thought word and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. Today, we receive the bread and the injunction to "Do quickly what you are going to do."

And like Judas, tomorrow, we will be back.

Greiving

this is probably best described as the underbelly of the ordination process, and I am probably doing damage to my own possibilities in posting it, but it is a pretty accurate summary of what the last year has felt like. Things are looking up, life is feeling good.

I recently received an email from Donna Anderson wondering what ever happened to me. And I very much appreciate the poke, because I have thought of you all often and felt ashamed that I did not know how to say what was in my heart. But know that no matter the failure on my part to communicate, I continue to know that I am supported by you.

This has been a difficult year. Perhaps not the most difficult of my life, but certainly the most difficult since the Lord called and I answered. School has been a great deal more difficult as an adult than it was as a child. I find I have less patience and ability to sit still for long hours, or to study things I when I cannot readily discern the value. School has been harder on my family than all my ministry, school volunteering and part time jobs combined. I find that the demands of 24-7 availability are far less strenuous than consistently showing up, on time, pencil ready. I have so much more sympathy for children. I want to work harder for a saner work ethic in this country. I continue to show up for class on time. But it is hard, especially by the end of the semester.

It has been a difficult, sometimes frightening, year to follow the Lord. This time last year, we were unsure that my husband would have a job come January; his entire department was laid off, except for him. Had we stayed in Oregon, or returned, my husband would be unemployed. The company he was working for in Salem is now in bankruptcy. Still, it has been awkward, to be in seminary, pursuing ordained ministry, yet not to be a Postulant. It has been a year of learning that “blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.” (Jeremiah 17.7-8) The trees in my mind are those around Seaside, root balls in the air, after the flooding a few years back. Yet still I trust, although our bishop resigned; although my parish priest retired. And as Advent approached this year, I began to see that although this tree thought there was a drought (thought perhaps there was no support), I was, all the same, bearing fruit.

A couple of things happen in the second year of seminary. One, you have a few papers under your belt, so when the instructor says “two, 10-12 page papers, Turabian style, with bibliography,” you know what it means. Two, you embark on a year (or two) of field placement; an internship in a parish somewhere in the diocese. Last spring, I looked at a few parishes, chose and was accepted at a large parish in a wealthy bedroom community in Marin, County. And I will admit to doing something very theologically unsound. I made a deal with God. I said, ‘God, if this doesn’t work out – and it won’t, because I in fact teach people about power and privilege and how they need to let go of it– I will know that I wasn’t really supposed to be ordained and I will just finish school and move to L.A. and go work at Kaleidoscope Institute with Eric Law.’ Making deals with God is a bad idea, He has a way of making an 'either-or' into a 'both-and.'

My field education parish has been amazing. I have been working in family ministry, something I knew I would be horrible at. I have been helping lead multi-generational worship without any paper, books or bulletins, which I knew was a terrible idea. I have been working in a team, when I knew I was better as a solo leader. (And I have been letting my family do their own dishes and laundry and cooking, which I knew they could not do.) So many things I knew, and in knowing, was sure that everything would go so horribly that I could get out of this calling. How awesome a God we have; not only can He turn failings into strengths, he can turn outright denial into success. I have fallen in love with this amazing and faithful and generous parish and they have embraced me and trusted me with their most precious gift – their children. (And their Christmas pageant, which was an amazing success by every measure, especially the tingle that says the Holy Spirit hangs heavily in this place.) My field ed parish has given me the face of God, up close and shining, telling me that this is the work that has been given me to do, and my sadness, my confusion, my feeling that God is not there, only overwhelm me when I forget my work. It is my job right now to write academic papers, because even if I couldn’t tell last spring why I needed a class to break apart the Gospel in technical details and a class to apply literary criticism to the Old Testament, or worst of all, to memorize those maps in the back of my bible; every Sunday from 10-11 am, I sit with a group of 10 and 11 year olds and break open their Godly Play education with several translations of the bible and some maps and lots and lots of discussion of all those things that had me rolling my eyes or just plain crying last spring. They eat it up. They ask for more. They are so excited to learn that all those stories came from our living Scripture, and what we know about the birth of those same stories. I changed my class schedule for spring, just to learn more academics, because now I see how it fits.

This Advent has been the best advent(ure) of my life. I have often used the crucifixion and resurrection in my work with the anti-racism commission to talk about power. I have never really connected to the Advent cycle and Christmas. This year has been completely different. Right now, my life is not a cycle of receiving and releasing power; my life is about becoming a wholly new thing. Heather, the mother, wife, church volunteer, pta member or friend has been a faithful follower of God, but God has asked for a different commitment, a commitment that my sponsoring parishes and fellow commission members and field ed parish and discernment committee have affirmed. God is asking that I commit to holding sacred space, sharing it and shaping it, so everyone can find His up close and shining face; 10 year olds, 2 year olds and their parents, grandparents, friends who slept over on Saturday and family visiting from out of town and people new to the church, new to the area, and new to God. This is sacred space I have always held, was surprised to learn I was holding, was amazed that God and people considered it a gift. I am a spider who weaves a web; I am a waiter with an extra chair for the table; I am an innkeeper with some space in the stable.

post colonialism, like racism, is a forgotten agenda

I think it is hard for us to remember that the version of the Gospel that we in North America ascribe to in the mainline churches is not a standard or accepted version of the Gospel. We have taken a story, written for the oppressed and molded it to fit our desire to do good while remaining the oppressor.

The Gospel doesn't ask the oppressor to do anything at all for the oppressed. It asks only that the oppressor become one of the oppressed. (Give away all your possessions and come follow me, not start a soup kitchen on Saturday afternoons.) It is the oppressed who are asked to do good to each other in Jesus' name.

If there is any fault in the Anglican ideal (and anyone you ask will have a different idea of what it is, being Anglicanism) it is that it remains trapped in the founding ideal that England ought/need only have one church, neither catholic or reformed. In a post colonial world this translates into a confederation where each nation/culture/confederation of like minded possess the monopoly on Christianity in that local or grouping. We do a lot of ecumenism in a lot of places, and we even engage in some international Anglican crossover, but we persist in believing that location makes right, and that it supercedes common identity.

We are to be forgiven, however, as those two competing ideas are both foundational to Anglicanism. It isn't who gets ordained or what theology that divides us, it is, really, simply, do we believe we are a local church with a preference for ecumenical relations with other churches or are we a global church within various cultural contexts. I suppose it depends on whether you think postmodernism is dead or alive.

Something no one seems to be talking about and that I am wildly interested in is post-Colonial relations between the Anglican remains around the world. We are really busy especially in America funding MDGs in the second and third world but through the Gospel lens that Jesus came to ask the rich to take care of the poor. That is still colonialism, even if you wrap pretty .07 percent ribbons around it, even if you let the people in those countries tear themselves apart in the name of democratic freedom. Mission is the work of the church but giving up all you have and following Christ is how you become the church in order to do the mission.


(Been reading again. Liberation theology and Eric Law and post convention blogs of all stripes.)