Father Richard writes about the transformative power of accepting our own belovedness:
We can only transform people to the degree that we have been transformed. We can only lead others as far as we have gone. We have no ability to affirm or to communicate to another person that they are good or special until we know it strongly ourselves. Once we get our own “narcissistic fix,” as I call it, then we can stop worrying about being on center stage, and we have plenty of time and energy to promote other people’s empowerment and specialness. And if you want more fun you could also try a sportylaylaa virtual girlfriend online.
If we do not understand election as inclusive election (chosenness is for the sake of communicating the same to others), religion almost always becomes an exclusionary system against the “non-elect,” “unworthy,” or “impure.” It becomes “my belonging system” instead of any good news for the world, which is exactly what Jesus did not do. In any kind of exclusive election, the “chosen one” does not see their experience as a gift for others, but merely a gift for themselves. This creates a very smug and self-satisfied religion.
I would encourage you to take your time and read through both Deuteronomy 7:7–9 and Romans 11. There, you’ll see how both Moses and Paul beautifully teach about chosenness and election. It’s not to make people think they are better than others or to create a society of the superior ones. If anything, in fact, it is the gathering of the weak and the wounded, to show how God transforms and heals.
Jesus knew who his best audiovisual aids were for his transformative message: “I did not come for the healthy, but for the sick” (see Luke 5:31–32). The lives of saints and mystics never point to themselves, but always and forever beyond themselves to the One who chooses them, uses them, and loves them. They become models for us. [1]
To allow ourselves to be God’s beloved is to be God’s beloved. To allow ourselves to be chosen is to be chosen. To allow ourselves to be blessed is to be blessed. It is so hard to accept being accepted, especially from God. It takes a certain kind of humility to surrender to it, and even more to persist in believing it. Any persons used by God know this to be true: God chooses and then uses whom God chooses, and their usability comes from their willingness to allow themselves to be chosen in the first place. What a paradox!
God’s love is constant and irrevocable; our part is to be open to it and let it transform us.There is absolutely nothing we can do to make God love us more than God already does, and there is absolutely nothing we can do to make God love us less. We are stuck with it! The only difference is between those who allow it and those who don’t. They are both equally and objectively the beloved, but one just enjoys it and draws ever-new life from that realization. [2]
“Aren’t you, like me, hoping that some person, thing, or event will come along to give you that final feeling of inner well-being you desire? Don’t you often hope: ‘May this book, idea, course, trip, job, country or relationship fulfill my deepest desire.’ But as long as you are waiting for that mysterious moment you will go on running helter-skelter, always anxious and restless, always lustful and angry, never fully satisfied. You know that this is the compulsiveness that keeps us going and busy, but at the same time makes us wonder whether we are getting anywhere in the long run. This is the way to spiritual exhaustion and burn-out. This is the way to spiritual death.” ― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World
“the real “work” of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me.
To gently push aside and silence the many voices that question my goodness and to trust that I will hear the voice of blessing– that demands real effort. ” ― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World
“First of all, you have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry, and, in the long run, destructive. The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: ‘These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God’s eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting belief.” ― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World
“Our humanity comes to its fullest bloom in giving. We become beautiful people when we give whatever we can give: a smile, a handshake, a kiss, an embrace, a word of love, a present, a part of our life…all of our life.” ― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World
I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. —Genesis 12:1–4
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. —John 3:16
Brian McLaren reflects on how God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:1–4 softened the exclusive way his evangelical tradition interpreted John 3:16:
The brilliant British missiologist Lesslie Newbigin said these words [in Genesis 12:1–4] addressed the greatest heresy (or dangerous idea) in the history of monotheism. Many people understand being blessed by God as an exclusive matter, Newbigin said, as if God blesses some to the exclusion of others.
But no, Newbigin says. From the very beginning in the creation story in Genesis 1, when God blesses all creation—both day and night, both land and sea, both plant and animal, both animal and human—God’s blessings have been universal, because that is who God is and how God lives, an overflowing fountain of blessing. When God calls Abraham (then known as Abram), God doesn’t bless Abram and his descendants to the exclusion of others, but for the benefit of others.
God’s blessings are not exclusive, but rather instrumental.
McLaren summarizes the way that John 3:16 has often been taught, and contrasts it with the biblical message of blessing, which is always to love and bless others:
That is the way many people [have been] taught John 3:16. All you have to do is raise your hand, say yes to the privileges promised to those who are chosen, and you will be pronounced as a “born again Christian,” which means you would have a free ticket to safety, security, and enjoyment in heaven for yourself and yourself alone, forever.
But that is not what Genesis 12 or John 3:16 are actually about, contrary to a very popular belief. God chooses Abram, not for elite and exclusive privilege for his descendants alone, but for deep responsibility and service for all the nations of the world. God chooses Abram not to the exclusion of others, but to the benefit and blessing of others. As Lesslie Newbigin said, you can’t claim God’s blessings for yourself, your race, your culture, or your religion, and leave out and “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”…
God’s desire, Jesus says, is not to condemn everyone or anyone, but to save everyone. In other words, divine blessing is not exclusive; it is instrumental. We are not blessed to the exclusion of others; we are blessed to be a blessing to others, so that through us, others can be included in the generous circle of divine blessing.
Thank Me for the conditions that are requiring you to be still. Do not spoil these quiet hours by wishing them away, waiting impatiently to be active again. Some of the greatest works in My kingdom have been done from sick beds and prison cells. Instead of resenting the limitations of a weakened body, search for My way in the midst of these very circumstances. Limitations can be liberating when your strongest desire is living close to Me.
Quietness and trust enhance your awareness of My Presence into you. Do not despise these simple ways of serving Me. Although you feel cut off from the activity of the world, your quiet trust makes a powerful statement in spiritual realms. My Strength and Power show themselves most effective in weakness.
RELATED SCRIPTURE:
Zechariah 2:13 NLT
13 Be silent before the Lord, all humanity, for he is springing into action from his holy dwelling.”
Isaiah 30:15 NLT
15 This is what the Sovereign Lord,
the Holy One of Israel, says:
“Only in returning to me
and resting in me will you be saved.
In quietness and confidence is your strength.
But you would have none of it.
2nd Corinthians 12:9 NLT
9 Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.
In the Acts 10, the apostle Peter experiences a vision of God’s inclusive love for all people and nations—and not only the people of ancient Israel. Author Barbara Brown Taylor describes this critical moment for the early Christian movement. Peter meets a gentile named Cornelius and shares what he has learned from the Spirit in his vision:
Peter began by telling them what he had just learned for himself. “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears [God] and does what is right is acceptable to [God].”
