Reflection and Renewal: The Still Small Voice Among Many Noisy Voices (based on 1 Kings 19:12)

God, in our lives there are many voices which ask for our attention.

There are voices that says, "Prove that you are a good person."  Other voices say, "You’d better be ashamed of yourself." There are also voices that say, "Nobody really cares about you," that say, "Be sure to become successful and powerful," and that say, “buying this product will make you happy and will win the approval of others.”

But underneath all these often very noisy voices is a still, small voice that says, "Rejoice, you are loved, simply because you are a part of the universe that God created and called ‘good.’”

God, that’s the voice we need most of all to hear. Sometimes we are so hurried and distracted that we forget that this voice is even speaking at all. Sometimes we resist making the effort to listen for that voice - to listen for you.

So as we pray now and going forward - gives us ears to hear the voice that calls us "loved” and to take joy in it.

Amen

Call To Worship: God, The Life-Giving Trinity (based on Ephesians 2:22)

The incarnate words that God speaks are the life and sustenance of all things. The life Jesus gives is the re-creation and renewed birth of all things. The Spirit which dwells within all of us is the inspiration for creativity, compassion, joy, and community.

May we grow in our awareness of the all-surrounding presence of our life-giving, life-restoring, and life-fulfilling God as we are gather today.

We Choose Love Over Fear - CRC Office of Social Justice

"The Bible is clear that there is no fear in love. They are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Fear has to do with punishment. Love has to do with seeing Christ in all, especially the distressed."

Love versus fear.

We are living in a time, in a world, in which fear rules our hearts. Fear that has been woven into the very fabric of our society; fear that we carry around as a heavy burden in our bodies, and in our souls.

The Bible is clear that there is no fear in love. They are at opposite ends of the spectrum.  Fear has to do with punishment. Love has to do with seeing Christ in all, especially the distressed.

Now is the time as Christ followers to choose: do we want to live in the spirit of fear, or do we want to embody the perfect love of God in this world? We cannot choose both.

-----

It can be all too easy to be swallowed up by fear.

It's acceptable, in the eyes of many, to continue putting up walls, turning back boats, not saving those in distress in the middle of the sea, imprisoning those who dared try to cross a man-made border “illegally”.

Many justify these acts by saying that they are not our brothers and our sisters, they are not our neighbors, they are not aliens living in our land…they are others.

It can be all too easy to say, “Well, many of them are Muslims…” and deny the love of Christ to those who are believers of different religions (or of no religion).

We choose love. It is not always easy. It does not always feel safe. It takes work. But we choose love.

The full article is available here

Call To Worship: Love God and Love People (based on Mark 12:30-31)

As followers of Christ, we are called to a hopeful understanding of our world; declaring that God called the created universe "good."  We are called to bring this hope in God with us wherever we go,  declaring that God makes all things new again.

Jesus taught that we should love God and love one another. So let's join together in our love of God to worship and give thanks.

Ways U.S. Churches Can Welcome Immigrants - Christian Reformed Church of North America

In the Bible, strangers are often used by God to bring blessing. Immigrants today are a blessing to our congregations, communities, families, economy, and country. They are created in the image of God.

And God expressly, and repeatedly, commands us to welcome the stranger. This resource shares ten ideas for showing hospitality and experiencing the blessings immigrants bring.

You can preview and download the resource here

It Was Not A Silent Night - Rewrite by Jeff Wiersma

It was not a silent night
there was pain, and joy, and fright
A first time mother, far from her home
Forced, far to travel, by edicts from Rome
A young woman's cries echoed out
that night in King David's town

It was not a silent night
the barn floor cold, the cattle and flies
Mary is screaming in labor and pain
sweat and fear upon her face
with blood and tears on the ground
that night in King David's town

It was not a silent night
as Joseph watched with worried eyes
Held Mary's hand as he knelt on the floor
joy at the screams of the newborn
Love incarnate came down
that night in King David's town

Love incarnate came down
that night in King David's town

White U.S. Christianity = It's Own Greatest Threat - Charles Mathewes, professor of Religious Studies

Fear moves us away from the core of Christianity — love.

