Redefining Mission

I've just read and re-read that chapter in Brian McLaren's book on Mission and his understanding of the subject. I found it fascinating and i need more time to chew it over.
Anyway here's a summary of it:

Saving souls from the dehumanizing effects of hostility to God and other(s).
As souls have a body and a body needs the air, planet and creation. We endeavour
to 'save' all these aspects.
Salvation from the effects of misguided, distorted, dysfonctional religion.
Saving decision: a choice not to live for our own selfish interests alone.
But for the common good, the good of all creation.
God saves us from the evil effects of greed, pride, fear and hostility.
(Remember human beings bear God's image, therefore they are good)
Freedom of religion - not getting people from other religions to come over to
our Christian religion. People can choose to do so. That's their choice.
Calling (everyone) to welcome Jesus in their community and invite them to
watch as he transforms temples of stone into temples of humanity.
Inviting to be born again - not once but an ongoing transformation.
Alter Call (not Altar Call) - a calling to alter our self-understanding of God
as revealed in the human-kindness of Jesus. To discover a God who needs no
appeasement but who seeks to bring all things into joyous reconciliation.
Also, an invitation to alter our self-understanding and discovering a new identity.


Now as I said i'm still processing Brian's ideas.
It's a call to a new understanding of mission that certainly rocks the boat of old colonial
type mission.
This new approach calls for both respect for the other and humility on our part.
I can see that Jesus didn't come to start a new religion called the Christian religion but came to show the Way to all humanity in every culture and religion. The Way of peace and salvation from our hostility towards God, our fellow human beings, ourselves and creation.
The central message of Jesus was and still is the Kingdom of God is here - among us and not yet come in its fulness. Jesus taught and demonstrated with his life what that Kingdom looks like. One of peace, reconciliation and love. The Kingdom (or as Brian refers to it) the Commonwealth of God - transcends all religions and all cultures. So I can understand the concept of 'freedom of religion' - as the Jesus Way - the Kingdom/Commonwealth Life is not 'contained' by a single religion - so the call to 'welcome' Jesus into your community (which could be read religion or culture) - will in fact transform the community to live out the Commonwealth of God - within its cultural/religious context. And therefore there would not be a need to change religion. But as a consequence of welcoming Jesus and following Him the community/religion/culture would be transformed.

I once read somewhere that Jesus came to make us more human. In the context of mission - our hope is to see ourselves being more Christlike which is to be a better human - full of human-kindness.

St Catherine's Tree

As a kid i was familiar with (St) Catherine's wheel (light up the fire with standard fireworks! :) - but Richard Rohr speaks about St Catherine's tree:

St Catherine of Siena pictures the spiritual life are a large tree.
The trunk is love; 

The core or middle part is patience; 

The roots are self-knowledge 

The many branches, reaching our into the air are discernement.

In other words love does not happen without patience, self-knowledge and discernment.

(Possibly) today we have little encouragement toward honest self-knowledge or training in spiritual discernement from our churches. By nature most of us are not very patient. All of which means that love is not given to be very common.

Do we need St Catherine's tree again?

Possibly so.

Popular Resistance: Gaza redux analysis

Here's an interesting and probably accurate analysis of the current situation in Palestine.
Finally it's about the occupier and the occupied, the colonizer and the colonized...



Popular Resistance: Gaza redux analysis: Analysis of conflicts and destruction should not be done in the heat of the moment when emotions are high. In wars, everybody loses but...

Baptism, Identity and Human-Kindness

I'm reading through Brian McLaren's book 'Why did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha and Mohammed cross the road?' - and blogging as i go along. I'm finding it both thought provoking and a challenge to some of my pre-conceived, pre-taught ideas.

I've recently read the chapter on Baptism. McLaren states that baptism is a ritual that pre-dates christianity. Jewish pilgrims partook of ritualistic washing ( a form of baptism) before entering the temple. This was in order to be cleansed from the contamination that they had contracted due to their contact with 'unclean' gentiles (non-jews). This practice reinforced an identity that we are clean/legitimate and they are dirty/illegitimate. God loves 'us' and finds 'them' smelly, disgusting, dirty and unacceptable.
The Essenic communities also practiced a form of baptism to clean themselves of the pollution of the corrupted temple/religious establishment. Unfortunately,they simply mirrored themselves in opposition -  a 'us and 'them' mentality.