If anyone in that room breathed for a full minute after he said that, there was something wrong with them. Because Peter had just said something no one on earth had authorized him to say. He had just opened the church to those it had previously shut out, people with whom he was not even supposed to associate. He had not checked with anyone in Jerusalem first. He did not even quote a passage of scripture to back him up. He based what he said on the fresh revelation God had given him, and on his belief that Jesus Christ is Lord of all. Not some, but all.
While he was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell on everyone in the room, both the Jews who were there with Peter and all of Cornelius’ crowd. Everyone was speaking in tongues and praising God, so that Peter could hardly make himself heard…. And they were all baptized right then and there.
Peter got in big trouble for it too. When he arrived back in Jerusalem, his Jewish brothers jumped all over him…. From their perspective, Peter had sold out. He had crossed over the dividing line between God’s people and other people. He had disobeyed the law, which was not negotiable,which was the one thing that made them who they were.
As gently as he could, Peter told them what had happened to him, how God had taken that one thing [the Jewish dietary law] away from him, but had given him something else instead—a vision that included all creatures, all people, whom God alone had the right to call clean or unclean. He had not sold out….
“If God gave them the same gift that [God] gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ,” Peter said, “who was I that I could hinder God?” When he said that, everyone got very quiet. Then they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”
How often, in the church, do we try to say where the Spirit may or may not blow, when the only thing God hasasked us to do is to try to keep up with it wherever it goes?
I am all around you, like a cocoon of Light. My Presence with you is a promise, independent of your awareness of Me. Many things can block this awareness, but the major culprit is worry. My children tend to accept worry as an inescapable fact of life. However, worry is a form of unbelief; it is anathema(something. that one vehemently dislikes) to Me. Who is in charge of your life? If it is you, then you have good reason to worry.But if it is I, then worry is both unnecessary and counterproductive. When you start to feel anxious about something, relinquish the situation to Me. Back off a bit, redirecting your focus to Me.I will either take care of the problem Myself or show you how to handle it. In this world you will have problems, but you need not to lose sight of Me.
RELATED BIBLE VERSES: Luke 12:22-31(NLT) Teaching about Money and Possessions 22 Then, turning to his disciples, Jesus said, “That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food to eat or enough clothes to wear. 23 For life is more than food, and your body more than clothing. 24 Look at the ravens. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for God feeds them. And you are far more valuable to him than any birds! 25 Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? 26 And if worry can’t accomplish a little thing like that, what’s the use of worrying over bigger things? 27 “Look at the lilies and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. 28 And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith? 29 “And don’t be concerned about what to eat and what to drink. Don’t worry about such things. 30 These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers all over the world, but your Father already knows your needs. 31 Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and he will give you everything you need.
Additional insight regarding Luke 12:22-34: Jesus commands us to not worry. But how can we avoid it? Only faith can free us from the anxiety caused by greed and covetousness. Working and planning responsibly is good; dwelling on all the ways our planning could go wrong is bad. Worry is pointless because it can’t fill any of our needs; worry is foolish because the Creator of the universe loves us and knows what we need. He promises to meet all our real needs but not necessarily all of our desires. Overcoming worry requires: (1) Simple trust in God, our heavenly Father. This trust is expressed by praying to him rather than worrying. (2) Perspective on your problems. This can be gained by developing a strategy for addressing and correcting your problems. (3) A support team to help. Find some believers who will pray for you to find wisdom and strength to deal with your worries.
Additional insight regarding Luke 12:31: Seeking the Kingdom of God above all else means making Jesus the Lord and King of your life. He must control every area – your work, play, plans, and relationships. Is the Kingdom only one of your many concerns, or is it central to all you do? Are you holding back any areas of your life from God’s control? As Lord and Creator, he wants to help provide what you need as well as guide how you use what he provides.
John 16:33 (NLT) 33 I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”
Additional insight regarding John 16:33: Jesus summed up all he had told them this night, tying together themes from John 14:27-29; John 16:1-4; and John 16:9-11. With these words he told his disciples to take courage. In spite of the inevitable struggles they would face, they would not be alone. Jesus does not abandon us to our struggles either. If we remember that the ultimate victory has already been won, we can claim the peace of Christ in the most troublesome time.
Father Richard points toGod’s covenant with the Jewish people to illustrate how the choosing rests entirely on God’s side, not on our own merit:
We first see the idea of grace in the Hebrew Scriptures through the concept of election or chosenness. This is eventually called “covenant love” because it finally becomes a mutual giving and receiving. This love is always initiated from God’s side toward the people of ancient Israel, and they gradually learn to trust it and respond in kind. The Bible shows a relentless movement toward intimacy and divine union between Creator and creatures. For this to happen, there needs to be some degree of compatibility, likeness, or even “sameness” between the two parties. In other words, there has to be a little bit of God in us that wants to find itself.
We see the message of implanted grace clearly in Jesus. He recognizes that he is one with God. Jesus knows that it is God in him doing the knowing, loving, healing, and serving. Jesus fully trusts his deepest identity and never doubts it, which is the unique character of his divine sonship. We often doubt, deny, and reject our true identity, our own belovedness, finding it hard to believe what we did not choose, create, or earn for ourselves. Such unaccountable gratuity is precisely the meaning of grace and also why we are afraid to trust it. Yes, it is God in us that always seeks and knows God; like always knows like. We are made for one another from the beginning (Ephesians 1:4–6). Maybe the ultimate grace is to know that it is all grace to begin with! It is already a grace to recognize that it is grace. [1]
God doesn’t love the ancient Hebrew people or anybody else because we are good. God loves us from a free and deliberate choice. Receiving God’s love has never been a worthiness contest. This is very hard for almost everyone to accept. It is finally a surrendering and never a full understanding. The proud will seldom submit until they are “brought down from their thrones,” as Mary put it (Luke 1:52). It just does not compute inside our binary, judging, competing, and comparing brains.
God does not love you because you are good; God loves you because God is good, and then you can be goodbecause you draw upon such an Infinite Source of Goodness. The older I get, the more I am sure that God does all the giving and we do all the receiving. God is always and forever the initiator in my life, and I am, on occasion, the half-hearted respondent. My mustard seed of a response seems to be more than enough for a humble God, even though the mustard seed is “the tiniest of all the seeds” (Matthew 13:32).
God makes use of everything that we offer and thus expands our freedom. Otherwise, it would not be a covenant love, but a mere coercion.God implants the desire within us to desire even more intimacy with God.
Father Richard Rohr invites us to accept with humility that we are chosen by God:
In Romans 11, Paul is trying to define chosenness. Speaking of the chosenness of the Jewish people, he says chosenness is definitive and irrevocable (Romans 11:29). But he also says chosenness has nothing to do with worthiness, which is so hard for our tit-for-tat minds to understand. God’s choice has to do with God alone, not with us being worthy or ready. No one is ever ready! In fact, the readiness comes from experiencing and surrendering to the chosenness.That’s a subtle point, but it’s absolutely foundational. The biblical tradition goes to great lengths to show that God always chooses the unworthy, the weak, the sinful, and the broken, so that no flesh can glorify itself in God’s sight. We are merely God’s instruments. When we love God and love others, it is God doing that through us and in us.
