The Blessings.
-a simple liturgy-

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Forgive us
our religious arrogance.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Have mercy on us
when we turn a blind eye, to the hurting.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Open our eyes
to this upside down kingdom.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Save us
from the jesus machine,
our soul’s long for more than carbonated sweet jesus.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Help us
die to our delusional ideas of justice.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Cleanse
our minds.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.
Awaken us
to the art of reconciliation in our world.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Disturb us
least we forget your hope filled, yet subversive gospel.

Lord, we long for your kingdom fulfilled
and grant us mercy in the way.

Amen

I thought this was quite good.  I was never really sure what to do with this parable, exactly.  I had heard explanations and this one seems to  sit the best with Jesus’ overall teachings.

If you have any thoughts or want to write on how you understand this parable, please do.  Parables are incredible things and there is no one right way to understand one.

This is an excerpt from: “Everything must Change” -Brain McLaren (pages: 239 - 240)

Something similar occurs in Luke 16, which we considered briefly in Chapter 16. My old King James Bible inserted a title for the parable there: “The Parable of the Unjust Steward,” but the word “unjust” revealed more about the presumptions of the editor than about the teaching of Jesus. Again, Jesus uses the common economic situation in Galilee, where Roman taxes forced many small farmers to sell their land to rich landowners, reducing them to the status of tenant farmers. Landowners would frequently hire managers, or stewards, to be the middle-men, demanding a portion of crops from all the tenant farmers and saving the landowner from this unpleasant task.

The manager in Jesus’ story has been accused of poor management and waste, so the landowner demands an account. Jesus conveys the man’s inner dialogue: “What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg – I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.” He goes to all the tenant farmers and cuts their debts: a debt of nine hundred gallons of olive oil is reduced by half, a debt of a thousand bushels of wheat is reduced to eight hundred.

To modern readers, this move sounds like injustice. But Jesus sees the entire system as unjust, and so in his story, the man isn’t condemned for malfeasance. By reducing an unfair debt that would further advantage the rich and further oppress the poor, the steward is actually decreasing injustice, so he is praised for being shrewd. In essence, he has defected from the systemic injustice of the dominant system and has switched sides, seeking to help the poor instead of seeking to help the rich. Jesus follows up the parable with words we’ve already heard from him: “No one can serve two masters… You cannot serve both God and Money.” Interestingly, Luke offers this epilogue to the encounter: “The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus.” Obviously, they like the current system and see no injustice in it: it is “working” for them in a way it isn’t “working” for the tenant farmers. But Jesus tells them their concept of justice is skewed: “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight.”

Oh, come come

this has potential to be fun

the culture says, originality is easy

see…just follow me.

let us beat the dead horse.

Art

Oh, come come

lets dream of encapsulating the energy of the sun

while we all dream of creation

excuse me while I dip my spoon in the bowl of consumption

let us beat and eat of the dead horse.

Art

Frantic friends

follow me till the economic system ends.

Quickly quickly,

create something pretty.

that Sells.

Art

come come, let’s build a studio

later we can add an addition just for show

Let us build, down the street

where our people can meet

a Café.

Art

oh won’t it be grand!

let’s all be come members in some sorta of musical band.

we immerse ourselves in this artsy sphere

no other voices do we hear

we in the belly of the dead horse

Art

we tell ourselves we are more

case and point, we romanticize about the poor.

we watch their movies on the television

and we scream of the corporate sin

our community stretches across economic lines

Art

all of this

in the name of

Art.

Art is dead.

-  This rhymish poem is just

me venting…I’m not saying

I’m any better.

-  I know it isn’t cool to write

rhymey poems…but like

it or not rhyme rocks!

I have been reevaluating and trying to simplify my life.  I have been searching for something to “put things in perspective”.  I came upon this familiar chapter this evening.  I was awestruck.

1 Corinthians 13 (The Message)

The Way of Love

¹ If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. ²If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. ^3-7If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

^8-10Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

¹¹When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

¹²We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

¹³But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

The following is an except from Brandon O’Brien reporting for NPC (Nation Pastor Convention) 2009.  Here are his thoughts and summery on Shane Claiborne’s talk.

‘The main event this evening was Shane Claiborne, who spoke about the “new economic vision” that God gives his people in Scripture. An important first step to understand Scripture’s economic vision is “learning to laugh in the face of things in the world [like money] that don’t have real power.” He spent most of his time unpacking Mark 10:29-30, by suggesting that, in God’s economy, there is enough for everyone because no one has more than he needs. He quoted an early Christians who said that a person who has two coats when someone has none was considered a thief in the kingdom of God; when you give to the poor, you’re simply giving back what has been stolen.

He argued that the “end of poverty was one of the signs of the birthday of the church,” and that loving our neighbors is not an “act of distant charity” but a matter of entering into relationship with our needy neighbors. This great summary line came late in his talk: “The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them away.” Then he put his money where his mouth was. Shane cashed the honorarium check that NPC paid him for his sermon tonight into $1 bills. As he concluded, he had someone bring a bag of the dollar bills to him; then he scattered them on the floor and invited everyone to come take one “as a sign of God’s jubilee.”’

Shane Claiborne never really ceases to amaze in the respect that, the words that come from his mouth and what he embodies seems very often to be parallel.  That kind of radical following is seen rarely today, instead we seem to just “consume” the Bible/books/ideas (and we think that’s enough?), but we never actually try to embody them.  Too, often I get the feeling that I am just an apathetic Christian drunk on romantic ideas.  I trying to become more than that, it’s difficult.

Okay, we’re back to this “new economic vision”.  I read somewhere (sorry can’t remember the source), that Shane said, in regards to the economic crisis, “The first step for recovering from an addiction, is admitting you have a problem.”  I agree, our culture is addicted to stuff and the consumption thereof.  We definitely have a very real problem, simply put, we consume too much (I promise I won’t throw wealth statistics at you, I’m sure you’re seem them), and worst of all at others expense and lives.  I suppose a solution would be in order, because when someone tell you, you have a problem they most often have a solution in mind.  Well I don’t, rather read the Bible, contextualize from then into today’s story, meditate, pray, love, and embody.  This will look different for each one of us.

Just some of my thoughts.  Peace.

Here are two videos that were posted on emergent village that try to answer/explain what Emergent Church is about.  I thought they offered a fairly decent analysis.

I know some of my small readership will find this interesting and maybe you have heard this before.  Regardless what are your reactions/thoughts?

I’ve been told that God is not bound by space and time or that he is omnipresent.  Yet, we feel his presence in different places.  Oddly enough some places seem to frequent god’s presence more than others. Celtic tradition suggests that such places, where earth and heaven almost meet and we feel supernatural presence, are called “Thin Places.”  It seems to me that these places are often: quite, rooted deeply in history, in undisturbed nature, or have or did have at one time or another a group of people that were unified in God.  These places are holy and beautiful.

I am by not means limiting God to “thin places”, I believe that God moves freely and his presence can be felt anywhere, when we are sensitive.  Here is what I am suggesting, we stop, feel and listen.  America’s culture, has such a productivity drive, that we tend to manage our time around productivity.  Time is money.  You are valued at what you can produce.  This mentality is near sighted, shallow and can easily consume us.  Take time for small things like mediation, prayer, reflection and reading.  It is in these small, intimate times in life, that “thin places” happen.