“Little children – keep yourselves from idols.”  So the apostle John ends his first letter to the early church. (1 John 5:21)  I don’t think he was warning against Caesar dolls!  Interior idols and the cult of ‘Things’ is the ever-present danger.  Whenever we look to something other than God for our meaning or security – we become idolaters.

Imagine a community of people unattached to their stuff?  Living creatively, responsibly, generously in the world so that everyone can see the living God?
Jesus would call it ‘Church!’

I’d like to re-post something from a few years ago on the dangers of modern idolatry.

Consumerism has been called “The Cult of the Next Thing.”  The essay by Mark Buchanon and is available here. In Matthew 6:19-24, Jesus calls us to check our hearts and our eyes as it relates to possessions and Kingdom priorities . If Money is one of the idols – or gods of this world, then Jesus wants us (in the words of Dale Bruner in his commentary on Matthew) to become the real atheists to the secular gods of consumerism, successism, pride in possessions, self-serving, overspending, and indifference to needs…” 

The antidote to terminal consumerism is generosity: both the tithe principle of regular, planned giving and offerings of what we have that come from a heart of compassion in the face of urgent needs.

Randy Alcorn has a voluminous website with a section on Money that is well worth checking out.  As with any author, we may not agree with every emphasis, but Alcorn covers the questions thoroughly and with a heart of Christ-centeredness. Alcorns books, The Treasure Principle, and especially Money, Possessions, and Eternity are excellent.  Much of their content is on the website in the form of articles or downloads.

This is your invitation to join an important conversation.  Tell us your stories of how you have seen God use your everyday work in His mission to the world!  Or in light of the teaching from the I Am The Church series, how God’s Spirit  is moving in you to “re-imagine” your work -  reflecting the beauty of God’s love and truth in new ways.  Scroll down and leave your story in the Comment section.

Here is a wonderful summary of the theology behind the teaching from a site called The High Calling of Our Daily Work, by a ministry led by Howard Butt.  This is a quote from an article on creating a beautiful work place.

…Beauty must be seen then as an aspect of God and God’s creation. Beauty is the light of God shining from within the created world. The fact that one person sees beauty where another doesn’t has to do with people’s different capacities, not the nature of beauty itself.

Why does all this matter? Because if we want to be followers of Christ, we need to join Christ in his work. Through his incarnation, public ministry, passion, resurrection, and ascension, Christ initiated a cosmic renewal. His victory over death began the restoration of God’s entire creation to a state even better than its original “goodness.”

In fact, we are invited to be co-creators with Christ in this work, as part of his living body within the world. That means performing (good, i.e.) beautiful deeds . . . from anointing the Savior’s feet with expensive perfume to building exquisite church sanctuaries….to helping widows, orphans, and prisoners; from constructing excellent architecture to putting together vital organizations; from decorating our homes attractively to creating a harmonious workplace.

The Lausanne Movement arose out of the first international Congress on World Evangelization convened by Billy Graham and attended by leaders from 150 countries.  Out of it came the Lausanne Covenant – a wonderful document used ever since as a balanced statement of the Church’s mission.  It was here that John Stott first crafted the phrase, “the Whole Church taking the Whole Gospel to the Whole World.”  We spoke of this briefly in our series on I am the Church, on The Call To Mission -Connecting to a Hurting World.

Let me encourage you to read further on this vital understanding of Mission. Lausanne has an amazing website with documents and papers from all of its conferences and global study groups.  I’ll link here to the section that further explains the “Whole” emphases. The article by Christopher Wright is especially helpful.

Here’s a paragraph from The Jesus Prayer, reviewed in the previous post and referenced in the October 11, ‘09 teaching at Christ Church.  It captures the intimate link between communion with Christ and mission to the world.

“The purpose of this earthly life is to be saturated with the life of Christ.  Everything flows from that, every work of art and act of courageous witness, every  theological insight and every effort to help the poor.  The idea is that God will fill people with His Son’s life, and then they will accomplish his work in the world.”

“(Christ’s) indwelling presence heals, restores, and completes us, preparing each of us to take up the role in his kingdom that we alone can fill.”

