A Page from Vitaljournal - Psalm 23

Let me be honest with you.  I've missed several days now of my Bible reading, the daily workout I committed to do for the season of Lent.  This is a clear integrity gap - not doing what I said I would do, when I said I would do it, in the manner in which it was intended.  I want to acknowledge this and say that it has had an impact on me.  Most of the impact has come in the form of feeling less connected to God and to others.  In Faithwalking, I've learned to be honest about my habitual disobedience and do that without self-condemnation and judgment.  But it doesn't end with that;  I am recommitting to this daily workout.  Thanks for the grace and room.

And so as I re-engaged my daily spiritual workout, YouVersion's reading plan through Matthew's Gospel called Lent for Everyone with a commentary by N.T Wright, I wasn't expecting that today's reading would be from Psalm 23.  I was expecting a passage from Matthew.  When I saw it, I was thinking "boring!" and I know this Scripture already and can quote it by heart. Anyone else?  I had just shared this with a family at the memorial service of their loved one.  But in reading NT Wright's comments in the additional material, I found something I'd never heard before: 

"And now, many generations of Christians have prayed the Psalm in the same way, in the light of the many passages where Jesus picks up the shepherd-promise and applies it to himself. In fact, the gospel story is not unlike the picture of the shepherd and the sheep: Jesus leading his disciples around Galilee, teaching them, healing people as he goes. And as the story moves us forwards towards the valley of the shadow of death, we look on in awe and wonder as the Good Shepherd goes ahead of us into the darkness. His rod and his staff, two poles of wood, come together in a new pattern, a shape which will etch itself on the heart of the world. We look at the cross and we are comforted."

That insight gives me a different line of sight to the cross - one I've needed and am delighted to add.  Just goes to show...

Jesus Through the Centuries

Today I completed a book by Jarslov Pelikan (I love saying that name) entitled, Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture.  It is a book that I heard about in seminary in a Church History class (Pelikan was a Church Historian) and a book I actually bought in a used bookstore way back then.  It sat on my shelf all this time.  Plan white, the dust jacket long since lost and forgotten.  I'm glad I pulled it off and read it.

Pelikan basically sets Jesus in the context of each century from the time he walked the earth to now.  He explores not only the theological writings of the time, but the popular writings as well, which in most ways are the more revealing.  There are eighteen cultural images of Jesus.  The writer of Hebrews proclaimed, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8).  Yet, historical, theological and cultural interpretations of Jesus depict a Christ that is eclectic and diverse, not homogeneous and static.  For instance, Constantine's Jesus was a conquering king while most first century believers saw him as a Jewish "rabbi," unlike any other.  Jesus the "Cosmic Christ" who compels humanity to question their universe paves the way for Jesus "The Teacher of Common Sense." 

What I find really interesting looking at this book as a whole, and Jesus throughout the centuries, is that the historical Jesus forges a common link for a host of unlikely fellows ranging from the Apostle Peter and Tertullian to David Hume and Thomas Jefferson to Fyodor Dostoevski and Ralph Waldo Emerson.  I also find it interesting how scholars, writers and poets in every age so easily create Jesus in their own image.  The tendency to do so, and to do so so easily, should be a caution to us all.

Pelikan writes well.  Read him.  You'll enjoy!

Believing and Following

Here's a page from the Vitaljournal from the reading plan for Lent from Matthew's Gospel.  Today the reading is from Matthew 9:1-13 and includes the calling of Matthew the Tax-Collector:

I'm struck by The Message version's translation of what the religious leaders say when they see Jesus hanging out with Matthew the tax-collector, this Jew who is in league with Empire Rome for his own benefit.  They say, "What kind of example is this from your Teacher, acting cozy with crooks and riff-raff?"  It kind of makes me wonder that if the religiously "in" AREN'T making comments like this about you and the way you live Christ, then you may not be living Christ well. 

I'm struck by another thing:  The fact that Jesus did NOT get Matthew "all cleaned up and turned from his tax-collecting ways" BEFORE he called him to follow.  It really - at least for me - reinforces the notion that we have been focused on in worship;  that Christianity isn't about a system of belief as much as it is about a way of life.  And until Christians rediscover their faith as a way of life, people will continue to leave the church or never have any interest.  What Jesus calls Matthew to - this "disreputable character" as he's described - is not to believe something so much as he calls Matthew to follow a way that Jesus embodies. 

Lord, hear this as my prayer for me and FCC.  Amen!

PS:  If you want to join up on the reading plan and the Facebook Group Vitaljournal, check out the earlier post which gives all the details about how!

53 Days Through Matthew

Lent for Everyone is a YouVersion Scripture reading plan FCC is calling all our congregation to engage. The readings through Matthews Gospel are designed to lead us all together through the same spiritual experience right through Holy Week and Easter. The commentary on the readings should you want to read more are written by a fantastic Biblical scholar named N.T. Wright. His insights are quite literally moving and insightful. If you would like to join a growing group of FCC friends in this spiritual practice all you have to do is go to YouVersion and register. Look for the reading plan entitled Lent for All. You can have the daily readings sent to you each day via email or even on your smart phone.

There is also a Facebook page that has been created if you want read and/or share what the Spirit is stirring up in you. All you have to do here is befriend me, Michael Dunn, with a message that you want to join the FB group called Vitaljournal. I'm posting there a few times a week as I read through Matthew.

Here's a thought: There can be no wholeness in the image of Christ which is not incarnate in our relationships with others, both in the body of Christ and in the world. M. Robert Mulholland, Jr. Invitation to a Journey: A Roadmap for Spiritual Formation.

