Category: Personal Perspectives

An Ontario artist’s sculpture of a ‘homeless Jesus’ has been given a home near to the Vatican. Schmalz, the sculptor, said in an interview, “Historically, symbolically, it’s probably the greatest location for it.”

Since Pope Francis took office (March 2013) there has been an increased focus on the homeless:
last year, Archbishop Konrad Krajewski, head of the charities, unveiled showers for homeless pilgrims near St. Peter’s Square and free shaves and haircuts are also now offered.

In the article it also noted that:

In London, Methodist Central Hall, across from Westminster Abbey, wanted to install it in front of its church, but the City of Westminster’s council rejected that, saying the sculpture would fail to preserve or enhance the character or appearance of the Westminster Abbey and Parliament Square conservation area. An online petition has been launched to try to overturn that decision.

Another church in London, St Martin-in-the-Fields, rejected the statue because it has a rule banning people from lying down inside church, and there were fears the statue would expose the church to ridicule, according to the Church Times.

Community is in the heart of God. Trinitarian belief, the corporate ‘my people’, ‘it is not good for the man to be alone’… all point to community as not simply beneficial but healthy existence. When community is denied a person there is loss and pain. Given the norm of community and the lack of it that many experience I write cautiously what follows. I also write from our personal context here.

We have a strong conviction that over these next couple of decades many will find themselves uprooted from their former setting. We believe that thousands will re-locate to the cities and regions across Europe as the continent is re-seeded not simply with a gospel of words but an incarnated gospel of people (Mk. 13 parable #1 ‘seed’ = ‘word of the Lord’; parable #2 ‘seed’ = ‘people of the Lord’). In the relocation some will go with distinct purpose and vision, others will go by ‘circumstance’. If we come from a background of (Christian) community there are a few surprises waiting for us.

‘Clubs’ give us ready made friends. Many believers do not need to connect to others, the construct is what provides the context where they find the friends. This is not a bad thing in itself but all clubs by default insulate, they separate, and more so when we have no need of connecting external to that club. This is also accentuated if one held a measure of leadership within that club context. Friendship-making outside that context and with those who do not share the same world-view is a challenge – Paul, even with an incredibly developed world-view, achieved this (Acts 19: 31).

Appreciating beliefs that are different are wonderfully challenging. A gospel that is insulated can make sense when one is also isolated… but against the context of other beliefs can be deeply challenged. This, from what I understand, is what brought Steve Chalke to describe penal substitutionary atonement as ‘cosmic child abuse’. Our gospel is ‘foolishness to the Greeks’ but this does not mean there is no coherence to it. To re-examine the gospel is no bad thing. And certainly when one realises that the Western Protestant versions do not have a monopoly on interpretation opens up a few healthy doors.

Separation from the known, entering the liminal spaces, are so necessary for growth. Richard Rohr apparently recently described fundamental evangelicalism as ‘religion in its early phase’. He, being a Catholic, might indicate where development should take such a fundamentalist, whereas I would go in a totally different direction!

In transitioning into adulthood in many tribal scenarios there is a commonality to many of the rituals. What is in common is the removal of the known surroundings and boundaries, and the entering into a disorientating world. This is necessary for growth.

Yesterday we (Gayle and I) speculated that perhaps there is now the possibility of a fresh (Christian) movement, not one simply based on guilt and forgiveness at a personal level though probably with deep roots within that, but one focused on the body of Christ as the ‘soul’ of the world, the priesthood in the earth. If so I think that isolation will be one of the gifts from heaven to act as a catalyst for the conversion that is needed. Maybe Christian community will have to become (for a period, or maybe permanently) less of a defining element? Community, acceptance and accepting, is vital for healthy human existence, but those who have a vision for healthy community probably need to experience some measure of isolation along the way. To those much further down the road than I, thank you.

I’ve been thinking about conversion and what does it really mean and recently a friend of mine (Michael Hardin) suggested that Saul was not actually converted on the road to Damascus but instead it was when he heard Ananias call him “brother”.

The point cannot be missed that his journey into Damascus must have been less than optimal, not knowing exactly where he would end up, his entire theological world in shatters from the encounter with the light and voice that others heard but no one saw…think it through with me…you have journeyed probably with a group of “like-minded” enforcers with legal jurisdiction to incarcerate and apprehend ANY who were part of the struggling New Community that in a collective understanding were an abomination to your way of life and faith.

He is not on the fence about this Jesus guy…he is not indecisive regarding what must be done, he is a man of action working with other men of action and he has just been confronted by the one whom he is decidedly against.

Three days he lives in darkness, led by the hand to…I dunno, where do you stay when you’ve come like a cop to arrest people but now your plans of “legally enforced entry and seizure”  have been derailed? Do you stay with the Jewish authorities in Damascus? Do you stay at some Roman citizens residence? Obviously you are not staying with a disciple, no one trusts you now…

Even Ananias as far away as Damascus has heard about the havoc and HARM Saul has done to the saints in Jerusalem, this was not Saul’s first rodeo he actually had a reputation that went out of the city into the surrounding region…

And then a man from the group you have come to violently destroy approaches you and calls you “brother”…

Let that sink in…imagine greeting a leader of Jihad with the phrase “brother” while offering to pray for complete healing for him…

This is where the real conversion takes place and not to diminish the “every head bowed every eye closed I see that hand” evangelical approach, but real conversion must take place between enemies or the gospel has not completed it’s work…

Until we have embraced our enemy with healing and the inclusion that “brother” brings we have not really done much more than shift the lines of who is in and who is out by a minus-plus equation…