quote of week: Scot McKnight on Pentecost and the atonement

We dare not forget Pentecost when we speak of atonement. Pentecost makes things right by creating the new covenant, filling all with the Spirit, and creating the ecclesial community and enabling it to live in love with one another. Put differently, Pentecost empowers all to be restored in all four directions: with God, with self, with others, and with the world. Pentecost crystallizes the intent of God's atoning work.

Scot McKnight, A Community Called Atonement, 77

quote of the week

I suggest that we see the achievement of the cross in three expressions: Jesus dies "with us" - entering into our evil and our sin and our suffering to subvert it and create a new way; Jesus dies "instead of us" - he enters into our sin, our wrath, and our death; and Jesus dies "for us" - his death forgives our sin, "declares us right," absorbs God's wrath against us, and creates new life where there was once only death.

Not only is this death saving, this same death becomes the paradigm for an entirely new existence that is shaped, as Luther said of theology and life, by the cross. A life shaped by the cross is a life bent on dying daily to self in order to love God, self, others, and the world. And a life shaped by the cross sees in the cross God becoming the victim, indentifying with the victim, suffering injustice, and shaping a cruciform pattern of life for all who would follow Jesus. The cross reshapes all of life.

Scot McKnight, A Community Called Atonement, p. 69

"Christmas Coal - shame" from L.L. Barkat

In chapter 2 ("Christmas Coal - shame") of L.L. Barkat's new book, Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places, we read of shame heaped on a nine year old girl by her stepfather in front of his sons and her mother. Then we see how God helped L.L. to cope with that and overcome it.

As is the whole book it is written with no ordinary prose. One gets taken in, but not too much into any sordid detail. Two chapters following continue this part of L.L.'s life during those years. We get a glimpse into L.L.'s story which can help each one of us with our own shame. How in Jesus we can address this and move on in spite of a shameful past. And how she unfolds the Scriptural analogy of the worm is one to remember. It helps me in addressing shame that is thrown at me sometimes even now.

I tried to avoid giving a summary of this chapter which gives too much away because I'd like to encourage you to read it for yourself.

Shame has been a big part of my own life. One memory that stands out is how there was a group at my very first church who used to make fun of Dad. Dad being the oldest son had worked with his own father on the farm and while intelligent, did not have the social skills one gets from living in society. By extension our whole family was shamed. I remember vaguely now getting thrown in the bushes probably by a couple older boys. I was hurt and angry, but also ashamed myself, and still feel a little angst in telling this.

Shame in my life extends beyond that as well, experienced through the meanness of others, but also through my own ill reactions and actions. As well as my not fulfilling the dream of my life in being ordained and serving as a pastor. Though at this late date in my life I could easily think of myself as a teacher or even an editor, though not so sure on that last one!

L.L.'s chapter helps me, both by her own sharing of her life as well as the powerful analogy fulfilled in and by Jesus for us. Our shame is covered by Jesus through his death for us, Psalm 22 a key passage from which L.L. draws. Two key quotes to leave us with from this chapter: "I'm glad God delights to make things right, to cover our shame so we can stop trying to cover it ourselves." (p 20) "And the shame of my past, though real, cannot keep me earthbound." (p 22)

How has shame been a factor in your own life and what help in Jesus have you found for that? Or any other thought you'd like to add to this either from your reading of the book or of this post.

1. Stepping Stones - conversion

Next week: chapter 3: "Tossed Treasure: messiness"

friendship

I'm kind of excited today, and trying to fight off a cold at the same time. This evening Deb and I are going to meet our blogging friend and writer, L.L. Barkat. She is in town for the festival of faith and writing at Calvin College. It's a wonderful annual event, and I'm so glad she can be a part of it! And I can't wait to read her book, Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places. All other books will be interrupted, put on stop, put on hold, as I read this book. I know I will be blessed in my own life, and I plan to give it to others. And I will blog on it.

Friendship is my favorite aspect of blogging. An important part of friendship is sharing something of our lives with each other in words. Our words, according to Eugene Peterson, can communicate our hearts and true selves to each other.

To know that we are friends, and to look at everyone as a potential friend is a good thing. This is in large part why Jesus came: to reconcile us to God to be friends of God, and because of that to be reconciled to each other as friends who in many cases were enemies. This is why Jesus had to come, becoming one of us, and had to die, and then be resurrected, to bring this new potential for true and lasting friendship into this old world.

