Happy New Year from Kenya! School has begun--we went back Wednesday for three days of remembering students' names, rejoining the company of our fellow teachers, sharing stories about holidays, and even a little teaching. But now we are back in Nairobi, preparing to leave in the morning for Zanzibar! Tomorrow is our first retreat as a YAV group. We go to Zanzibar in conjunction with ITC, the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, GA. They seem like a cool bunch so far--we worshiped with them this morning and had dinner with them Friday. They will be good resources on this retreat as we discuss how God is working and study the structures that we have seen. I heard two of them preach this morning, and wish to commend to you some of the things I heard (but I cannot reproduce all the magnificent alliteration of both speakers. props to them).
Today we remember Jesus' baptism, and ours too, hopefully. Baptism is an inauguration into a new way of being. We are anointed into the presence, the purpose, and the power of God--the indwelling of the Holy Spirit through a path Christ walked, with the approval of God the Father. Not merely to heavenly peace, but to power through the indwelling of the divine. As in, the God of the universe, holy and mighty, who has come to us as a person, comes in us wandering people to make us new and air out our dank spaces. The purpose of baptism is not merely to enrich a single person, but the whole body of Christ. Growth is no isolated incident. It must be systemic.
The second message encouraged us, like Naaman, to humble ourselves to God's transformative power. It comes to us through simple means of grace that can seem simultaneously too easy and too mystical, and obedience is the way to healing. Pride will keep us unclean, as we refuse the gracious gift of God for our well-being.
Both sermons pointed me to a Gospel that was vital and relevant. Encouraged by Pastor Edward Furi of PCEA St. Andrews (among others), the Gospel's immediate importance has been on my mind recently. Obviously, the promise of God is not merely for the life to come. It is life here, too, but in FULL. It is prosperous by God's sanctified definition--not necessarily by your own or your boss's or professor's incomplete longings. It is for peace and joy and justice in God's good world, not just in heaven or in the new earth. The Gospel is now. God gives peace today. And all we have to do is jump in.
Take the plunge. Seek the light. Be anointed again in Spirit and Truth this New Year. Take up wholeheartedly the means God gives you to know and to love God and neighbor. May the one by whose help we have come empower you for his life-giving mission. Today.
Showing posts with label sermons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sermons. Show all posts
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Monday, September 28, 2009
Mind the pedestrians
Written 27 Sept 09
I've been pointed by a dear friend to ponder the place of Eden in theology. The gist of it is that the Garden is not simply the sundering of humans and God, but a pivot or even a pedestal in human development as a species. The Genesis account of the Garden had humans in a small space, naming animals and living without conflict. They disobey the only command they are given and are banished, cursed. The elements of the curse include working the land, childbirth, and hardship. "Knowledge of good and evil" is the fruit of their disobedience. The snake said they would become like gods, and they did a little. But the elements of the curse allow for humans to grow and develop in unique ways, ways that are now incorporated into our humanity itself. For humans are satisfied in working the land, in raising children, and even in working through adversity. Working the land fulfills better "fill the earth and subdue it" than simple naming of animals, and in romantic relationships and child rearing (and letting go of) there are uniquely complex images of God's love for us. So thinks one Jewish rabbi, anyway. Perhaps this direction to take the text is unorthodox, but it seems to work fine in the text--Genesis does not read "thus the human race was sundered from God" or "thus did humans come to be equipped to know God better." So maybe either reading is wrong if it is oversimplified. They are perhaps opposite faces of a jewel, or mirrors with different hues.
The Road Goes Ever On and On
I asked someone whether the road behind us was Uhuru highway and they responded categorically, "No, that's Waiyaki Way." I was confused--I had been thinking for a while that it was Uhuru Highway. So the next time I consulted my Nairobi map, I checked. Sure enough, right by where we were the road was called Waiyaki Way, but a km east the road was Uhuru Highway (written much bigger). Earlier in September, we heard about Mombasa road (which I think is an extension of Uhuru Highway as well, but I won't offer that nomenclature to a Kenyan). After we had discussed the road for a while, I pointed to it and was corrected then, too--it's not Mombasa road if you point to the side on which the cars go the other direction. It seems like the same road to me.
