In a blog on January 6th, I suggested that one purpose for gathering as followers of Christ is to search for God and allow others to do the same. Today I want to address another reason
why we gather as the Body of Christ: mission.
As most of us will know, Missional Church
is very much in vogue these days. We read about it in the primary journals and
publications of the church and most of our churches claim to be on a missional
path. Many times when hearing someone speak of the “missional” church, I find
myself wanting to quote Inigo Montoya from Princess
Bride, “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.” Perhaps none of us has a clear definition of the word “missional.”
However, today, I do want to make some bold
statements about mission. One of the reasons God has called us to be the church
is that he is continually calling us to mission. The word mission comes from a Latin word, mitterre, which means “to send.” The etymology of the word is also
rooted in the Greek word “apostolos, from apostellein to send
away, from apo- + stellein to send.”[1]
So, a missionary or an apostle is “one who is sent;” in this context, it is one
who is sent by God.
Jesus is our perfect example of one who was
sent. The Gospel of John, chapter 20, verses 20 and 21 make this clear, “As he spoke, he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side. They
were filled with joy when they saw the Lord! Again he said, ‘Peace be
with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.’”[2]
From these words we
understand that Jesus was sent into human time and culture by God the Father;
and, as his mission was nearing completion, he sent his followers into human
time and culture to continue his work. John 20: 20, a verse that I like to call
the “20:20 vision verse,” also informs his followers that the task of being
sent is not easy and may result in rejection, suffering, and even martyrdom.
Now, as we are sent
into this world, what do we understand to be our task? Our task is that of
Jesus Christ, the Son. Jesus came to do many things and, as some of the
manuscripts of the Gospel of John also say, “If they were all written down, I
suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written.”
(John 21:25) It is clear that Jesus came to forgive sin (John 20:23), bring
Good News to the poor . . . . to proclaim that captives will be released, that
the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of
the Lord’s favor has come.” (Luke 4:18, 19) All of these tasks are also
the work of the ones whom Jesus sends into this present time.
I like to describe it
in another way; being sent by Jesus means that we are to be the hands, feet,
and voice of Jesus. We are to continue his work of releasing people from the
chains of oppression (both earthly and spiritual). We are to proclaim the truth
of the Gospel and bring this good news to the spiritually poor and the earthly
poor. By prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit, we are to bring sight to the
spiritually blind and the earthly blind. We are to bring hope and peace that the
time of God’s favour upon humans is at hand. Jesus continues to say, “As the
Father has sent me, so I am sending you.”


[1] See the Merriam-Webster online dictionary at http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apostle
[2] I am quoting from the
New Living Translation (NLT) unless otherwise noted.

The title of my blog has always been a
reminder to me that there is a type of thirst that I am to continue to have. Matthew
5:6 says, “God
blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will
be satisfied.” I can think of times when my physical body was depleted of water and
my thirst was strong. I remember how good water tasted when I was finally able to quench this thirst. Until I quenched it, my mind could think of little else. “Thirst for justice” is about
having that same kind of desire for a world of justice. It is a desire to see
all wrongs made right. It is easy when I feel that I have been treated unjustly; then, my thirst for justice is
immediately strong. What God desires for me is that I learn to have a powerful thirst for justice
for others as well. It starts with a thirst for the kind of justice God desires.
It starts with a thirst for God.
Psalm 42 speaks of thirsting for God like a
deer thirsts for streams of water. Like that deer, we may sometimes despair of ever finding
water for our thirst. We may think back on happier times when God was very
present, quenching our thirst for justice and our thirst for God’s presence in
our lives. We have all known times when both God and God’s justice seemed far away. Psalm
42 reminds us that we can once again put our hope in God for He is the one who
will quench our thirst – our thirst for God – and our thirst for justice.
Psalm 42 (NLT)
As the deer longs for streams of water,
    so I long for you, O God.
2 I thirst for God, the living God.
    When can I go and stand before him?
3 Day and night I have only tears for food,
    while my enemies continually taunt me, saying,
    “Where is this God of yours?”
4 My heart is breaking
    as I remember how it used to be:
I walked among the crowds of worshipers,
    leading a great procession to the house of God,
singing for joy and giving thanks
    amid the sound of a great celebration!
5 Why am I discouraged?
    Why is my heart so sad?
I will put my hope in God!
    I will praise him again—
    my Savior and 6 my God!
Now I am deeply discouraged,
    but I will remember you—
even from distant Mount Hermon, the source of the Jordan,
    from the land of Mount Mizar.
7 I hear the tumult of the raging seas
    as your waves and surging tides sweep over me.
8 But each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon
me,
    and through each night I sing his songs,
    praying to God who gives me life.
9 “O God my rock,” I cry,
    “Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I wander around in grief,
    oppressed by my enemies?”
10 Their taunts break my bones.
    They scoff, “Where is this God of yours?”
11 Why am I discouraged?
    Why is my heart so sad?
I will put my hope in God!
    I will praise him again—
    my Savior and my God!