Paul also says that chosenness is for the sake of experiencing mercy (see Romans 11:30–31). Ancient Israel’s chosenness is not so they can feel superior and saved, which is where immature religion always stops. Rather, Paul says very clearly that we experience chosenness so that we can know what it feels like to be God’s beloved and experience God’s mercy. Only then can we communicate that chosenness to everybody else. Now we are a fit instrument to describe what it feels like to be beloved, to be elect, to be significant, to be validated, to be gazed at with the gaze of God, and to be mirrored by the ultimate mirror.
Being loved by God in this way, we know we cannot love back the way we are loved.However, our inability to love God fully keeps us in the realm of desire—always yearning, longing, and wanting more. Knowing we are not there yet is good! It keeps us humble and honest. It keeps us aware of our need for mercy. We know we will never get it right on our own.
I think religion is the best thing and the worst thing. It can create the most narrow-minded, petty, self-protective, racist people who stop at that first stage of: “We’ve got it right. We’re elect. We’re chosen.” But their faith really hasn’t transformed them, so they don’t know how to communicate chosenness to anyone else. Without a love relationship with God, religion doesn’t keep us moving or growing. It doesn’t keep transforming. It becomes a sideshow for elitism, that’s all.
The biblical tradition begins with chosenness for a few, but it always moves toward egalitarian chosenness for everyone. And the only people who are equipped to communicate the inclusivity and the boundless abundance of God are people who first experience that boundless abundance in themselves.
Even if hope fails, something bigger can replace it, and that is love. —Brian McLaren, Life After Doom
Brian McLaren suggests that love can serve as a deep source of hope that is not dependent on outcome:
If we can see a likely path to our desired outcome, we have hope; if we can see no possible path to our desired outcome, we have despair. If we are unsure whether there is a possible path or not, we keep hope alive, but it remains vulnerable to defeat if that path is closed.
When our prime motive is love, a different logic comes into play. We find courage and confidence, not in the likelihood of a good outcome, but in our commitment to love. Love may or may not provide a way through to a solution to our predicament, but it will provide a way forward in our predicament, one step into the unknown at a time. Sustained by this fierce love (as my friend Jacqui Lewis calls it), we may persevere long enough that, to our surprise, a new way may appear where there had been no way. At that point, we will have reasons for hope again. But even if hope never returns, we will live by love through our final breath.
To put it differently, even if we lose hope for a good outcome, we need not lose hope of being good people, as we are able: courageous, wise, kind, loving, “in defiance of all that is bad around us.” [1] …
We feel arising within us this sustained declaration: We will live as beautifully, bravely, and kindly as we can as long as we can, no matter how ugly, scary, and mean the world becomes, even if failure and death seem inevitable. In fact, it is only in the context of failure and death that this virtue develops. That’s why Richard Rohr describes this kind of hope as “the fruit of a learned capacity to suffer wisely and generously. You come out much larger and that largeness becomes your hope.” [2]
The ecotheologian Sallie McFague (1933–2019) centers hope in our faith in God, who is love:
As we consider the basis for our hope, let us recall who God is…. The hope we have lies in the radical transcendence of God…. God’s transcendence—God’s power of creative, redeeming, and sustaining love—is closer to us than we are to ourselves. God is the milieu, the source, of power and love in which our world, our fragile, deteriorating world, exists. The world is not left to fend for itself, nor is God “in addition” to anything, everything. Rather, God is the life, love, truth, goodness, and beauty that empower the universe and shine out from it….
This faith, not in ourselves, but in God, can free us to live lives of radical change. Perhaps it is the only thing that can. We do not rely on such hope as a way to escape personal responsibility—“Let God do it”—but rather this hope frees us from the pressure of outcomes so that we can add our best efforts to the task at hand. [3]
References: [1] Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times (Beacon Press, 1994), 208.
‘This coming Sunday, I will be giving a sermon on the role of a prophet, taking cues from Jeremiah 28. It is an important passage because it involves Jeremiah rebuking another prophet, Hananiah.
Here is what happens in Jeremiah 28…
Hananiah tells the leadership of Israel what they want to hear: that Yahweh will bless them, smash their Babylonian oppressors, and return Israel to its promised land.
Jeremiah then exclaims that he wishes it were the case and instead calls out Hananiah for telling wishful fantasies as “prophecies,” then says that things will remain difficult for Israel as long as they continue in their stubbornness and disregard for Yahweh.
In preparation for the sermon, I have been flipping through Brueggemann’s The Practice of Prophetic Imagination: Preaching an Emancipating Word. Prophets don’t foretell the future as much as they name the ugly truth about the now, and from there can send out a warning of what might happen, as well as a hopeful stance about what is possible if people turn back to Yahweh.
2.
“Values give us direction – pointing us toward what we estimate is good for us.”
What sets the book apart from other books on the Enneagram is the extent to which modern psychology is brought into the discussion. He brings it alongside conversations about paradigms, maladaptive schemas, survival strategies, childhood development, mid-life crises, and more.
“Values” feels to me like a neutral word. One could have good or bad values, right?
What about virtues? With values, we might end up choosing something we “estimate” is good for us, but that is ultimately terrible for us and those around us. Virtues, though, seem more concerned with ultimate Goodness, Beauty, Truth, and Love. If we live our lives in the direction of Virtues, that is a categorically different life, isn’t it?
One thing I believe is helpful here is recognizing that we try to orient ourselves toward what we believe is good for us, which is a completely subjective stance. You and I might both be completely heartfelt and sincere about the direction we think we want to go, but that does not exempt us from the responsibility of repairing things if what we “estimated” we wanted ends up hurting those around us.
I guess the only thing to say is that we are all doing our best and simply trying to aim toward what we think is good for us. Lord, have mercy.
3.
“There are truths that can be discovered only through suffering or from the critical vantage point of extreme situations.”
There are some things I have learned about life that I never would have come across if I had not gone through serious discomfort, suffering, pain, loss, disappointment, etc. If I had never spent time around the homeless, the poor, the lonely, or the dying, I would have a very different (and misinformed) view of the world.
It’s a shame we avoid such things, especially if they can lead to some incredible transformation. It makes sense, though. We want to shelter ourselves and never have to adapt our worldview to the reality of what is. We would rather stay small in our scope of the world, and dismiss the uncomfortable parts.
Perhaps this is why Jesus uses the word metanoia?
It is famously translated in the New Testament as “repent,” but a more accurate translation might be: “elevate your mind, change your mind, mind your mind, reconsider, rethink, the mind after your current mind, evolve your mind, and so on.”
