Pope Francis - Conservative, Liberal, or What?

 

 In a recent Washington Post Blog entry there was this bit of news on the new Pope:

In spiritual leadership, changes in style, tone, and emphasis are real changes. Recently Pope Francis phoned a 35-year-old Italian woman, who had written to him because the man who had gotten her pregnant was advising her to get an abortion. She didn’t want to, but she was frightened and alone. The pope encouraged her not let anyone rob her of her hope and assured her that, if necessary, he would perform the child’s baptism himself.

The following story by  Michael Gerson strikes me as getting the new Pope just about right:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-gerson-pope-francis-the-troublemaker/2013/09/23/19084384-2481-11e3-b75d-5b7f66349852_story.html

I will continue to post interesting stories on the new Pope as we read together his first encyclical, The Light of Faith.  

Guest Speakers at Truro This Fall

We have an embarrassment of riches at Truro.  This is especially evident in the guest speakers that come our way.  This fall we have three in particular I want to highlight and ask that you mark your calendar to be sure to hear them.

The Rt. Rev. John Howe will be here October 5-6.  On Saturday October 5, he will preach at Joseph Kitt's memorial service.  Joe was a much beloved priest who John called as his associate in the late 1970's.  On Sunday, Bishop Howe will preach the three main morning services.  We are immensely pleased to welcome back John and Karen Howe to Truro!






 On  Oct 26-27, the Rev Nigel Mumford will be leading a healing mission co-sponsored with Church of the Apostles.  A retired Royal Marine, Nigel has been particularly equipped to minister to those who suffer from various anxiety disorders, especially post-traumatic stress.  This is a great opportunity to minister to those in the military or law enforcement or anyone who suffers from post-traumatic stress - whatever its cause.

 Ms. Anna Halpine is the founder of World Youth Alliance.  WYA is a service and advocacy organization which excels in training young people in social advocacy work from a Christian world view.  Anna will be speaking at an event for Truro young people on Saturday and at the Rector's forum on Sunday, December 22.  A version of WYA and Anna's story is found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Youth_Alliance





These three speakers bring a timely message for our parish and I hope you and your family will be in attendance to learn more how we can partner with God in the healing and transformation of the world through the good news of Jesus Christ.  

"Relational Orthodoxy" - in a Vatican Accent

Pope Francis keeps throwing Molotov cocktails of love into our binary, Machiavellian partitioned worlds.  At the end of this article he articulates the Christian understanding of Truth in terms of Jesus and our relationship to him.  He states, "truth is a relationship." It merits reading and contemplation:
 http://www.religionnews.com/2013/09/11/pope-francis-tells-atheists-to-obey-their-conscience/


hat tip/SH 

Apostle's of North American Christianity

Last weekend I took a pilgrimage to Baltimore to visit the shrine of three great Methodists leaders.  In the photo to my left Francis Asbury (the first Methodist bishop to America), Robert Strawbridge (Methodist convert from Ireland and great lay evangelist to the Eastern shore of revolutionary America) and E. Stanley Jones (missionary to India and evangelical statesman) lie buried next to each other.  In seriatim stand three obelisks memorializing three great evangelists: the first a bishop, the second a lay man and the third a missionary.

The more I reflect on their lives the more I become convinced that one cannot understand the Christianization of North America without reflecting on the apostolic force of early Methodism.  Each man, in his distinct vocational role, learned to indigenize the gospel for those who remained outside of Christian faith and community. 

If you wish to learn more about this era I recommend two chapters of Mark Noll's America's God (chs. 15-16).  If that whets your appetitie then turn to John Wigger's American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists.  

Their exemplary lives merit further reflection as we find ourselves in an America that needs re-Christianization.  

Through the Bible: Week 49, Romans - part 8

Romans 5:1-11

            I still remember the celebration and solidarity that the 1971 Super Bowl Chiefs brought to the tense city of Kansas City.  The heroes were white and black, native born and immigrants.  Our civic and racial divisions were (momentarily) reconciled in the common celebration of a victorious team who belonged and reflected us all.

            The subtext of Paul’s argument is that God has demonstrated his love by reconciling all of humanity through the death and resurrection of the Messiah, his son.  The church, in its common life, is to model the kind of relations God wishes for the world. The church is made up of people who are exchanging identities rooted in native land, blood and ideology for an identity shaped and informed by the victory of God in Jesus. We are united by the celebration of Jesus’ victory for us. Three times Paul states the basis of our celebration or rejoicing (cf. boasting – 2:17, 23, 3:27):  

1.      We rejoice in hope of future glory – our true end (v.2)

2.      We rejoice in the reality of present suffering – our normal means (v.3)

3.      We rejoice in God’s past victory of reconciliation in Jesus (v. 6-11)

This comprehensive celebration, if practiced continually and with understanding, will encourage the Church to experience the new humanity that God is creating around Jesus.  Let’s consider how that can be.

5: 1-2

Instead of boasting in our heritage (Jewish, Greek, etc. - Paul’s argument in chs. 2-4), we are invited to boast rather in God’s accomplishment in Jesus.  We have access to a peace that his death makes possible.  We now stand in grace – an environment of costly and unmerited love.  The imagery is possibly of the temple, where a worshipper is invited into the presence of God through the atoning sacrifice of his offering.  The presence of God in the temple portends a future life of unbroken connection and pleasure in God.

5:3-5

Our present and difficult experiences in life might make such a celebration short-lived.  So what do we do?  Paul places them in the context of our guaranteed future – our unbroken fellowship and connection with God – as an essential preparatory experience.  We need the testing of suffering to strengthen our character and hope for the wait is often long and arduous. But God’s love in our hearts reassures us that we are part of God’s future, new people.

