The Wired Wanderings of a Postmodern Pilgrim
Nov 2nd, 2009 by Tom Lyberg
It appears that Itunes no longer is listing current podcast library. I’m going to do a couple of test uploads to see if it will re-seed the feed or if something else is going on.
I know it has been 8 weeks since my last podcast – sadly I have let the busyness of life get the best of me again. Enjoy a couple of these reruns – if they come through.
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Oct 21st, 2009 by Tom Lyberg
I have to admit, this is a rather fascinating article and I may have to check out this book. It does give some traction to the idea of America as a Judeo-Christian culture. Here’s a review from Savannahnow.com. I’m curious – has anyone read this book?
There was a time leading up to the Protestant Reformation when average believers were forbidden from reading the Bible.
When they finally got the opportunity, the character they most identified with was Moses. A bond that doesn’t come as a surprise to best-selling author Bruce Feiler, a Savannah native.
“While America was 100 percent Christian at its founding and 80 percent Christian today, the themes of Jesus’ life – spreading the gospel, poverty alleviation, building a kingdom of heaven on earth – these are not ideas that motivated most of the great transformations in American history,” Feiler said in a recent interview on Tybee Island.
“It’s the Moses themes. Standing up to authority. Banning together, trying to build democracy, trying to build a sense of nationhood. These are the great themes of American history and they are more related to Moses.”
Feiler, the author of best-selling books “Walking the Bible” and “Where God was Born” will speak on his new book “America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story” on Oct. 14 in Savannah.
The book is scheduled for release Oct. 6.
Feiler, 44, has written about life in the circus, teaching in Japan and exploring the country music industry. But Feiler is best known for his series on traveling through the holiest sites on earth.
In the travelogue “Walking the Bible,” Feiler covers the 10,000-mile journey through the desert as described in the five books of Moses. The book spent more than a year-and-a-half on the best-seller list of The New York Times.
Feiler also has hosted a three-hour PBS miniseries series based on the book called “Walking the Bible with Bruce Feiler.”
Savannah’s writer
Local bookseller Esther Shaver described Feiler as Savannah’s “claim to fame” within nonfiction literature.
“He is the only really nationally known nonfiction writer in Savannah or anywhere nearby,” she said.
Feiler and wife, Linda Rottenberg, live in New York with their twin daughters, Eden and Tybee.
They frequently visit Feiler’s parents, Ed and Jane Feiler of Savannah, and spend weeks each summer at the family’s Tybee Island beach home.
Bruce Feiler also serves on the board of visitors of Savannah Country Day School where he graduated in 1983.
In July 2008, Feiler was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer. After a year of treatment including chemotherapy and reconstructive surgery on his leg, he is coming to the end of his “lost year,” he said.
He anticipates the release of a next book in the spring chronicling his yearlong bout with cancer.
In his 2002 book, “Abraham,” Feiler explored the hope that Jews, Muslims and Christians could find unity through their common ancestor.
Rabbi Arnold Mark Belzer, spiritual leader of Congregation Mickve Israel where Feiler grew up, described Feiler as a “an important commentator on our shared scriptural tradition.”
“He has emphasized the humanness of biblical personalities, as well as their unique genius.”
Revolutionary father
The Bible tells of the prophet Moses who led the enslaved Jewish people from the bondage of their Egyptian captors.
In Exodus, God parts the Red Sea so that Moses and the Jews can cross. Then God releases the waters on the pursuing Egyptian army.
In “America’s Prophet,” Feiler describes how the Moses’ story has been sealed into the foundation of America.
“In fact, when those pilgrims got on that ship in 1620, their Bibles had Moses on the title pages,” he said. “They were saying that you could stand up to the Catholic Church, and they were standing up to King James.”
The founding fathers frequently referenced Moses, Feiler said. Thomas Paine likened King George to the pharaoh and Revolutionaries to the Israelites crossing the Red Sea.
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams suggested Moses be on the national seal of the United States.
African-American slaves and civil rights activists held up Moses as the icon of freedom in the spiritual, “Go Down Moses.”