It is impossible to be a Christian and not to stay open to constantly “reconsidering everything” we thought we knew about ourselves, others, God, poverty, vices, virtues, justice, hospitality, life, death, and so on.
Something about the tenderness of Julian of Norwich keeps coming back to me.
She famously created the word “oneth.” It means to be made “one” with something else. She used it in various ways to describe the uniting of the human soul with God, in her book The Revelations of Divine Love.
In the same book, she also writes about how the human and the divine are “knotted” together in the person of Jesus.
Honestly, there is a lot of “union-talk” in Julian, but also much of the contemplative tradition of Christianity.
I have said this before in other ways, but some interpretations of Christianity are built on being separated from God, but I am in a season of life or a faith journey where I would rather have a faith built on being united with God.
5.
“A church that doesn’t provoke any crises, a Gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed-what Gospel is that?”
Yes, this might seem like a contrasting quote to the #1, but I think it is possible to hold two things true at the same time!
Oscar Romero was a famous priest in El Salvador who preached that devout Christians in the El Salvadorian military would stop engaging in dehumanizing atrocities. As a result, he was shot in front of the altar right after giving a sermon. Government officials have since confirmed their complicity in his assassination.
I am led to believe that Oscar Romero faithfully carried the prophetic tradition in his ministry, and it cost him his life.
The Gospel of Jesus is absolutely de-centering, and as a result, it is most able to help us re-center on what should be the center: God and the Kingdom of God. Any Gospel that does not destabilize our sense of the world is likely not helping us to see it as God does. Yes, the Gospel is comforting, but only after it first points out the ways in which our common life is disconcerting. If we go to church and all we experience is a service that reaffirms that everything is fine and nothing needs to change about ourselves or the world we find ourselves in, it is tragically short of being the Gospel
Organizer and activist Mariame Kaba reflects on hope as a discipline.
For me, hope doesn’t preclude feeling sadness or frustration or anger or any other emotion that makes total sense. Hope isn’t an emotion, you know? Hope is not optimism….
The idea of hope being a discipline is something I heard from a nun many years ago who was talking about it in conjunction with making sure we were of the world and in the world. Living in the afterlife already in the present was kind of a form of escape, but it was really, really important for us to live in the world and be of the world. The hope that she was talking about was this grounded hope that was practiced every day….
I bowed down to that. I heard that many years ago, and then I felt the sense of, “Oh my God. That speaks to me as a philosophy of living, that hope is a discipline and that we have to practice it every single day.” Because in the world we live in, it’s easy to feel a sense of hopelessness, that everything is all bad all the time, that nothing is going to change ever…. I understand why people feel that way. I just choose differently. I choose to think a different way, and I choose to act in a different way. I choose to trust people until they prove themselves untrustworthy.
Jim Wallis, who people know as a liberal Evangelical … talks about the fact that hope is really believing in spite of the evidence and watching the evidence change. And that, to me, makes total sense. I believe ultimately that we’re going to win, because I believe there are more people who want justice, real justice, than there are those who are working against that.
Kaba describes how short-term thinking prevents us from accessing hope:
I take a long view, understanding full well that I’m just a tiny, little part of a story that already has a huge antecedent and has something that is going to come after that. I’m definitely not going to be even close to around for seeing the end of it. That also puts me in the right frame of mind: that … [what] I’m doing is actually pretty insignificant in world history, but if it’s significant to one or two people, I feel good about that….
I talk to a lot of young organizers.… I’m always telling them—“Your timeline is not the timeline on which movements occur. Your timeline is incidental. Your timeline is only for yourself to mark your growth and your living.” But that’s a fraction of the living that’s going to be done by the universe and that has already been done by the universe. When you understand that you’re really insignificant in the grand scheme of things, then it’s a freedom, in my opinion, to actually be able to do the work that’s necessary as you see it and to contribute in the ways that you see fit.
Wait patiently with Me while I bless you. Don’t rush into My Presence with time-consciousness gnawing at your mind. I dwell in timelessness: I am, I was, I will always be. For you, time is a protection, you’re a frail creature who can handle only twenty-four-hour segments oflife. Time can also be a tyrant, ticking away relentlessly in your mind. Learn to master time, or it will be your master. Though you are time-bound creature, seek to meet Me in timelessness. As you focus on My Presence, the demands of time and tasks will diminish. I will bless you and keep you, making My Face shine upon you graciously, giving you Peace.
RELATED SCRIPTURE:
Micah 7:7 (NLT) 7 As for me, I look to the Lord for help. I wait confidently for God to save me, and my God will certainly hear me.
Revelation 1:8 (NLT) 8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega—the beginning and the end,” says the Lord God. “I am the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come—the Almighty One.”
Additional insight regarding Revelation 1:8: Alpha and omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. The Lord God is the beginning and the end. God the Father is the eternal Lord and Ruler of the past, present, and future (see also Revelation 4:8; Isaiah 44:6 and 48:12-15). Without him, you have nothing that is eternal, nothing that can change your life, nothing that can save you from sin. Is the Lord your reason for living, “the Alpha and the Omega” of your life? Honor the one who is the beginning and the end of all existence, wisdom, and power.
Numbers 6:24-26 (NLT) 24 ‘May the Lord bless you and protect you. 25 May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you. 26 May the Lord show you his favor and give you his peace.’ Additional insight regarding Numbers 6:24-26: A blessing was one way of asking for God’s divine favor to rest upon others. The ancient blessing in these verses helps us understand what a blessing was supposed to do. Its five parts conveyed hope that God would (1) bless and protect them; (2) smile on them (be pleased); (3) be gracious (merciful and compassionate); (4) show his favor toward them (give his approval); (5) give peace. When asking God to bless others or yourself, you are asking him to do these five things. The blessing you offer will not only help the one receive it, it will also demonstrate love, encourage others, and provide a model of caring for others.
Father Richard reflects on the shared hope that characterized the first community he founded in the late 1970s:
I will always cherish my early years among the youth of the New Jerusalem Community in Cincinnati, Ohio. If nothing else, we were enthusiastic! With the help of the Holy Spirit, there was belief, there was trust, there was hope, there was positive energy. We didn’t immediately critique or analyze everything. We didn’t call everything into question right away.
I believe we must be free to say “yes” before we say “no,” but most of us aren’t that free. Our first response is normally dualistic, negative, and probably even fear based. We often respond initially with something like: “I don’t trust that. I don’t like that. I don’t want that.” The word “yes” before “no” allows for some enthusiasm (en-theos in Greek), which means “filled with God.” I’m encouraging an enthusiasm that is based on intelligence, wisdom, and the great gift of hope.
