The following is a perfect example of engaging culture through the arts. This is what New Wine is about. Redemptive engagement…
Never a better time for some EE Cummings
I love EE Cummings. I love people who write things that make me feel fully alive again– as if, just by finishing it, I have been resuscitated in a way I didn’t even know I needed. I am grateful for people who get over themselves and dare to express these sort of sentiments for the world to sigh and marvel at together. Poets like EE Cummings share their heart in the moments when no would ever think to listen. It’s these secret marvels exposed that show us bits of ourselves and God and I love it.
i am a little church (no great cathedral)
| i am a little church(no great cathedral) far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities -i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest, i am not sorry when sun and rain make april my life is the life of the reaper and the sower; around me surges a miracle of unceasing i am a little church(far from the frantic winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to ee cummings |
The Wounds of Jesus
To prepare for Easter, I have been reading from Jean Vanier’s “Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John.” I felt the following passage was worth sharing:
These wounds become his glory
From the wound in his side flowed the waters that vivify
and heal us.
Through his wounds we are healed.
Jesus invites each one of us, though Thomas,
to touch not only his wounds,
but those wounds in others and in ourselves,
wounds that can make us hate others and ourselves
and can be a sign of separation and division.
These wounds will be transformed into a sign of forgiveness
through the love of Jesus
and will bring people together in love.
These wounds reveal that we need each other.
These wounds become the place of mutual compassion,
of indwelling
and of thanksgiving.
We, too, will show our wounds
when we are with him in the kingdom,
revealing our brokenness
and the healing power of Jesus.
Glenn Beck and the Church’s Politics
In recent weeks, Glenn Beck has stirred up controversy by instructing his hearers to leave their churches if they hear or see the words “social justice,” as he believes the words are “code” for nazism and communism and a perversion of the gospel. The words led to a blogging spree, as one would expect, and a series of rather comical exchanges between Jim Wallis of Sojourners and Beck in which Beck has promised a smear campaign in which he will “hammer” Wallis “all through the night, and over and over” as Wallis has turned the other cheek and asked for a civil dialogue on the matter.
My interest here isn’t to join the fray. Though it troubles me the lack of discernment shown by some Christians with this, it’s become clear Beck is wading into unfamiliar waters and making a fool of himself in the process. Even leaders of Beck’s Mormon church have called Wallis to apologize for Beck’s uninformed statements. My interest is instead to explore what I believe is really at issue here, but to my knowledge overlooked by commentators: the political nature of the church.
It’s become a truism that the church is not political and moreover should not be political. When the church and state are not kept separate, the logic goes, both the church and state suffer. The problem, I believe, is not that the church has become too political, but rather that the church in America is suffering because it has not been political enough. The church is itself a political body with its own brand of politics, and this politics has been largely forgotten and replaced by the world’s politics.
One key part of the church’s politics is the church’s unity. The church is to be one, in complete unity. This unity goes deeper than any loyalty to blood relations, any patriotic sentiment, or any political ideology, and it shows the world that the Son and the Father are one (Jn 17). I’m convinced that one of the best ways to spot idols in the church is to see what divides us. If we are divided by anything but the essential truths of the Christian faith, we are in effect placing whatever divides us over our loyalty to Christ and so each other. We may not do this intentionally, and we may even have the best of intentions for doing so, but by dividing ourselves we are implying that what divides us is more important to us than the unity of Christ’s body.
This is, in my estimation, the danger of what Beck has called for. Not so much that he denies social justice as being a part of the gospel (although I’d strongly disagree with him there), but that his statements imply that political views are more important than church unity. The world is divided by languages, religions, race, politics, and, our most recent invention, the nation-state. But Christ has shattered each of these dividing walls of hostility through His death and resurrection (Eph 2). In a constantly warring world, Christ is our peace. The peace Christ has created shows the world that division is not apart of God’s plan, and that something is more important than the world’s political games: that the Father and the Son are one.
The Biblical Family?
Scot McKnight on the biblical family. Or, more accurately, Scot McKnight on Stephen Holmes on the biblical family.