RSS feed from the Ekklesia Project http://www.ekklesiaproject.org Sun, 11 May 2008 20:05:03 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.ekklesiaproject.org/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png http://www.ekklesiaproject.org RSS feed from the Ekklesia Project http://www.ekklesiaproject.org/content/view/315/9/ God's Grandeur The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-- Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1877) bLOGOS - Blog Entry Sun, 11 May 2008 17:55:01 +0100 http://www.ekklesiaproject.org/content/view/314/9/ Today is a beautiful spring day in central North Carolina. The summer heat and humidity that will oppress us for weeks on end is not yet upon us. Recent rains have made everything green and lush. The azaleas are past their prime but the camellias are in top form. It’s a beautiful day. It’s also the day that voters go to the polls to decide local, state, and national primary contests. Holding our primary as we do in the month of May, we’re not used to mattering much on the national scene. Party nominees are usually firmed up long before now. But you know that your state counts when the former President of the United States visits places like Louisburg, Lenoir, Elizabeth City, and my humble town of Apex. But there’s a downside to all this attention (isn’t there always?). To matter this late in the process is also to experience the worst that politics can become. Instead of appealing to our better selves, the campaigns now exploit our baser instincts: our suspicion of difference—religious differences, especially and our vague, unarticulated fear of the other. And they encourage perhaps our worst tendency as the myopic Americans we are: we look at the global situation around us (politically, economically, socially) and end up feeling most sorry for ourselves. All of this poses problems for Christians who want to be engaged in this historic election, since we believe that the Christian life is not about seeking our own security but about denying our comfort for the sake of those who suffer; that is, for the sake of Christ in the world. It’s a beautiful day here in North Carolina. But it’s not so lovely in Myanmar today, where the level of death and destruction staggers the mind. You’d hardly know this, though, from the stingy coverage by the election-obsessed media. We’re having fun in the Tar Heel state, secretly thrilled to be in the national spotlight for a day, but people in places like Sudan, Iraq, Zimbabwe, and Congo (to name just a few) are not having a very good time. bLOGOS - Blog Entry Tue, 06 May 2008 11:10:35 +0100 http://www.ekklesiaproject.org/content/view/313/9/ Ascension Sunday Acts 1:1-11; Luke 24: 44-53 Should I Stay or Should I Go? When I read the Ascension texts for today (or this upcoming Sunday if you are in a Protestant tradition that celebrates the Ascension on the following Sunday), my tendency is to immediately jump to the conclusion of Luke’s report in Acts 1 when the angels appear to ask the disciples: “Why do you stand looking up at heaven?” I hear in this question an affirmation of my own need for action—the angels are telling those disciples to get on with it already. There is work to be done witnessing, proclaiming, releasing the captives, caring for the sick, and forgiving enemies, among other things! bLOGOS - Blog Entry Thu, 01 May 2008 15:45:44 +0100 http://www.ekklesiaproject.org/content/view/312/9/ Two very public, very controversial religious leaders have addressed the nation in as many weeks and the differences between them couldn’t be more striking. Pope Benedict, during his stateside visit earlier this month, spoke the truth about American Catholicism with equal parts commendation and critique. His humility and shy grace were evident in his speeches and sermons and in his carriage and demeanor (all of which was a little disconcerting to those who remember when his public persona—fair or not—was that of the rigid, humorless Cardinal Ratzinger). Jeremiah Wright, on the other hand, has come out swinging. In a series of increasingly hostile speeches he has assumed the pose of the put-upon, the tragically misunderstood. At first he had a point: reducing thirty years of sermons to thirty seconds of incendiary sound bites was irresponsible and misleading and did serious damage to Wright himself, to Barack Obama’s presidential aspirations, and to the (multivalent) tradition of black preaching in America. But now it’s hard to see much Christ-like grace and forbearance in Wright’s public bitterness and defensiveness. The Christian’s call to absorb the abuse of others is, of course, hard to practice in a culture shaped more by the raw lust for revenge than by the desire for reconciliation. But such a call is no less necessary for being difficult. I think of Bonhoeffer’s insistence in Life Together on the “discipline of the tongue”: the skill, learned and perfected in Christian community, of knowing when to speak and when to stay silent. While the political pundits and TV talking heads will be preoccupied for awhile with the electoral implications of Wright’s recent words and actions (no silence from that crowd, alas), Christians have a unique opportunity to think deeply and talk honestly about what it means to practice the “ministry of bearing” (Bonhoeffer): to forgo the temptation toward self-preservation, and to practice instead the kind of suffering joy found only in bearing the cross of Christ. bLOGOS - Blog Entry Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:29:33 +0100 http://www.ekklesiaproject.org/content/view/311/9/ John 14:1-14 It’s become our routine. No sooner have I strapped my two year-old son, Elijah, into his car seat and started driving us on our way than my son pipes up from the back seat, “Hey mom, where are we going?” I always answer him very clearly. “We are going to the grocery store,” I say, or “We are going to the library.” To which Elijah always responds, “Hey mom, where are we going?” This kind of back and forth, repetitious toddler-talk used to frustrate me until it finally dawned on me that it was not as if Elijah hadn’t heard me or hadn’t understood me. Instead, like a child needs to do, Elijah needed to ask his question more than he needed to hear me give him an answer. I think about my two year-old son when I read Sunday’s Gospel lesson. bLOGOS - Blog Entry Sun, 20 Apr 2008 05:54:21 +0100