Tag: social

Reconciliation

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 3 – Dancing in the Kingdom– Chapter 18 – Entering the Dance

Reconciliation

[Bible references: Luke 19:11-27; John 13:34-35; 14:15-31; 16:7-15, 33; Romans 5:1-11]

Keeping in mind that we serve as Christ’s ambassadors to the world with the message of reconciliation, Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice have summarized ten aspects of that reconciliation:[1]

  • Reconciliation is God’s gift to the world. Healing of the world’s deep brokenness does not begin with us and our action, but with God and God’s gift of new creation.
  • Reconciliation is not a theory, achievement, technique, or event, It is a continuous process, a dance if you will, with our fellow image-bearers.
  • The end toward which the journey of reconciliation leads is the shalom of God’s new creation — a future not yet fully realized, but holistic in its transformation of the personal, social, and structural dimensions of life.
  • The journey of reconciliation requires the discipline of lament.
  • In a broken world God is always planting seeds of hope, though often not in the places we expect or even desire.
  • There is no reconciliation without memory, because there is no hope for a peaceful tomorrow that does not seriously engage both the pain of the past and the call to forgive.
  • Reconciliation needs the church, but not as just another social agency or NGO,
  • The ministry of reconciliation requires and calls forth a specific type of leadership that is able to unite a deep vision with the concrete skills, virtues, and habits necessary for the long and often lonesome journey of reconciliation.
  • There is no reconciliation without conversion, the constant journey with God into a future of new people and new loyalties.
  • Imagination and conversion are the very heart and soul of reconciliation.

The heart of reconciliation is love. When we love and reconcile one another with others in the body of Christ, that is, if we can love the people we don’t like and become reconciled, that becomes the visible grace of God that can even be recognized by those outside the church and draws them to that same love and grace of God. Our task from the beginning was to serve the earth. Jesus lived that out, not by growing crops but by healing the sick and loving the outcasts. We continue that task by “Dancing in the Kingdom,” expanding God’s flourishing glory as we respond to Jesus’ call to us to “occupy till I come.”

[1] Katongole, Emmanuel & Rice, Chris. Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace, and Healing Intervarsity Press, 2009

Observe

Read Romans 5:1-11. How do we prepare ourselves for the work of reconciliation?

New Jerusalem’s Urban Garden

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 3 – Dancing in the Kingdom– Chapter 16 – Fixing our eyes

New Jerusalem’s Urban Garden

[Bible references: Genesis 1-2; 1 Corinthians 12; 14;1 Peter 1, 4; Revelation 21-22]

In the now-broken earth, many people think of human civilization only as a corruption and pollution of the earth, that the earth was only meant to be pristine – as it supposedly was before humans started to mess it up. While we certainly have abused the earth in many ways, that does not mean all aspects of human civilization are inherently bad. When we use our God-given capabilities to join God in His kingdom building, that is good. Many of the things that we design, create and build are inherently good. The problem lies in our corruption and the world’s corruption that causes us to misuse every good thing.

When we were charged with filling and subduing the earth, it did not mean that we were to simply expand the Garden of Eden. God had given us many gifts to use, including tremendous creative abilities. We were given various spiritual gifts for the purpose of building one another up; we were given artistic gifts to make articles for the Tabernacle and Temple; we were given gifts of singing, making musical instruments and craftsmanship, hunting, trading, sailing – in general, making the things of civilization.

Those same gifts are available for current task of participating with God in the process of bringing His Kingdom to earth, a process that shall lead to ultimate uniting of heaven and earth, a process that leads not to the original Garden of Eden, but of an urban garden attached to the new Jerusalem.

It is undeniable that, despite the corruption we see, God has provided us an abundance of creative skills for displaying His transcendence and glory in our art, technology, engineering, and sciences. He has also given us social and political skills to create human public and private institutions that can organize our abilities to do good.

But it does not take much observation to also notice the corruption that has permeated our society. It can seem hard to determine if we have misused more than properly used the gifts and abilities God has given us. Nevertheless, as God’s co-regents we have been given a sacred obligation to nurture the place he gave us in anticipation of God’s final restoration of the earth.

Reflect

How can you use the gifts and skills that God has given you to help give people hope for the future?

Observe

Read 1 Peter 1. If our mind is set on seeing Christ soon, how shall we prepare?