“The story is a universal story. It applies to all of us in any time,” Feiler said.
“That is why this story has worked so much in America. It provides this incredible example of ‘I’m not the first to go through an impossible situation. Other people have done it. I can take hope they succeeded and then maybe I can succeed, too.”
If you go What: Best-selling author and Savannah native Bruce Feiler will offer a free lecture and book signing for “America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story.” The book is scheduled to be released Oct. 6. When: 7 p.m. Oct. 14 Where: Wesley Monumental United Methodist Church, 429 Abercorn St. Cost: Free lecture and book signing event.
I can’t believe its been this long since my last post and last podcast. However, be brave you faithful, I’m leading an event on Becoming a Digital Missionary at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Bowling Green at 12:45PM. Its a day long event called CrossTraining where people from congregations around our synod share their gifts and skills for building up other ministries. Its sure to be an excellent event and I’m kicking myself for not posting it sooner.
However, I will do a couple of things – it does have the core for my Facebooking Faith podcast #50 for next week. I’m not going to let September go by without a podcast.
I’m also going to try and see if I can record the event “Napkin Scribbles” style and if it turns out, I’ll post that as well.
And because so many of you have asked, have begged, and politely prodded me about a new podcast, what can I say? Ever since the ELCA Assembly voted to explore finding a way for partnered homosexuals to be ordained as pastors, there has been a Midwestern meltdown that has affected us here as well. The amount of time I have spent talking to people who are upset and wonder if our tribe is hell bound, talking with people who are supportive and glad for a love that seems more like Jesus than legalism, and with those who are in the middle who aren’t sure what this means – well, its been constant and draining. It probably deserves a podcast but I’m frankly so tired of having to research ELCA positions, Bible passages on sexual purity law, and articulating both sides so we can even agree what we are talking about, its really the last thing I want to do a podcast on at the moment.
So, look for Facebook and Faith next week, and maybe my teaching event.
Aug 28th, 2009 by Tom Lyberg
Thanks for the emails and requests for a podcast on the recent actions of our tribe, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. In becoming the largest Protestant denomination in the US to permit (within limited paramters) homosexuals in same sex partnerships to be pastors has awakened a firestorm and celebrations. As a local pastor, I’m caught right in the middle, of course, hoping that time will be taken to sort out the official decisions, take time to talk, to study, to pray, and avoid just reacting out of grief and anger at feeling your church has abandoned you while others celebrate the feeling of finally being welcomed in.
As we sort it out here locally, and I consider what I will put into a podcast, I offer these reflections of one of our bishops. Its good pastoral advice on the hope of how we are to live as the church, not only for our own sake, but for all those watching hoping to see Jesus in us.
Sex from the Perspective of Graveside
Where words are many, sin abounds. – Proverbs 10:10
Be still and know that I am God. – Psalm 46
Have no anxiety about anything, but in all things, through prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. – Philippians 4:6
Today we picked out flowers for the casket. Not only was it the same flower shop where we got our wedding flowers 21 years ago, it was the same florist. The owner’s daughter. It’s ironic how life comes around. We will stand tomorrow in the same place at the same church where Susan was confirmed, and where we were married, and where we buried her mother. And now her father. The end of an era that began decades ago when I stood on her front porch for the first time, for our first date.
And now to her kind, kind father, I have to say goodbye. A lifetime flashes before us. A boy growing up the on the farm. Then a young man flying his first bombing run over Germany on his 21st birthday. He flew 35 missions in all as a pilot of a B-17. I close my eyes and try to imagine those young boys in that paper-thin airplane, bullets whizzing through the cockpit, doing what they had to do. Saving the world from a garish fascism that would have annihilated Jews, homosexuals, political dissidents, the mentally ill, and so on. He once told us the anti-aircraft bullets were often so thick it looked as if you could get out and walk on them. “Were you scared?” I would ask. “We did what we had to do,” was his matter-of-fact response.
This is his generation’s song. We did what we had to do. This gentle, yet strong man, took everything in stride. He rarely got his ire up. He had the mind of a mechanic. Everything was just a problem to be worked out. He loved puzzles.