When it comes to keeping us away from the core truths of our faith, I suspect this one error is key: many Evangelical and Fundamentalists Christians today seem governed by fear. (The celebrity fundamentalist Christians who have built their fortunes selling fear have discipled their adherents incredibly poorly).

Theologians as well as psychologists will tell you that there is a spiritual peril in acting out of fear and a sense of danger. Fear drives us into patterns of “reasoning” that are far from reasonable, but more akin to reactionary patterns of cause-and-effect.

And fear moves us away from the core of Christianity — love. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love,” says the first epistle of John.

The tyranny of fear in US Christian life is especially visible among white evangelicals, who stand out in their opposition to pluralism in the United States.

The full article is available here

Christian Zionism's Problematic Interpretation of Scripture - Stephen Sizer

Any suggestion that the Jewish people continue to have a special status before God is biblical anathema. The exalted Christ rules from the heavenly Jerusalem with sovereignty over the entire world. A regression to the limited form of the Old Covenant that Jesus fulfilled is not sound Christian teaching.

The Rise of Biblical Literalism vs Christian Tradition
The rise of biblical literalism in the early 18th century was central to Christian Zionism. In the 1830's, John Nelson Darby substituted the traditional Christian view of the Revelation for his own literalist hermeneutic, claiming that God had revealed it to him by special revelation.

In place of all main Christian tradition, Darby concocted a "dispensationalist" view; the belief that God was about to destroy the world and inaugurate a "whole new dispensation" on earth. This led to speculative interpretations of apocalyptic writings, especially Daniel and Revelation.

Lewis Chafer defines the literal hermeneutic upon which which dispensationalism and Christian Zionism is based in the following way: "The dispensationalist believes every statement of the Bible has only the plain, natural meaning its words imply." Additionally, dispensationalists believe prophecy must be taken literally, despite Christian tradition having interpreted the Bible's future predictions as symbolic.

Unfortunately, this absolutist commitment to literalism does not place any emphasis on the historical context of passages or the way scripture interprets scripture.

Take for example the blessings made to Abraham in Genesis 12. Though these promises were made to the patriarch personally, Christian Zionists applies to the current nation state of Israel.

Biblical Prophecy Removed From Its Covenant Context
Christian Zionists - working from a flawed literalist hermeneutic - believe prophecy is pre-written history. In doing so, they detach the words of the prophets in scripture from the covenental contexts in which they were originally given.

This speculative endeavor is at odds with the prophets themselves, who consistently stressed that it was their intention to call God's people back to the terms of their covenental relationship. Their role was not to reveal arbitrary and otherwise hidden facts about predestined future events thousands of years later.

This is the most basic hermeneutical error which Christian Zionists consistently repeat. Biblical prophecy is invariably conditional rather than fatalistic and is ALWAYS given within the context of the covenant relationship between God and his chosen people.

But Christian Zionists treat scriptures as a "frozen text." Based on highly selective texts, they erroneously focus on a restored Jewish kingdom rather than the Body of Christ, upon the contemporary State of Israel rather than the cross of Christ. Their selective hermeneutic leads to them ignore how Jesus and the Apostles reinterpreted the Old Testament.

The Christian Zionist's misguided reading of both history and contemporary events, determined by the dubious exegesis of highly selective texts, is essentially fatalistic, polarised and dualistic. It sets Israel and the Jewish people apart from and above all other people; despite what Jesus and Paul taught.

Any suggestion that the Jewish people, let alone the nation state of Israel, continue to have a special status before God is biblical anathema. The exalted Christ rules from the heavenly Jerusalem with sovereignty over the entire world. A regression to the limited form of the Abrahamic Covenant that Jesus fulfilled is not sound Christian teaching and ignores the ways that Jesus and the Apostles reinterpreted the Old Testament.

The Unfortunate Results
These problematic practices and understandings only serve to perpetuate, exacerbate, and the policies of right-wing Israelis who resist negotiating land for peace. It reinforces Israel's apartheid policies and the illegal settlement and absorption of Occupied Palestinian Territories into the State of Israel.

