Rich Little (Revelation 1-3)

Fate Hagood (Revelation 4)

Dave Clayton (Revelation 5)

Don McLaughlin (Revelation 6-11)

Randy Harris (Revelation 12-13)

Mike Cope (Revelation 14-20)

Rick Atchley (Revelation 21-22)

“If faith always works the way it should for you, if your prayers are always answered, if you’re always living in the delight of a spiritual summer, this book may just puzzle you. But if you have battled doubt, if you have agonized over God’s apparent silence, if you’ve felt gusts of winter chilling your spiritual journey—well, this is your book. Ross writes with raw honesty about life’s disappointments but also with bold hope about God’s future. I look forward to putting it in the hands of many people who are struggling to believe among life’s disappointments.”

Here are a few questions for Josh as the book is released:

Josh, because of my own life experiences with pain and grief, I identify with images and metaphors such as limping through life, wrestling with God, and living with scars. How did you settle on “scars” as the driving image of your book?

This book began as a commitment to journal for forty days because I needed healing. I had hit a wall in my faith journey a few years ago. I wasn’t at the point I was thinking about giving up on God, but I was definitely considering going through life (and ministry) with low expectations of what God can do in the here and now. At least if I lived with low expectations, I could save myself from ever feeling like God let me down.

As I began to write, it became clear that I was both wounded and scarred. A scar is a healed wound, and I had a number of them. But I also had open wounds that weren’t even close to becoming scars yet. The original title of the book was Scarred with God, because I was given assurance as I began writing that God dips into our pain to walk along with us, and at the time, I didn’t so much need a God who could deliver me from the pit, but a God who would get down in the pit with me.

You tap into something Philip Yancey, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and Anne Lamott have taught many of us, which is suffering can be stewarded. How has this played itself out in your life?

You had this line in your book Megan’s Secrets about grief being a gift, because it’s part of the healing process. Having witnessed you grieve and hang onto faith through your own pain taught me that suffering can be redeemed. Grief is never forgotten, but it can be embedded in the story of the resurrection.

Ian Morgan Cron was gracious to write the foreword, and it’s probably the best part of the book. He wrote this, “Joshua compassionately but firmly challenges us to move beyond asking “Why am I suffering?” and live into the question “What does my pain make possible?” I like that. A lot.

When Jenny got sick, we had just made a decision to relocate into the heart of Memphis. After she died, many people thought we would back out of our decision to move into a blighted community because of grief. However, in a way that’s hard to explain, Jenny’s death gave us even more energy to engage Memphis with intentionality. It still does. One day, Jenny might just be dancing in the redeemed streets of Memphis with many of the children who have lost their lives here because of malnutrition and abuse. I want to partner with God to usher in that day.

You conclude your book with three chapters that challenge the local church to embrace scarred-stories as if our lives depended on it. Why did you feel compelled to end your book this way?

I feel like the church hasn’t followed the life of Jesus when it comes to giving voice to brokenness and pain. At times, we’ve told people to keep quiet about their grief and suffering instead of learning to tell a more redeeming story of how Jesus can enter into grief and suffering. Maybe it’s the pastor in me, but I felt like I wanted to conclude this book with a charge to the church to embrace scarred-stories, to celebrate the beauty of confession, and to live as if we really believe the resurrection is the best news for the world.

As your mentor, is it true that I will receive 15% of the proceeds of this book?

Remember, I’m Josh Ross; not Max Lucado. I’ll be glad to buy tableside guacamole next time we’re at a Mexican food restaurant. Deal?

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Michael Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Following the Lamb Into the New Creation

Richard Hays, etc., Revelation and the Politics of Apocalyptic Interpretation

Bruce Longnecker, The Lost Letters of Pergamum

Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination

Barbara Rossing, The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation

Greg Stevenson, A Slaughtered Lamb: Revelation and the Apocalyptic Response to Evil and Suffering

N. T. Wright, Revelation for Everyone (New Testament for Everyone)

Also, I can’t wait to get ahold of my former professor Rick Oster’s Seven Congregations in a Roman Crucible: A Commentary on Revelation 1-3

Please feel free to add in the comments section other books which have been helpful to you in studying Revelation.