He was raised Baptist, then later became a Methodist. He didn’t get worked up about the homosexuality issue. He had a live-and-let-live attitude about things. I think he felt sorry for gays and lesbians. He wasn’t mad at them. They would not have children. They would be hated. But they were taught never to talk about this. It is taboo. If you’re gay, you keep your mouth shut, get married and have kids. Yes, there are people with no attraction to the opposite sex, but this is to be ignored. Society is to pretend it doesn’t really exist.
As we met at the funeral home to choose a casket and decide how much waterproofing we needed for our loved one’s vault, and how much we would spend on our loved-one’s this and that, I watched my 16-year-old son take it all in. “You’ll be doing this for me some day,” I leaned over to him and said. “I hope.” Then all his questions in the car. Why burial? Why cremation? Why embalming? What’s it like? Can I touch grandpa? What will he feel like? These are times for deep conversations. The time is now. There will never be a more teachable moment. This we believe. Life is good. God is good. As sad as we are to lose him, we know there is more to life than this life, and we are joyful he has been released from this body of death in which he was trapped. We now say goodbye as he walks down a pathway we cannot yet go, where he will be welcomed by Jesus and a host of loved ones who have gone before us, including his beloved Kay.
We return to the hotel room. Susan reads her dad’s letters to his parents from boot camp while I check my email. I have a letter from an angry member, who is threatening to leave the church if I don’t do this or that, or say this or that. I sit on the couch and smile, but it is a sad smile. In the light of Ultimate Things, this member’s petty manipulation seems so badly focused, his anger so misdirected, for a hundred reasons, I’m not sure what to say. Where do I begin?
Ultimatums are funny things. They are about control. I can control you if you are afraid of something. If you don’t do what I tell you, I will leave. If I am truly terrified at the prospect of your leaving, there’s no telling what I might do to appease you. Communities get messed up with this kind of stuff. I learned long ago that if I made my decisions by the polls, I made poor decisions. People think pastors are shaking in their boots at the prospect of someone getting mad and leaving. I suppose some pastors do worry. And then they’ll blow in the wind, doing whatever they’re told, for fear of declining membership and losing their job, when in reality the church needs strong self-defined leaders to grow. Not opinionated, my-way-or-the-highway pastors, but people who are gentle and kind, but won’t get pushed around. In the parish, whenever someone said, “Do this or I’m leaving,” I usually responded, “We are going to miss you so much.” The only way to create healthy community is to take the power out of the equation. Once people see that “I’m leaving” is a playing card that doesn’t work on you, they stop using it. And you really need them to stop using it. Congregations where people are constantly threatening to leave in order to get their way are not pleasant places to be. It’s like the spouse who threatens divorce in order to get his/her way. It’s an ugly, ugly way to be.
At the bottom of things, this conversation is about fear and manipulation, not sex. But I suppose it’s also about how we read the Bible, and this has been another disappointing realization for me. Biblical literacy seems so low in our church. We have work to do. When someone can quote Leviticus and assume that it’s binding, I marvel. The email writer points out that homosexuality is forbidden in the book of Leviticus as if that should settle things. But Leviticus also says you should stone your daughter to death if she has sex out of wedlock. Everyone knows this is absurd, and yet people continue to act as if everything in the Bible is binding on Christians. I find this astounding. We have so much work to do. Is anyone really proposing we follow all the laws in the Bible? I truly, truly don’t understand why this isn’t clear to people: The Bible says eating shrimp is an abomination. Do you believe this? Do you follow this law? The Bible forbids lending money at interest. Do you believe this? Do you follow this? Are you proposing a Bibliocracy?
Susan goes through her Father’s clothing. His shirts and pants, are so him. They smell like him. They look like him. She decides what to keep and what to give away. She decides to give away his furniture except for a small oval end table that has personal meaning. It’s an odd piece, but it has emotional significance. It’s so hard to let go of things.