We know that we'll be friends in Jesus, with L.L. forever. What a wonderful thought! And friends with each other in our Lord.

Anyone with a thought or line to chime in here?

truly a good Friday

The Friday which we Christians call Good Friday is truly a good Friday. It is the day we remember in awe with both tears and celebration what our Lord did for us in dying on the Cross. A most wonderful day in which God's "Amen" sounded clear and unmistakeably that first Easter Sunday in our Lord's resurrection from the dead.

On the Cross just prior to his death (I capitalize "cross" because of the One who was nailed on it and died, and because of the significance of his death for us, for humankind, and for all of creation- in God's redemptive plan) Jesus declared these words: "It is finished."

What was finished? All that Jesus came to accomplish. By his death he would destroy death forever and the one who held the power of death, the devil. By his death all sinners could be set free from God's judgment, since Jesus himself took all of sin's curse and just claim on himself. By his death God offers to us a new life in Jesus, a life that begins in living out Christ's life here and now. And by his death there is complete, full reconciliation. God has reconciled the world to himself in Christ, not holding people's sins against them, and has broken down the barriers that separate humanity into so many hostile groups, to make us all one in Christ, in the communion of the Trinity.

What a terrible day that Friday was! But God took what was terrible, and what was actually his plan for this: the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This was redemptive in the Father buying back in the Son all that had been lost to his good plan in creation, for the new creation. In this, Jesus made all things new.

But for any of us to know the goodness of this Good Friday for ourselves, we must look to the One on that cross, and repent and believe this good news. Yes, it's good news for us. And then we begin on a track that continues in this life: God turning what is bad into something good, through Jesus Christ and by his work for us that dreadful day, and yet by that act making it a most wonderful day, especially as we know the end of the Story.

What "Amen" or thoughts might you add here?

the last supper

When we read of the last supper in the gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) we see it is around a table of fellowship with Jesus at the center. It was a meal in anticipation of his death. But also looking forward to the marriage supper of the Lamb, in which Jesus will eat and drink again with them, and with all of us, in his Father's kingdom.

The question of the real presence of Jesus at the Lord's Table (communion or the Eucharist) is an issue in which Christians are divided. But one thing for sure which we can agree on: Jesus is at the center. He is our Redeemer, Savior and Lord. We bow to him in worship, and give him thanks for his great and awesome sacrifice for us, for the world. We are in awe of this and of him. And that we can actually participate together in the receiving and partaking of this great salvation found in Jesus.

The Lord's Table or communion is more than a ritual; it is reality. What Jesus has done for us in dying for our sins, that we might, through his broken body and shed blood, have new and eternal life. What a wonderful salvation! What a wonderful Savior!

I know that just from my daily experience. God is good to us even in this fallen and broken down world of which we are a part. We begin now, by faith in Jesus to taste of this great salvation, to taste and see that the Lord is good. And we live with the anticipation of the completion of what we're experiencing now, in Jesus. Drawn up even now into that communion of the Father, Son and Spirit.

So let's not live on our feelings or be held back by our failures and weaknesses or the problems we'll ever face in this life. Let's realize in the midst of it all, Jesus is here. And this great salvation in him is for us beginning now, to impact every part of our lives, as we come just as we are to God through Jesus.

What might you like to share here?

Advent and the cross

Christmas is about Christ and his coming. God becoming flesh to take on himself a death that we as sinners were, and in ourselves are doomed to die. Jesus took that on himself at the cross that we might in exchange receive a new start in the new humanity in Jesus.

The cross. It should never be forgotten that it is through the cross that God accomplishes everything that is to be done, in the coming of his Son. And in Jesus, by faith, especially together we're to become part of the solution, as we live a cross-formed life in Jesus, a humanity like what he lived. But not by mere imitation, but by very participation through the Spirit, as by Jesus' atoning work we're taken up into this new way of living.

Jesus, and everything about his coming is somehow related to his cross and his death for us. It speaks God's word to and about everything. All is judged but also redeemed and saved through that death. Through this death alone comes our real life. Not in the world's terms of life, but in God's terms.

This is part of God's word to us this Christmas season: it's the word of the cross. God's gift to the world in his love, his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

Do we see this season in terms and through the cross? Do we see everything through the lens of the cross? And with that the resurrection. But resurrection means life out of death, accomplished for us and for the world by Jesus.

What might you like to add or say here?