However, it didn’t feel like spring. It was cold, dark, snowing, and breezy with a wind that cut to the raw bone.

It’s always disorienting when it is spring by definition but yet still feels like winter.

For believers, it is spring: Christ is risen! Yet for many of us, it still feels like winter. We identify with those powerful words Paul uses to describe our experience: groaning, longing, waiting, hoping. Those are not words of despair but of deep trust. They proclaim: “I believe spring has started even though it feels wintery.”

Even though it was cold, dark, and wet, I could see small signs of spring starting to peek out. And this I knew:Before long, the redbuds will brighten the earth, the irises and petunias will burst forth in stunning color.

And for us—Easter believers!—we eagerly await the day when dark losses and despairing griefs blossom into joy, joy, inexpressible joy.

So much will be happening that I’ll tell you about over the coming months. But I especially want to encourage you to prepare for a study of Revelation. Many have shied away because the book seems so, well, weird; others have kept an arm’s length because of the bizarro interpretations of the book floating around popular culture.

If you’re a minister or Bible class teacher, let me encourage you to plan to do something on Revelation in the summer or fall of 2013. Come to Malibu—tough gig that it is!—April 30-May 3, 2013, to help in your preparations.

Here are some resources I’d like to recommend if you want to get a head start:

Michael Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly
Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder
Barbara Rossing, The Rapture Exposed
N. T. Wright (of course!), Revelation for Everyone

One of my very favorite resources will come out at the lectureship: Dr. Greg Stevenson, who teaches at Rochester College, has a new book called A Slaughtered Lamb: Revelation and the Apocalyptic Response to Evil and Suffering that is amazing. He will be one of the resource scholars, along with James Walters of Boston University (and others).

Like Tiresias, the blind prophet in Greek mythology, Charlie could see things no one else could see—despite his failing eyesight. And he wasn’t afraid to help people move beyond the places where they were stuck. He helped others see ways in which their own pride, bitterness, sense of privilege, and nearsightedness were interfering with better relationships.

Two of my favorite memories about Charlie aren’t altogether pleasant. (Let’s be honest: people didn’t call him “Chainsaw Charlie” for nothing. The truth is that this was a compliment: you just don’t meet many people in life who will love you enough to tell you the truth about yourself. It’s also why so many churches brought Charlie in to help them. When all else fails, try asking someone who will tell you the truth.)

Both of the memories come from the mid-90′s, around the time of Megan’s death. Diane and I were exhausted, and in my exhaustion I lost nearly all ability to see myself. Charlie held up a much-needed mirror.

Once was after a tense elders meeting—this seems strange to say, because there was almost never a tense elders meeting the last ten years I was at Highland—when I drove him home. We sat in the car late at night. I invited him to tell me what he thought about some conflict I was in with a few people. And kindly, but very directly, he spoke words that hurt. Because they were true. He spoke them as a friend, not as a scolding elder. And then he moved on to words of affirmation and hope. I remember thinking that this was a new beginning for me as a minister.

The other time came about a year later. It was two months after our daughter’s death. I was fragile and tired, but I needed someone to tell me that that’s not an excuse for poor behavior. I got mad at Clois Fowler. Yes, Clois Fowler: one of the best men I’ve ever known in my life. My friend. Like a father to me. But in my exhaustion and immaturity, I got upset. So I went to Charlie. I guess I was going to tattle on Clois. Or perhaps I just figured another strong leader of our church would put his seal of approval on my anger.

Wanna guess how that went? Charlie told me that he could understand how weary I must be, but that I needed to pull it together. He told me that if I had a bigger fan at Highland—someone who’d cleaned up more of my messes than anyone else—than Clois, he didn’t know who it was. He said, “If you can’t make things work with Clois, I’m guessing you can’t make things work. He’s your greatest fan.” I crumpled in sorrow. Charlie prayed for me, and I went to Clois immediately to apologize. (If you know Clois, you know that he’d already forgiven me.)