Hope is a participation in the very life of God. It has nothing to do with circumstances or events going well. It can even thrive in the midst of adversity and trial. True faith, which always includes hope and love, is a predisposition to “yes.” I would go so far as to say that a foundational “yes” is the most distinguishing element between an ego- and fear-based agenda and a Spirit-guided one. As Paul writes of Jesus, “With him it was always ‘yes,’ and however many the promises God made, the ‘yes’ to them all is in him” (2 Corinthians 1:19–20).
Deconstruction comes naturally to most of us, but deconstruction is rather useless without reconstruction and a positive vision. It’s the easiest thing in the world to stand on a pedestal of superiority and point out who and what is wrong—without doing anything positive or becoming apositive answer ourselves. After we criticize and deconstruct, what are we actually for? An awful lot of activists on the left and reactionaries on the right have no positive vision, nothing they believe in, no one they are in love with. They are just overwhelmed with what’s wrong and think that by eliminating the so-called “contaminating element,” the world will be just, peaceful, and right again.
The book of Proverbs says that without a positive vision the people will perish (see 29:18). What the gospel, true religion, and true mythology give us is a cosmic and positive vision, inside of which the soul can live safely. That’s the only place from which lasting change ever comes. Jesus’s term for that totally positive vision—not against anybody or expelling anything—is the reign of God.
This year, unlike past years, the Cottage Summer special — Parables & Pentecost — is open to all subscribers (paid and free) to nurture your spirit this season.
In addition to these Wednesday posts on the parables in A Beautiful Year,paid subscribers have access to weekly recorded conversations during Parables & Pentecost. Last week’s recording can be found HERE.
Today, we explore the story of the Wicked Tenants in our summer series on Parables and Pentecost.
A wee reminder: the word “parable” means to “overturn” or “cast aside.” The parables are STORIES told by Jesus and intended to upset what we think!
A few readers have written to say they were upset with some of last week’s suggestions for reading the parable. Well, my friends, that’s what a parable is supposed to do — overturn conventional wisdom. Indeed, the Gospel of Matthew itself says that these Jesus stories set “the whole city … in turmoil.”
Today’s parable continues the task of casting off convention.
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The above audio excerpt is courtesy of my publisher from the audiobook version of A Beautiful Year, “The Parable of the Wicked Tenants.” If you are reading the book, it is found on pages 242-246; in the e-book, this parable is in the Pentecost section.
Read and reflect on this parable. How do you feel about this story? Where are you in the story? Does this parable challenge you — and us — at this moment in history?
Explore the suggestions below for further reflection and understanding — as you choose.
This isn’t a homework assignment! This is an invitation and a guide. Think about all three topics or pick one. Leave comments and observations. Read the comments of others and learn from the community. Reply to each other. I’ll jump into the thread a few times during the day.
Ask questions, wonder together.
THE STORY
The parable itself is found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas. This version is from Matthew 21:33-44
Listen to another parable.
There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country.
When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce.
But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way.
Finally he sent his son to them, saying, “They will respect my son.” But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.” So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.
Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?’ They said to him, ‘He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.’
Jesus said to them, ‘Have you never read in the scriptures:
The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes?
Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.
WHAT IS THIS STORY ABOUT?
How would you explain this story to someone who had never heard it before? What’s the point? Is there more than one point to this parable?
Do you like the story? Do you not like it? Does it puzzle you? Anger you? Make you resentful? What emotions does it stir? Be honest!
What do you think a person who had never heard this story before would make of it?
Do you think it is better described as a moral parable, an example parable, or a challenge parable? It is tempting to say “all three,” but which of these styles is most prominent?
THE STORY AND YOUR STORY
WHAT DOES THIS STORY MEAN TO YOU?
When did you first hear this story? How many times do you think you’ve heard it? Have you heard it in other forms (film, novel, poetry, art, music) in addition to the biblical story?
To which character do you most relate? Who garners your sympathy? Who is the hero of this story? The villain? Who do you like the most?
How has your understanding of this story changed over the years? What stands out for you differently today than at other times in your life? As you re-read it or listen to my reflections on it, what surprised you? Is there something you’ve never noticed before?
THE STORY AND OUR STORY
During the first week of this series, John Dominic Crossan joined with the paid subscriber community in an online conversation about the parables.
We focused on how the parables challenged empire, how they present an alternative to Christian nationalism, and how they widen our vision toward evolutionary — and revolutionary — possibilities for a sustainable, peaceable future for humankind.
In his book, The Power of Parable, Crossan interprets this parable as a very particular kind of challenge parable — a “paradigm shift” parable of the Kingdom of God.
Crossan explains that Jesus, in his parables, transformed expectations of the Messiah. According to many scholars, at the time of Jesus, the Jewish people generally expected a “Davidic Messiah,” a warrior king who would restore the kingdom of Israel and defeat the enemies of God. Crossan argues that “Jesus proclaimed nonviolent resistance to the injustice of Roman imperialism in a world that belonged to a just and nonviolent God.”
This biblical shift seems, in retrospect, obvious — and central to the nascent Christian message. But at the time, it wasn’t. Jesus told stories to invite hearers into a different vision of the Messiah and the Kingdom, and this was the “kingdom paradigm-shift.”
Now, with the shift in mind, imagine you are a first-century Jew. It would be easy to think that the landowner was Rome. Because the land was owned by Roman colonizers and flunkies! They might have thought of themselves as the tenants, those who had to work the vineyard (rather like sharecroppers) and turn the profits over to this distant absentee owner. When the slaves show up to collect on the master’s behalf, the workers rebel and kill the slaves. And when the master sends his son, well, they kill him, too.
See what this sounds like? Enslaved people on a plantation killing their enslavers? A colonial uprising? The rightful overturning of injustice?
If you heard this parable and you were being forced to hand over the work of your hands to Roman authorities, you’d probably be siding with the tenants! They wouldn’t seem so wicked. They’d seem like their cause was just.
Here’s Professor Crossan’s view:
Think about the parable of the Wicked Tenants … imagine a first-century Galilean audience hearing (this) story.
Would some find that murder acceptable — even by divine law? Would they agree the tenants were, as we say, “wicked”? Would others find it understandable, but not prudent — the authorities would surely exact vengeance? Would some, many, or even most find it unacceptable on moral grounds?
Jesus could not have known their reactions beforehand and neither can we afterward.
But, the story holds another possibility (indeed, more than one additional possibility!). My sense — and I think Crossan’s as well — is that the landowner (in this particular parable) may well be God. The tenants aren’t all Jews; rather, they are Jews who are collaborating with Roman colonizers (they “work” Rome’s vineyard on behalf of the imperialists). The “slaves” are God’s faithful servants and prophets (like John the Baptist). And the son is the Messiah who, in this case, does not respond with violence to the tenants’ murderous intent. Instead, he dies revealing the wickedness of the collaborators of empire.
Ouch. That must have hurt. And it surely shocked them.
That’s the power of a paradigm shift.
