I wrote 4 pages of notes, typing furiously, trying to keep up with the rich sentences that keeping flowing … it was a hopeless task so profound was so much of what he was saying … but judge for yourselves by reading the notes in the “read more” section.

Wright was speaking about bringing together the spiritual and social justice, looking at salvation, our task in light of that salvation, and the way God works in hew world. He was outlining the vision of the restoration of the whole creation that is clear in Ephesians.

Key quotes: “When we have a view of salvation of leaving earth and go to heaven … we are not reading the same Bible.”

“The western church is guilty of a false polarisation of the spiritual and the worldly… we need to put them back together again.”

“We must discover the vocation of being genuine human beings.”

“We have to learn to collaborate without compromise … but also we must critique without dualisms“

He was outlining a road map for what we are doing in bringing together the practical and spiritual – we need to understand why we are doing it. There was a great emphasis on the cross and resurrection (which has been lacking from what I have been saying, although of course I do see the cross and the whole incarnation as crucial to the inauguration of the Kingdom). But consistently Wright drew our attention to salvation not being an individual thing, not primarily FOR me, but to FLOW through us to the world, to bring restoration, rescue, healing, hope etc.

The notes are long … but they are worth reading … I hope they make sense!

Tags: Emerging Church, Incarnate, Incarnate Conference 2007, Kingdom, Kingdom of God, Mission, Missional Church, NT Wright

Session 2 – N T Wright

Ps 127 – unless the Lord builds the house, the labourers labour in vain; unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain…

Many things that need to be done in our society … but need make sure we don’t do it without God.

Sense of the Psalm:
When the Lord is building, you will be able to build
When the Lord is guarding, you will be able to guard.

Ecumenical thing is very important. God is doing new things, but we need to do them together.
Sense of convergence of the “spiritual” and “practical” – saving souls and social justice.

We need a framework of how it fits together … a road map of how we get into that stuff. Spirituality and social justice should be together.

Incarnate – Jesus didn’t stay at a distance. We have taught the wrong stuff about the Kingdom of God.

Something deeper amiss when the poor get poorer and the rich gets richer. Something is radically amiss with the system.

1. Salvation

Often when we read the early chapters of Romans we get a very individual take on salvation. But in Romans 8 – we get God’s restoration of the whole cosmos. That is where we should get to when we consider salvation.

If you read Ephesians, you get there much quicker …

Eph 1:10 – God’s design was to gather all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.

When we have a view of salvation of leaving earth and go to heaven … we are not reading the same Bible. The message of salvation is that it has already happened in Jesus Christ – to rescue this world from the mess we are in, and infuse with God’s presence. Gnosticism – rescue to heaven. We are just passing through.

The great enemy is death, as it the destruction of the good creation … creation was very good. Soul to heaven is a still description of death … that is not the destruction of death.

We are not made for life after death. Heaven is important, but it is not the end of the world. But the good news is that there is life after life after death. The defeat of death and the rescue of people, as God renews the earth. It is not the abandoning of this world, but the rescue. The launch has happened in Jesus.

The Kingdom is not a place where God rules, but the fact that God rules. What would be like if God is running the show? Jesus tells us … the blind see, the lepers get healed…

How do we integrate Jesus’ interaction with the poor and the end of the story? Jesus goes off and dies! So some just have the passion narrative, with a rather long introduction …
We must put the gospel story back together again …

Whatever force it is that causes war, slavery, human trafficking – they are very powerful. They will not be waved away by a bunch of people who go around doing some good …
Jesus has to go the place where the darkness is the worst … he has to go the cross…

Coming of God’s Kingdom is through the defeating the powers of darkness … what we have traditionally called sin (which is far more the little individual things we do) but that the world would healing from the grip of evil. What Jesus launched, he took to the cross … and was re-launched on Easter Day…

The whole point about Easter is that it is bodily … a new creation is launched…

The western church is guilty of a false polarisation of the spiritual and the worldly… we need to put them back together again.

Disciples thought the Kingdom was all about Israel. We have done the same about being human. We think that salvation is for me.

Salvation is not primarily FOR us, but through us. We get it, as it flows through us…
cf. Jn 8 – rivers of living waters … out of you come this living water. You are refreshed as you give.
cf Rev – the river flows from the new Jerusalem, to the nations and the healing of the nations.

Salvation is not just god’s gift TO the church, but through the church…

2. Human Task

There are times when we need to know why we are doing this. The church is the source of hope for the world. The world doesn’t want it, as it has carved up the world. They have made the church OK for spiritual things – they will look after the world.

Eph 2:10 – we are God’s workmanship or POEM. FOR good works … not about living a good, nice life (that is too privatised) but do go some good works out there in the world. God wants to build the city through you, to guard the city through you…

We are not just people who are experiencers of salvation, but the purveyors of salvation.
cf. Shipwreck in acts – salvation … salvation is in the here and now …
Gen 1 – called to be image bearers … God doesn’t just want to see His image as he looks at us. But actually we reflect God’s image into the world. We are called to guard God’s creation. Reflecting his healing love into the world. We are called to bring rescue to those in slavery.
We are rescued to rescue…

We believe in the creator and live-giver God … and wants to bring about real signs of the new creation in the present. We are to share God’s rule in the world. Not a theocracy. Rule of God over the world is found in Jesus – as a shepherd among his flock. Don’t call it rule if that word doesn’t help.

