When he finds them, he persists in his questioning: Who told you that you are naked? As if to say, “I made you that way! You have no reason to be ashamed”. Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? Why would God ask what he already knows, if not to allow man the opportunity to confess. Before speaking judgement, he allows man to take full responsibility for his actions, thereby affirming his humanness. He allows room for reflection, confession and repentance, so that man might be restored. Yet rather than recognise his own fault, Adam blames God, and then his wife, for his own folly. What is this you have done? A fourth question, which Eve in turn answers in blaming the serpent. Neither acknowledges wrongdoing. What would have happened had they confessed? Was it the eating of the fruit or the failure to ask for forgiveness that saw them ultimately excluded from the garden, and thus human life the way God intended it.

God continues his search, probing into the heart of man, drawing him out. To Cain he asks Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? Is this not the concern of a loving Father? Yet rather than receive that love, Cain allows his anger to give birth to murder. There again, God stays his judgement, preferring to allow the possibility of a contrite heart. Although Abel’s blood was screaming Cain’s guilt, God asks: Where is your brother? Cain adds falsehood to his crimes. And still God questions: What have you done?

This same God questions us today, not imposing his truth, nor bringing judgement before its time. He allows us to draw our own conclusions, willing us to choose rightly, longing for our restoration, yet permitting us to reject him if we so choose. If we reject him, our refusal will not go unjudged indefinitely. Today is amnesty day – our opportunity to confess our faults, to overcome our pride, and to agree with God’s appraisal. Who knows but that it might be our last.

“What a strange way to start a revolution
. . . And what a strange way to end a world tour.”
We worship the seed that died.
The revolution will not be televised.
It will not be brought to you by Fox News with commercial interruptions.
It will not be sandwiched between ads to accelerate you life or be all you can be.
There will be no re-runs.
The revolution will be live.
The revolution will be in the streets.
The revolution will be cleaning toilets and giving another blanket to Karen.
The revolution will not be talking about poverty in hotel banquet rooms.
It will be eating beans and rice with Ms. Sunshine and watching Back to the Future with our neighbor Mary.
Get ready, friends…God is preparing us for something really, really – small.

Martyn Joseph, British songwriter

This time we have arrived in a more typical French August: eerily quiet. If you didn’t know that everyone has head for the beach or the mountains, you would wonder whether you’d stumbled onto the set of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.

But even so, many of the people we have most wanted to catch up with have been around, and the most meaningful things that have happened since our return 2 weeks ago has been renewing contact with friends. We’ve had a more or less constant stream of visitors, which has been both surprising and encouraging, and has really helped in dealing with the odd coup de blues* over leaving New Zealand.

We have not come back with a stack of new projects to launch into, but already we see the few ideas we have beginning to take shape. Some of them are not quite cooked enough to talk about them here, but we are really enjoying having the space to step off the ministry “roundabout”, and actually ask the question, “Lord, what do you have for us to do?”, and sensing the freedom to wait for him to answer before forging ahead.

Not sure that we’ve ever been in this place before.

*coup de blues – you can probably guess: a time of feeling down.

I just approved a comment on some thoughts I posted a while ago under the heading Reinterpreting Traditions. It’s an article by our friend Cor the artist touching on the story of the Samaritan woman, and I thought it was too useful to hide away in the comments section of an old post. Hope you get as much out of it as I did…

Like many of you, I’ve heard and read it countless times! I know this story already for more than fifty years! Then one day as by a divine touch, the real meaning of this rich deep story hit home, at least it shook up my life.

This divine touch can leave you potentially confused, excited, reassured or, as in my case, with a glorious revelation experience! I am talking about the story of the Samaritan woman at the well in the Gospel of John 4.

By many preachers, she has always been painted as the lady with a questionable past, who went through five husbands, and the one she was living with was not her husband either, according to a very reliable source: Jesus! Surprisingly, Jesus does not turn away from her in horror and disgust, but He choses to do the opposite…to teach her! She becomes one of the first human beings to be taught the miracle and principle of the Kingdom.

Here she is, a woman belonging to the despised Samaritans, a human being without any credibility according to the Jewish laws and attitude of the time.
Even the disciples were at least “mildly” disturbed, when they found Jesus talking to her by their return to the well. Their behaviour gives us some insight in their preconceptions and ways of thinking regarding situations like these.

The disciples had no idea that they were about to go through a life-changing experience that would absolutely shatter their pre-conceptions about religion and human relationships, and would add inevitably a new level to their spiritual maturity.

First, Jesus paid attention to the person, whom He knew had more spiritual depth then many of His own people. He looked past the five husbands which could easily have been a dramatic run of illnesses in that family, and that she was therefore cared for by a certain man according to the laws at the time.
We find a similar situation in the case in the old testament of the prophet Elijah and the widow of Zarephath with her son.

