Author: a fool

All alone with Jesus

transform to transform

I have just purchased this book. While I suspect that it will not be my cup of tea, I am intrigued by the premise. And it follows from the previous post. So the premise is:

Christian mysticism is about the holy transformation of the mystic by God so that the mystic becomes instrumental in the holy transformation of God’s people. This transformation always results in missional action in the world. The idea that mysticism is private and removed from the rugged world of ministry is simply false. All the Old Testament prophets were mystics. Their visions, dreams, and other experiences of God were for the express purpose of calling God’s people back to their missional vocation.

Elaine Heath, The Mystic Way of Evangelism: A Contemplative Vision for Christian Outreach, 5

“Being transformed leads to a desire to transform”. Yes! Experiencing Jesus leads to a desire for others to experience Him. There are movements that emphases the experience of Jesus that are also intensely missional. (Pietism and Pentecostalism are only two.) Yet the missional impulse does not grow out a “requirement” but rather from love.

So mission is about people experiencing and being transformed by Jesus. And that can only happen if I am transformed and reflect Jesus in my life. And the modern prophet is a mystic who calls individuals back to their mission to proclaim Jesus.

encountering Jesus?

I woke up thinking about the Knowledge argument. Yes, I am really weird! Actually I suspect I was thinking about Ex Machina that includes it. It goes by some other names – Mary’s room or Mary the super-scientist – yet fundamentally it is a thought experiment by Frank Jackson. In short:

… Jackson’s Mary is a scientist who knows everything there is to know about the science of color, but has never experienced color. The question that Jackson raises is: once she experiences color, does she learn anything new? Jackson claims that she does.

I find that idea really interesting. I think we sometimes, in a modern scientific world, downplay experience in epistemology. Is something that I know but have never experienced really “knowledge”?

So allow me to move the discussion in a theological direction. Does the experience of Jesus change me? Can I know Jesus without ever experiencing Him? Of course these questions actually influence the way we do “mission” and “evangelism”. Unfortunately sometimes “sharing my faith” is more about personal validation than transformation.

I think that I can tell people about Jesus and then the individual experiences Him. So is the speaking about really transformative or is the experience that may or may not follow? Of course, the issue is further complicated by the very fact that Jesus is a person and not an idea. A person who needs to be encountered. It is the personal meeting with Jesus that transforms – what role does my speaking about Him play?

Anyway, I was wondering what gospel story could be used to illustrate the above philosophical point? The Road to Emmaus? The blind man in John 9? Any suggestions?

Kierkegaard’s gospel?

I have stumbled across this article a couple of times and I feel I may have mentioned it already. So I am linking to it again and just going to quote a paragraph:

There is a scandalous dimension to the intrusion of God upon goodness. Many atheists today claim that Christianity is “offensive” in some way or another. Kierkegaard would say this is quite in order – Christianity is offensive and must be so in order to remain what it is. The offensive aspect of the difference God makes to goodness is one that Kierkegaard thought Socrates missed, as he believed anyone without the benefit of revelation would have done, no matter how wise they were in other respects.

The gospel according to Kierkegaard: Sin, guilt and the offense of forgiveness

Christianity is offensive because there is something offensive about Jesus. When an individual is confronted by the reality of the Word Incarnate, the God-man, offence is one of the responses – the other being a leap into faith, into the uncertainty of a relationship. The same as when the individual is confronted by the reality of sin in their own life. Modern Christianity has turned Jesus into one product amongst many and has made Him acceptable to the market. But do I miss the real depth of the Gospel when I refuse the offence of Jesus?

Another paragraph:

To forgive sins is a radical, wild, gratuitous folly. Really to forgive is to do something grossly offensive: it is to move beyond the categories of moral good and evil, to declare that, yes, an evil has been done against you, but that the evil is dispelled, it is of no account. Forgiving sin however means that the forgiver is still exposed to the possibility that the offender could hurt them again. This is part of what makes forgiveness so reckless: it offers no protection against future injury. For someone really to forgive, they have to reconcile themselves to the offenses of the past and remain vulnerable to injury in the future. Most of us are too self-protective, too shrewd, too timid really to forgive. But without forgiveness we are stuck in a cycle of self-loathing and despair.

I really like that paragraph. There is something very offensive about forgiveness. Because there is a risk of future injury. Forgiveness is a willingness to remain in a relationship even if the future is full of risk. All because of the other person, because of love. Anyway, I like the above article and it is Australian so another bonus.

