CLICK HERE TO SEND AN EMAIL TO YOUR MEMBER OF CONGRESS:
This is it--the year that Congress is ready to act to fight the spread of malaria. But they need your help. They need to know that YOU want them to support funds to fight malaria!
In 2010, malaria will kill as many as one million people worldwide. By the end of today alone, about 2,000 children will have died as a result of the disease. In fact, by the time you finish reading this message, several people will have died from this devastating disease.
In many of the communities where LWR works, mosquitoes--the carriers of malaria--have more power over a child's future than their own mothers. And for adults infected with the disease, and unable to work or care for their families, mosquitoes literally have more control over their lives than any mayor, military, or economic system.
In recent years, the U.S. government has made large and meaningful investments in the fight against malaria, helping save millions of lives. We are closer than ever to winning the fight against malaria. We cannot afford to back away from this fight.
Please sign this letter and ask your member of Congress to support the fight against malaria with proper funding in the 2011 budgeting and appropriations process.
CLICK HERE TO SEND THE EMAIL:
http://lwr.convio.net/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&id=245
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
The Resurrection is a Hermeneutic: Preliminary Preaching Notes for Easter
So here is the general direction I'll be going for the Easter sermon. Notice that in the resurrection narrative in Luke, the men in dazzling clothes at the tomb say, "Remember how [Jesus] told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again." Then it says, "THEN they remembered his words." (24:7-8)
Apparently Jesus' own preaching about his resurrection is forgotten until it is heard again post-resurrection.
But that's not all. Luke keeps going with this kind of theme throughout the rest of his gospel. So on the walk to Emmaus, Jesus says to Cleopas, "Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?" "THEN begining with Moses and all the prophets he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures (24:27).
When the disciples finally recognize him and have a conversation about it, they equate having their hearts burning inside them with Jesus opening the scriptures to them, as if these were basically the same thing (24:32).
Getting the point yet? If not, Luke does it again when Jesus appears to even more disciples. "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you--that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled." "THEN he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. Thus it is written that..." (24:44-45).
A great preaching theme for Easter, and the one I will be running with in some way, is the theme of the resurrection opening the eyes of the disciples to a new way of reading Scripture. In point of fact, even when Jesus preached about his own resurrection prior to his death and resurrection, the disciples were unable to understand or even remember it, apparently because they had a different interpretive lens operating that expected something different of the Messiah based on their (now obviously insufficient) reading of scripture.
The resurrection is a hermeneutic.
It is a hermeneutic in the sense that it helped the disciples understand Jesus' own pre-resurrection life more clearly, but it also sends them back to the scriptures (and in fact Jesus in his post-resurrection appearances TAKES them back) to read differently.
Might it be the case that a major barrier to believing the resurrection is not lack of reading the scripture, but mis-reading scripture, or reading the wrong scriptures?
And we can move beyond a text-based sense of this (although sticking to texts is important) and ask how we are blind and forgetful until Jesus, Son of God, the New Hermeneut, helps us read better. And specifically how he teaches us to read is to read him as the fulfillment of the scriptures. It was necessary... and you are witnesses.
Apparently Jesus' own preaching about his resurrection is forgotten until it is heard again post-resurrection.
But that's not all. Luke keeps going with this kind of theme throughout the rest of his gospel. So on the walk to Emmaus, Jesus says to Cleopas, "Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?" "THEN begining with Moses and all the prophets he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures (24:27).
When the disciples finally recognize him and have a conversation about it, they equate having their hearts burning inside them with Jesus opening the scriptures to them, as if these were basically the same thing (24:32).
Getting the point yet? If not, Luke does it again when Jesus appears to even more disciples. "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you--that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled." "THEN he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. Thus it is written that..." (24:44-45).