I think people feel this way about change in general. The world has changed. The quaint hyper-patriotic euphoric post-WWII baby-boom world no longer exists. People are grieving the loss. I may struggle with the strange hermeneutics of the Bible being employed, but I understand that there are people who see the world a certain way, and it’s changing fast. I wonder what it felt like when we started ordaining women, for those who were strongly opposed. What exactly were they afraid of? Sometimes it’s hard to get at. It just may be a loss of what was. I think of America after the Emancipation Proclamation, when European Americans had to accept African Americans into mainstream society. Why was this so hard? What were they afraid of? The slave-enhanced economy might falter? The gene-pool might be weakened? The fragile fabric of society might be somehow irreparably damaged? I’m not sure.
When people are faced with change, they need time to assimilate things. Their first reaction may be joy or anger, but in time we come to terms with the pros and cons of things, and we make better decisions. Try not to let people react too quickly. Don’t fuel their anger. Use pastoral conversation to help people dig deeper into their feelings rather than going to the wall and doing something rash. IF they say they’re leaving, they may in fact do so. Or they may not. But don’t let them make rash decisions in the heat of the moment, decisions that they might regret later. Don’t rush things. Give them time.
My parents have flown up for the funeral. It’s always comforting to have family nearby at times like these. My family and I don’t all agree on everything. We are divided on this and many other issues. And yet we are still family. When we have a stern disagreement on something, no one threatens to leave the family. We love each other too much. We need each other. What unites us is greater than what divides us. I believe this is true of most people in the church. Our love of Jesus, our desperate need of God’s grace, and our need of each other binds us together, even when we disagree. People only leave if they don’t have this connection. If they don’t have that connection, we should let them leave in peace, and find a church where everyone thinks the way they do and where they can get connected in a significant way.
James says be quick to listen, slow to speak, in this coming Sunday’s lesson. This is good advice. The author of Proverbs says, “Where words are many, sin abounds.” No kidding. Sometimes you just have to listen. When Jesus finished his bread sayings it says many were offended and left his church. He didn’t go running after them. Instead he turned to his inner circle: “And what about you?” They responded, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
In my view, the church is not a place where everyone agrees on everything. It’s a place where we go to hear the only message that gives life. The church is a place that agrees on these things: God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Because of this, we are saved by grace through faith, not by our good works. This is a perfectly free and undeserved gift. All people are sinners. None of us deserves God’s grace. “By this shall all people know you are my disciples: If you love one another.” When all is said and done, the dead in Christ shall rise imperishable, and we shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.
שלומ سلام Peace,
Rev. Michael Rinehart, bishop
The Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast Synod
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
12707 I-45 North Frwy, Suite 580
Houston, TX 77060-1239
281-873-5665
Aug 21st, 2009 by Tom Lyberg
As I sit listening to the ELCA Churchwide Assembly discuss and vote on issues of homosexuality, I also received a facebook note about the tornado that the the assembly hall earlier in the week now being proclaimed as the wrath of God by local megachurch pastor John Piper. Author Rachel Held Evans has a marvelous response, not in defense of any “gay agenda” but on the deadly hypocrisy in the organized church across the spectrum of sides. We point to the “other” as the greater sinner and ignore our own sins using a mask of purity and faithfulness.
Check out Rachel’s blog Evolving in Monkeytown.
Aug 3rd, 2009 by Tom Lyberg
Had a great conversation Sunday in a class looking at the Bible readings for next Sunday. John 6:35, 41-51 is part of a long conversation on crazy talk by Jesus. I say that because that is how it sounds to someone who is not a Christian and how it sounded to the first audience. Jesus goes on about eating his body, that he is the true bread from heaven, that he is God, and most everyone listening thinks he has lost his mind.
For me, its that reminder that we still don’t understand God or what God has done in Jesus. The crazy talk bothers us because it isn’t rational but yet we want a connection to something spiritual, something beyond this reality. Too many congregations fall into marketing a “jesus program” rather than a relationship with a God beyond your understanding. Give some cash, show up to take a seat, engage in the selective battles of the true faithful: condemn homosexual behavior or welcome homosexuals fully into the community; preserve traditional worship (keep out the drums) to keep the faithful or go all alternative with band and media to reach the young; keep the church small so we know everyone or grow the church to megasize.
