the drum|rob fairbanks

Prayer: Before the Day is Out

A beautiful and moving prayer from Walter Brueggemann that I used in my sermon this morning.

Before the Day is Out 

Unwavering in your power,

Unflagging in your zeal,

Uncompromising in your position,

    It is good for us – just past Sabbath again,

                               just past Easter again –

    to awaken to your will of constancy for your world.

We pursue our projects,

    depart to our private dreams

    invest in our deepest hopes.

    They are fragile and flimsy at best,

    at worst they are devious and destructive.

    Either way, they pale before your constancy.

We gladly affirm – past our inclinations –

    that you will well-being among us,

    that you intend justice for the vulnerable,

    that you command mercy and compassion among us.

Turn us, before the day is out, from our will to yours,

Wean us, before we sleep, from our petty hopes,

Relocate us in your eternal resolve,

    that the earth may be fully your realm,

    that the world may wreak with your shalom,   

    that we ourselves may find our true freedom

        in your sovereign purpose.

Yours – not ours – is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory…

    And we are grateful. Amen

From Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth

 

Newbigin on the Community of Faith

I am reading the book, The Household of God by Lessile Newbigin.  The below is a seminal thought about the church and its role in the world.

“It is surely a fact of inexhaustible significance that what our Lord left behind Him was not a book, nor a creed, nor a system of thought, nor a rule of life, but a visible community. He committed the entire work of salvation to that community. It was not that a community gathered round an idea, so that the idea was primary and the community secondary. It was that a community called together by the deliberate choice of the Lord Himself, and re-created in Him, gradually sought – and is seeking – to make explicit who He is and what He has done. The actual community is primary; the understanding of what it is comes second.” The Household of God (p.20)

I started wearing my glasses before I new he sported his. I swear I was not copying. But pretty pumped that we have similar tastes though!

Frederick Buechner on Advent

My friend Nick Webb from Manchester sent me an email yesterday with this Buechner excerpt attached.  Buechner is an extraordinary artist...each sentence he writes sings.  I can almost taste what he is saying about Advent.  Enjoy!

“The house lights go off and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised his baton. In the silence of a midwinter dusk, there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen. You walk up the steps to the front door. The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing. For a second you catch a whiff of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you’ve never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart…The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.”

— Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark, pp. 2,3

More from Nouwen: Becoming a Church of the Poor.

I promise that I'll stop dropping these Nouwen excerpts in here, but I have been so moved by this string of his thoughts about the church that I have not been able to stop myself. I have posted two other: Here and Here.  I hope you are both as encouraged and challenged as I have been.

"When we claim our own poverty and connect our poverty with the poverty of our brothers and sisters, we become the Church of the poor, which is the Church of Jesus.  Solidarity is essential for the Church of the poor .  Both pain and joy must be shared.  As one body we will experience deeply one another's agonies as well as one another's ecstasies.  As Paul says:  "If one part is hurt, all the parts share its pain.  And if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy" (1 Corinthians 12:26).

Often we might prefer not to be part of the body because it makes us feel the pain of others so intensely.  Every time we love others deeply we feel their pain deeply.  However, joy is hidden in the pain.  When we share the pain we also will share the joy."

Do you resonant with his vision of the church?

Going to the Margins of the Church - Nouwen

The below is a quote from Henri Nouwen.  Click "like" if you resonant with his vision of the church.

Those who are marginal in the world are central in the Church, and that is how it is supposed to be!  Thus we are called as members of the Church to keep going to the margins of our society.  The homeless, the starving, parentless children,  people with AIDS, our emotionally disturbed brothers and sisters - they require our first attention. 

We can trust that when we reach out with all our energy to the margins of our society we will discover that petty disagreements, fruitless debates, and paralysing rivalries will recede and gradually vanish.   The Church will always be renewed when our attention shifts from ourselves to those who need our care.  The blessing of Jesus always comes to us through the poor.   The most remarkable experience of those who work with the poor is that, in the end, the poor give more than they receive.  They give food to us. 

Ok, there is no "like" button...but if there were I'd like, like, like!

r

Loving the Church - Nouwen

I find the thinking and spirit (attitude) of Henri Nouwen some of the most refreshing of all writers.  Here are some of his thoughts about the church.

 Loving the Church does not require romantic emotions.  It requires the will to see the living Christ among his people and to love them as we want to love Christ himself.   This is true not only for the "little" people - the poor, the oppressed, the forgotten - but also for the "big" people who exercise authority in the Church.

To love the Church means to be willing to meet Jesus wherever we go in the Church.  This love doesn't mean agreeing with or approving of everyone's ideas or behavior.  On the contrary, it can call us to confront those who hide Christ from us.  But whether we confront or affirm, criticize or praise, we can only become fruitful when our words and actions come from hearts that love the Church.

What are you current feelings toward the church?  Do they reflect his words or have you come to a place where this simply doesn't make sense?

The Kingdom of God

"The Kingdom is primarily the dynamic reign or kingly rule of God, and derivatively, the sphere in which the rule is experienced. In biblical idiom, the Kingdom is not identified with its subjects. They are the people of God's rule who enter it, live under it, and are governed by it. The church is the community of the Kingdom but never the Kingdom itself. Jesus’ disciples belong to the Kingdom as the Kingdom belongs to them; but they are not the Kingdom. The Kingdom is the rule of God; the church is a society of men."

The Theology of the New Testament, George Eldon Ladd

 

Lewis on Hell

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’  All that are in Hell, choose it.  Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.” 

(C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 72)  

The Eyes of Faith - John Chrysostom

Such is the power of the eyes of faith.  The eyes of the body can only see what falls under the sense of sight, but with the eyes of faith it is just the reverse.  They see nothing that is visible, but they see what is invisible just as if it lay before their eyes.

The Need for Faith, John Chrysostom

 

More Living Toward the Future

"Every now and then I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral. ... Every now and then I ask myself, 'What is it that I want said?' I'd like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King Jr., tried to love somebody."

- Martin Luther King Jr., from his sermon "The Drum Major Instinct"

HT - Sojourners