There may actually be a ninth planet in our solar system after all. Astronomers at Caltech recently presented evidence for a large, gas-giant, planet in a 20,000 year orbit around our sun. They have been quoted as saying, "We have felt a great disturbance in the force." This only adds to the crazy nature of this announcement; but they were not referring to Luke Skywalker's famed Force, but rather the gravitational force that keeps all of the planets and dwarf planets in motion around our sun. Their research suggests that the existence of such a planet, in this large elliptical orbit, is one of the best explanations for the measured orbits of the dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt. Their argument is presented in an enlightening YouTube video and one of the scientists has been interviewed by CBC's Bob McDonald on the program "Quirks and Quarks." The mass of the planet is said to be greater than that of Earth but less than the mass of Neptune and it is perpetually "very distant" in the solar system. It has not yet been seen with a telescope; but is inferred from its interaction with the features of the Kuiper Belt.
What are the implications of such a discovery? Where should we point our telescopes to begin to look for this planet? There are certain constraints on where this planet could be, but that still leaves a large area to be scanned. The current position in its orbit will be unknown until it can be visualized. This research also invites questions related to the planet’s proximity to other planets in our solar system. What perturbations (dare I say, “disturbances in the force”) will be noted when this planet swings by after a long journey away from the other planets and dwarf planets in our solar system? Might it have noticeable effects on the physics, chemistry, and biology of Earth? Gravity is a relatively weak force but its influence acts over very large distances.
For now, I congratulate Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin and other contributing researchers for their work in this area. May they inspire many more “planet-hunters.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/9th-planet-x-1.3412070
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/distant-planet-may-lurk-far-beyond-neptune
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6poHQ2h00ZA

A few days ago I
posted a blog entitled “On the Radio” which featured the lyrics of a song
called “Radio” by Steep Canyon Rangers.
Today, as a follow-up to that blog, I give you the lyrics to the song “Mr.
Radio.” The song was written by Roderick Taylor and has been recorded by Linda
Ronstadt and Trisha Yearwood. The song remembers a time when the radio was the
main source of entertainment in many homes and communities. The song also
speaks of the very practical use of putting a radio in the chicken coop to keep
the foxes away. On the farm on which I grew up my father used to play a radio
in the milking barn. He claimed it kept the cows calm and helped them produce
more milk. He also claimed that the radio needed to be tuned to Country Music; I
of course wanted Rock ‘n Roll.

Mr. Radio 

Oh, what a sunny
day
When they carried the radio home
Bringing him in off the truck
And the dogs wouldn’t leave us alone
Mr. Radio, you come down here to keep us company  

We listen in a
room
Through the miles and miles of night
Deep in the heart of the Bible belt
In the golden radio light
Mr. Radio, you come down here to keep us company  

And it’s hard
days out in the field
The crows in the high tree top
If a man’s away from his home all day
His chickens might fall to the fox
Mr. Radio, what can you do about that?
Uh huh  

And you can take
me down to a river town
Where the citizens dance till dawn
They dance so close it’s a sin almost
The way they carry on
Mr. Radio, I never dreamed you could  

And it’s miles at the careless touch
Of a tired hand in time
When evening fell I heard a stranger sell
Dreams that were never mine 

Mr. Radio, come down here to keep us company 

Come down here to keep us company 

Songwriter: Roderick
Taylor; Published by BMG Rights Management US, LLC

Today,
I saw second Timothy chapter 3 with greater understanding. The whole chapter
speaks into the contrast between those who “love pleasure” and those
who “love God.” Those who love pleasure are said to

  •  Love only themselves and their money
  •  Be unloving and unforgiving
  • Slander others
  • Be unforgiving
  • Be cruel
  • Hate what is good 
  • Betray their friends
  • Be reckless
  • Be prideful
The
passage goes on to describe even more dangers of those who love pleasure. Yet,
even as I write and study these words I am aware of the duplicity in myself.  On the one hand, I love God and in many ways
live my life according to this orientation; and then there are the times when I
reveal my own selfishness and my own love of pleasure. I daresay we are all in
the same predicament if we claim that we love God. I struggle to “love the
Lord my God with all my heart, all my soul, all my strength, and all my mind;
and to love my neighbor as myself.” (Luke 10:27) You struggle as
well. How can we possibly “love our neighbour as we love ourselves?”
I can’t even love my neighbour as well as I love my dog! (if I had a dog).