Frederica Mathewes-Green, The Jesus Prayer: The Ancient Desert Prayer That Tunes The Heart To God, p.12

Many are familiar with what over the centuries has been called The Jesus Prayer, which in the subtitle of a new book by Frederica Mathewes-Green is described as “the ancient desert prayer that tunes the heart to God.” It comes from the Gospels and we’ve used it in worship services, retreats, and prayer gatherings and many have incorporated it into their personal prayer disciplines.  There are various forms, but I usually use the longer form: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

I had the joy of sitting in three of Frederica’s workshops in Oxford during my sabbatical a few years ago.  We had coffee one afternoon.  At that time I told her I felt she was one of those great “bridge authors” like Henri Nouwen who helps different faith streams glean from one another.  I’ve been waiting for this book and I’m not disappointed.  I wrote an Amazon review which I’ll put at the end of this post as well.

Paraclete Press, the publisher, has posted a long excerpt you can read here.  It has the intro and first chapter that will help you get the idea of the history and helpfulness of prayers like the Jesus Prayer.  Here is the link to the book excerpt. My review follows here:

Frederica is a bridge author between historic Orthodoxy and other faith streams like Evangelicalism the way Henri Nouwen was appreciated by both Roman Catholics and Evangelicals.  I sat under her workshops at Oxford CS Lewis Institute and have read all her books and dozens of others on the Jesus Prayer. Eastern Orthodox spirituality, theology, and music have deeply impacted my own journey as a pastor. This book is direct, clear, and accessible for any Christian and even those seeking more understanding.

Matthewew-Green has chosen to have half the book be in a Question and Answer format which works well because of the many nuances and viewpoints even among the Orthodox on the practice of the prayer and the related principles of spiritual discipline.

I believe this will be the modern standard to introduce millions of Christians to prayer that moves beyond (both) shallow self-expressed prayers and formal written prayers to a place of constant presence with God so needed in our self-addicted world of miss-placed passions. I encourage you to read the book and more importantly, make the Jesus Prayer and similar scripture prayers the core of your prayer-practice.

Thomas Merton – Trappist Monk and prolific author (1915-1968) wrote a book of reflections on the spiritual life called No Man Is An Island.  It’s the kind of book where you can read a few pages and it takes hours to digest.  My Monday off was Merton day.  My reading tied in with our current series, I am the Church and Sunday’s teaching on Connecting with God – our call to maturity as individuals and a church.

Merton makes a distinction between what he calls physical evil (suffering) and moral evil (always involving sin).  He says physical evil is only to be regarded as real evil insofar as it moves us toward sin.  Here’s an excerpt:

Physical evil has no power to penetrate beneath the surface of our being.  It can touch our flesh, our mind, our sensibility.  It cannot harm our spirit without the work of that other evil which is sin.  If we suffer courageously, quietly, unselfishly, peacefully, the things that wreck our outer being only perfect us within, and make us…more truly ourselves because they enable us to fulfill our destiny in Christ (Romans, chapter 8?)…and when they come we should receive them with gratitude and joy. (James, chapter 1?)

The Christian…knows the peace of one who has conquered everything.  Why is this?  Because Christianity is Christ living in us, and Christ has conquered everything.  Furthermore, He has united us to one another in Himself.  We all live together in the power of His death which overcame death.  We neither suffer alone nor conquer alone…In Him we are inseparable:  therefore we are free to be fruitfully alone whenever we please, because wherever we go, whatever we suffer, whatever happens to us, we are united with those we love in Him because we are united with Him.  His love is so much stronger than death that the death of a Christian is a kind of triumph.  (pp. 90-91)

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. (Romans 8:19)

a page from Bach's Bible

One of the exciting themes of our new teaching series, I am the Church, is that our everyday work is very much a part of the Mission of Christ. I came across this 3 minute video about the discovery of J. S. Bach’s personal Bible which laid to rest the question of whether or not he had a strong faith or just wrote great church music.  Take a look at this link from the Speaking of Faith website.

Poetry, for me, is a little like trying to observe a “sabbath.”  It shouldn’t feel like a luxury, but I treat it that way. So I subscribed to Poetry – a small journal from the Poetry Foundation (their website is a treasure for finding all things poetic.)  In a September ‘09 article, Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich writes about her frequent use of poetry in her columns.   She referenced the last line of a 1980’s Mary Oliver poem, The Summer Day, which “electrocutes me every time I read it!”  I’m not sure if I can print the whole poem here though it’s easy to find on the internet (e.g. here).  The poet is strolling through the fields and begins by asking, “Who made the world?”  She takes off on a beautifully vivid description of an encounter with a grasshopper, followed by this closing section.  Note the question that ends the poem.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Impressions?  Comments?