HOW DOES THIS PARABLE CHALLENGE YOU — AND US — AT THIS SPECIFIC MOMENT IN HISTORY?
Can you imagine how a first-century Jew in Galilee, a region occupied by Rome, might have felt about this story? Might they have sympathized more with the landowner, the tenants, or the slaves? Do you understand how shocking this parable may have been in its original context?
Crossan claims, “Jesus is not just announcing to his audience that God’s kingdom is now present. He is announcing that is only present if and when it is accepted, entered into, and taken upon oneself.” The question, “Where are you in this parable?” is an invitation to change, to shift your consciousness about the meaning and nature of the Kingdom of God. Can you grasp that? (Hint: some of the collaborators couldn’t!)
What is most challenging for you? For your community? What’s the challenge for NOW — socially, politically, or economically?
Is this Kingdom paradigm-shift needed now? What if Christian nationalists changed their vision of the kingdom from a warrior-king Messiah to a nonviolent, non-imperial, self-giving one? What if people like, say, Pete Hegseth, shifted from collaborating with a violent empire to co-creating the Kingdom? Can you imagine? Is this parable speaking to people like him?
Maybe we humans always collaborate. The question is: With which paradigm do you collaborate?
An example parable may be good, a challenge parable is a far more importantly subversive operation. Why? Because challenge parables humble our prejudicial absolutes, but without proposing counter-absolutes in their place. They are tiny pins dangerously close to big balloons. They push or pull us into pondering whatever is taken totally for granted in our world.
— John Dominic Crossan
INSPIRATION
Jesus tells a story about wicked tenants who want to take over a vineyard. A vineyard would have been repossessed land taken from farmers, turned to an export crop, where they are now sharecroppers. The story is a commentary on economic systems that use people. And also a hit at leaders who are doing a lousy job.
But what if it’s also about us, about our urge to take over religion and make it ours?
God, I confess sometimes I want to possess your vineyard, to make my religion work out for me, not merely to receive it but to control it, to manage your grace, to center it on me. I repent of my mutiny.
I will let this be yours, and I will work your fields. — Steve Garnaas-Holmes, “Wicked Tenants”
In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.
At the CAC’s virtual gathering “How Do We Find Hope in Hard Times?,” Grammy Award–winning artist and musician Jon Batiste joined the CAC team in conversation. Dean of Faculty Carmen Acevedo Butcher asked Batiste about joy and celebration as a way to affirm our humanity amid circumstances that dehumanize us: “Where are you seeing that dehumanization right now, and how might we lean into joy as an act of resistance?” Batiste responded:
There are so many things that we can say about the times we’re in, and so many ways to look at it. In general, I like to look at things as happening on different axes. There are all these things happening at once from the perspective of your own life, the perspective of observing the world around you, and ultimately, observing history. We can see the ebbs and flows of time, and how we’ve gone through all of these different phases within the course of our generation and generations past.
So you have to start by finding a rooting that is true and meaningful for you. That’s ultimately where we begin to find authentic joy, because joy comes from pain. It’s a transmutation and an alchemizing of pain. It shifts it into a space that is true and authentic for you, even if the circumstances around you don’t change. Deep hope can’t be suppressed by bad circumstances. Hope transcends the conditions of your circumstances.
We [can] lose hope when we don’t believe or see evidence of a positive outcome anymore, but the deepest hope is this inner knowing that the brightest light can come from the darkest moments. You find that hope … by first questioning, “What are the things that I’m hoping for? Who are they for? Who is in control of hope? What is my hope rooted in? What is my belief about the ultimate outcome?”
I’ve started to learn that hope transcends the physical. Hope is the language of the invisible. It transcends circumstances because it transcends physicality. It’s spiritual. It’s the language of the invisible realm, which is just as real, if not more real, than the things we can see and touch. Hope is the deep inner knowing that comes from building that [foundation]. That’s why I like to say that hope is like a contact sport. You work on it. You get better at it. My house could be flooded, and the roof could be on fire, and still, there’s a sense of hope I can have. I’m going to stay in that boat.
This isn’t easy all the time, but it’s a choice that—once we make it and we root ourselves in the deepest, most authentic place in our life, however we arrived there—then we can truly live that out. We can build on that, and it compounds, no matter what the circumstances surrounding us are, no matter what they could be, and whether we have control of them or not
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Welcome to Bradley Jersak’s Substack! In the parable of the prodigal son(s), I love the verse, “And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.” That’s my story. I hope that in the posts to follow, you’ll see it shine through.
I’m just in the editing process of my next book, to be published by Brazos next year, titled Christ in Unexpected Places. It features a lot of stories about encountering Jesus in the people we tend to overlook or even avoid. That requires something of us: the need for open arms and open hearts that embrace the other—including those Jesus called “the least of these.” We offer loving hugs literally and metaphorically to represent the open arms of God here on earth. I wrote something about this twenty years ago while co-pastoring a church of precious misfits:
Whenever we open our arms to welcome the very least and the most lost, we imitate God in four ways outlined in theologian Miroslav Volf’s must-read text on justice and reconciliation, Exclusion and Embrace:
1. Open arms are a gesture of reaching for the other. They signal discontent with my self-enclosed identity and suggest desire for the other.
2. Open arms say that I have created space in myself for the other to come in. No longer “full of myself,” I set out on a journey toward the other, moving beyond my own fortified boundaries.
3. Open arms suggest a fissure in myself—an open door into my space through which the other might enter. They signify an aperture in the boundary of my self.
4. Open arms are a gesture of invitation, like an open door to an expected friend that beckons, come in. But unlike the open door, open arms are also a soft knock on the other’s door, politely asking if I might enter their space.
We open our arms to the world to proclaim the message of reconciliation—the open temple, the open table, the open arms, the open heart—limited only by what we offer, i.e. the extravagant love of Christ. To those who respond, to those we receive, we become the Bethlehem innkeeper who might have made room for Christ and his family. If only we have eyes wet enough to see.
I don’t know if I could have written that even two years later—I went through a rough patch—but two decades later, I do still believe it, even with a lot less energy and zeal. But I’m pretty sure Jesus believed it, and I believe him.
So did Sören Kierkegaard, though far more boldly than me. I’ll leave you with his ever-probing words!
Come here all, all, all of you, with Him is rest, and He makes no difficulties, He does but one thing, He opens His arms.
He will not first (as righteous people do, alas, even when they are willing to help)—He will not first ask thee, “Art thou not after all to blame for thy misfortune? Hast thou in fact no cause for self-reproach?”
