A young friend who doesn’t have a lot of work on at the moment offered to help us, and as we were driving around picking up bits and pieces he made a very wise observation. Wouldn’t it be amazing to be part of a community where whenever somebody needed to set up a new home, everybody rallied around to help; if people would pool their resources, pulling little-used items out of their cellars and garages, and bring them over to help furnish the new house. What if it became a real community effort – that way a house could be furnished very cheaply, the occupants would be all set up in a short time, and people could enjoy getting rid of unnecessary stuff.

Well, I don’t remember if he said all that exactly, but it reflects very well what we experienced today. We drove around picking up stuff from people’s garages, and a load of stuff from some friends moving countries, and apart from a couple of items, we managed to furnish the whole house for under 400€. Not to mention my friend who freely gave up his day to help us get it done. With this kind of giving and receiving – everybody gets blessed. That’s how the kingdom economy works.

It is impossible to stress too strongly that the beginning of mission is not an action of ours, but the presence of a new reality, the presence of the Spirit of God in power [...] The great missionary proclamations in Acts are not given on the unilateral initiative of the apostles but in response to questions asked by others, questions prompted by the presence of something which calls for explanation [...] Where the Church is faithful to its Lord, there the powers of the kingdom are present and people begin to ask the question to which the gospel is the answer. And that, I suppose, is why the letters of St. Paul contain so many exhortations to faithfulness but no exhortations to be active in mission. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

This is from a man who spent most of his career as a missionary in India. It almost sounds heretical. He also makes the point that the end of the enterprise is not the successful conclusion of our projects, but the coming of Christ to reign. Jesus’ statement, “Where I am, there shall my servant be” is central here. Where is Jesus? At the frontier of light and darkness, where the acted out good news of the kingdom is pushing back the powers of evil, whatever form they may take. If we want to be with Jesus, that’s where we need to be.

All around me I see projects. When our projects succeed, we feel good. When they fail, we sink into existential crisis. Our whole reason for being seems to be predicated on our projects. This is because we see the Church as the source and agent of God’s coming kingdom, which is not so very far from the imperialism of medieval Christendom. The Church is not the source, but the sign and witness. It is here that the reality of the kingdom begins to break through in a visible way.

Mission is an acted out doxology. That is its deepest secret. Its purpose is that God may be glorified.

So why aren’t more people in our culture looking a the Church and asking questions?

Faith enables us to be at the same time realistic and hopeful. We can be realistic, knowing that no human project can eliminate the powers of darkness as they operate in human life. This realism delivers us from the utopian fanaticisms which have condemned millions of people to misery and death in the cause of an imagined future. But at the same time we can be hopeful, acting hopefully in apparently hopeless situations, not dreaming of an absolute perfection on this side of death, but doing resolutely that relative good which is possible now, doing it as an offering to the Lord who is able to take it and keep it for the perfect kingdom which is promised. In this sense [...] our actions in the public life of the world are acted prayers for the kingdom. They do not themselves lead directly to the kingdom. They are acted prayers for its coming and as such they act as signs of its reality and so enable others to act in hope.

Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

It’s such a shame this guy isn’t better known. What I love here is the refusal to escape into a pessimism which sees the world “going to hell in a handcart”, which leads some to retreat into a kind of “lifeboat” Christianity which refuses to engage with the world other than trying to pull a few drowning people into the boat. But at the same time there is no room for living in denial, as if heaven was already here. Yes the world is profoundly sick, and yes at this point in time we can’t actually bring ultimate positive change through our actions. But, we can rest assured that our actions are not wasted. Change is coming! It is not our actions that will bring it about, but our acts do have an important prophetic role in pointing people toward the glorious reality that is coming. I also really like the idea of viewing our actions as a form of prayer. No room for passivity here.

“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

Happy New Year! Our family New Year’s Eve involved a trip to an outdoor skating rink which the city of Nantes puts on for the festive season, a nice meal which didn’t quite work out (Simon cooking!), some games and a movie. We also talked around the table about our favourite memories from 2007. I am experiencing the usual disorientation of wondering where the year went. I generally approach the new year with a vague sense of a number of decisions that need to be made, new habits that need to be formed, and then when the first of January rolls around I don’t feel ready. Then I remind myself that it’s silly to get hung up about a change of digit in the year, which is, after all, a completely arbritrary way of dividing time. There’s nothing sacred about the calendar. But it is a reminder of the ever-accelerating passage of time, and the fact that we are not getting any younger. I’m getting ready to teach a series on the Jesus’ teaching on the end times in Matthew 24, and have been struck again by the many references to time in the prophetic Scriptures, and the signs that are to help us get ready for the events of the end – whether they come in our lifetime or not. It is a good reminder that time is going in a specific direction – forward! The calendar may be arbitrary, but the passage of time has specific purpose as we head towards the fulfillment of all God had in mind when he created the world: the establishment of a kingdom on earth with Christ as its king.

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?