For the Joy of the Journey

Front Porches
Jane Jacobs who, in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, argued that it was the mark of healthy urban life to have “eyes on the street.” Porches were crucial half-way places between the insides of the homes and the street, where residents of the homes could watch the street and where people from the street could fraternize with residents. Blocks in which no one sat out on porches to talk to passers-by and to watch what was happening were desolate and often dangerous. Blocks with lots of porch-sitters were friendly. If you were on a porch and saw someone you knew, you could call them up onto the steps or the porch and talk and even offer them a glass of lemonade or sweet tea on a hot day before they went on their way. Porches were the key to a vibrant neighborhood. 
Timothy Keller

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“I Will Spit You Out of My Mouth”: The Real Lukewarm Christians

Posted on 4.05.2023

When I was growing up, Revelation 3.15-16 was a frequently used text for hellfire and brimstone sermons:

“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”

This text was used to challenge our spiritual commitment. “Lukewarm” Christians weren’t invested, weren’t 100% bought in. “Lukewarm” Christians weren’t rebels or hostile to God, they weren’t cold, but they were slackers. They skipped church. They didn’t give. Etc. Etc. Consequently, Revelation 3.15-16 would be regularly pulled out to whip these lazy, uncommitted Christians into shape. 

And yet, that’s not what Revelation 3.15-16 is talking about. Whenever this text was preached, no one ever read past Verse 16. Because if you do, the vision of the “lukewarm” Christian becomes clear, and it’s not the vision I grew up hearing about. I was told the issue was a lack of spiritual effort, that I needed to try harder. But according to the text, a lack of effort is not what make a believer “lukewarm”:

“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.”

What makes a “lukewarm” Christian isn’t a lack of effort or investment. What makes a “lukewarm” Christians is a lack of humility. The issue isn’t laziness. The issue is a failure to recognize and embrace our need and dependency. The issue is saying “I need nothing.”

What makes you a “hot” Christian, therefore, isn’t more work, strain, and effort. What makes you “hot” is recognizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked. What makes you “hot” is the realization that you need medicine for your eyes and for someone to cover your shame. The Christians who step into this neediness, as broken people in need of grace, are the ones who are truly “on fire” for the Lord. By contrast, those who stand before the Lord declaring “I need nothing,” as prideful and self-righteous, will be the ones he will spit out of his mouth.
Richard Beck

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Questions we need to be asking 

How do you convict a person of sin if they strongly believe that morality is socially constructed and that we get to define for ourselves what is right or wrong?
How do you motivate a person to care about the Christian message if they believe that there is no afterlife at all and that the only happiness that can be grasped is material, this-world pleasure and comfort?
How do you speak to someone about salvation if they do not believe in a personal God, but only in a spiritual life force permeating everything?
How do you respond to the listeners who are alarmed that you are not allowing people to express and define themselves and that therefore your message is spiritually abusive and exploitative?
Timothy Keller

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Nashville

Scripture would call me to lament. I don’t do it well. Lament seems far too passive, but it doesn’t need to be. Lament recognizes powerlessness, but it also marshalls what few reserves we actually have. The paradox of lament is that only God can repair the savage brokenness of our society. And God has given us his Spirit to be the change we want to see. I am simultaneously powerless and empowered when I declare, “The world is a broken place.”

Scot McKnight

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At the Table

At the Table we are bound to the past, the Exodus generation. At the Table we have communion with Jesus in the struggle for faith. At the Table we are escorted into the very presence of God. The book of Revelation ends with that promise. We are seated at the Wedding Supper of the Lamb, our tears are washed away by the God who hears our cries, and God makes his home with us.

What “happens” at the Table is a microcosm of the entire Story of God. Those who feast at this Table share with those in the past, share in the present, and share in the future.

We are in God’s Time at the table.

Bobby Valentine

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Old graveyards

If you ever tour an old graveyard, one of the things that might surprise you is the number of children who are buried next to their parents. We’ve come a long way in protecting our children. We protect them from disease and unclean water, but we can’t protect them from everything.
(unknown)

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Patriotism 

you probably saw the Wall Street Journal/NORC poll that came out this week. It found that the share of Americans who say patriotism is very important to them has dropped to 38 percent from 70 percent since 1998. The share who say religion is very important has dropped to 39 percent from 62 percent. The share who say community involvement is very important has dropped to 27 percent from 47 percent. The share who say having children is very important has dropped to 30 percent from 59 percent.