This Samaritan woman turns out to be very knowledgeable about the religious environment of the times. Yes, she even knew about the Messiah who was about to come. She rises far above the mediocrity of her fellow villagers, reaches out, absorbs and processes the words of life, provided by Jesus.
This exhibition of faith puts her on a similar level with Simeon who was waiting for the Messiah as well.

There is plenty of reason and evidence to believe that, instead of the perceived impression of a lady with a past, she was in fact a lady with a future and leadership, as she was evidently a highly esteemed prophetess (Revelation 19:10… for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.) and well regarded by her own people. This explains her obvious gift of perception, the ease and authority by which she gets her fellow villagers to listen to that strange Jewish teacher: Jesus.

She was clearly steeped in religion as she new the conditions of worship in her own culture as well as the Jewish, and was most likely familiar with the “theology” surrounding it. She had all her religious facts lined up in a row and nothing would surprise her. Yes, apart from an underlying yearning for more, she was content with it, despite the obvious “enslavement” aspect. Little did she know about that glorious spiritual glowing fire that was brooding under her feet, a fire that would free, purify and cleanse her for the rest of her life.

In His short teaching-session, Jesus gets straight to the point by exposing the center-core truth about the Kingdom, which is the Spirit of God in man, thereby heralding the coming demise of the known formal type of worship, including the use of the buildings dedicated to that purpose.

The emphasis in His teaching is on the walk of a human being by the government of the Spirit of God. This Spirit is the bread of Life, and the Living water, which will quench every need and directs the receiving person into a lifestyle which is worship in itself. When the Spirit of God directs a life into a life of worship, Truth is the result, and as the truth is the person of Christ, it is easy to see that a Spirit governed life is a life lead by the living Christ.

Is it not wonderful that Jesus entrusted the principle of the Kingdom to these despised people. They invited Jesus AND the disciples to stay in their village and Jesus accepted. They stayed for two days and reading their responses and reactions, Jesus’s time in their midst changed these people involved dramaticly, including the disciples. They all went through a real-life seminar/workshop and all must have come out on the other side as changed people.

Understanding that this Kingdom-blueprint was also meant for the believers in the following ages, for us, raises in me the question; what on earth have we done with the Kingdom teaching! Jesus always taught the Kingdom power, never the church principle, only the English translation Bibles do. Perhaps we are called to choose again for the Kingdom, in order to experience unobstructed the Christ of Christianity?

As we were travelling at 100kph along the motorway north of Auckland in our white diesel van on loan from OM New Zealand (yes, that great OM tradition of getting about in ageing but faithful vans has even made it to the bottom of the world!), when a big bang, a loud warning siren and a lot of smoke alerted us to the fact that something was not quite right. To make it even more exciting, the brakes failed, and my wife told me afterward that my face went even whiter than the van (which needs a good clean, actually – the van, not my face). At that speed bringing the van to a stop was a tricky manoeuvre, but a couple of hundred meters later I was able to safely pull off the road, as it turned out, right beside an emergency phone.

Little tip if you ever happen to break down on a New Zealand motorway: look for an emergency phone rather than using your cell phone. If you call from one of these, the motorway authority will have you towed free of charge to the nearest garage (something about keeping the motorway secure).

As it turned out, the nearest garage was in a town where we happen to have some good friends who were away overseas – such good friends that we actually know the door code to get into their appartment! We were able to camp there while the van was being fixed (broken fan belt and blown out radiator). It was a bit of a pain being delayed for two nights, but we made good use of the time.

It could have been so much worse. I know that just because God is looking after us it doesn’t mean that bad things can’t happen. But in this particular instance we were pretty impressed by his care for us, in the way that a potentially disastrous situation turned into a reason for thanksgiving (the prayers of a faithfully praying mother-in-law also probably had something to do with it!)

[posted with ecto]

“Clearly the missional church that claims the deed as sacrament will be fully involved in life, evangelism, work among the poor, community groups and causes, and pubs and cafes. This is because the missional church realizes that it is finding God (or is God finding us?) in those places previously perceived as “outside” of God because they were outside of the local faith community’s mission program. Actually there is no such thing as seeking God, for there is nothing in which he cannot be found. It’s all in the “seeing” and the perceiving. Having broadened our concept of God’s involvement in the world and our part in it, Christians can then be free to engage missionally in any and every place. The whole world becomes an arena for the inbreaking of God’s kingdom.”

If you’re not familiar with the phrase “deed as sacrament”, it’s a means of expressing a view of Christian spirituality where God’s grace is made apparent in our actions, and where there is no dichotomy between so-called “spiritual” activities like proclaiming the gospel, and practical deeds of service. God redeems the whole of life, not just the religious part. It’s not a new idea, but in practice we still tend to act as if somehow the things we do that are related to church are more valuable to God than, say, being friendly to our neighbours, serving on the local school committee or spending time at the local pub to get to know the locals. God can be in all of these things, not just the church bit (or should I say, “even the church part” )

Does this strike a chord with you? Click on the comment link above, and tell me what you think.