Discipline of Resting/Sabbath

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 3 – Dancing in the Kingdom– Chapter 15 – Reforming our Souls

Discipline of Resting/Sabbath

[Bible references: Exodus 20:8-11; Deuteronomy 5: 12-15; Mark 2:23-28; Hebrews 4:1-13]

We work to live

To understand the place of Sabbath we need to understand who we are and the place of our work (or play). The accumulation of archeological research in the last few decades has made it more possible to understand the Genesis creation account in the same way it was understood in the times of Moses. Creation was not primarily viewed as a physical event but rather the moment of being assigned a purpose. The creation account, understood this way, was a dedication of a temple, that is, a place where God would meet with his image-bearers. Those moments of dedication were done within the boundaries of days, “there was the evening and the morning.” After the temple was dedicated, it was now the time to live into the temple, to live into what it was designed for. The “rest” was not referring to a cessation of activity, but of doing the activity that the temple, in this case, the universe, was designed for.

The seventh day, as described in Genesis 2, was not assigned a beginning and an end. It was not designated with “and there was evening and there was morning.”  It continues now. Now is the time we live in the temple, doing that for which the temple was designed. Work has been designed for us, but we were not designed for work. Going back to Genesis 1 and 2, we see God was creating a place for him to reside and take control and for us to join him as co-regents. The seventh day, the sabbath, God had finished the dedication of the “temple,” but it was not a time where he ceased to do everything. Rather, it was the time where the “home” was now ready for God, and for us as co-regents, to begin the settling into our “home” and doing the things that our home was designed for. Jesus in John 5:1-7 clarified this idea where he explained, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” Living into this sacred space would entail us taking part with God in his continual acts of creating and sustaining the universe. When Eve gave birth to Cain, she recognized that “I’ve created a man with Yahweh.”

The work that we were designed to do was more than just tending the garden. In Genesis 2:15, we were given a mandate to “work” and “take care of” the garden God had created. These tasks, again looked at in light of Ancient Near East culture, were more of a priestly nature, taking care of this temple where we reside with God. We were to take care of this place which was designed to be a “very good” place for us to flourish in, creating whatever structures we needed to “increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it.” This task, this mandate, meant that we would eventually go beyond the capacity of gardening and create not just a bigger garden but cities, a flourishing civilization as pictured in Revelation 21 and 22.

When examined closely, we can see the breadth of work committed to Adam and Eve. Subduing the earth would entail many physical, social, and intellectual activities. In the gardening we can see cultivation and farming; in taking care of the animals, we can see shepherding and domestication; in the naming of the animals, we can see a cultural and scientific activity which required understanding the nature and attributes of the animals and establishing authority over them. We can see that God had created things to be beautiful (Gen 3:6) and as his image-bearers we would be expected to also create beautiful things.

The introduction of sin has complicated this sense of work by corrupting the value of the good work that had been intended for us and by adding more types of work that are only necessary because we need to mitigate the effects of our sin (law enforcement, hospitals, military, etc.). But even to that work, we can join Christ in His work of redeeming creation.

We rest to remember

Having determined the nature and value of our work, we can now determine the place of sabbath rest. The discipline of Sabbath is a regular reminder that work may have a place for us, but we were created by God for God, we were not created by God for work. There is work designed by God for us to do, and even if we enjoy that work, we need the reminders that we were primarily made for our relationship with God. The Westminster Catechism states that we were designed to “enjoy God and glorify Him forever.” 

Our focus should be on God and not the work He has given us. In this world there is more than sufficient work to be done, but we are not created to be slaves to that work. The Sabbath is our opportunity to remember our dependence on God’s provision for us, leaning on His provision instead of our labors, trusting Him to provide for us instead of trusting in our work to provide for us. In that restful place we then have the opportunity to focus on our relationship with God. As Jesus pointed out, the Sabbath was made for us, for our benefit, for us to enjoy.

Observe

Read Exodus 20:8-11; Deuteronomy 5: 12-15; Mark 2:23-28; Hebrews 4:1-13. What is the reason for the Sabbath?

In time and In an eternal future

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 3 – The image-bearers

In time and in an eternal future

[Bible references: Genesis 2:9; Exodus 25-28; 1 Kings 5-6; Psalms 19; Ecclesiastes 3:1-22; Matthew 6:28]

Although we have not existed from all eternity, God created us with more than a mortal body. We are also endowed with a soul and a spirit that can be joined to God’s Spirit. In the present moment, our mortal bodies are created from the stuff of the earth, and we are born into particular times and places so that we may serve and enjoy God in those particular times and places.