We must discover the vocation of being genuine human beings.

3. The way God’s works in the world

We must find an integrated view of working in the world.
How do we work with others? Do you just go along with everything? Or do we sit on the sidelines and carp?

Eph 3:10 – through the church, the rules and authorities will be called to account (Jesus is Lord and Caesar isn’t!).

A few principles about working in the world:

Col 1: 15, 16 God wants to bring order
Ordered wisely structure. If you don’t have order you have chaos, and if you have chaos the bullies always win.

Human rebels. God will set it right, sort it all out.
Judge = put it all right.

God will do this. But in between, God wants human authorities to put it right, to anticipate the putting right that God will do one day – to love mercy, do justice.
But real trouble comes when human authorities when they try to bring pride, or money or … to themselves.
The answer isn’t to get rid of authorities … but to call them to their job under God.
Again and again in Acts we see the rulers get it wrong, and the church calls them to apologise and put right.

The church is the proto community – what the world should and could be … the church is where this comes through…
In Jesus we see the fulfillment of the human task … and of Israel’s task, to be the light of the world.
This can only happen when on the cross Jesus took all the darkness.

Jesus is raised, the new creation has begun. Now we have a job to do, to work for that new creation…
We are called to model the flourishing of God’s new work in the world. When we go to work, where-ever we are …
We can’t hide from the world behind our “spiritual relationship with Jesus” … but we can’t hide from our relationship with Jesus by serving the poor.

We have to learn to collaborate without compromise … but also we must critique without dualisms
ie. we say where they are wrong, but we don’t right them off as all bad / evil / satanic.

Eph 6 – spiritual warfare. When we take on this role, we will get into battles … we are confronting the world with the brokenness of the structures.

Wilberforce – not separation between prayer and public life.
But something happened in 19th century a separation came between spiritual and physical … it became personal piety. At the same time the church started to narrow the gospel to a spiritual rescue to heaven.

But on to part 4 of mission and development (also see part 1, 2, and 3). We are looking for good biblical (theological) reasons why social justice or development should be seen as integral to our mission – not secondary, or a means to an end, but a central part of our mission.

We have looked at how the Kingdom is one of Shalom that Jesus comes to bring. But now we to ask ourselves the question (which one switched on person asked me a few Sundays ago): why do we not see more evidence of this Kingdom of Shalom in the world? So the paper we are reviewing continues:

The reign of God is hidden in history

We need now to reflect a little on the mystery of God at work in the world. God creates this world in shalom, and God is at work in it sustaining shalom – but everywhere is hatred, poverty, disease, pollution, and violence. Dwelling in shalom is not exactly how one would describe the experience of the people of the earth! To make sense of this is a profound matter in Christian theology that has to do with human freedom, sin and suffering; and here we can only touch briefly upon it by
reflecting upon the work of Jesus. Within the mystery of God’s work in the world, God allows Godself to be pushed off centre stage – so that the profoundest proclamation of God’s shalom is on a cross, on the dung-heap of Golgotha. Yet, we know that this was not the end; and God signalled God’s affirmation of what Jesus had witnessed to through the resurrection.

At the heart of Jesus’ work and ministry was the proclamation of the kingdom of God, or the reign of God. Where Jesus healed, freed, touched, proclaimed – where he manifested shalom, and restored life – there the reign of God was experienced; and in the victory over death on Easter Sunday morning the reign of God and the defeat of sin was signalled in the most profound victory of life over death. But we are still living in history, a time characterised by human freedom, sin and suffering. The reign of God manifest in Jesus Christ is glimpsed and experienced in many ways, but it is not yet fully established. The Bible tells us that this will only happen at the end of history, and that for now the reign of God is hidden in history – often found amongst the poor, in
weakness, suffering and powerlessness.

My Comment: Here we see the mystery of the God’s wisdom. At the very point when it seemed as though God’s purposes was defeated, was actually his greatest victory in the death of Jesus. Just now we look for signs of God’s kingdom and sometimes they are hard to find. We wait for the fullness of the Kingdom, God’s rule to fully brought about (say as described in Rev 21), but for now we look for “signs of the Kingdom”, those small indicators that God’s Kingdom is at work, rather like yeast in the dough.

We live in the midst of hope and pain, peace and conflict, brokeness and healing, good and evil, harmony and discord, live and death. Which of these do you see more of?

Tags: Development, Gospel, Kingdom, Kingdom of God, Missio Dei, Mission, Missional Church, Social Development

We have looked the nature of God activity being consistent with who He is (Part 1) and (in Part 2) how God is at work in the world to bring Shalom (“peace with justice”). Part 3 looks at role of Jesus in bringing “shalom”.