Mary, The Magnificat, and an Unsentimental Advent - Rachel Held Evans

The incarnation isn’t about desperately grasping at the threads of power and privilege. It’s not about making some civic holiday "bigger and better." It’s about surrendering power, setting aside privilege, and finding God in the smallness and vulnerability of a baby in a womb.

We like to paint Mary in the softer hues—her robes clean, hair combed and covered, body poised in prayerful surrender—but this young woman was a fierce one, full of strength and fury. When she accepts the dangerous charge before her, (every birth was risky in those days, this one especially so), rather than reciting a maternal blessing, Mary offers a prophecy, called the Magnificat.

With the Magnificat, Mary not only announces a birth, she announces the inauguration of a new kingdom, one that stands in stark contrast to every other kingdom—past, present, and future—that relies on violence and exploitation to achieve "greatness."

This is the stunning claim of the incarnation: God has made a home among the very people the world casts aside. And in her defiant prayer, Mary— an unwed, un-believed teenage girl in an occupied land—names this reality.

The incarnation isn’t about desperately grasping at the threads of power and privilege. It’s not about making some civic holiday "bigger and better." It’s about surrendering power, setting aside privilege, and finding God in the smallness and vulnerability of a baby in a womb.

The full article is available here

Advent: Labor Pains In The Birth Of A New World - Shane Claiborne

Compassion For The Poor - Father Greg Boyle

Update From CRC Team at COP23 Climate Change Negotiations - Stephan Lutz

“Sustainability” might be a modern term, but it’s an ancient value.

Elders have long taught youth not to take more than is needed, to live in harmony with one’s surroundings, to protect the soil from wind and water erosion, and to protect creatures so they can continue to reproduce. Before the advent of sustainability coordinators, math, and science, citizens of our world were already implementing widely effective methods to use resources without depleting those resources or causing permanent damage.

I am currently representing World Renew and the Climate Witness Project at COP23 in Bonn, Germany. It is exciting to be here. Being with thousands of people from all over the world, coming together from all walks of life to stand in solidarity about an issue that is affecting the entire world, is an awesome thing. You realize that you, as an individual, are one of many with the same passion, and that each of us are one small but crucial piece of the puzzle.

Each of us has our own unique contribution to make to the bigger picture of defending vulnerable people and preserving God’s good world. It’s a very humbling experience!

The full article is available here

The Gospel Is Good News Or It Is Nothing At All - Jacob Wright

Jesus’ gospel affirms the original goodness of humanity created in the image of God. Any “gospel” that emphasizes continually repenting of "wretchedness" and begging God for mercy is no gospel at all. 

Any “gospel” that emphasizes shame and sin-consciousness instead of a new creation and restoration is no gospel at all.

Any “gospel” that emphasizes continually repenting of "wretchedness" and begging God for mercy is no gospel at all.

Any “gospel” that oppresses people with the need to be in fear and anguish over people for the eternal destiny of their souls is no gospel at all.

Any “gospel” that says your true nature is a wretch that must only approach God with groveling and self-deprecation is not the gospel that Jesus preached.

Any “gospel” that causes one to be weighed down with spiritual gloom on top of the already weighty concerns of life that we have to deal with every day is not the gospel Jesus preached.

Jesus’ gospel lifts the weight, not adds to it. Jesus’ gospel affirms the original goodness of humanity created in the image of God. It declares the bright shining hope that Jesus is universal Lord, the One whose empathy and forgiveness and love is for all humanity; not that a devil will drag the vast majority of humans who’ve ever existed down to eternal torment and that it’s up to Christians to make sure people are “saved.”

I reject a “gospel” that adds loads of spiritual heaviness to the weight of sadness and darkness that we all will deal with as humans. Yes, Jesus' gospel does call us (corporately, not individually) out of selfish and unloving behaviors and it does excoriate the systems that dehumanize us and lead us to victimize each other.

However, the gospel is light and hope and peace and joy for all! It is good news or it is nothing at all.