And somehow we convince ourselves that we are right in staking out these polar positions because we know what God wants, we know who God is. My own journey that has led to wired jesus is that the net has become one of those few places where we are wiling to get honest with ourselves. What we choose to hide in public we willingly blog, post, or tweet like a note in a bottle on a digital sea, hoping that someone will find it and give us an answer that is real about a God that is beyond us. In the end we want to know a greater God we can’t understand but know is concerned about a relationship with us over a well crafted definition of doctrine or box of right belief.
Perhaps thats why I like this quote I read this morning from my morning meditation book For All the Saints. In the end, whether in meat world or the digital world, the journey of faith is an adventure, not an answer.
“These exclamatory statements were all Paul found left to say about the ways of God after he had struggled with the whys and wherefores of God’s wisdom. Judgement and love. Because for all of our knowledge and experience of God as they are expressed in creeds and dogma, he is always beyond us, beyond our understanding and reason, beyond our neat little blueprints and formulas.
Which brings me to this: Never be misled into supposing that we Christians
think we have God all neatly packaged and labeled for our easy distribution
and consumption like a package of frozen peas. Our creeds and dogmas only
serve to lead us into the “depth of the riches†of God’s being. There is a mystery
about the nature and ways of God that you and I can never expect to fathom
entirely- otherwise God would not be God. We do but touch the fringe of his
garment. But we do believe that the fringe which we touch is real!
Harry Emerson Fosdick once described it as being like a man standing on
The beach at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. This little portion of the coast
line and the ocean which touches it, I know this is real. But beyond it are
incalculable miles of shore line and ocean which I can never know
intimately and about which I can only surmise. These two things I know
about the ocean and God: this portion which touches me is real; beyond it
Is far , far more than I can ever know.
The creeds and dogmas of the church then are no pat formulas which provide all
the neat answers man can ever find as to the nature of God. Nor are they
barriers bearing the legend, ‘ Thus far and no farther.’ Rather are they invitations
to adventure, a kind of spiritual road map offering you the experience of
others who have found a rich and exciting experience of God.”
Edward A. Steimle (1907-1988), from his book, Are You Looking for God?
Aug 3rd, 2009 by Tom Lyberg
The summer has gone by quickly and has been far busier than I had hoped. I plan on getting a podcast done here soon but besides my senior pastor duties, I have a new sermon writing project for Augsburg Fortress (our church publishing house), a church consult on alternative worship in October, a seminar class on social networking and the net for congregational ministry, and a few projects I promised my wife I would get done. I guess my model trains will have to wait a bit. 🙂 However, podcast number 50 will probably be a “Napkin Scribbles” recording on the road Friday when I have to drive 3 hours to pick up our youth from a mission trip week.
So, look for a podcast by next week and if you want the daily news, be sure to check me out on facebook!
tom
Jul 20th, 2009 by Tom Lyberg
Last week I did an interview for our local newspaper, The Findlay Courier, on churches, web pages, and the internet. The reporter, Sara Arthurs, did a great job and expanded out a little on the whole subject of digital ministry, mentioning the Wired Jesus Podcast. So, check out Sara’ book blog but also take a look at the article here.
I guess I better get a new podcast up! I think we may go down the virtual sacraments and church discussion from the last post.
Jun 28th, 2009 by Tom Lyberg
I recently received via Twitter from Leonard Sweet – an post about a Baptist professor who teaches at Oxford who is arguing for a sacramental theology for Second Life. The heart of the arguments seems to be that if one can worship virtually one should be able to received the sacraments virtually. I’m not sure I agree. This was my response to Len:
I would use a different take. I’m not sure matter matters in the sense of explaining/differentiating virtual matter versus real matter. Relationships matter and sacramental relationships are consumated relationships, to know and be fully known and that cannot be done virtually. If the Incarnation is more than God as avatar in our “second life”, then the sacraments must also be a “first life” experience of a consumated relationship with the Body of Christ, God and people together in community.