These trends are partly driven by you, young adults under 30. Only 23 percent of you said that patriotism is very important or that having children is very important.

David Brooks

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Church Attendance

During the pandemic, a shift happened among Americans in general and particularly among Americans with evangelical beliefs in reference to attending church, according to the State of Theology study. In early 2020, 58% of Americans said worshiping alone or with one’s family is a valid replacement for regularly attending church. By 2022, that number jumped to 66%. Among Americans with evangelical beliefs, the percentage increased from 39% in 2020 to 54% in 2022.

Julie Roys Report

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Telling the Truth

My belief is that when you’re telling the truth, you’re close to God. If you say to God, “I am exhausted and depressed beyond words, and I don’t like You at all right now, and I recoil from most people who believe in You,” that might be the most honest thing you’ve ever said. If you told me you had said to God, “It is all hopeless, and I don’t have a clue if You exist, but I could use a hand,” it would almost bring tears to my eyes, tears of pride in you, for the courage it takes to get real—really real. It would make me want to sit next to you at the dinner table.  

So prayer is our sometimes real selves trying to communicate with the Real, with Truth, with the Light.

Anne Lamott

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Digital evil

My 6-year-old boy died in January. We lost him after a household accident, one likely brought on by a rare cerebral-swelling condition. Paramedics got his heart beating, but it was too late to save his brain. I could hold his hand, look at the small birthmark on it, comb his hair, and call out for him, but if he could hear me or feel me, he gave no sign. He had been a child in perpetual motion, but now we couldn’t get him to wiggle a finger.

My grief is profound, ragged, desperate. I cannot imagine how anything could feel worse.

But vaccine opponents on the internet, who somehow assumed that a COVID shot was responsible for my son’s death, thought my family’s pain was funny. “Lol. Yay for the jab. Right? Right?” wrote one person on Twitter. “Your decision to vaccinate your son resulted in his death,” wrote another. “This is all on YOU.” “Murder in the first.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/covid-vaccine-misinformation-social-media-harassment/673537/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20230328&utm_term=The%20Atlantic%20Daily

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Enchantment

There has been a yearning in me that I’m only just beginning to to understand: a craving for transcendent experience, for depth, for meaning – making.  : It’s not just that the world needs to change-l need to change, too. I need to soften, to let go of my tight empirical boundaries, to find a greater fluidity in my being. I’m seeking what the poet John Keats called negative capability, that intuitive mode of thought that allows us to reside in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason. The subtle magic of the world  offers comfort, but I don’t know how to receive it. 

Enchantment – Katherine May Pg 8

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Church as family

As I’ve studied the theme of church as family in Paul’s epistles I’m unconvinced that the biblical model can work with more than 100 people at a time…and that might be stretching it…maybe we should redefine success in ministry…

Phoenix Preacher

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Powerlessness

Admitting we are powerless over people, places and things, and that our lives have become unmanageable, can be one of the most difficult, yet one of the most freeing, admissions of our lives. It is usually beyond our comprehension that admitting powerlessness and unmanageability will help us find peace. For many, if not most of us, this admission implies we have given up or we are defeated. However, this is exactly what the First Step is asking us to do: admit defeat. But, we are only admitting defeat in relation to our way of doing things. 

…what happens on the other side on our admission of defeat: 

Admitting our powerlessness frees us to allow the One who is Power to become active in our lives. We become more open to new ways of doing things as we allow God to love us and teach us how to give and receive love. We also begin to accept people and situations as they are. As we realize we aren’t in control, but God is in control, we are more able to detach from people and situations that are unhealthy for us, and accept these the way they are. This doesn’t mean we quit caring. We care, but we don’t allow the situation to determine our thoughts, actions and feelings. We will discover, as our detachment and acceptance deepens, that we have more emotional energy to spend on ourselves and the activities we would like to do.  

Catherine Chapman

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Love the sinner hate the sin

…Evangelicals don’t approve of gay sexual relations. This is expected given their views that this activity is sinful. But what about the “love the sinner, hate the sin” dynamic? And let’s remember the finding from above: Evangelicals report being the most accepting of people (compared to other religious groups), even when those people are doing things they disagree with. So, do Evangelicals separate their feelings about gay behavior from their feelings about gay persons? The results from another “feeling thermometer”: Of all the religious groups Evangelicals score the lowest with the most negative feelings toward gays as people.