Erroneous Idea of Eternal Hell Obscures Good News Of Gospel - Jacob Wright

The good news is that God has come to restore this shattered world, NOT that if we happen to come across the right beliefs then God might not torture us for eternity. 

The idea that you have to tell people the scariest most horrifying thing ever ("eternal Hell") in order to present the "good news" of a formula to be saved from it is the absurdity of all absurdities.

I've had people tell me "That's what makes the good news so good! You can't have good news without the bad news!" It’s as if these people have forgotten that the world is full of suffering, disease, fear, violence, war, heartbreak, injustice, poverty, and finally death. The state of this world is the bad news, and everyone lives it.

The good news is not that if we happen to get the right beliefs then God might not torture us forever after this short life in which we all experience suffering. The good news is that God has come to this world to make things right!

The idea that the good news actually means “avoiding some eternal afterlife horror” is nothing more than using the fear of death to propagate worse news than we ever imagined, that the world is worse than we thought!

Eternal torment infinitely eclipses any sort of good news. Eternal torment is a dark shadow overcasting the contemporary understanding and articulation of gospel, and it needs to be removed.

The truth is, the good news is that God has come to restore this shattered world and mercifully bring it to justice, eradicate suffering, and vindicate human meaning within the cosmos. It's as simple as that. The kingdom come. It's what the prophets have declared from the beginning of the world.

The Fear-Inducing, Damaging World Of The Fundamentalism I Knew - Unfundamentalist

The larger U.S. Fundamentalist Christian culture I grew up in showed nothing of an unconditionally loving God – the God that, since I have left that awful world, I have come to know and love.

Sometimes people ask me why I became an Unfundamentalist. Well, the main reason is that I know what real fundamentalism is like; because I was raised within it's bubble.

It's important to note that my parents and some of the church leaders of my youth were reliably good spiritual guides.

But the larger U.S. Fundamentalist Christian culture my non-denominational church was part of - as well as the denomination it eventually joined - was toxic, injurious, and theologically bankrupt.

This fundamentalist culture of book stores, music, magazines, movies, youth revival conferences, "family-focus" organizations, and televangelists falsely indoctrinated us to believe that we were completely worthless in the eyes of God.  We were taught that we were dirt: undeserving, untrustworthy, deserving only of punishment.

Naturally, this is how we came to view everyone else too. Logically, this leads to the hubris and judgmentalism so common to fundamentalism.

(Sadly, this completely theologically-backward understanding is what is still articulated by much of the Praise and Worship Industry).

We were taught that Satan would take every opportunity to creep in and trick us away from “the narrow path.” Questions, doubt, and sin were of the Devil, evidence of weak faith, or of no faith at all. Looking back now, it's patently obvious that this absolutism was complete bullshit, plainly contradicted by scripture. But back then, it was leveled against us as an absolute truth.

This is the patriarchal, ego-fortifying, psyche-destroying, soul-crushing, domineering, brain-washing, fear-inducing, manipulative, spiritually-abusive world of the fundamentalism I know so well.

It showed nothing of an unconditionally loving God – the God that, since I have left that awful world, I have come to know and love.

The full article is available here

"Holiness" = Be Christlike - Jacob M Wright

Jesus said that when we love our enemies, overcome evil with good, and are kind to all, then we will be perfect as our Father is perfect. That is holiness.

When we're studying scripture and we read that God says "Be holy as I am holy," it means that God wants us to be like Jesus. This is because Jesus is the best revelation of what God is like.

When we say that "God is holy" we cannot mean that God is something other than like Jesus. We cannot mean God is cruel, vindictive, and unChristlike. That is how all other humans are, not Jesus.

We cannot mean that God can't look upon sin or won't allow sin or sinners in his presence. That is how the Pharisees were, not Jesus.

When God tells us to "Be holy,” it means that God is calling us to be like Jesus. Jesus said that when we love our enemies, overcome evil with good, and are kind to all, then we will be perfect as our Father is perfect. That is holiness.