This is worth some more thought and a podcast.
Virtual Eucharist from Liturgy Blog by Bosco Peters
Jun 25th, 2009 by Tom Lyberg
I received this from Leonard Sweet this week and got permission to post it here on Wired Jesus. Its worth a podcast, so watch for more later. There is definately something to be said that in a world that is concerned in talking about Jesus, asking what would Jesus do, or pointing to the “Jesus of the Bible”, that someone would finally say that Christianity is Christ, not a denominational derivative.
For now, read the Manifesto and let me know what you think. You can read it on the host site here.
A Magna Carta
for Restoring the Supremacy of
Jesus Christ
a.k.a.
A Jesus Manifesto
for the 21st Century Church
by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola
Christians have made the gospel about so many things … things other than Christ.
Jesus Christ is the gravitational pull that brings everything together and gives them significance, reality, and meaning. Without him, all things lose their value. Without him, all things are but detached pieces floating around in space.
It is possible to emphasize a spiritual truth, value, virtue, or gift, yet miss Christ . . . who is the embodiment and incarnation of all spiritual truth, values, virtues, and gifts.
Seek a truth, a value, a virtue, or a spiritual gift, and you have obtained something dead.
Seek Christ, embrace Christ, know Christ, and you have touched him who is Life. And in him resides all Truth, Values, Virtues and Gifts in living color. Beauty has its meaning in the beauty of Christ, in whom is found all that makes us lovely and loveable.
What is Christianity? It is Christ. Nothing more. Nothing less. Christianity is not an ideology. Christianity is not a philosophy. Christianity is the “good news†that Beauty, Truth and Goodness are found in a person. Biblical community is founded and found on the connection to that person. Conversion is more than a change in direction; it’s a change in connection. Jesus’ use of the ancient Hebrew word shubh, or its Aramaic equivalent, to call for “repentance†implies not viewing God from a distance, but entering into a relationship where God is command central of the human connection.
In that regard, we feel a massive disconnection in the church today. Thus this manifesto.
We believe that the major disease of the church today is JDD: Jesus Deficit Disorder. The person of Jesus is increasingly politically incorrect, and is being replaced by the language of “justice,†“the kingdom of God,†“values,†and “leadership principles.â€
In this hour, the testimony that we feel God has called us to bear centers on the primacy of the Lord Jesus Christ. Specifically . . .
1. The center and circumference of the Christian life is none other than the person of Christ. All other things, including things related to him and about him, are eclipsed by the sight of his peerless worth. Knowing Christ is Eternal Life. And knowing him profoundly, deeply, and in reality, as well as experiencing his unsearchable riches, is the chief pursuit of our lives, as it was for the first Christians. God is not so much about fixing things that have gone wrong in our lives as finding us in our brokenness and giving us Christ.
2. Jesus Christ cannot be separated from his teachings. Aristotle says to his disciples, “Follow my teachings.†Socrates says to his disciples, “Follow my teachings.†Buddha says to his disciples, “Follow my meditations.†Confucius says to his disciples, “Follow my sayings.†Muhammad says to his disciples, “Follow my noble pillars.†Jesus says to his disciples, “Follow me.†In all other religions, a follower can follow the teachings of its founder without having a relationship with that founder. Not so with Jesus Christ. The teachings of Jesus cannot be separated from Jesus himself. Jesus Christ is still alive and he embodies his teachings. It is a profound mistake, therefore, to treat Christ as simply the founder of a set of moral, ethical, or social teaching. The Lord Jesus and his teaching are one. The Medium and the Message are One. Christ is the incarnation of the Kingdom of God and the Sermon on the Mount.
3. God’s grand mission and eternal purpose in the earth and in heaven centers in Christ . . . both the individual Christ (the Head) and the corporate Christ (the Body). This universe is moving towards one final goal – the fullness of Christ where He shall fill all things with himself. To be truly missional, then, means constructing one’s life and ministry on Christ. He is both the heart and bloodstream of God’s plan. To miss this is to miss the plot; indeed, it is to miss everything.
