5 posts tagged “faith”
It’s the beginning of a new year! (well, almost!) As we begin 2009, I’d like us to have a fresh start and fresh vision of our relationship with God and our habits in worship. I’m asking that we be found dependable in the eyes of one another and of God. Think of it this way: Do you apply the same standards of faithfulness to your worship of God that you expect from other areas of your life?
Consider the following: If your car starts once every three tries, is it reliable?
If your news carrier skips delivery every Monday and Thursday, is that person trustworthy?
If you don’t go to work once or twice a month, are you a loyal employee?
If your refrigerator stops working for a day or two every now and then, do you say, “Oh well, it works most of the time?”
If your water heater provides an icy-cold shower every now and then, is it dependable?
If you miss a couple of loan payments every year, does the bank say, “Ten out of twelve isn’t bad”?
You see, we expect faithfulness and reliability from the things we own and we expect it from other people. Does not God expect the same from us? The problem is that in our religious activities we see ourselves as volunteers rather than duty bound (1 Corinthians 9). For a volunteer, almost anything seems acceptable. For a person who is duty bound, faithfulness is expected.
Reliable faith...let's make that the name of the game in 2009!
Yours for the reign of God,
Fr. Ron
What are the characteristics of a person with mature Christian faith? Based on interviews with theological scholars and denominiational executives, openended surveys of several hundred adults from six participating denominations, and reviews of the literature in psychology and religion, we posited that a person of mature faith integrates eight core dimensions of faith. They are:
- Trusts in God's saving grace and believes firmly in the humanity and divinity of Jesus.
- Experieness a sense of personal well-being, security, and peace.
- Intergrates faith and life, seeing work, family, social relationships, and political choices as part of one's religious life.
- Seeks spiritual growth through study, reflection, prayer, and discussion with others.
- Seeks to be part of a community of believers in which people give witness to their faith and support and nourish one another.
- Holds life-affirming values, inclduing commitments to racial and gender equality, affirmation of cultural and religious diversity, and a personal sense of responsibility for the welfare of others.
- Advocates social and global change to bring about greater social justice.
- Serves humainty, consistently and passionately, through acts of love and justice.
From Effective Christian Education: A National Study of Six Protestant Congregations, The Search Institute, 122 West Franklin Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55404, March 1990
The following is taken from the book The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch. It is worth consideration.
About the time when Mao Tse Tung took power and initiated the systematic purge of religion from society, the church in China, which was well established and largely modeled on Western forms due to colonization, was estimated to number about 2 million adherents. As part of this systematic persecution, Mao banished all foreign missionaries and ministers, nationalized all church property, killed all the senior leaders, either killed or imprisoned all second and third level leaders, banned all public meetings of Christians with the threat of death and torture, and then proceeded to perpetuate one of the cruelest persecutions of Christians on historical record.
The explicit aim of the Cultural Revolution was to obliterate Christianity (and all religion) from China. At the end of the reign of Mao and his system in the late seventies, and the subsequent lifting of the so-called Bamboo Curtain in the early eighties, foreign missionaries and church officials were allowed back into the country, albeit under strict supervision. They expected to find the church decimated and the disciples a weak and battered people. On the contrary, they discovered that Christianity had flourished beyond all imagination. The estimates then were about 60 million Christians in China and counting. And it has grown significantly since then. David Aikman, former Beijing bureau chief for Time Magazine suggests in his book Jesus In Beijing that Christians may number as many as 80 million. In this Chinese phenomenon we are witnessing the most significant transformational Christian movement in the history of the church. And remember, not unlike the early church, these people had very few bibles (at times they shared only one page to a house church and then swapped that page with another house group). They had no professional clergy, no official leadership structures, no central organization, no mass meetings, yet they grew like mad. How did they do it?
Most of you who read this blog know that the reason I write is to wrestle with authentic faith. Questions such as: "What does it mean to be a person faithful to God as a Christian in this day and age?" and "How is what I say that I believe and how I live it compare?" are just a few of the many questions that arise on this blog.
A most recent book entitled: The Phoenix Afffirmations:A New Vision for the Future of Chrisitanity (by Eric Elnes) sets up an interesting list of what Authentic Chrisitanity looks like. While I'm not sure that every aspect on this list is correct, I believe them to be noteworthy and perahps equally important, containing enough grit worthy of chewing on them in comparison with what you may or may not believe.