Byzantine orthodox church dome, from Bob Sloan

I’ve become passionate about how the Christian world view provides the best answer to the question, “What is a person?”  or “What does it mean to be fully human?”   Jesus is called the Second Adam and the implications are enormous.  For example, our proclaiming of the Good News needs to start with Creation and our being in the image of God.  Then our fallen and broken selves can point to Christ as the one who redeems our humanity.  Some of this will be “fleshed out” (no pun intended) in our 2009-10  series on the Letter to the Romans.  Here’s an example of the kind of vital reminders I keep coming across.  It is from Image Journal – a publication committed to the intersection of Art, Faith, and Mystery.  Let me encourage you to read this blog post from the editor.  Not an easy read, but worth the effort.  It begins with a quote that is in the title of this post.  Click here to read.

“Jesus was a master of the Psalms.  Whenever he heard them, in the synogogue and at the temple, he took them to heart, for the Psalms spilled constantly from his lips… His entire life was bathed with Psalms… Jesus prayed the Psalms and Christians have always followed his example.”  (Scot McKnight, Praying With The Church, p. 53-55)

This summer ‘09 we are teaching a 6 part series called Language of the Heart: Learning to Pray the Psalms. Each week, in addition to exploring one Psalm, we will be giving examples of what Christians throughout history have said about the importance and the practice of praying the Psalms.  Here is an article I’ve put together of some of my favorites.

Kathleen Norris from Cloister Walk:

You come to the Bible’s great “book of praises” through all the moods and conditions of life, and while you may feel like the pits, you sing anyway. To your surprise, you find that the Psalms do not deny your true feelings but allow you to reflect on them, right in front of God and everyone.
The world the Psalms depict is not that different from our own; the 4th century monk Athanasius wrote that the Psalms “become like a mirror to the person singing them,” and this is true now too.
They remind us that the mundane and the holy are linked.
The Psalms make us uncomfortable because they don’t let us deny – either the depth of our pain or the possibility of its transformation into praise.
We commit ourselves to being changed by the Psalms, allowing the words to work on us, and sometimes to work us over.
The Psalms are unrelenting in their realism. They ask us to consider our true situation and to pray over it. They ask us to be honest about ourselves. (p. 104)

From Norris’ Quotidian Mysteries:
(Early woman monastic Syncletica) “There is a grief that is useful, and there is a grief that is destructive. The first sort consists in weeping over one’s faults and weeping over the weakness of you neighbor…..but there is also a grief that comes from the enemy, full of mockery, which some call acedia (spiritual depression/ listlessness; not bearing the thought of going on). This spirit must be cast out, mainly by prayer and psalmody (praying the Psalms as a spiritual exercise)