4. Being a follower of Jesus does not involve imitation so much as it does implantation and impartation. Incarnation–the notion that God connects to us in baby form and human touch—is the most shocking doctrine of the Christian religion. The incarnation is both once-and-for-all and ongoing, as the One “who was and is to come†now is and lives his resurrection life in and through us. Incarnation doesn’t just apply to Jesus; it applies to every one of us. Of course, not in the same sacramental way. But close. We have been given God’s “Spirit†which makes Christ “real†in our lives. We have been made, as Peter puts it, “partakers of the divine nature.†How, then, in the face of so great a truth can we ask for toys and trinkets? How can we lust after lesser gifts and itch for religious and spiritual thingys? We’ve been touched from on high by the fires of the Almighty and given divine life. A life that has passed through death – the very resurrection life of the Son of God himself. How can we not be fired up?
To put it in a question: What was the engine, or the accelerator, of the Lord’s amazing life? What was the taproot or the headwaters of his outward behavior? It was this: Jesus lived by an indwelling Father. After his resurrection, the passage has now moved. What God the Father was to Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ is to you and to me. He’s our indwelling Presence, and we share in the life of Jesus’ own relationship with the Father. There is a vast ocean of difference between trying to compel Christians to imitate Jesus and learning how to impart an implanted Christ. The former only ends up in failure and frustration. The latter is the gateway to life and joy in our daying and our dying. We stand with Paul: “Christ lives in me.†Our life is Christ. In him do we live, breathe, and have our being. “What would Jesus do?†is not Christianity. Christianity asks: “What is Christ doing through me … through us? And how is Jesus doing it?†Following Jesus means “trust and obey†(respond), and living by his indwelling life through the power of the Spirit.
5. The “Jesus of history†cannot be disconnected from the “Christ of faith.†The Jesus who walked the shores of Galilee is the same person who indwells the church today. There is no disconnect between the Jesus of Mark’s Gospel and the incredible, all-inclusive, cosmic Christ of Paul’s letter to the Colossians. The Christ who lived in the first century has a pre-existence before time. He also has a post-existence after time. He is Alpha and Omega, Beginning and End, A and Z, all at the same time. He stands in the future and at the end of time at the same moment that He indwells every child of God. Failure to embrace these paradoxical truths has created monumental problems and has diminished the greatness of Christ in the eyes of God’s people.
6. It’s possible to confuse “the cause†of Christ with the person of Christ. When the early church said “Jesus is Lord,†they did not mean “Jesus is my core value.†Jesus isn’t a cause; he is a real and living person who can be known, loved, experienced, enthroned and embodied. Focusing on his cause or mission doesn’t equate focusing on or following him. It’s all too possible to serve “the god†of serving Jesus as opposed to serving him out of an enraptured heart that’s been captivated by his irresistible beauty and unfathomable love. Jesus led us to think of God differently, as relationship, as the God of all relationship.
7. Jesus Christ was not a social activist nor a moral philosopher. To pitch him that way is to drain his glory and dilute his excellence. Justice apart from Christ is a dead thing. The only battering ram that can storm the gates of hell is not the cry of Justice, but the name of Jesus. Jesus Christ is the embodiment of Justice, Peace, Holiness, Righteousness. He is the sum of all spiritual things, the “strange attractor†of the cosmos. When Jesus becomes an abstraction, faith loses its reproductive power. Jesus did not come to make bad people good. He came to make dead people live.
8. It is possible to confuse an academic knowledge or theology about Jesus with a personal knowledge of the living Christ himself. These two stand as far apart as do the hundred thousand million galaxies. The fullness of Christ can never be accessed through the frontal lobe alone. Christian faith claims to be rational, but also to reach out to touch ultimate mysteries. The cure for a big head is a big heart.
Jesus does not leave his disciples with CliffsNotes for a systematic theology. He leaves his disciples with breath and body.
Jesus does not leave his disciples with a coherent and clear belief system by which to love God and others. Jesus gives his disciples wounds to touch and hands to heal.
Jesus does not leave his disciples with intellectual belief or a “Christian worldview.†He leaves his disciples with a relational faith.