In New Zealand April 25^th is ANZAC Day, which commemorates the battle waged by Australian and New Zealand troops at Gallipoli in Turkey during the first world war, and by extension those who died in combat during the various wars of the 20^th century.

You’d think that as the last old returned servicemen passed on, interest in marking ANZAC Day would wane. Well, we were in for a surprise. Our children have been studying the world wars for history, so we thought we’d give them a real “kiwi” experience and bundled them all into the van before sunrise to attend the Dawn Parade. This ceremony is enacted in most large towns all over the country, where returned servicemen and women parade through the streets before dawn to the Cenotaph – a war memorial monument, where a service of remembrance is held.

When we arrived at the Cenotaph, we could barely find a place to park, and we were amazed to see so many people, of all ages. It was amazing seeing such a crowd of my supposedly “secular” contemporaries listening in reverent silence as Psalm 139 was read out, followed by hymn singing and public prayers of thanksgiving for God’s blessings and for those who gave their lives, and prayer for those in authority. It finished with the singing of the national anthem, in Maori then in English – “God of nations, at thy feet in the bonds of love we meet. Hear our voices we entreat, God defend New Zealand…”

Sure, there have been calls to change the national anthem to make it less Christian and more “inclusive”. There has been heated debate about the custom of opening parliamentary meetings with a prayer. Even the Bishop of Auckland, who has recently “come out” as an agnostic, has questioned the suitability of public prayer in our “secular society”. (By the way, our friend Michael Hewat has written a superb article on this issue.)

But as I looked up at the Southern Cross in the pre-dawn sky, and looked around at this solemn scene, it confirmed to me again that people are longing for that sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves, something to help make sense of the folly of this life in which so many hundreds of thousands of young lives can be snuffed out fighting wars of uncertain purpose.

It’s not that people aren’t interested in the gospel. The problem is not with society being too “secular”. It’s with us Christians – with the way we communicate the message.

Technorati Tags: war world war spirituality God

In the last few days we have had a leak in our house (resulting in no heating, irregular water supply, a gooey plastery mess and lots of phone calls to the insurer), we have been taken to the cleaners by a dodgy plumber, we have lost a credit card, Elise sprained her finger due to an altercation with a basketball, there is a seemingly unsolveable administrative problem with our social security over the fact that we are out of the country for 4 months, there is another wrangle due to a miscommunication over our car insurance, a low flying soccer ball upended a cup of tea into the computer keyboard – colds, headaches, and a strained back needing physiotherapy – how can all this happen in a week?? It’s like being in the middle of a hurricane. And somehow normal life has had to continue through it all.

Somebody asked me on the phone tonight how it was going, and I blurted out “there is hope”. Don’t know why I said that because humanly speaking it all looks pretty disastrous right now. But there really is an underlying peace – there’s a conversation going on, and God is saying, “you just wait and see how I work all this out.” I realise I can’t demand that everything work out the way I want it to – maybe we will leave the country with some of these disasters unresolved. But the point is learning to be confident in God through it all. Knowing that doesn’t automatically dissolve the hard knot I have in my stomach right now, but it gives perspective which helps maintain a straight course in adverse conditions.

Technorati Tags: conversation with God God spirituality

Our house is full of teenagers again – well, pre-teens really. Maria is having a girls night to say goodbye to school friends before leaving for distant shores for a few months. We were encouraged that one of the Dads that didn’t know us at all called to find out who we are and wanted to meet us before deciding whether his daughter could come or not – we’re not so weird after all wanting to know the parents of the girls that invite her to their homes! They are still 12 after all, but there’s such pressure on kids to be independent.

He stayed for a drink. Interesting guy – a former social worker very familiar with the kinds of “hard cases” Heather meets at La Maison on Monday mornings. He defined himself as a “catho de gauche” – a left-wing Catholic, which he also defined as a humanist (super handlebar moustache!) He burnt out in his work with street people, and this meeting comes at an interesting point in a discussion Heather and I have been having about what motivates people to care for the unwanted, and to stick at it, when God isn’t in the picture. He spoke of several colleagues who had blown fuses doing this kind of work and given up. These people must be motivated by love – something that God has put there even though they don’t recognise it. But the missing ingredient is hope.

Bit tired to elaborate on this right now, but thinking a lot about the hope dimension in mission at the moment. Our faith is reflected in what we believe, our hope in what we do, and love holds the whole thing together. Better go and start my packing…

Why don’t I do that more often? It is really amazing how your perspective can change in an instant. I had my eyes on the track in front of me, and at one point stopped, looked up and saw the most stunning green postcard vista in front of me, and the little voice suddenly became incredibly clear and authoritative: “Simon, stop worrying. I am all you need.” That was all. It was like someone just changed the CD in my brain, and my thoughts were back on the right track again.

I need to stop allowing myself to live as if God wasn’t there.