"You cannot describe God as cruel, capricious, vindictive, and then justify it by saying, 'God is holy.' No. God's holiness looks like Jesus."
- Brian Zahnd

"The holiness of God is expressed as empathetic self-giving."
- Archbishop Lazar

"Holiness is love of God and of others carried to a sublime extravagance."
- Jean Baptiste H. Lacordaire

The Mistranslation Of "Hell" In The Bible - Jacob Wright

The concept of "hell" or eternal torment in the afterlife is based on mistranslations and not based on Biblical teaching.

The word "Hell" that we have in the Bible is a mistranslation of the word "Gehenna." The word "Gehenna" appears just a few times is in the Old Testament. The concept of "hell", or eternal torment in the afterlife is literally and exactly nowhere in the Old Testament.

Gehenna is a literal place, right outside of Jerusalem, where Israel practiced gross idolatry and later became called "the Valley of Slaughter" because of its reputation of idolatry and loathsomeness. Dead bodies were thrown in Gehenna and they were eaten by worms and turned to ashes by fire.

So What Did Jesus Mean We Spoke About "Gehenna?"
The understanding of historical and geographical details provides the context of Jesus usage of "Gehenna." Jesus quotes Isaiah when talking about Gehenna when he says "where the worm doesn't die and the fire is not quenched".

He's referring back to the valley of Gehenna, directly quoting Isaiah 66:24, which says "...the dead bodies, the worms that eat them up will not die and the fire that consumes them will not be quenched."

This literally happened. Dead bodies were eaten up by unquenchable fire and worms fed on the dead bodies until they were consumed to nothing.

If you were to visit that Valley of Slaughter today,  you wouldn't see the fire still burning nor will you see immortal worms feeding on miraculously preserved dead bodies. The bodies are gone, the worms are gone, the fire is gone. The point Isaiah and Jesus were making is that the fire would not be deterred in burning up the dead bodies to nothing, the worms would not be deterred in eating up the dead bodies to nothing. And keep in mind these are mortal dead bodies in this life, not immortal conscious souls in the afterlife.

To read eternal torment into that is misguided.

"Eternal" Is Also A Mistranslation
Even "eternal fire" or "eternal punishment" is a mistranslation, as "eternal" is a mistranslation of the Greek word "aionios", which does not mean "never-ending" or anything of the sort. It means "of the age to come", or to Plato - who may have invented the word - it means something which has its source in God and the unseen realm. It has nothing to do with ongoing, never-ending time.

There is literally no verse in scripture that can prop up the pagan, non-Jewish concept of eternal torment.

Early Church Fathers Didn't Teach Eternal Torment
This is not some new, "politically correct" idea that people are making up. There is a long list of early fathers who rejected eternal torment because they understood these correct meanings of words, they didn't believe in the immortality of the soul (a pagan Greek belief), and they recognized that the scriptures either taught conditional immortality and/or final universal reconciliation.

Eternal torment was the minority belief in the early church, and among those who were less familiar with the original meanings of the text. It did not become the prominent belief until after 500 AD, with the help of the violent organized institutional church established under Constantine.

Hell is not a good translation of “Gehenna” and it never will be. Gehenna was a real place with a real history in the Jewish mind, and it must be read in that context. Once it is read in that context, the idea of eternal torment falls to pieces, as it should.

Call To Worship: God Invites Us To Connection (based on Matthew 6:33)

Good and gracious God, you invite us to come and find connection; so may our hearts be open.  Lord, as we gather now, may we seek you. As you knock, may we open the door to you. As you make yourself known to us, may we praise you.

Responsive Call To Worship: We Can Re-center Ourselves With God's Presence (based on Matthew 22:39)

Reader: God, you call us to live in ways that honor you and bless our neighbors.
All: Your goodness is our source for the love, justice, and peace
you've tasked us with pouring out into your world 

Reader: So we come once again seeking to recharge in your life-giving presence.
All: As we re-center ourselves around your perfect love, may you shape and
reshape our hearts to be more like yours.

Reader: May what we say, sing, and hear this morning open our
spirits to connect with you, God ...
All: ... and be your hands and feet to the world 
that you created and called "good."

