The Gospel

The Gospel’s climax (at least as far as we know) may occur in the events recorded in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but it does not begin or end there. This is a survey of Scriptures to broaden our understanding of Gospel, to look at a bigger picture than we may be accustomed to looking at. It all begins at the beginning:

Conveniences

Okay, so this is not anything to do with Reflections in Ministry. You’ll forgive me, right?

Welll, I should say that it is connected. This time last year my wife and I flew from our comfortable southern-state home to New Jersey to interview for the church position we’re now working for. We moved two months later and have been loving life in New Jersey ever since.

A couple of things that we have learned about New Jersey:

• It has incredibly high property taxes. Fortunately, we live in a parsonage and it doesn’t directly affect us.
• Getting into New Jersey is free, but the surrounding states will charge you to get back out. There is no way to leave NJ without paying for a plane ticket, ferry, or bridge toll. Well, there may be a way in to get from the New York suburbs into New York state without paying, but I’m not sure about that.
• While most of NJ is citified, there is a lovely part of the state called “South Jersey” that has some beautiful farmland and is sparsely populated.
• New Jersey is one of two states where it is illegal to pump your own gas (Oregon is the other that I know of). So every gas station is full service (well, not in the sense that they will wash your windows, check your oil and tire pressure, and give your engine a once-over, but they do pump your gas for you).

The funny thing about this last one, the pumping gas, is that my wife and I were both sort of intimidated about this fact when we first arrived. Mostly because neither of us just relishes new experiences, and we had never gone to a full-service station. But after 10 months of it, we’re quite accustomed to just pulling up to a pump and sitting in our car while someone comes up to us and pumps it for us. Oh, the life of luxury!

So we’re traveling this weekend. And not to Oregon. We’ll have a car to rent. I’ll have to return it with a full tank (or pay upward of $7.00/gallon for them to). That means I will actually have to pump my own gas for the first time in 10 months. Wow. Life changes quickly!

(As an aside, New Jersey is a small state – you can get out of it and into one, two, or three other states in a matter of one or two hours, depending on your course. The surprising thing we’ve found is that NJ, where they pump the gas for you, generally has gas that is $0.15-$0.25 cheaper per gallon than the other states. Because we have a lower gas tax. So even if we’re running on fumes in, say, Delaware, we’ll cross over to NJ and get gas there where someone else can pump our gas and we can pay less for them to do it!)

Anyway, having someone pump the gas for us may be a legally mandated luxury in NJ, but we certainly enjoy it. I hope that I can remember how to pump gas when we get to where we’re going!

Grace in Ministry

Amazing Grace, How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now I’m found. Was blind but now I see.

Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed

Though many dangers toils and snares, I have already come
Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home

The Lord has promised good to me, His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be as long as life endures

It is one of our favorite hymns. A song that probably everyone knows. It brings comfort and soothing. It calms our hearts, restores our soul. It is full of the mystery of God working in our lives to restore broken creatures to himself.

God actively extends grace to us. That is fundamental to Christian faith. All of the hope that Christianity offers (whatever our differences may be regarding what that hope actually is in) relies on God’s extension of grace to us. Apart from that, we are lost, unforgiven, dead, without hope whatsoever.

So in a faith that places so much reliance on grace, how do we go about practicing that grace ourselves? How do we extend God’s grace, forgiveness, and restoration to a lost and dying world around us? When is that grace extended? Is it in this life or only in the next?

Sanctification is an ongoing work, according to the theology that I have grown up in. So even the saved are not yet perfect in this life. We seek to perfection. We still lie, cheat, steal, lust, and murder – in our hearts if not in fact, something that our Lord equates with the actual act. So as imperfect strivers to perfection, ever in need of God’s grace, what does grace look like in our lives?

Jesus went to dinners with “sinners” and “rabble rousers” and “drunkards.” Why do some seek to require pastors to always remain above even the possible image of reproach? Can pastors not work with the least of our society?

Why are some sins considered unforgivable? For example, in my tradition, it has been common to forbid those who have been divorced from ever serving in a leadership position in the church? Why? Is there no hope of forgiveness and restoration in this life? Certainly there are consequences to sinful action, but is one of those consequences a loss of any kind of place in ministry?

Every culture has their untouchables. Those undesirables who are looked upon with utter disgust. Perhaps its the divorced. Or the homeless. Or the homosexual. Or the (former) convict. Or the drunkard. There are those people we would rather, like Jonah, see God never extend grace to. The Assyrians were a brutal people. They were ruthless in battle. They looked after their own and did not care who stood in their path – they were taking what they wanted. They did unspeakable acts in pursuit of their ends. Certainly they were not worthy of God’s grace, and Jonah knew this.

Who are the untouchables, the unforgivable in our reach? Who would we rather show the exit door than an empty seat in the sanctuary if they were to walk in? Is anyone beyond God’s grace? Is anyone beyond redemption and hope?

If anyone is, how dare any of us think that we are not?

Body and blood

This morning, like we do the first Sunday of every month, our church celebrated (is that an appropriate word?) communion. I have been in churches with a variety of time tables of practicing this ritual: quarterly, in the evening service, in the morning service, monthly, and one Baptist church and prepared the table with bread and the fruit of the vine every week.

I don’t know that there is a right and a wrong as to when to have communion. I believe
the church has freedom in deciding when to practice it as best fits their worship practice.

But I was struck today by how normal it felt. Communion should never be normal.
We practice monthly here. The last church I attended served communion weekly.
It never got old, routine, or normal then. In fact, I think communion took on
more significance for me while I was at the church precisely because we practiced
it weekly. But here, at only once a month, it just seems every day. Normal. Routine.
Not all that holy, set-apart, sacred. And I don’t like that, not one bit.

Communion, Lord’s Supper, Eucharist, Table, Mass, whatever you might call it, is the
high point of worship in a church. While my tradition does not hold any place for special, saving grace from the cup and bread,  Communion is the preeminent time of worship. It is, of all times, when we remember our whole story: from Genesis to Revelation, taking long stops in Deuteronomy, Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It’s not just the Christmas story or the cross or the resurrection. But the whole bundle from creation through loss to redemption and the hope of restoration. Only communion can really capture all of that at the same time.

So it shouldn’t be routine. It shouldn’t be normal. It is anything but.

All things new

A great Steven Curtis Chapman song.

And it applies to this blog, as I am sure you can see from the theme that is in place. This will be a work in progress for a little while, then the content will start coming.

Feel free to leave a comment.

UPDATE

I have uploaded my entries from my other blogs that I worked on. This will be my one home from now on (see here).