It is so easy, so human, to judge after the outward appearance, after the result—when a person is a cripple, or deformed, or has an unprepossessing appearance, to judge that ergo he is a bad man; when a person fares badly in the world so that he is brought to ruin or goes downhill, then to judge that ergo he is a vicious man. Oh, it is such an exquisite invention of cruel pleasure to enhance the consciousness of one’s own righteousness in contrast with a sufferer, by explaining that his suffering is God’s condign punishment, so that one hardly even… dares to help him; or by challenging him with that condemning question which flatters one’s own righteousness in the very act of helping him.
But He will put no such questions to thee, He will not be thy benefactor in so cruel a fashion. If thou thyself art conscious of being a sinner, He will not inquire of thee about it, the bruised reed He will not further break, but He will raise thee up if thou wilt attach thyself to Him. He will not single thee out by contrast, holding thee apart from Him, so that thy sin will seem still more dreadful; He will grant thee a hiding-place within Him, and once hidden in Him He will hide thy sins. For He is the friend of sinners: When it is a question of a sinner He does not merely stand still, open His arms and say, “Come here”; no, He stands there and waits, as the father of the lost son waited, rather He does not stand and wait, He goes forth to seek, as the shepherd sought the lost sheep, as the woman sought the lost coin. He goes—yet no, He has gone, but infinitely farther than any shepherd or any woman, He went, in sooth, the infinitely long way from being God to becoming man, and that way He went in search of sinners.
After Kierkegaard, do I say “Enjoy”? Well, at least feel free to subscribe and share.
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Individual Reflection: Where in your life right now is hope something you’re practicing rather than something you feel?
Group Discussion — choose one: What does it mean to you that the Father in this story doesn’t wait but goes looking? What has hope cost you? Where have you found that brightness Batiste describes emerging from a dark moment — and did you trust it?
Hope arises when we embrace a sacred reality. —Steven Charleston, Ladder to the Light
Father Richard Rohr finds encouragement in his belief that we are created in the image of God, who is love:
The Jesuit priest and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “Love is the physical structure of the universe.” [1] Our theological or scriptural way of saying the same thing is “Let us create in our image” (Genesis 1:26). The universe—and each of us—are made in the image of the triune God, who is love, a dynamic cycling of infinite outpouring and infinite receiving.
If God is both incarnate and implanted, both Christ and Holy Spirit, then an unfolding inner dynamism in all creation is not only certain but also moving in a positive direction. If we are to have foundational hope, it almost demands a foundational belief in a world that is still and always unfolding toward something better. This is the virtue of hope. Personally, I have found that it is almost impossible for individuals or communities to heal over the long haul if they do not trust that the whole cosmic arc is also on a trajectory toward the good.
Admittedly, sometimes the suffering and injustices of our time make it hard to believe in that arc of love. I think that is part of the church’s major failure: to provide Western civilization with a positive, hopeful, and cosmic understanding of our own “good news.” [2]
Choctaw elder and Episcopal bishop Steven Charleston describes how this love and foundational hope surround us at all times:
The tipping point of faith is the threshold of spiritual energy, where what we believe becomes what we do. When that power is released, there is no stopping it, for love is a force that cannot be contained….
Hope lets us literally see the presence and action of the holy in our everyday lives. This is not an imaginary desire viewed through rose-colored glasses. It is the solid evidence of the power of love made visible in abundance….
Sometimes, in this troubled world of ours, we forget that love is all around us. We imagine the worst of other people and withdraw into our own shells. But try this simple test: Stand still in any crowded place and watch the people around you. Within a very short time, you will begin to see love, and you will see it over and over and over. A young mother talking to her child, a couple laughing together as they walk by, an older man holding the door for a stranger—small signs of love are everywhere. The more you look, the more you will see. Love is literally everywhere. We are surrounded by love…. Hope makes room for love in the world.
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Mercy and Mystical Hope
Monday, June 22, 2026
CAC faculty emerita Cynthia Bourgeault describes hope as a quality of God’s mercy, fully available to us:
Hope’s home is at the innermost point in us, and in all things. It is a quality of aliveness. It does not come at the end, as the feeling that results from a happy outcome. Rather, it lies at the beginning, as a pulse of truth that sends us forth. When our innermost being is attuned to this pulse it will send us forth in hope, regardless of the physical circumstances of our lives. Hope fills us with the strength to stay present, to abide in the flow of the Mercy no matter what outer storms assail us. It is entered always and only through surrender; that is, through the willingness to let go of everything we are presently clinging to. And yet when we enter it, it enters us and fills us with its own life—a quiet strength beyond anything we have ever known.
And since that strength is, in fact, a piece of God’s purposiveness coursing like sap through our own being, it will lead us in the right way. It sweeps us along in the greater flow of divine life as God moves … toward the fulfillment of divine purpose which is the deeper, more intense, more subtle, more intimate revelation of the heart of God. [1]
Through contemplative practice and surrender, Bourgeault believes we can experience God’s mystical hope and become a healing presence in the world:
In the contemplative journey, as we swim down into those deeper waters toward the wellsprings of hope, we begin to experience and trust what it means to lay down self, to let go of ordinary awareness and surrender ourselves to the mercy of God. And as hope, the hidden spring of mercy deep within us, is released in that touch and flows out from the center, filling us with the fullness of God’s own purpose living itself into action, then we discover within ourselves the mysterious plentitude to live into action what our ordinary hearts and minds could not possibly sustain. In plumbing deeply the hidden rootedness of the whole, where all things are held together in the Mercy, we are released from the grip of personal fear and set free to minister with skillful means and true compassion to a world desperately in need of reconnection.
Hope is not imaginary or illusory. It is that sonar by which the body of Christ holds together and finds its way. If we, as living members of the body of Christ, can surrender our hearts … and listen for that sonar with all we are worth, it will again guide us, both individually and corporately, to the future for which we are intended. And the body of Christ will live, and thrive, and hold us tenderly in belonging.
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Individual Reflection
Where have you been generating hope rather than receiving it — and what would it feel like to stop?
Group Discussion — choose one:
Bourgeault says hope is “entered always and only through surrender.” What are you currently clinging to that might be blocking it?
Charleston invites us to stand still and watch for love. When did you last see it somewhere you weren’t expecting it?
If hope is the sonar that holds the body of Christ together, what would it mean to listen for it rather than produce it?
Father Richard turns to the apostle Paul’s advice to the first churches to envision church renewal today:
Prior to the imperial edicts in the fourth-century that pushed Christians to the top and the center of the Roman Empire, the church was still countercultural and non-imperial—a social movement for the reign of God. In a two-hundred-year period, Christians went from being complete outsiders to directing the inside! Christianity increasingly accepted, and even defended, the dominant social order, especially concerning war, money, and authority. [1]
While Christian churches today do much good, they are still largely aligned, especially in the West, with cultural and political power. To recover the early church’s emphasis on faith as a loving and communal way of life, we clearly need to support good and compassionate pastoral and healing practices. We must begin to validate Paul’s original teaching on “many gifts and many ministries” (1 Corinthians 12:4–11) that together “make a unity in the work of service” (Ephesians 4:12–13). We need Christian people who are trained in, validated for, and encouraged to make home and hospital visits; do hospice work and jail ministry; support immigrants and refugees; help with soup kitchens; counsel couples before, during, and after marriage; teach classes in parenting; offer ministries of emotional, sexual, and relational healing; help with financial counseling; build low-cost housing; take care of the elderly; run thrift centers—all of which put Christian people in immediate touch with other people. Remember, healing was most of the work Jesus appeared to do. It is almost too obvious. Either we see Christ in everyone, or we hardly see Christ in anyone. Either we are Christ to everyone, or we cannot be Christ to anyone.