People who rub up against the Psalms every day come to see that, while children may praise spontaneously, it can take a lifetime for adults to recover this ability. One sister told me that when she first entered the convent as an idealistic young woman, she had tried to pretend that “praise was enough.” It did not last long. The earthy honesty of the Psalms had helped her, she says, to “get real, get past the holy talk and the romantic image of the nun.” In expressing all the complexities and contradictions of human experience, the psalms act as good psychologists. They defeat our tendency to try to be holy without being human first. Psalm 6 mirrors the way in which our grief and anger are inextricably mixed; the lament that “I am exhausted with my groaning; / every night I drench my pillow with tears” (v. 6) soon leads to rage: “I have grown old surrounded by my foes. / Leave me, you who do evil” (vv. 7-8). Psalm 38 stands on the precipice of depression, as wave after wave of bitter self-accusation crashes against the small voice of hope. The psalm is clinically accurate in its portrayal of extreme melancholia: “the very light has gone from my eyes” (v. 10), “my pain is always before me” (v. 17), and its praise is found only in the possibility of hope: “It is for you, O Lord, that I wait” (v. 15). Psalm 88 is one of the few that ends without even this much praise. It takes us to the heart of pain and leaves us there, saying, “My one companion is darkness” (v. 18). We can only hope that this darkness is a friend, one who provides a place in which our deepest wounds can heal.
The Psalms make us uncomfortable because they don’t allow us to deny either the depth of our pain or the possibility of its transformation into praise. As a Benedictine sister in her fifties, having recently come from both the loss of a job and the disintegration of a long-term friendship, put it to me, “I feel as if God is rebuilding me, ‘binding up my wounds’ ” [Ps. 147:3]. “But,” she adds, “I’m tired, and little pieces of the psalms are all I can handle. Once you’ve fallen apart, you take what nourishment you can. The psalms feel like a gentle spring rain: you hardly know that it’s sinking in, but something good happens.”
The Psalms reveal our most difficult conflicts and our deep desire to run from the shadow. In them, the shadow speaks to us directly, in words that are painful to hear. In recent years, some Benedictine houses, particularly women’s communities, have begun censoring the harshest of the Psalms, often called the “cursing psalms,” from their public worship. But one sister, a liturgist, said after visiting such a community, “I began to get antsy, feeling, something is not right. The human experience is of violence, and the psalms reflect our experience of the world.”
The psalms are full of shadows–enemies, stark images of betrayal: “Even my friend, in whom I trusted, / who ate my bread, has turned against me” (Ps. 41:9). Psalm 10 contains an image of a lion who “lurks in hiding” (10:9) that calls to my mind the sort of manipulative people whose true colors come out only behind the doors of their “lairs.” Psalm 5 pictures flatterers, “their throat a wide-open grave, all honey their speech” (v. 9). As C. S. Lewis has noted in Reflections on the Psalms, when the Psalms speak to us of lying and deceit, “no historical readjustment is required. We are in the world we know.”

From Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms, Prayer Book of the Bible

Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian who opposed the Nazis and the established German church that went along with Hitler.  These excerpts are adapted from the introduction to the new edition of Bonhoeffer’s works.

The Nazi Board for the regulation of Literature fined and chastised Bonhoeffer for publishing this book as subversive. They removed the fine but banned all future publications. (he was imprisoned and executed before he could write more!) Anything lifting up the Old Testament or the Old Testament people of God – the Jews was opposed.

That Bonhoeffer desired to retrieve the Psalms as the prayer book of Jesus. Interpreted the Psalms as did Luther – seeing the Messiah in them and speaking in them as well as the source of Jesus’ own prayers.
He saw it as side by side with the Lord’s Prayer as the Lord’s answer to the plea of the Disciples, “Teach us to pray!” The Lord’s Prayer can be seen as the lens through which we read the Psalms.

Praying certainly does not mean simply pouring out one’s heart. It means, rather, finding the way to and speaking with God, whether the heart is full or empty. No one can do that on one’s own. For that, says Bonhoeffer, one needs Jesus Christ.

We learn to pray like a child learns to speak – saying the parent’s words after them. So prayer is answering God.
Reading the Psalms in worship services; (learned in the Benedictine Monastery experience) and having systematic ways of reading the Psalms are a profound help in forming an independent relationship with God and with God’s Word.

The Psalms should be prayed in their entirety since they “mirror life with all its ups and downs, its passions, and discouragements.”

Luther: “Whoever has begun to pray the Psalter earnestly and regularly, will soon take leave of those other , easy, little prayers of their own and say: ‘Ah, there is not the juice, the strength, the passion, the fire which I find in the Psalter.’”

Bonhoeffer loved to pray the Psalms because they offered him the sustaining and liberating power of God’s own words in coping with the vicissitudes of everyday living. The praying of the Psalms also teaches us to pray as a community.

Letter to parents when imprisoned: “I read the Psalms every day, as I have done for years; I know them and love them more than any other book.” Psa 31:15 My times are in your hands…rescue me
Psa 13, How long O Lord…The source of Bonhoeffer’s vitality and stamina in prison = “his constant , daily, childlike relationship to God.” (Burton Nelson) He would learn scripture during the day and review it before sleep…wake up at 6 and read Psalms and hymns.

The prison doc who attended his execution wrote, “I was most deeply moved by the way this extraordinary, lovable man prayed, so resigned and so certain that God heard his prayer.”

Adapted from Fortress Press ed. Of the complete works of Bonhoeffer