Richard Beck

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We learn by doing it wrong

Any talk of growth, achievement, climbing, improving, and progress highly appeals to the ego. But the only way we stay on the path with any authenticity is to constantly experience our incapacity to do it, our failure at doing it. That’s what makes us, to use my language, fall upward. Otherwise, we’re really not climbing; we’re just thinking we’re climbing by saying to ourselves, “Look, I’m better today. Look, I’m holier than I was last week. Look, my prayer is improving.” That really doesn’t teach us anything or lead us anywhere new.  

In contrast, it is recognizing, “Richard, you don’t know how to love at all” that keeps me on the path of love. Constant failure at loving is ironically and paradoxically what keeps us learning how to love. When we think we’re there, there’s nothing to learn.  

Richard Rohr

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Seeing- Stopping

The practice of Seeing…is simply a posture of social mindfulness. The practice of Seeing is paying attention to–seeing, really seeing–the person right in front of you. 

 Older translations of the Bible use the word “Behold” a lot. “Beholding” is deeper than mere “looking.” You can look, but not behold. The practice of Seeing is a practice of beholding others. Consider the failure of the Rich Man in the parable with the poor man Lazarus. Lazarus sits at the Rich Man’s gate begging, sores covering his body which the dogs came and licked. Though sitting at his very door, the Rich Man never sees Lazarus, never beholds him. Most of our failures to welcome others begin and end with these failures of beholding. Practices of Seeing try to bring people into view.

The practice Stopping is a variant of of the practice of Seeing. We often don’t see people because of the pace of our lives, our hurry and preoccupations. We have agendas and stuff to get done. Consequently, we tend to blow right past people. The practice of Stopping is a practice of slowing and becoming interruptible.

Richard Beck 

http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2023/03/practicing-jesus-part-7-practices-of.html

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Global Christianity

In his book “The Unexpected Christian Century,” Scott Sunquist notes that in 1900, about 80 percent of the world’s Christian population lived in the Western world and about 20 percent in the majority world. By 2000, only 37 percent lived in the Western world, and nearly two-thirds lived in the majority world. Sub-Saharan Africa had the most striking growth of Christianity, growing from around 9 percent Christian at the beginning of the 20th century to almost 45 percent at the end of it. There are around 685 million Christians in Africa now.

“Christianity at the beginning of the 21st century,” said George, “is the most global and most diverse and the most dispersed faith.

Statistics vary but even conservative estimates guess there were around 98 million evangelical Christians globally in 1970. Now, there are over 342 million.

The future of American Christianity is neither white evangelicalism nor white progressivism. The future of American Christianity is probably not one where white concerns and voices dominate the conversation. The future of American Christianity now appears to be a multiethnic community that is largely led by immigrants or the children of immigrants. And that reality ought to change our present conversations about religion in America.

Tish Harrison Warren NYT

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A Prayer for When God Seems Absent 

Oh God, comfortable would we be if You gave us formulas and answered prayers and realized hope. But You call us beyond comfort. 

But God, life upends us. We face divorce or miscarriages, financial struggles or job insecurity, and the people we love are tossed about by disease or loneliness or homelessness or addiction. 

We are afraid. We don’t have adequate answers. And sometimes we can’t find You. 

Or, we can’t find the person we hoped You would be. 

May we learn to trust that You aren’t asleep on the job. That You haven’t forgotten us. That You are as near to us as our very breath. Give us the courage to press on. To suffer with hope that You have overcome the world. 

May again and again we be awed by Your presence. That even when we feel like we’ve hit rock bottom, may we recognize we have fallen into Your arms because there is no place so deep or so dark or so scary that Your presence cannot reach. 

In the name of the One who can still the seas with mere words, amen.

Kate Bowler Jessica Richie

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Worshipping Satan

When I make myself and my pleasure my highest value, my highest vision of the good life, then I am worshipping the devil. 

I’m convinced the worship of the devil is not so obvious; it is evidenced in a heart that has made its outward priorities an inward map of their motivations, motivations clearly pointed back at one’s own care above others. I’m a big fan of self-care. But it’s not the goal; rather, it is a means to wholeness and fruitfulness for the sake of renewing our call to sonship and daughterhood in the world.

Dan Wilt  

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STILL ON THE JOURNEY