But
the insight of the day for me is about a foundational aspect of the motivation
behind those who love pleasure. It is found in verse two: “They will
consider nothing sacred.” (2 Timothy 3:2; NLT) If we consider nothing
sacred, then we cannot love God. For all is sacred in God’s economy. Creation
is sacred, life is sacred, my dog is sacred, my neighbour is sacred, my
children are sacred, that mosquito that annoys me on a warm summer evening is
sacred, making love with my wife is sacred, the work I do in
the sciences is sacred, the work I do in philosophy is sacred, and yes, even
the work I do in theology is sacred. Those who are on a trajectory away from the
love of God consider nothing sacred. Those who are on a trajectory toward
loving God consider all things sacred. Selah.

My band, Key of Zed, just posted a new song at ReverbNation. The song is called “Earth Day” and it is dedicated to Jordyn Katherine Haeckel who was born on Earth Day (April 22) in 2014. Here are the lyrics.

Earth Day
 

Life marches ever onward
Thousands of years come and they go
Constant – motion of the tides
Beings that ebb and flow

There’s a change on this Earth Day

Life begins anew
She’s our baby
Our precious little girl

Parents and all their parents
Children arrive one-by-one
This blue-green fragile planet
This jewel of many suns

There’s a change on this Earth Day

Life begins anew
She’s our baby
Our precious little girl

Made from nothing but stardust
She shares the hopes of many
Part of a greater family
Her grace is more than any

There’s a change on this Earth Day

Life begins anew
She’s our baby
Our precious little girl
Scars and hurts upon this earth
But we will look for more
She waits for her time to come
Her own redemption song

Small and trivial from afar
She stands among all others
I will give her this earth
We will care for her Mother,



There’s a change on this Earth Day
Life begins anew
She’s our baby
Our precious little girl

What will we tell future generations about “the
radio”? My grandchildren will have a hard time understanding the extent to
which radio stations influenced my childhood and teenage years. We scooped the
radio waves out of the air with nothing more than a transistor receiver that
ran on a nine-volt battery; or with the large cabinet radio in the living room.
We could also listen to radio stations in our cars and we dreamed about the
places from which the music came. As a boy I remember using a very fine touch
to tune in 1400 CFUN all the way from Vancouver, BC. There were only certain
hours, after dark, that this would work and to a kid on a small farm in Central
Alberta, Vancouver was one of the most exotic places I could imagine. The radio
station played a lot of the band Chilliwack,
which suited me fine, and the DJs sounded more sophisticated than those in Red
Deer or Calgary. All of the radio stations in a particular area played approximately
40 songs throughout the day. The 40 songs would change from month to month but
some stuck around for a while. We learned the lyrics to all 40
so we could sing along any time that they came on. It usually took me about two
listens to memorize a song and I still have many of those lyrics locked away in
my cranium where they sometimes get in the way of more important pieces of
information.

It is hard to comprehend, and harder still
to explain, what a profound influence these songs had upon the children of the
sixties, seventies, and eighties. We would sing a single line and everyone in
the room could fill in the next words of the song. The attitudes and
consciousness expressed in the radio hits were absorbed into our psyches and we
were changed without even knowing we were being influenced. My first memories
of life, when my infant consciousness was awakening, are forever connected to
songs that I heard played on the radio. My uncle’s car radio playing “Ring of
Fire,” by Johnny Cash, is etched eternally on my mind and I can still see Uncle Ray standing there with the hood up, tinkering with the carburetor. I have been
forever influenced by the Radio.
Steep
Canyon Rangers, a bluegrass band from Asheville,
North Carolina has recorded, “Radio,”  a
song that captures the way in which the radio has influenced generations of
singers, musicians, and writers. Written by banjoist, Graham Sharp, the song is
the first single and the inspiration for the album title produced by Jerry
Douglas of Union Station.
Radio
(Listen while you read the lyrics)
I really dug your double-tape deck
Pressing dead flowers
For hours with you
Up in your bedroom
Beneath that Waterloo sunset so fine
Riding home from Sunday School
Casey Kasem told me
I’d find her one day
I believed, I believed
In every word he said
Cause I was born to the rhythm
Rocked in the bosom
Raised on the sound of the Radio
And when I want to get back
I turn it up loud and I’m ready to go
We never had to look around, look around
The sound was everywhere
And you’d call me on the phone
Saying look what I found
The skeleton key made just for you
Songs were the dark sunglasses
And the telescopes we were looking
through
And the open door that we stumbled through
And we crawled, and we ran
And we just, we just flew
Cause I was born to the rhythm
Rocked in the bosom
Raised on the sound of the Radio
And when I want to get back
I turn it up loud and I’m ready to go
On the radio (on the radio)
On the radio (on the radio)
On the radio (on the radio)
On the radio (I’m on the radio)
Cause I was born to the rhythm
Rocked in the bosom
Raised on the sound of the Radio
And when I want to get back

I get back 

Cause I was born to the rhythm
Rocked in the bosom
Raised on the sound of the Radio
And when I want to get back
I turn it up loud and I’m ready to go
On the radio
On the radio
 