But enough with the commentary, here's what Elnes has to say on the matter:
1. Walking fully in the path of Jesus without denying the legitimacy of other paths that God may provide for humanity.
2. Listening for God’s Word, which comes through daily prayer and meditation, studying the ancient testimonies which we call Scripture, and attending to God’s present activity in the world.
3. Celebrating the God whose Spirit pervades and whose glory is reflected in all of God’s Creation, including the earth and its ecosystems, the sacred and secular, the Christian and non-Christian, the human and non human.
4. Expressing our love in worship that is sincere, vibrant and artful as it is scriptural.
5. Engaging people authentically, as Jesus did, treating all as creations made in God’s very image, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental ability, nationality or economic class.
6. Standing, as Jesus does, with the outcast and oppressed, the denigrated and afflicted, seeking peace and justice with or without the support of others.
7. Preserving religious and the church’s ability to speak prophetically to government by resisting the commingling of church and state.
8. Walking humbly with God, acknowledging our own shortcomings while honestly seeking to understand and call forth the best in others, including those who consider us their enemies.
9. Basing our lives on the faith that in Christ all things are made new and that we, and all people, are loved beyond our wildest imagination – for eternity.
10. Claiming the sacredness of both our minds and our hearts and recognizing that faith and science, doubt and belief serve the pursuit of trust.
11. Caring for our bodies and insisting on taking time to enjoy the benefits of prayer, reflection, worship and recreation in addition to work.
12. Acting on the faith that we are born with a meaning and purpose, a vocation and ministry, that serve to strengthen and extend God’s realm of love.
“Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean speak, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.” –an excerpt from “Evangeline” –Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Dear fellow sojourner in the faith,
If you haven’t caught on by now, you should know that I love poetry. I began this particular blog with a quote from Longfellow because, in my mind, he is the greatest poet of the 19th century. Posterity has not been kind to him, but nonetheless I stand by what I believe. While others such as Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman stand as preeminent American poets, Longfellow stands above them. Permit me, for a moment, to wax on a little further.
Longfellow is distinct because of his genius. His mass appeal reached both children and high brow readership and for most Americans during his lifetime, Longfellow was a superstar. Dickinson was virtually unknown in her life time, and Whitman was considered scandalous by some in his day (Dickinson felt that way about him).
Furthermore, Longfellow, according to poet Dana Gioia (author of Interrogations at Noon) was the “Walt Disney of his day,” primarily because he was a “Master of Atmosphere.” Indeed, one look at Longellow’s “Evangeline” and Gioia’s conviction is affirmed. Evangeline is not only deliciously written, and a remarkable story (culturally about the Cajuns) It also touches deeply upon human desire. The poem is about the longing of love (Evangeline is a woman who is separated from her fiancée and spends her life looking for him only to find him at the end of his life granting him a final kiss before he dies) and it is based on a true story.
Most impressive of all is that it was written in Dactylic hexameter, a meter of poetry used by Virgil and Homer (The Illiad and Odyssey) and until the coming of Longfellow (and his work Evangeline), was never successfully used in Modern English even though poets have tried.
“So what!” says you the reader.
Here’s what. I’ve told you all this not just because I love poetry, but because poetry has and continues to be an important part of our Christian history, legacy and worship. The vast majority of poetry written in English is Christian. Indeed, beginning with Caedmon in the year 658-680 through ancient, medieval, Reformation, and modern church periods we have at our disposal over thirteen centuries of poems. Some of these have been put to music and we sing them as a part of the worship at St. Clare’s where I serve. Other poems vary in their meter: from psalm, epic forms, private and personal this treasure trove waits to be opened and speaks beautifully, longingly, deeply about the struggles and joys of being a Christian. These poems were written by those who were persecuted, who struggled with and died for the faith. What a great companions they are on this journey of faith (for those who would like to read more I suggest A Sacrifice of Praise by James H. Trott). And as Anglicans who count tradition as one of our guiding and discerning principals, poetry stands at the top.
And, no matter how great Longfellow may be, his work pails in comparison to the legacy we have from our ancestors of the faith.
My reason for writing about this stems from my desire to see us build upon what we have already been given. From time to time you will read poetry on this blog. It will come from a variety of sources, however, what all the pomes will all have in common is the legacy of faith in relations with thirteen hundred centuries of poetry behind them. They will be unabashedly Christian.
All in all, I believe Longfellow would be pleased
Yours for the reign of God,
Ron
