I'm still thinking abut some of Paul's words from Romans 6.  Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to Christ.  The implication is that we should see ourselves as God in Christ sees us.

 

I think about that moment when our Stephan saw his bride for the first time in her beautiful wedding dress.  It was a transcendant moment.  He is deliriously happy in his new marriage, and that has been true from the moment he proposed to Brooke.  I was struck, however, by the way he saw his new bride in that dress.  I think he will never look at her the same way again.

 

God has chosen, as an act of sheer grace, to see us clothed in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Over and over Paul will talk in his letters about what it means to "put on Christ."  God chooses to see us in our new clothing--that of justification for the sake of Christ.  A large part of our faith response is to see ourselves in that way.

 

Brooke's dress necessitated certain behaviors.  Her train required her to walk in a certain way.  It had to be bustled up for her to dance.  It also said volumes about her modesty, her beauty, and her appreciation of the seriousness of the marriage moment.  In the same way, our "clothing" in Christ necessitates certain behaviors.  We don't act as followers of Christ in order to buy the dress.  We act as followers of Christ because of the clothing we have already received.

 

I wonder how my faith and life will change if I look in the mirror each morning and choose to see myself as clothed with Christ, if I choose to consider myself dead to sin and alive to Christ.  I don't have to wonder.  Everything will change.

"What we have called Christianity for 1,500 years in the West turns out to be a Greco-Roman version of Christianity. There’s been a lot of talk already about the Greek influence on Christianity. But I think we’ve underestimated the Roman captivity of Christianity from those early centuries when Greco-Roman philosophy was becoming the tool of Roman domination of the empire...The problem is that this process led to a connection between Christianity and systems of power and domination throughout Christianity that sure look antithetical to the way of Jesus." 

Brian McLaren, http://www.readthespirit.com/explore/2008/06/187-conversatio.html?gclid=CJXRtK6f8pMCFQRksgodH1C3bw

 

More McLaren--“I am convinced that Jesus didn’t come to start a new religion; he came to proclaim a new kingdom.”

And a bit more--"Any of the helpful ideas I’ve shared with people in my work have come to me as conversations among friends. And this is especially important to say here: I think the conversations that need to happen right now are global conversations -– conversations between the colonial North and the post-colonial South, between Americans and Africans, between people in the North and people in Latin America, between people in the majorities and people with minority voices."

 

I wonder how we can use our relationship with Tanzanian Lutherans to shape and inform our emerging church stirrings in Lincoln?

 

From Tom Wright--'Part of the difficulty in Western Christianity for both Protestants and Catholics for the last 1,000 years has been this emphasis on Christianity as being all about how we can get saved. We’ve taught people that what really matters in Christianity is how we get to heaven. The focus becomes all about “me” and “my salvation.” People get stuck there in this self-centered focus.'

 

From Phyllis Tickle--Young men and women of faith, especially, are crying everywhere, “Give us a faith that costs us something! ... Teach us the things that will mark us as children of God! ...”  Their demands swell out with heat and vision, and what they foretell is that Christianity must be a way of living life as much as it is a system of belief. What they envision are Christians who  belong to each other in common cause, regardless of place and circumstance, a tribe of people marked by how they are and live as a nation peculiar unto God, regardless of where they may exist on this earth.

 

What is dis-satisfying about Church as we "do it" now?  For what does your spirit long?

 

Let's do it!

Well, friends, the wedding is over.  The kids are by the pool in Aruba.  We've caught up on the lawn mowing and survived multiple severe storm warnings.  Our Tanzanian friends are back in Kimangaro, reading their diaries, looking at photos and catching up on sleep and work.

 

Now, perhaps I can move into more of a post-wedding, post-Tanzania, post-craziness mode.

 

What a great conversation we had at our church council meeting last night.  The Holy Spirit continues to move us toward a new congregational start of some kind--but who, other than the Lord, knows what kind?  That just sends tingles up my spine.

 

So we're going to get under way with more conversation.  Starting Sunday, July 13, we're going to meet at Our Saviour's Lutheran Church, 1200 South 40th Street in Lincoln, Nebraska, and discuss Nate Frambach's book, Emerging Ministry, as a way to help us get our heads and hearts and spirits wrapped around this thing.  Of course, other things might happen as well--who knows?

 

We hope to get Dr. Frambach here to Lincoln after the first of the year for more conversation, planning, consulting--whatever we might need at the time.

 

If you want to get started on some more thinking, here's a brief article from Frambach with a series of 21 descriptions of this emerging church thing: http://www.spselca.org/documents/CharacteristicsofPostmodernWorshippingCommunities.pdf

 

And here's a networking site that has interesting connections and conversations.

 

Spread the word!

Thanks, Jodi, for pointing this out!

 

 

See Lutherans known and unknown (sort of like the sins we confess).

Selected wedding photos now available.  In addition, my message at the service and my rehearsal dinner remarks are available in the folder below.

So, Barak Obama has resigned from Trinity United Church of Christ.  I find this remarkably encouraging from the point of view of a pastor.  I had no idea that the things I might say from the pulpit would become determinative for the views, positions, policies and behaviors of those who hear me over the long term.  I was under the impression, based on some measure of experience, that people in the pews in front of me tended to make their own decisions regardless of what I might have said.  Perhaps I will need to rethink that assumption.

 

Of course, the preachers at Trinity are probably far more influential and more accomplished as preachers than I will ever be.  Perhaps they have been able to exert such profound formative influence on parishioners that we must fear what they say.  I have not had that experience based on my own preaching.  It is indeed true that I have never preached to a politician who inhabits the national stage.  Apparently those creatures are more amenable to clerical suggestion than the run of the mill parishioner.  Perhaps others have noticed in history that politicians simply collapse in the face of preacherly pomposity.

 

I am inspired to try harder.

 

What is puzzling is that the simple act of resigning membership from such a congregation is seen as the remedy for this massive determination of Senator Obama's character.  Twenty years (if we assume that Mr. Obama attended regularly) of weekly influence can now be erased by a simple paper transaction.  It is difficult to work this out in my mind.

 

It seems that the preachers of that parish have mesmerizing power over even the most stalwart of members.  Then, with the flourish of a pen, that political and theological hypnosis can be wiped away.  Trinity United Church of Christ is certainly a different parish than any I have ever served.  Resignations of membership may be signs that I have had little influence on someone--but that was usually obvious long before the membership ceased.  Never has a letter of resignation obliterated the meager influence I may have had over someone's thinking and believing.

 

So the rule of political life is once again proved--this time at the expense of the Gospel.  The more absurd a proposition is, the more likely it is that people will believe it.

 

I am greatly cautioned to speak with care before all the future presidents in my congregation.  Who knows what havoc I might produce?

 

"I am not ashamed of the Gospel.  It is the power of God for salvation...through faith for faith."--Paul's Letter to the Romans