Reflection and Renewal: We Have Value By Virtue of Existing (based on Philippians 3:4-10)

Loving God, you have called us to "take up our crosses and follow." In the agony of crucifixion, we see the lengths you were willing to go to.

Sometimes we pay lip service to "following" and we believe it in theory but we find ourselves hesitant to actually "follow" in practice because we want to be in the lead, because we want to be “winners” in our competitive culture. And sometimes in our sincere, well-intentioned effort to follow, we get  sidetracked into performance-mode, into striving to prove our value and worth.

Remind us that we don't have to seek our worth in status, prestige, achievement, or possessions. Remind us that we don't need to try to prove that we deserve your love or strive to earn it. Help us to remember that you created everything and called it "good," and therefore you see us all as inherently precious and valuable just by virtue of existing!

Thank you for being a God of infinite love; whose mercy never runs out and whose grace is bottomless. Out of our gratitude for that grace, lead us to your work of renewing and redeeming your world, to truly find our lives by losing the prideful ambition of our egos.

Amen

Interfaith Coalition: No Principled Basis For Trump's Travel Ban - Religion News

A coalition of Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and Jews say Trump's travel ban is “anathema” to their shared belief in religious tolerance.

They say the order “selectively targeted” six Muslim-majority nations cited in State Department reports on terrorism but excluded at least two Christian-majority nations — Venezuela and the Philippines — that meet the same criteria applied to the Muslim countries.

While not contending that those two countries should be included in the ban, the coalition argues that the order violates the Constitution’s establishment clause, which calls for the government to not favor one religion over another.

The full article is available here

A Prayer For The Anniversary Of 09/11 - Sojourner's

"May we never forget
that on that day
those who jumped in to help others
did not focus on nationality,
wealth, education, sexuality.
They focused on need."

The full article is available here

Call to Worship: God Welcomes Everyone (based on Galatians 3:28)

God welcomes everyone with open arms. No one stands outside of God's circle of mercy and love. And so for this endless, limitless grace, we come to give thanks.

Through the power of your spirit, God; open our eyes to see your handiwork all around us, open our minds to be receptive to your wisdom, and open our hearts to give you praise.

Fear and the Nashville Statement - Christian Reformed Church Network

We need to be welcoming and affirm God’s love for those who have been marginalized rather than capitulating to fear.

The recent "Nashville Statement" by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood purports to provide clarity about the inclusion of LGBT Christians in the church.

The authors claim to speak with grace and love, but their words ring hollow as they promote conversion therapy, complimentarianism, and patriarchy.

Going further, they even state that Christians who do not agree with their position are not true Christians.

That kind of statement seems to stem from a position of fear. It is profoundly damaging to our Christian witness, and theologically wrong in it's elevation of human sexuality to an issue of salvation.

We need to be welcoming and affirm God’s love for those who have been marginalized rather than capitulating to fear.

The full article is available here

God Didn't Command Genocide In Old Testament - Brian Zahnd in Religion News

The Bible is not the perfect revelation of God; Jesus is.

Even a casual reader of the Bible notices that between the alleged divine endorsement of genocide in the conquest of Canaan and Jesus’s call for love of enemies in his Sermon on the Mount, something has clearly changed.

What has changed is not God but the degree to which humanity has attained an understanding of the true nature of God.

The Bible is not the perfect revelation of God; Jesus is. What the Bible does is point us to Jesus, just like John the Baptist did.

The Old Testament tells the story of Israel coming to know the living God, but the story doesn’t stop until we arrive at Jesus!

It isn’t Joshua the son of Nun who gives us the full revelation of God but Yeshua of Nazareth.

It’s not the warrior-poet David who gives us the full revelation of God but the greater Son of David, Jesus Christ. We understand Joshua and David as men of their time, but we understand Jesus Christ as “the exact imprint of God’s very being.”

Once we realize that Jesus is the perfect icon of the living God, we are forever prohibited from using the Old Testament to justify the use of violence. Using Scripture as a divine license for the implementation of violence is a dangerous practice that must be abandoned by we who walk in the light of Christ.

The full article is available here