A great preaching theme for Easter, and the one I will be running with in some way, is the theme of the resurrection opening the eyes of the disciples to a new way of reading Scripture. In point of fact, even when Jesus preached about his own resurrection prior to his death and resurrection, the disciples were unable to understand or even remember it, apparently because they had a different interpretive lens operating that expected something different of the Messiah based on their (now obviously insufficient) reading of scripture.
The resurrection is a hermeneutic.
It is a hermeneutic in the sense that it helped the disciples understand Jesus' own pre-resurrection life more clearly, but it also sends them back to the scriptures (and in fact Jesus in his post-resurrection appearances TAKES them back) to read differently.
Might it be the case that a major barrier to believing the resurrection is not lack of reading the scripture, but mis-reading scripture, or reading the wrong scriptures?
And we can move beyond a text-based sense of this (although sticking to texts is important) and ask how we are blind and forgetful until Jesus, Son of God, the New Hermeneut, helps us read better. And specifically how he teaches us to read is to read him as the fulfillment of the scriptures. It was necessary... and you are witnesses.
Friday, March 26, 2010
The Forgotten Ways - Developing Apostolic Imagination and Practice in Western Contexts.
One of the most inspiring books I've read in the past five years or so was The Forgotten Ways - Developing Apostolic Imagination and Practice in Western Contexts. More recently, I'm reading Hirsch's book Untamed. I hope to post a review of it this weekend. But I'm curious, has anyone reading this ever taken their APEST assessment?
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Letters are Prayers: Part Two
The most sustained letter-writing (snail mail) I've ever engaged in was with a friend from Seattle, WA. He and I carried on a correspondence over a couple of years, averaging one or two letters a week, some lengthy. I have to say that writing back and forth that frequently meant we were conducting a friendship at a level much deeper and profound than many of the friendships I had face-to-face.
Our letters included poems, stories, philosophy, theology, cultural analysis, description. They ranged widely. I still remember one letter especially where he offered a kind of prayer based on a Psalm 46:10:
"Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I AM.
Be still and know that...
Be still and know.
Be still and...
Be still.
Be.
We both made use of this prayer as a kind of mantra, reminding ourselves that we can be still and know that God is. That God is "I Am Who I Am." That we can trust that. That we can simply rest in knowing that. That sometimes you can be still, and the "and" comes along in the stillness. Just be still. Just be.
My friend was more of a mystic, and so was happy to leave it at that. Myself, still irrepressibly Lutheran, I like to remember that I am called to be still, to just be, because that's the best response to know that we are justified for Jesus' sake. God does it, not us.
No matter how you frame, either theologically in terms of the proclamation of the Gospel, or apophatically, in the presence of God the I AM, it makes a great prayer, and I commend it for regular use.
As an addendum, I should add that my friend is now an Orthodox monk, and I am a Lutheran pastor. I believe that correspondence we conducted over the years helped shape our individual vocations. God can get in the middle of epistolary conversations and do a new thing.
Our letters included poems, stories, philosophy, theology, cultural analysis, description. They ranged widely. I still remember one letter especially where he offered a kind of prayer based on a Psalm 46:10:
"Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I AM.
Be still and know that...
Be still and know.
Be still and...
Be still.
Be.
We both made use of this prayer as a kind of mantra, reminding ourselves that we can be still and know that God is. That God is "I Am Who I Am." That we can trust that. That we can simply rest in knowing that. That sometimes you can be still, and the "and" comes along in the stillness. Just be still. Just be.
My friend was more of a mystic, and so was happy to leave it at that. Myself, still irrepressibly Lutheran, I like to remember that I am called to be still, to just be, because that's the best response to know that we are justified for Jesus' sake. God does it, not us.
No matter how you frame, either theologically in terms of the proclamation of the Gospel, or apophatically, in the presence of God the I AM, it makes a great prayer, and I commend it for regular use.
As an addendum, I should add that my friend is now an Orthodox monk, and I am a Lutheran pastor. I believe that correspondence we conducted over the years helped shape our individual vocations. God can get in the middle of epistolary conversations and do a new thing.
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