John the Baptist appeared on the scene with a new baptism. A baptism of repentance. Repentance meaning changing attitude; from hating the enemy to loving the enemy...defecting from violence (the brood of vipers) and identifying with peace (the dove).

In Luke 3: 11 - 14, repentance is seen as how we treat others. Not with hostility, not with resistance, but with kindness, generosity and justice.

Our baptism is a sign of our call to identifying with oppositional identities and by dying to them; identifying with something new - the Kingdom of God.

Passing through the water and the Spirit is to be joined once again to all mankind (and to all creation), to be ever marked with human kindness.

Baptism is symbolic of laying aside all hostilities and taking up a new identity in Christ, in which old divisions are replaced by a strong, profound solidarity of human-kindness, shared with everyone!

MacLaren is influenced in this regard to Pete Rollin's book 'Insurrection'. Rollin points to Paul's words where he declares that in Christ  there is neither jew nor greek (religious identity), slave nor free (socioeconomic identity), male nor female (sexual identity)...to Rollin it's not a question of embracing yet another identity but rather 'laying down the various identities that would otherwise define us'.
To follow Christ is to share his radical  divestment of identity.
Rollin concludes: "We can even say that in Christ there is neither Christian nor non-Christian...The scandalous nature of this radical vision is captured succinctly in the Gospel according to John, where the Christian is described as one who lives in the world (with all of its social, religious, and political divisions) while no longer being (not being held fast by them)...When this loss of identity is enacted in a liturgical setting, we may call it a suspension space, for in that location one symbolically lays one's identities at the door".

This subversive symbolism would see a laying aside of all our hostile identities -  taking up a new identity in Christ - in which old divisions are replaced by a new and profound solidarity of human-kindness.

I have a sneaking suspicion that both McLaren and Rollin are on the right track. It got me thinking of Paul's analogy of Christ being the 2nd Adam. Adam symbolises the first human, the father of humanity.
Christ has now brought us into a new humanity (which was what humanity was meant to be from the start until hostility and brokenness entered) - so Christ brings us back into the human-kindess - with all its diversity - in solidarity and harmony.

We are now reconciled to one another.
Note: reconciliation differs from inclusion. Inclusion says we can absorb the 'other' into 'us', while reconciliation means we want to be at peace with the other as the other !

A Different Story Frame

According to Brian McLaren there are at least 7 story frames  - in the way we relate to the Other.

Domination (classic imperialist Us over Them mentality)
Revolution (Us overthrowing domination of them)
Purification (Us eliminating Them)
Assimilation (Us converting Them to us)
Competition (Us competing with Them - seeing the other as rival)
Victimization (Us oppressed by Them - survival is our primary goal)
Insolation (Us apart from Them - separation and avoidance of them)

All of the above ways of relating to the other are not ideal (to say the least) and dangerous to humanity. In my humble opinion these story frames are not what followers of Jesus should entertain - though unfortunately we have many examples to the contraire.

McLaren looks at Genesis and the story of God's calling of Abraham as a model of how we should relate to the Other.
Ina nutshell God called Abraham with a strong identity - his greatness and strength was given for the sake of the Other(s); all the nations on the earth will be blessed through him.
Called to the Other for the sake of the Other.
Called to join God in healing a world torn by human hostility.

CRIS

Brian McLaren speaks about CRIS in his book - "Why Jesus,Moses..." this is an acronym for Conflicted Religious Identity Syndrom - by this he means those things we don't want to associate with in our particular faith tradition. Those elements that we are in conflict with.
Maybe we can all relate to this. Personally I went through this and still am to a certain extent,  where I didn't want to be associated with Evangelicalism - due to some of the associations with US right leaning politics, narrow ideas about salvation and who's 'in' and who's 'out', a fundamentalist 'literalist' understanding of scripture, and so on.

Chagall at Roubaix

There's an excellent expo of Marc Chagall at the Piscine at Roubaix near Lille.
There are many of his paintings, drawings and sculptures.
It's worth a visit.