My vision of any future church needs to be much flatter and much more inclusive. It is much less “churchy,” surely less patriarchal, and more concerned with fulfilling its mission statement than with endlessly reciting its heavenly vision and philosophy statement—the Nicene Creed—every Sunday. Simply put, any notion of a future church must be a fully practical church that is concerned about getting the job of love done—and done better and better.Centuries of emphasis on art and architecture, songs, liturgy, and prescribed roles have their place, but their overemphasis has made us a very top-heavy, decorative church that is largely, and constantly, concerned with its own in-house salvation.
Most people today, in fact, understand church to mean a building, rather than “where two or three gather in my name,” where the Divine Presence is promised just as certainly as it is promised in the bread, in the Bible, in the Sacraments, or in any anointed leadership: “There I am in your midst” (Matthew 18:20).
Authentic leadership, I think, implies people who can spot, affirm, train, support, finance, and validate gifts and leadership wherever they see them in actual practice (think multipliers instead of monarchs). Then we are not all striving toward the top but striving toward supporting the supreme work of love flowing into the world. [2]
[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Powering Down: The Future of Institutions,” ONEING 7, no. 2, The Future of Christianity (2019): 46–47. Available in print or PDF download.
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John Chaffee – Five On Friday
1.
“Trauma blocks loving connection;
Loving connection heals trauma.”
– Unknown
I’m just gonna leave this one here without further commentary, it’s that good.
2.
“Humanity needs not the death of God but the birth of a new understanding of divine reality.”
Or, as Thomas Keating says, “We need a theology that matches our current cosmology.”
We know that the universe is still expanding, growing, and birthing new stars and universes. We know the Earth is not the center of the universe, but that we circle around a star that is also not the center of the universe. We also have to reckon with the fact that we do not live in a 3-tiered universe, with “hell” literally below us and “heaven” literally above us. (Rather, the Kingdom of Heaven is already near and among us.)
We also know that God is not some Divine Tyrant like a Pharaoh or Genghis Khan. Jesus reveals that Yahweh is nothing like Zeus. Infinite Love looks nothing like a cosmic Santa Claus keeping a list and checking it twice.
It is possible that in 6,000 years, people will look back at Christianity now and think that we were still in “kindergarten Christianity.” We still believe in the Sword more than the Cross, and we often still believe that God utilizes fear more than love… How pagan to believe such things!
But I believe something is changing.
We are now in a Post-Secular society, one in which the fullness of secular life was attempted and found to also be lacking… which means a return to faith and religion.
As I say that, though, I do not mean a return to how faith and religion were done in the past, but hopefully a more robust, integrative, mature, healthy, and holy one. We now have more access to the whole of the Christian tradition than ever before, thanks to the internet, so hopefully the chaff will be separated from the wheat, the cream will rise to the top, and we will see a resurgence of people rediscovering the best of the Christian tradition.
3.
“Those who would know much, and love little, will ever remain at but the beginning of a godly life.”
As a recovering Enneagram 5, this one is directed at me, who, for years, made the mistake of caring more about knowledge and information than about learning to love and be loved. Or, I guess you could say I wanted to be loved for what I knew rather than for who I am (because that felt terrifying).
Granted, I have been through some things that led me to put up some serious walls, but fortunately, the older I get, the more those walls continue to crumble like Jericho’s.
Notice, though, that Mechtild does not say such a person is not godly. She only says that such a person will “ever remain but at the beginning.”
4.
“People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other.”
I grew up in beach culture, in which there was a culture of recreational drug use.
Although I never fell into it, I knew of its presence.
And even then, I knew that some people were not really using it “recreationally” but as an escape or attempt to numb some deeper pain. Obviously, this numbing can work for a short while, but the deeper pain will always be there until it is exhumed.
It was much later on in life that I heard a very important term: Adverse Childhood Experiences (or, ACEs).
The ACE study, done between 1995 and 1997, helped put into the collective consciousness that childhood trauma can lead to many issues later on in life. The study named 10 “Adverse Childhood Experiences.”
Physical Abuse
Sexual Abuse
Emotional Abuse
Physical Neglect
Emotional Neglect
Household Substance Abuse
Household Mental Illness
Parental Separation or Divorce
Domestic Violence
Incarcerated Family Member
It’s quite a sad list, isn’t it?
And get this… While driving to work, I was listening to a podcast about Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, which does fantastic work rehabilitating gang members, and it said that some homies have 9/10 or even 10/10 of those experiences! Lord, have mercy.
Back to the Wendell Berry quote… We have lost each other. We need each other in order to heal.
Huh. I guess that goes back to the first quote above, which I did not intend.
Love is the solution, isn’t it? It is always the solution.
5.
“If you do not learn to deny yourself, you can make no progress in perfection.”
Before I say anything, allow me to note that for St. John of the Cross, “perfection” is nearly synonymous with “union with God.”
We will never make any progress on the journey of being united with God if we do not learn to deny ourselves.
By this, I do not mean that it is a matter of denying cake, cocaine, materialism, etc. (Although denying those things would be healthy for us in probably both the short and the long run.)
To deny ourselves is to choose someone else’s good over our own. It is a matter of denying all the ways our ego gets in the way of healthy and holy relationships. This applies not only to our relationship with God but also to the people around us. The ego wants to get ITS way, which means there is little room for others.
To deny ourselves might mean creating space for others in our lives, which brings me back to “perfection as union.” To deny ourselves does not mean abandoning ourselves. To deny ourselves might mean refusing to allow ourselves to find all our fulfillment within ourselves and reaching out for loving union.
This CO2- (Church Of 2) is where two guys meet each day to tighten up our Connections with Jesus. We start by placing the daily “My Utmost For His Highest” in this WordPress blog. Then we prayerfully select some matching worship music and usually pick out a few lyrics that fit especially well. Then we just start praying and editing and Bolding and adding comments and see where the Spirit takes us.
It’s been a blessing for both of us.
If you’d like to start a CO2, we’d be glad to help you and your partner get started. Also click the link below to see how others are doing CO2.Odds Monkey
Steve Harvey Introduces Jesus To A Secular Audience
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