Christians don’t follow a book. Christians follow a person, and this library of divinely inspired books we call “The Holy Bible†best help us follow that person. The Written Word is a map that leads us to The Living Word. Or as Jesus himself put it, “All Scripture testifies of me.†The Bible is not the destination; it’s a compass that points to Christ, heaven’s North Star.
The Bible does not offer a plan or a blueprint for living. The “good news†was not a new set of laws, or a new set of ethical injunctions, or a new and better PLAN. The “good news†was the story of a person’s life, as reflected in The Apostle’s Creed. The Mystery of Faith proclaims this narrative: “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.†The meaning of Christianity does not come from allegiance to complex theological doctrines, but a passionate love for a way of living in the world that revolves around following Jesus, who taught that love is what makes life a success . . . not wealth or health or anything else: but love. And God is love.
9. Only Jesus can transfix and then transfigure the void at the heart of the church. Jesus Christ cannot be separated from his church. While Jesus is distinct from his Bride, he is not separate from her. She is in fact his very own Body in the earth. God has chosen to vest all of power, authority, and life in the living Christ. And God in Christ is only known fully in and through his church. (As Paul said, “The manifold wisdom of God – which is Christ – is known through the ekklesia.â€)
The Christian life, therefore, is not an individual pursuit. It’s a corporate journey. Knowing Christ and making him known is not an individual prospect. Those who insist on flying life solo will be brought to earth, with a crash. Thus Christ and his church are intimately joined and connected. What God has joined together, let no person put asunder. We were made for life with God; our only happiness is found in life with God. And God’s own pleasure and delight is found therein as well.
10. In a world which sings, “Oh, who is this Jesus?†and a church which sings, “Oh, let’s all be like Jesus,†who will sing with lungs of leather, “Oh, how we love Jesus!â€
If Jesus could rise from the dead, we can at least rise from our bed, get off our couches and pews, and respond to the Lord’s resurrection life within us, joining Jesus in what he’s up to in the world. We call on others to join us—not in removing ourselves from planet Earth, but to plant our feet more firmly on the Earth while our spirits soar in the heavens of God’s pleasure and purpose. We are not of this world, but we live in this world for the Lord’s rights and interests. We, collectively, as the ekklesia of God, are Christ in and to this world.
May God have a people on this earth who are a people of Christ, through Christ, and for Christ. A people of the cross. A people who are consumed with God’s eternal passion, which is to make his Son preeminent, supreme, and the head over all things visible and invisible. A people who have discovered the touch of the Almighty in the face of his glorious Son. A people who wish to know only Christ and him crucified, and to let everything else fall by the wayside. A people who are laying hold of his depths, discovering his riches, touching his life, and receiving his love, and making HIM in all of his unfathomable glory known to others.
The two of us may disagree about many things—be they ecclesiology, eschatology, soteriology, not to mention economics, globalism and politics.
But in our two most recent books—From Eternity to Here and So Beautiful—we have sounded forth a united trumpet. These books are the Manifests to this Manifesto. They each present the vision that has captured our hearts and that we wish to impart to the Body of Christ— “This ONE THING I know†(Jn.9:25) that is the ONE THING that unites us all:
Jesus the Christ.
Christians don’t follow Christianity; Christians follow Christ.
Christians don’t preach themselves; Christians proclaim Christ.
Christians don’t point people to core values; Christians point people to the cross.
Christians don’t preach about Christ: Christians preach Christ.
Over 300 years ago a German pastor wrote a hymn that built around the Name above all names:
Ask ye what great thing I know, that delights and stirs me so?
What the high reward I win? Whose the name I glory in?
Jesus Christ, the crucified.
This is that great thing I know; this delights and stirs me so:
faith in him who died to save, His who triumphed o’er the grave:
Jesus Christ, the crucified.
—
Jesus Christ – the crucified, resurrected, enthroned, triumphant, living Lord.
He is our Pursuit, our Passion, and our Life.
Amen.
*****
We also suggest listening to the YouTube song Give Me Jesus while reading this manifesto.