Jesus incarnates God’s work of shalom

The Scriptures tell us that this life of shalom was more often than not absent from the experience of the people of the earth – due to a falling away from God, creation and our neighbours through sin. The life created by God, too easily became sickness, suffering, oppression and death. The missio Dei involved restoring this shalom through the exodus of the slaves in Egypt, the granting of the Law at Sinai, the prophetic call for justice, and the restoration after Exile. But the workers in the vineyard did not heed these messengers. And so – as the parable has it (Luke 20.9- 16) – the owner sent his son. To understand Jesus within the sweep of what God is doing in history, and to recognise the links between the Old and New Testaments, we can simply state that as the incarnation of God, Jesus incarnates God’s work of shalom. This is what it means to call him “the way, the truth and the life”. The kingdom of God which he proclaimed and incarnated, is the kingdom in which this shalom is known and experienced.

With this in mind it is not difficult to see how the birth, ministry, proclamation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus is a profound proclamation of shalom. Christ is the peace of God, the bread of life, he who promises abundant life. The inner embrace of the Trinity finds expression in the physical embrace of Jesus. He goes to the lost and the outcasts, the marginalized and the excluded, and invites sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, children, lepers and political rebels to his table. He brings healing to the sick, food to the hungry, sight to the blind, hope to the despairing, good news to the poor, life to the dead. In a system in which religious control legitimated this exclusion, Jesus undermines the whole judicial system, causes a religious and political scandal and hastens his own demise by proclaiming the forgiveness of sins in the name of the
God of life. Jesus makes clear what other parts of scripture testify, that God has a particular concern for those who suffer in the absence of shalom, those whom we call the poor.

My Comment: I am grappling to understand “shalom” … a Hebrew word that means so much more than peace … perhaps “wellbeing” or “wholeness” might sum it up better. It seems elusive, but significant. It is about my life now, and my hope for the future. What I am beginning to see is the scope of the gospel is far wider than I have previously understood. That is what I love about these couple of paragraphs: the good news of the Kingdom is all about alleviating “sickness, suffering, oppression and death“.

Tags: Development, Gospel, Kingdom, Kingdom of God, Missio Dei, Mission, Missional Church, Social Development

So here’s part 2 of a paper that I am reproducing every Sunday over 10 weeks. For the introduction to the paper, and for part 1, see this post. Suffice to say, that we looking at integrating mission and development (or social justice) by grappling with 10 theological thesis. Don’t be put off that word (we all do theology even if we don’t think we do!) – it is really looking at how we understand who God is (we looked at that last time) and what in the world He is doing!

God’s work in the world – missio Dei – is the work of Shalom.

We believe that God is at work in the world. God did not create the world and then abandon it, but rather chooses it as the arena for God’s work. We understand that the love of God that is known within the Trinity reaches out to embrace the cosmos in creation, and particularly to draw all the living creatures of our earth into a covenant of love and justice with God and themselves. Now this work of love and embrace we understand to be God’s mission – the missio Dei – and while it is witnessed to in many part of Scripture, such as the covenant with Noah and the Law of Moses, it finds its most profound expression in the vision of shalom that is found throughout the Bible.

Shalom is often translated as ‘peace’, but this is a very thin translation. For shalom is not just the absence of hostility, but ‘peace with justice’. It means dwelling at peace in all our relationships at four levels: with God, with creation, with other people, and with ourselves. And this being at peace is not just at an external uninvolved level, for it really involves an enjoyment of one’s relationship. It means to delight in serving God, to delight in our physical surroundings, to delight in community, and to delight in what it means for oneself to be a child of God. It is clear that at the heart of shalom is the life that God has brought into being, and the desire to ensure that it is respected, nurtured and enjoyed. God’s work in the world, the missio Dei, is therefore about creating and sustaining, and restoring it when it is absent. It is an integrated and holistic mission.

My Comment: Well, I could say that I have posted about this before. I could say that I have actually said it again here. But I won’t. I will content myself, in saying “I wholeheartedly agree”. I do think we need to widen our understanding of the scope of the good news to the whole cosmos. I think God’s plan is about the restoration of the whole of creation: animals, birds, fish, weather, environment, the earth, cities, nations, and of course individual people. But we have traditionally focused on the individual and their need for ‘salvation’ and lost sight of this wider, broader, bigger focus that is found here. And I think Shalom is a good word … you could restoration maybe … I fact I have used that for a long time, but now I think Shalom more completely sums up this restoration and redemption of all creation.

I find the levels of shalom presented here really helpful. It broadens my understanding of what God is doing and what He is wanting. All are needed, not just a focus on shalom in our relationship with God. The two that are not usually taught in our churches are dwelling in shalom with creation and myself. Am I at peace with my surroundings? with the environment? with all that I have? with my job? money? weather? And am I am peace with myself? Do I like myself? Or am I disappointed with myself? Or ashamed? Or hidden?

What do you think?

Tags: Development, Emerging Church, Gospel, Micah Network, Missio Dei, Mission, Missional Church, Social Development