Somebody in life has to love you enough to tell you the truth. And it helps when this person is a friend.

My greatest bond with Charlie was this: we were ALWAYS fans of each other’s sons. (And he and Judy loved Megan while she was alive, too.) I aways asked him about John and Ben; he always asked me about Matt and Chris.

So it’s fitting that the last time I saw Charlie was about three weeks ago: he was sitting at The Beehive eating lunch with Judy, John, and Ben. He asked about Chris’s youth ministry internship; and he told me that John came into his hospital room asking if it was Halloween because he’d just seen Matt Cope dressed up like a doctor.

His body was bearing the marks of a long battle with cancer. But there was that great joyful face of his, sitting at a good meal with his wife and sons.

Thank you, Charlie. Well done.

“Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” – Hebrews 13:2

(Richard Beck put me on notice that I have two weeks to put up this post before he does so on his blog. It’s a brief summary of material I gave at Rochester College’s Streaming Conference. The full message will be in a forthcoming book.)

The Greek word for hospitality in these (and other) passages is philoxenia. The love of a xenos, a stranger. We’re fairly familiar with that word from the English word xenophobia: the fear of a stranger.

Xenos originally referred to a foreigner—leaning toward darker adjectives like strange, distasteful, and untrustworthy. Basically, it could refer to your enemy.

But one of the hard things about learning a language is that it’s like playing whack-a-mole. Just when you think you’ve nailed down the meaning of a word, it moves.

So xenos doesn’t just mean a stranger. If you invited the stranger into your home, they are now your guest. Still a xenos. So the word is fluid: it can mean either stranger or guest, depending on context.

And it carries one of those meanings everywhere it appears in the New Testament. Except for one occurrence.

In Romans 16, Paul sends greetings to the church in Rome from some believers in Corinth. Included in that list is “Gaius, who is the xenos of me and of the whole church” (v. 23).

Gaius isn’t their stranger or their guest. He’s their host! Talk about a roving meaning: xenos could mean either guest or host!

Perhaps it’s worth noting that Greek isn’t the only language with a word that can double for guest or host. In Spanish, the word huésped carries both meanings. And actually the old Latin word hospes did as well.

I’m guessing that the word morphed originally because of social obligation: once I’ve been your guest, I’m expected to reciprocate and be your host.

But as followers of Jesus, the border between host and guest breaks down for other reasons (just as the lines get blurred between leader and servant, strong and weak, teacher and learner).

We practice hospitality because Jesus is the host. He’s the one who washes feet, who serves at the table, who gave his life for all. We have learned a way of self-giving love through him. We’ve learned to open our lives, to create space, to welcome.

But we also practice hospitality because Jesus is the guest. The word xenos appears 14 times in the NT. The biggest cluster of occurrences is in Matthew 25, where it appears four times.

Jesus (to those on his right): “I was a xenos and you invited me in.”

Those on his right (to Jesus): “When did we see you a xenos and invite you in?”

Jesus: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

Maybe Christian hospitality is strongest when the lines of host and guest are blurred. We learn to welcome others; yet we also are willing to be welcomed by them.

It’s fitting that Hospice Care comes from a word that could mean either host or guest. I’ve talked to Hospice volunteers and staff who go as servants. They go to welcome and minister with ambulatory care to those who are dying. But their response is always the same: they come away being ministered to; they learn from walking on holy ground; they find they are the ones who have been welcomed.

My religious heritage, maybe my age, certainly my pride—to say nothing of my obsessive compulsive tendencies—want a clean, strong, visible border of safety. I want to know who’s the host and who’s the guest. But to make room for my neighbor, I have to follow Jesus into places and relationships that don’t have nice, sterile, quarantined borders.

I wonder if we best obey the command to be hospitable when we aren’t completely sure whether we are the host or the guest . . . or a bit of both.