Erasmus' Heart is Ours as Well

"Make Christ the only goal of your life. Dedicate to Him all your enthusiasm, all your effort, your leisure as well as your business. And don't look upon Christ as a mere word, as an empty expression, but rather as charity, simplicity, patience and purity--in short, in terms of everything he has taught us." For Jesus was "the sole archetype of godliness." Quoted in Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture, Yale University Press, 1985, p. 155.

The View of God for Me

This past Sunday we began a new course based on the scholarship of Marcus Borg. It is dealing with the themes of God, Jesus, Salvation, Community and Practice. If truth be told, our very first session has already exposed us to some new and challenging ideas about how we as Christians can think about God.

Two Views of God:
Simplifying things for the purpose of teaching, we tried on the idea that there are two views of God. The first view envisions God as a person. Someone embodied who looks like us in the general sense that humans have arms and legs, a head and torso, a heart and a head. This image is a familiar one to me. The depictions throughout time show an old, wise man, with a long white beard standing in the sky looking down with white robes and a staff. I don't offer that depiction in any way pejoratively. God is more often than not viewed this way exercising superhuman love and grace. Often, at the same time, most likely because of our experiences growing up, we depict God as legalistic and the Great Judge. Often that God is near to us, walking with us, carrying us - as the Serendipity Prayer does.

Another view of God is much different. We could put a lot of names to it. Sunday we used the term: All Encompassing Reality. Sounds a little hokie. This view doesn't see God as an embodied person similar to us. It sees God as a divine reality in the spirit of Paul's words in Acts 17, when he said "For in God we live and move and have our being." God is everywhere present as a reality beyond our wildest imaginations.

The View for Me
The older I get and the more I walk with God, I have to say that the first view makes less and less sense to me. I understand where it comes from. We are made in the image of God. We naturally gravitate to ways of expressing the being of God that are familiar to us. However, the old man in the sky, which is what I grew up with, leaves me with so much to be desired.

I like God as an All Emcompassing Reality and am finding that it is really enlivening my faith over the last several years. It opens me up to sit in a coffee shop and sense that God is all around me. In and next to me and the people I sit next to. In the faces of those with whom I converse. It opens me up to the world as beauty and sacred, instead of anti-God and profane. Something about all that touches me deeply and moves me to a greater sense of devotion.

Personally, I don't lose anything. I gain. I'm looking forward to the course and the conversation.

Acts 17
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[b] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[c]

A Beautiful PreSchool at FCC!

Sometimes I am powerfully reminded of what a beautiful preschool we have. In several ways, it stands out. Not the least of which is just the space. With its large rooms and seemingly even larger windows, it invites a environment of warmth and openness.

But we can have the best space and still not have a beautiful thing. Right? I was reminded this week of the beauty of FCS more to the heart of what is ultimately important. That is, FCS creates an experience over a long haul that forms people to be authentic lovers of God in the spirit of Jesus. It is something that happens in nearly every instance and at every level. Certainly the children are nurtured in an environment of the core values of FCS. But it is something that happens with parents and staff as well. As a ministry of First Christian Church, FCS functions so well as a mission outpost of love and grace.

I want to (and you along with me) acknowledge the leadership of Carolyn Maloney, and her assistant director, Tara Barouch. The teachers also are tremendously dedicated and dependable. One note on this score is that the average tenure of all our FCS teachers is over 6 years. Half of the 20 teachers have been here for 7 to 20 years. That speaks volumes!

You might be asking, "Well, what reminded you this week of how beautiful FCS is?" Well, the answer is that I received a copy of a resignation letter from one of our teachers, Laura Reprezza. Here is a transcript of it. I share it with a desire to share with you what I see, in the hopes that you will see it too. Blessings:

Dear First Christian School Family,

With contradicting feelings, I'm enjoying my last days at First Christian School. As you probably already know, my husband has accepted a job offer with Telemundo Network in McAllen, TX, and I have happily accepted to move back where my family lives.

For the past four years I have had the best experience ever, a wonderful job and the most loving school for my daughter. Working at FCS has been very fulfilling; I have grown as a person, as a mother and as a teacher.

It seems that the word "Thank You" is not enough to express my gratitude; to the teachers who were asking me how my daughter was when she was sick, to the ones who were holding and hugging her when she was crying, to the parents who were taking that extra time in the mornings to talk to me, to the ones telling their children, "Ok, let's go and look for your second Mom" ... again, thank you, it was an honor for me, when they were asking for my help.

The Blue room will always be the Blue room because Ms. Yolanda is there and from her I learned that no matter how cloudy it looks outside, it will always be a sunny day inside the Blue room. It's her energy and optimism that has made me enjoy these past four years.

Thank you Mr. Dunn for your warm smile and your jokes, for your spiritual guidance and your prayers, and thank you church members for all your support; to Robert my deepest appreciation for always taking care of me; to Kenneth, thanks for being such a great friend and I hope you continue to let the children call you "Swiper", because they love it and love you.

Thank you Langdon for holding hands with me when I most needed it, as young as you are you gave me more that what I could have given you.

So big thanks to the parents for letting me be a part of your children's life, to the children for all the love and the hugs, to the teachers for all these four years full of great moments and that you to Tara for being so thoughtful with my family.

And even when I know Thanks is not enough I have to say Thank You! Thank You! Ms Carolyn for not just offering me a job but offering me a big Family here in Houston...and Thank you for trusting me with your most precious treasure at First Christian School...your children!

I will always keep all of you in my heart!

Laura Reprezza