PreacherMike

A few insightful statements about faith and baptism in Paul by Michael Gorman (Reading Paul ):

“This is the essence of faith — dying to an old existence characterized by disobedience to God through complete identification with the obedience of Jesus. Paul both defines this complete identification with Jesus’ death (co-crucifixion) as faith and states that it occurs in the public expression of that faith known as baptism (Rom 6:1-11). Moreover — and this is crucially important — the act of co-crucifixion is not a matter of human effort; it is a graced response.”

“Reconciliation with God, then, is by God’s own initiative, or faithfulness, expressed in the faithfulness of Jesus, to which we respond by sharing in that faithful death in the act of saying ‘yes’ to God and expressing that ‘yes’ in baptism.”

“The person who says ‘yes’ to the gospel and is justified by co-crucifixion with Christ in the experience of faith and baptism makes a spiritual and sociological move from being outside Christ and the covenant people of God to being inside Christ and God’s people. Using what is sometimes called ‘transfer language,’ Paul can speak of ‘believing into Christ’ (the literal meaning of a key phrase in Gal 2:16) or being baptized into Christ (Rom 6:3; Gal 3:27). More vividly, he calls this being clothed with Christ (Gal 3:27), an experience that must be renewed day by day (Rom 13:14). Christ envelops the individual and the community that lives in him, beginning a long-term process of shaping both believers and churches into his image (Rom 8:29; 2 Cor 3:18), a process also of having the mind of Christ within (Phil 2:5).”

Read about it here.

If you could ask God one question, what would it be?

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We had a great board meeting for the Kibo Group this past weekend in Ft. Worth. The group was started by the fifteen of us who climbed Kilimanjaro together in 1998, and it focuses on ministries to help East Africa. Eleven of the fifteen were able to make it, plus two more were Skyped in from Searcy, and one other from Rwanda.

When you get a chance, I’d love for you to check out some of the programs that Kibo supports like: Malo Ga Kujilana, the Mvule Project, the Water Source, and the Basoga Women’s Leadership.

Here are two wonderful renditions of “Meet Me in St. Louis.”

First, Judy Garland:

And, Reese Cope:

Here’s a re-post from four years ago. The following posts in the series can be found here:
The B-I-B-L-E #2
The B-I-B-L-E #3
The B-I-B-L-E #4
The B-I-B-L-E #5
The B-I-B-L-E #6
The B-I-B-L-E #7
The B-I-B-L-E #8
And I’d now add this as The B-I-B-L-E #9

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Here is one of the most shocking discoveries of my early life: the Bible has to be interpreted.

I know that’s a no-brainer. But I grew up thinking that what set us apart from all other religious groups is that we just believed the Bible. God said it. We believed it. That settled it.

Other people had creeds. Others twisted it because they liked musical instruments or didn’t like baptism. They put their trust in commentaries–the words of mere humans. But we just read the Bible.

It helps to live an insular life if you want to hold onto that belief. Because when you begin engaging Christ-followers from other groups, you quickly realize that many of them think about the same thing.

But the Bible has to be interpreted. In a sense, that happens even in the earliest stages of translation. Those translating the Bible from Hebrew (and a bit of Aramaic) in the OT and Greek in the NT have to make choices. How do they translate a passage when it’s ambiguous? How do they express in English a word that seems to have a wide range of meanings?

Several times I’ve heard people say they’re jealous because I can read the Greek New Testament. (Hey, seven years of Greek and you’d be there, too!) They wish they could just read what the text says.

Guess what? It’s a blessing to be able to do that and it’s helpful to know what the original text said (as best we could piece it together from manuscripts–since we don’t have any original copies of the NT books), BUT . . . you still have to interpret. Reading Greek rarely makes things more obvious. Otherwise, all the Greek-readers would be unified.

We are not unique because be follow the Bible. Or because we’re nervous of creeds. Or because we like the “plain meaning of the text.”

As I’ve led discussions about the ministry of women, I’ve often heard people say, “We shouldn’t make the Bible say what we want it to say.” I agree. Absolutely. But let’s also be honest about this: none of us comes to scripture completely objective and unbiased. All of us are having to use tools of interpretation.

I don’t want to twist scripture. I want to live under its authority. But I also have to humbly admit that this is harder than I might have imagined.

This recognition demands two things from us:

First, it demands community. We need to read scripture together–with other Christians we know and with believers from other times, places, and denominations. As people seeking to follow Jesus, we need to rely on the insights of the larger community of faith.

Second, it demands humility. Before I write off other people who disagree with me, I’d better realize how very challenging this whole task of biblical interpretation has been. And it wouldn’t hurt me to remember that so many wars in the world have come because everyone has their own holy book that they believe they have the inside track on how to interpret.

I heard a powerful message by N. T. Wright in which he refuted the idea that the landing on the Hudson River a year ago was a “miracle on the Hudson.” It wasn’t so much a miracle, Wright says, but the result of a lifetime by a competent pilot. It was a landing that a novice pilot couldn’t have hoped for. In two or three minutes, he went through lots of little actions and several big decisions. When he told the people in the tower that he was landing in the Hudson, they weren’t sure what he’d said because his voice was so calm.

Shut down the engine . . . set the right speed . . . get the nose down . . . turn off the autopilot . . . seal the vents and valves . . . turn to face south with the Hudson’s flow . . . .

And Captain Sully did it without consulting a manual! (What would you look under in the manual? “F” for “flock of geese” . . . “G” for just “geese” . . . “H” for Hudson River?)

Wright said that virtue is like this. It is what happens when wise and courageous choices have become second nature. It is what results from a thousand small decisions.

So how about that as a theme for 2010: “a thousand small decisions”?

I told my class they could have the Friday after the SuperBowl off if they pick the winner. So using their iPhones/iTouches and the nifty polls devised by the ACU tech guys, here were the results:

Colts – 79
Vikings – 81
Saints – 119
Jets – 10

Just for the record (and please, before you call Vegas, remember WHAT my record on this blog is!), I have:

Colts over Jets
Vikings over Saints
Colts over Vikings

You?

This morning, I was finishing up my Keynote slides for class: teaching 300 students on Acts 1:1 – 6:7. But it didn’t have my full attention. For the news from Haiti kept coming in waves over CNN. And as I moved back and forth from the lecture I’d be giving to the news I was hearing, it struck me that I talk about compassion much more than I practice it.

Acts 2:45 – “They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.”

CNN – Hundreds . . . thousands . . . maybe tens of thousands dead . . .

Acts 4:33 – “And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy person among them.”

CNN – People buried . . . no electricity . . . sense of terror . . .

So I hurried through the text, pointing out in the beginning that Acts is about the early church doing — by the power of the Resurrected One — what Jesus had taught and practiced in Luke. Then at the end, we talked about Haiti. About its lack of safety net (no fire department to call if your baby is trapped, no 911 to call if your spouse is bleeding to death), about its extreme poverty (poorest country in the Western hemisphere), but also about its pockets of deep faith.

We threw up baskets at the doors, and the class dropped in $763 plus about $20 in change. Then four of them counted the money quickly, and took it to ACU administrators (who are always anxious for the students to be involved in urgent needs like this). I think the whole student body will be given a chance to join in this contribution.

How about you? Haiti depends on our response. As Nicholas Kristof wrote, “Today we are all Haitians.”

Perhaps your church has some connections there. If not, I have a lot of confidence in the good people at Manna Global Ministries. They have people who’ve lived in Haiti, who are fluent in Creole, who know the culture, who will be there tomorrow. Keep an eye on their website for specific ways to help.