I am a passenger

God uses people for the good of others. That is love. He uses them not in a negative way but puts people in your life that He uses for your good. God has placed people into my life for my good.

I have an extremely stressful and anxious day ahead. A day in which I am completely powerless – I am a passenger. But yesterday I spoke with a person involved and I am not nearly as stressed as I thought I would be. This person, without being involved previously and with little information, sees the situation the same way that my support people have been telling me. I trust them but my anxiety often talks very loudly. And my support people have been extremely supportive with a rather strange conference call. I know it is the anxiety and depression talking but I cannot shake, at the moment, the feeling that I am a burden and pain to people.

I have things to do today – I have yet to even start the Bible Study and that is tonight. I have been putting it off because my anxiety has been running riot. But I have learned how to manage it and how to live with it rather than against it. I am looking forward to the study and being useful.

This is the beginning of a very painful end. An end that I have yet to face fully – an end in which I am emotionally invested. An end that I do not desire and in which I have had no say. I am a passenger. So I am seeing it in a positive way – today is the start of a new life. A life that will look somewhat different than I had assumed. A life that is yet to be fully realised. A life into which I carry many scares and pains. But Jesus carries my scares, and my pain, on the cross for me. And that is the point I am starting from.

praying …

One of the things I love about being Anglican is the tradition of prayer. Yes, all Christians pray – or should, at least. And praying the Canonical Hours is not an Anglican only thing. Catholics have the Liturgy of the Hours and the Orthodox have their version. I think what sets Anglicans apart is the tradition of praying together. I like the tradition of daily morning and evening prayer as a community activity. Anglicanism is priest and people gathered around Jesus to pray every morning and evening.

While the ideal of a congregation at prayer is somewhat removed from the modern context, I like praying using a book other people are using. I like the community that uses the same Prayer Book as me. I like that I am united to my priest and clergy at my parish through the Prayer Book. And I like that while I am alone – and, let’s face it, I like being alone when I pray – I am with people around Jesus.

So as I pray today, I pray for you. The people who read this blog and the people in my life who support me. And the people who do not support me but that I pray for anyway. That Jesus’ love may strengthen you in faith, and that your heart may be open to Him.

a small update

I write personal things in very general terms. I am a private person by nature and do not feel comfortable sharing too much about myself. The sessions I have had with the counsellor have been eye-opening – to express some of my inner ideas and thoughts and not be rejected or ridiculed. And to express feelings without being censured or censuring myself. All of that has been extremely liberating!

One of the major thoughts that I struggle with is that I have let everyone down. That I am a disappointment for everyone. I have feelings of never being enough for people, always being just a stop-gap until they find someone better. And my recent history has only made that even more real for me.

So I just wanted to say that the next two days are going to be extremely stressful. Maybe the absolute worst of my life?! I am hoping that my anxiety will not rule my mind and I can get through it all. I have done one thing today that needed to be done. I am counting that as a victory. But tomorrow will be a nightmare. Then another one the day after.

I am listening to some music I like and I am going to pray. I know God is in control and this is working for my good – it is God’s love that is at work in me. I know I am not alone, surrounded not just by a cloud of witnesses but by faithful friends who always point me to Jesus. But from the inside it looks like a nightmare that is sent to punish me.

So, if you are so inclined, could you pray for me?!

Jesus, the individual, and the world

This week’s gospel text is from the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus, the bridge between Jesus’ ministry and His Passion in John. I must admit I find the whole of John 17 a little confusing. But I think it does follow the texts the lectionary has given us for the last three weeks. It is a summary of what it means to “abide in Jesus”.

Jesus said:
“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”

John 19:6-19

I am always struck by the distinction Jesus makes between the individual believer, who receives Jesus and the One who sent Him, and the world that stands against Jesus and His mission from the Father. In fact Jesus uses pretty tough language, “the world has hated them”.

Paul picks up some of the themes when he write to the people at Ephesus:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.

Ephesians 2:19-20

new and old

And Jesus said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

Matthew 13:52

This morning, on the way to church, I was thinking about the above part of Matthew’s gospel. In particular, I was thinking of how the church, as a community of individual believers, is always called to proclaim Jesus in new and fresh ways. But the core is always the same.

The text is also a warning: the old or the new can become idols. It is a call to return to the core of proclamation.

Anyway, I just wanted to share.