5:6-11

The validation of God’s love is not merely experiential; it is historical and rare.  A person might die for a good person but Jesus died for us when were sinners – separated and separating from God.  And if his death reconciled us to God how much more will his life in us prepare us for the future.  The contemplation of this should lead us to rejoice in God.

Through the Bible: Week 48, Romans - part 7

 

 Abraham: The Paradigm of Faith

Chapter 4

Why does Paul spend a whole chapter on Abraham as the father of faith?  Why is he the model Paul holds up for us?  William James, in his Varieties of Religious Experience, gives us a clue when he indicates that we tend not to see anything clearly until we see it in exaggerated form.  This was the reason Flannery O’Connor gave for peopling her stories with violent, grotesque misfits.  She explained, if you wish to communicate to those who are hard of hearing and seeing you must shout and use big gestures.  When the bible establishes a paradigm such as Abraham, the contrasts seem exaggerated. 

            Paul also employs the example of Abraham because he warrants Paul’s primary argument: people are included into God’s family by faith!  Faith is the sole criteria of membership. The people of God cannot require of others what was not required of the founder of their religion.  The boundary markers of works, circumcision and the law are important for Jewish self-identification in a pagan world but they are not essential aspects to one’s relationship to God.  Abraham had none of these things when first trusted God.  He demonstrated a faith that was not law-related or church-related.  What does God really want from us?  Not primarily obedience to a law or performance of a ritual.  Abram believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness (Rom. 4:3 & Gen. 15:6).  Abraham walked and talked with God – and in that we see the essence of his relation with God.  A faith relation marked by interpersonal intimacy and trust is what God expects.  It is this kind of faith that Paul contrast with Jewish 2^nd Temple piety – a piety absorbed with works, circumcision and law.  How does the Abrahamic paradigm of faith measure up to these standards:

If religious works (vv2-8) is the basis of Abraham’s acceptance before God then he can boast.  But this is not how Abraham was accepted.  Abraham’s acceptance was not merited; it was a gift.  Abraham’s acceptance into the divine family came by way of forgiveness not the works of the law (contrast Ps 32 with Ps 1). 

Like works, Abraham’s acceptance preceded his circumcision (vv 9-12) therefore circumcision could not have been a condition of that acceptance.  The only condition for Abraham (and by extension for us) is that of faith. Circumcision is the outward validation of a prior and internal relation. 

The promise (vv13-15) of world redemption – for the goal of faith was never merely private – was predicated on the right relationship that comes from trust (cf. 1:17). 

This is why it depends on faith.  God’s purpose is universal and requires a means that is open to all peoples.  Faith puts the promise into reach of all – and makes Abraham “the father of many nations” (vv16-17).

Great Reversal (vv18-25)

Abraham’s faith recapitulated the sin of the first human beings – and all their children (1:18-25).  Abraham’s faith led him to trust God, even against all odds.  Such a radical trust resulted in a deepened faith and worship of God as had not been known since the garden.   

Through the Bible: Week 47, Romans - Part 6

Boasting: Part Two

3:21-31

What is the appropriate response to make as Americans on Veterans Day?  Is it seemly to brag about our nationality – as if we deserved the freedoms that were purchased by others?  What’s the place of boasting in community created and sustained by grace?

In the first part of the chapter Paul argues for the culpability of all people – Jew and Gentile – before God.  No one keeps God’s law.  If people are to be rightly related to God and one another there will have to be another way of doing so.  Paul makes this case for a very important reason.  Just as he addressed the inimical effects of judgment (pretending others are worse than we are) in our community he warns of an equal and opposite danger.  Boasting (pretending we are better than others) will likewise divide and destroy the new family that God has created.    Verses 1-20 demonstrate that we are all guilty of breaking God’s law; even Jews who have been entrusted with law (v.2) are not anymore faithful than our Gentiles. 

However, God remains faithful to his covenant with Abraham (v.4).  Through his son Jesus, God finds a faithful representative of Israel to complete the human side of the covenant.  It is Jesus’ radical faithfulness to God (v22), even to the point of a sacrificial death that becomes the basis for us being put right.  It is also another reason, when properly understood, that there is no room for boasting in the church (v27).  In a community created by the sacrifice of another where is there room for boasting? 

Just as God had called forth Abraham to undo the problem of Adam, God now has put forth Jesus, his Son, to finish the work started by Abraham to restore the glory of God to humans (v23).  The ancient covenant, marked by the blood of bulls and goats (Lev. 16:14-15), reaches its climax in the death of Jesus.  How does this death complete what was started so long ago?  How is the faithlessness of Jew and Gentile recompensed by Jesus’ ultimate act of faithfulness? 

First, God finds the guilty “justified” through an alien righteousness.  The man Jesus represents all of us on the cross.  Jesus has suffered the effects of our disobedience to God.  The alienation of sin was conquered through an act of atonement.  We are now part of the covenant people of God through Jesus’ faithfulness. 

Second, the “sacrifice of atonement” refers to the mercy seat in the Temple where the priest placed the blood of sacrifice on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16).  Scholars suggest that Paul is alluding to a biblical concept of representative suffering, like that of the Maccabean martyrs (4 Macc. 6:28-29) and Isaiah’s Suffering Servant (Isa. 52:13-53:12).

So Paul has condensed, in typical manner, three trains of thought: (1) God’s righteousness is revealed in God’s giving of Jesus as the faithful Israelite; (2) that Jesus’ faithfulness was unto death, not unlike the Maccabean martyrs or better yet the suffering servant; and (3) Jesus’ self-giving is an act of God whereby sin is judged and mercy is offered simultaneously.