Out from the door where it began
Two sermons here have pushed the bounds of good theology without actually overstepping them. The pastor at Icaciri High today talked on Jeremiah 29:11, and the plans God has for us. He talked of the specificity of God's plan for us equally as emphatically as he talked of the importance of our aspirations and God's plans to fulfill them. He went almost farther than I was comfortable following talking of God's plan to make us successful, and I was getting all self-righteous, saying to myself "should have guessed from a Jer 29:11 sermon from an itinerant pastor." But I realized he started out from a very high view of God's plan that dictates our actions, and he returned to it after talking of success. I felt stretched--I could not reach both the extremes he seemed to be coming from. A connector came. It was not explicitly meant to connect an intentional paradox in the previous parts, but this was how I interpreted the role of Christ. Heart transformation and new birth are what unifies our success with God's plan. Oh, duh. Humbled after my critical episode, I remembered the first Sunday here in Kenya where I heard a sermon that bordered on answering "who sinned so that this man would be blind?" (but in regard to the current drought). But that pastor, too, apparently disregarded the possibility of tumultuous theology and plunged forward in the Scriptures, speaking truth not by staying on the fence but by disregarding it and passing through.
I won't even connect this here to issues of identity with rural, pastoral, traditional African on one side and American, British, urban, and technological on the other. That's one road many travel here, but starting from different places and going different directions. I cannot predict how that landscape is shifting. I will say that I once heard of a theologian (I don't remember which one, I think it was an early 20th-century person) soaring over the conflict of others with sound, scriptural truths. It would uphold Jacob's Bethel utterance if the God who is surely in Mombasa, Nairobi, and Meru is in Calvin and Arminius, Osteen and St Francis, and split Presbyterians.
I've been pointed by a dear friend to ponder the place of Eden in theology. The gist of it is that the Garden is not simply the sundering of humans and God, but a pivot or even a pedestal in human development as a species. The Genesis account of the Garden had humans in a small space, naming animals and living without conflict. They disobey the only command they are given and are banished, cursed. The elements of the curse include working the land, childbirth, and hardship. "Knowledge of good and evil" is the fruit of their disobedience. The snake said they would become like gods, and they did a little. But the elements of the curse allow for humans to grow and develop in unique ways, ways that are now incorporated into our humanity itself. For humans are satisfied in working the land, in raising children, and even in working through adversity. Working the land fulfills better "fill the earth and subdue it" than simple naming of animals, and in romantic relationships and child rearing (and letting go of) there are uniquely complex images of God's love for us. So thinks one Jewish rabbi, anyway. Perhaps this direction to take the text is unorthodox, but it seems to work fine in the text--Genesis does not read "thus the human race was sundered from God" or "thus did humans come to be equipped to know God better." So maybe either reading is wrong if it is oversimplified. They are perhaps opposite faces of a jewel, or mirrors with different hues.
The Road Goes Ever On and On
I asked someone whether the road behind us was Uhuru highway and they responded categorically, "No, that's Waiyaki Way." I was confused--I had been thinking for a while that it was Uhuru Highway. So the next time I consulted my Nairobi map, I checked. Sure enough, right by where we were the road was called Waiyaki Way, but a km east the road was Uhuru Highway (written much bigger). Earlier in September, we heard about Mombasa road (which I think is an extension of Uhuru Highway as well, but I won't offer that nomenclature to a Kenyan). After we had discussed the road for a while, I pointed to it and was corrected then, too--it's not Mombasa road if you point to the side on which the cars go the other direction. It seems like the same road to me.
Out from the door where it began
Two sermons here have pushed the bounds of good theology without actually overstepping them. The pastor at Icaciri High today talked on Jeremiah 29:11, and the plans God has for us. He talked of the specificity of God's plan for us equally as emphatically as he talked of the importance of our aspirations and God's plans to fulfill them. He went almost farther than I was comfortable following talking of God's plan to make us successful, and I was getting all self-righteous, saying to myself "should have guessed from a Jer 29:11 sermon from an itinerant pastor." But I realized he started out from a very high view of God's plan that dictates our actions, and he returned to it after talking of success. I felt stretched--I could not reach both the extremes he seemed to be coming from. A connector came. It was not explicitly meant to connect an intentional paradox in the previous parts, but this was how I interpreted the role of Christ. Heart transformation and new birth are what unifies our success with God's plan. Oh, duh. Humbled after my critical episode, I remembered the first Sunday here in Kenya where I heard a sermon that bordered on answering "who sinned so that this man would be blind?" (but in regard to the current drought). But that pastor, too, apparently disregarded the possibility of tumultuous theology and plunged forward in the Scriptures, speaking truth not by staying on the fence but by disregarding it and passing through.
I won't even connect this here to issues of identity with rural, pastoral, traditional African on one side and American, British, urban, and technological on the other. That's one road many travel here, but starting from different places and going different directions. I cannot predict how that landscape is shifting. I will say that I once heard of a theologian (I don't remember which one, I think it was an early 20th-century person) soaring over the conflict of others with sound, scriptural truths. It would uphold Jacob's Bethel utterance if the God who is surely in Mombasa, Nairobi, and Meru is in Calvin and Arminius, Osteen and St Francis, and split Presbyterians.
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