God made us as creatures. And the good part about being a creature is we were made to be dependent upon God and, by our very design, also dependent on other people and the earth … Often what we’re missing is the good of dependence. We need to cultivate an awareness of how our dependence and our needs open avenues of love … What if we stopped thinking of life as to-dos and started thinking of it as relationships? When we’re so task-driven, it’s very hard to appreciate love, because love is incredibly inefficient … when we were younger, God didn’t expect us to be what we are now. He’s still taking his time, by his Spirit, to bring about order through developmental growth … Part of recognizing our limits is getting comfortable in God’s space and growing in dependance on him … Sometimes, I think we’re actually scared to death to pray, because if we actually take the time to get quiet, we might begin to fear that God’s not there or wonder whether he’s apathetic or just really angry. Only in prayer will we discover how compassionately God views us … cultivating the gift of encouraging and celebrating others. It’s a spiritual discipline, a healthy way of dying to yourself and encouraging others. We are all dying for someone to pay attention and notice our presence and being. When someone articulates that, it’s life-changing. [1]

Our creatureliness which sets us in a particular place and time with a particular body is an opportunity to appreciate our finiteness and God’s infiniteness, to cultivate a sense of dependence on God’s provision and our dependence on each other and within the context of those relationships to truly learn how to love.

Our creatureliness also forces us to deal with God’s ordering Creation through process. Everything, whether physical, social, emotional, intellectual, or spiritual, is controlled by processes. Sometimes we desire to bypass those processes: we want to be instantly knowledgeable and wise and experts at what we do … and not dependent on anyone else. But it was precisely that kind of desire that led to our rebellion at the beginning of humanity.

As God’s image-bearing creatures, we not only have relationships with each other but also with our Creator. In our relationships with God’s other image-bearing creatures, our love can be expressed in our opportunities to support, uplift, and encourage one other. God has no need of such support from us, but He offers us such support. When we recognize our dependence on Him, He gives us the ability to pray, to acknowledge our needs and to recognize His provision for us when He supplies our needs.

We think of prayer as mostly self-expressive—as a way to put words to our inner life … if we pray the prayers we’ve been given, regardless of how we feel about them or God at the time, we sometimes find, to our surprise, that they teach us how to believe … We sleep each night in our ordinary beds in our ordinary homes in our ordinary lives. And we do so in a universe filled to the brim with mystery and wonder. We always sleep in a crowded room in our crowded cosmos, so we ask for crazy things—that God send unimaginable supernatural beings to watch over us as we drool on our pillows … Sleep reminds us of how helpless we are, even merely to stay alive. In the Christian tradition, sleep has always been seen as a way we practice death. Both Jesus and Paul talk about death as a kind of sleep. Our nightly descent into unconsciousness is a daily memento mori, a reminder of our creatureliness, our limitations, and our weakness. [2]

As we pray in our mortal bodies, we remember that although our mortal bodies will return to the dust from which we are made, our bodies will be resurrected when heaven and earth are reunited so that we, with soul and spirit and new body, will be able to enjoy God forever into the future.

What is that phenomenon we call ‘beauty’ and why does it lie at the core of both collective civilization and individual desire, even as we value it precisely for existing outside of practicality? In his essay The Weight of Glory [A sermon given in Oxford in 1942], C.S. Lewis explains it as an echo of eternity, imprinted upon humanity as an indication of our origin and destiny.[3]

Indeed, our God is a God of beauty, and he has created us to enjoy his beauty. Art and our appreciation of it are among the great gifts God has given to us. Sure, like anything, it can be turned into an idol. But art, beauty, and appreciation for the finer things of culture are all good gifts from a good God. [4]

In the meantime, while we await for our resurrection and to “gaze on the beauty of the Lord” (Psalm 27:4), we have reminders of our connection with our transcendent God in the beauty of His Creation and in our capacity to make things of beauty. Whether the beautiful things are of our creation or the Lord’s, they reflect God’s own beauty.

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing … they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited … We do not want merely to see beauty … We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.[5]

[1] Straza, Erin. “Learning to Love Your Limits” Christianity Today 13 Dec 2021 www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/january-february/youre-only-human-kelly-kapic-limits-god-design.html Interview with Covenant College theologian Kelly M. Kapic’s about his latest book, “You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News.”

[2] Warren, Tish Harrison. “The Cosmos is More Crowded Than You Think” Christianity Today 14 Dec 2021 www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/january-february/prayer-night-tish-harrison-warren-angels-crowded-cosmos.html

[3] Wang, Irina “Beauty betrays eternity” Salt salt.london/articles/beauty-betrays-eternity

[4] Meuhlenberg, Bill. “Art and the Christian” Culture Watch 28 July 2011 billmuehlenberg.com/2011/07/28/art-and-the-christian/

[5] Lewis, C.S. “The Weight of Glory” Theology Nov 1941

Observe

Read Ecclesiastes 3:1-22.  In the midst of meditating on the limitations of life on earth, verse 11 slides in a reference to beauty and eternity. How does that verse impact the rest of the chapter?