As we enter the year 2016, some will consider
attending a gathering of the church as a resolution for the new year. Some may
decide to attend a church gathering more regularly. In this post I am assuming
that there are many valid forms of church gatherings. Jesus Christ, who is the
head of the universal Christian Church, is in perfect communion with the Father,
and Holy Spirit in guiding His Church. There are church fellowships suited to unique settings in the world and valid forms include (but are not
limited to) house churches, church plants in school gymnasiums, gatherings that
meet in historic liturgical buildings in city cores, clandestine church
gatherings that avoid the scrutiny of government officials, mid-sized churches,
simple churches, organic churches, small churches, mega-churches, multi-site
churches, and missional-communities. We may be prone to ask, “What is church?” It is an easy question to ask – and hard to answer! In this year of 2016 I plan to write a few
posts addressing various aspects of the answer to this question. I offer humble
research, opinions, and assessments, not definitive, or complete answers. For “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling
reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and
incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows
me completely.” (1 Corinthians 13:12 NLT)

The first topic I will address is that “the church gathering
is a place where we search for God.” Of course, we often attend church after we
have had an encounter with God; yet, there is another sense in which we continually
search for the God of the universe and for His communication to us.
Furthermore, we want to make our church gatherings a safe place to search for
God.
How do we make our gatherings a safe place to search for God? One way will be that we will stop being certain that we
have already found God in all of His mystery and magnificence. 1 Timothy 3:16 reminds
us that God has revealed Himself to us through Christ and yet there is still
great mystery in understanding this faith which we now proclaim.
Without question, this is the great mystery of our
faith:
Christ was revealed in a human body
    and vindicated by the Spirit.
He was seen by angels
    and announced to the nations.
He was believed in throughout the world
    and taken to heaven in glory
(NLT)
 And Proverbs 25:2 (NLT) says,

“It is God’s privilege to conceal things and
the king’s privilege to discover them.”
God has not totally
revealed Himself to anyone. Some, like Moses, Solomon, Paul of Tarsus, and John,
the Beloved, have been taken deeper into the mystery of Christ than any others.
Yet, even they did not receive a perfect picture of the God of creation, the
Son, or the Holy Spirit. We cannot expect to fully understand God this side
of heaven.

So, a gathering of believers that recognizes
they do not have all of the answers will be a place in which there is less
argument and more grace; less protection of the past and more protection of the
future of God’s Kingdom on earth. We will never achieve perfection
in this area but let us aim for greater unity despite our diversity of
opinions. There will be times when we will be convinced that we have the
full truth in some aspect of our theology and, it is just possible that, in
some narrow area of theology, we might be right. Still, our churches need to be
places in which a person is free to dissent from the majority opinion and seek
a greater understanding. That is the kind of church of which we would all be proud.
Resolutions or
irresolution; we hear many opinions. You may also hear many statistics telling
us that only about 7% will have kept their resolutions by the second week in
January. You don’t even want to read a blog about resolutions! Neither do I. So
instead I would like to advocate for small, feeble, steps throughout the entire
year.
“God
is waiting eagerly to respond with new strength to each little act of
self-control, small disciplines of prayer, feeble searching after him. And his
children shall be filled if they will only hunger and thirst after what he
offers.”
Those are the words of
the former Bishop of Edinburgh of the Scottish Episcopal Church, Richard
Holloway. He is a controversial theologian; but I find this to be an inspiring statement.

To these words I would
add that this means that God is waiting for every feeble step toward Jesus; for,
our trajectory is everything. Moving toward Jesus may mean small steps in the
direction of self-control, prayer, and searching. It may also mean small steps
toward helping the poor, the oppressed, the sick, the widow, the orphan, and
the spiritually lost. Small steps – that is all I can take. Small improvements to this world I have been given – by God’s grace, that is all I can hope to achieve. Yes, I will be filled. I will be filled if I hunger and thirst. I will
be filled if I hunger and thirst for these small steps toward a redeemed world.

My fellow-blogger, Phil Reinders, over at Squinch, reminded me of this gem of a poem by one of our favourite poets. Of course, poetry
is made for slow reading. So make yourself a cup of tea and dip your biscotti as
you read (well, that is what I did today). The poem is entitled, “On the mystery
of the Incarnation” and it is by Denise Levertov. Make certain you read it
several times and catch the phrasing. Read it out loud (swallow that biscotti
first). Convince yourself of the correct places for pauses. Wait for the moment
when the meaning of this poem enters your heart and then meditate upon it
throughout the day. May this mystery be good news of great joy for you this
Christmas. 
On the
mystery of the Incarnation 

It’s when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart:
not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
to no innocent form
but to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-like, God
(out of compassion for our ugly
failure to evolve) entrusts,
as guest, as brother,
the Word.
 – Denise Levertov