The Story #9: After the Flood September 25, 2009
Posted by joejames in Bible Study, Biblical Application, Biblical Interpretation, Sin, Theology.Tags: Baptism, Creation, Genesis, I Peter 3:18-22, New Creation, New Life, Resurrection, The Flood
add a comment
“The Story” is a 9 month series at the Southwest Church in Jonesboro, AR. We are reading the bible through, from beginning to end, as a church family. My series “The Story” here on this blog is nothing more than my wonderings and wanderings about that journey. Hope you will join the conversation
What do you do after the flood? After the waters have dissipated and the boat comes to rest, what do you do? After all the animals are safely ashore, and the people have stretched their sea-faring legs, where do you go?
I remember a similar feeling after my baptism, don’t you? I am clean. I am fresh. I am made new. I have a new start, a new beginning. I am a new Creation in Christ. I am now part of a new humanity. I am now part of a new reality. What was sin is now gone. What was in the past has been washed away. But what now? How do I begin again? What do I do within this new reality, this new humanity? What is my first order of business? What if I mess this thing up again?
And now we can identify with Noah. Here is a passage from I Peter 3:18-22 that helps us think through the connections between that flood and our baptism into the new humanity:
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.
Story #8: One More Reflection on Creation September 25, 2009
Posted by joejames in Bible Study, Biblical Application, Biblical Interpretation.Tags: Creation, Discipleship, Frederick Aquino, Genesis, Gnosticism, Participating in Creation, Spirituality, Theology
add a comment
“The Story” is a 9 month series at the Southwest Church in Jonesboro, AR. We are reading the bible through, from beginning to end, as a church family. My series “The Story” here on this blog is nothing more than my wonderings and wanderings about that journey. Hope you will join the conversation
Frederick Aquino (boy, is that a theologians name or what) is a theologian and Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Abilene Christian University. I was recently listening to a lecture he gave in 2007 called “Seeing Christ in Creation”.
Aquino began by talking about gnosticism. What a term. Something we really no little about. It’s like the Dead Sea Scrolls… we simply do not know much about them. But one strand of thought stands out pretty clearly to us in gnostic belief. Namely that “matter” is inherently evil. Gnostics believe that the world, the earth, the “creation”, and especially the body or “flesh” is inherently evil. This is clear in their assertions that the goal of Spirituality is to detach ourselves from what is “real” or tangible and just be “spiritual”. But such a disembodied spirituality is false. Jesus was real, and not inherently evil. The world is real, and not inherently evil.
This strange belief allowed gnostics to understand that God did not create the cosmos, because tangible “creation” was bad – and, they supposed, that God wouldn’t create something that is innately bad.
And I wonder, do we share this gnostic sentiment today? Do we think that all things tangible are bad? Do we dichotomize flesh and spirit, church and world, creation and heaven, as if they are so radically separated? They are not. In the creation narrative one thing is clear. God, out of his infinite love, created. And he chooses to participate in the goodness of such creation. Do we choose to participate with God the creator in such a tangible creation? Or do we suppose what he has created is somehow bad?
The Story #6: Creation, Communion & Caring September 25, 2009
Posted by joejames in Bible Study, Biblical Application, Biblical Interpretation, Christianity, Discipleship, Theology.Tags: Creation, Environmentalism, Genesis
add a comment
“The Story” is a 9 month series at the Southwest Church in Jonesboro, AR. We are reading the bible through, from beginning to end, as a church family. My series “The Story” here on this blog is nothing more than my wonderings and wanderings about that journey. Hope you will join the conversation
It’s worth mentioning that when God created, he did not only create mankind. He also provided careful attention to the habitation of mankind. Creation is good. It is now fallen, yet still good… and redeemable, just as you and I are redeemable.
It’s easy to draw meaningful conclusions from those early chapters in Genesis that communion with God and others was and is a vital part of God’s purposes for us. Yet it is easily overlooked that God is also concerned with our responsible care of Creation. Just as we care for one another, for nurturing relationship with the Triune God, also we give careful attention to our habitation. And this is part of God’s will.
It would be ironic for us to read that God gave us “dominion” over all living creatures and creation, and assume a role of “authority and power” over these things – as if God were saying, “Do as you please, it is all yours!” Elsewhere we recognize that none of it “belongs” to us. Rather, I think dominion is best seen as God saying “I am entrusting this to your care and responsibility” Now wouldn’t it be sad if we simply did not care for creation?
I know this issue is heavily politicized and touchy. But let those who trust the word of God say once and for all, “We don’t really care about the politics behind the issue. We just want to accept our responsibility and give careful attention to God’s good creation!”
The Story #5: Thoughts on Creation and Formation September 25, 2009
Posted by joejames in Art, Bible Study, Biblical Application, Biblical Interpretation, Discipleship.Tags: Creation, Formation, Genesis, God's Nature
add a comment
“The Story” is a 9 month series at the Southwest Church in Jonesboro, AR. We are reading the bible through, from beginning to end, as a church family. My series “The Story” here on this blog is nothing more than my wonderings and wanderings about that journey. Hope you will join the conversation
I have been intrigued for some time now about the idea of rethinking the theology of those first few chapters of Genesis. It seems we can easily get wrapped up in combative thinking – namely that we can start to think that the purpose of the Creation narrative is to disprove evolution, etc. However, I don’t think scripture allows us to slip so comfortably into these ways of reading. God seems to be totally disinterested in proving himself to anyone in these chapters. (And their is good reasons for being cautious about thinking we even CAN prove God to anyone!)
Rather, those opening texts seem to paint a picture of the nature and character of the God we worship. More specifically we see that our God is a Creator, and is thereby creative. I like to remind people that the creation narrative isn’t technically “about” the material world at all! At least that isn’t the main point! The main point is God!
And what do these introductory chapters say to us about that God? They artistically show that he is capable of creating and forming and shaping. And then re-creating and re-forming and re-shaping. I like to think of God as a “re” God. He is constantly, throughout the course of history, proved that he is more than capable to “re” do everything we undo.
And if we can still stand in amazement and wonderment at all that is in this fallen creation, is it not possible that this same God can work his “re” magic in us? Remake us? Reshape us? Reform us? He can! And he will. Because this is the nature and character of our God. The God of “re”! The Creator and Creative God.
The Story #4: The Sad Movement Away From Creation September 25, 2009
Posted by joejames in Bible Study, Biblical Application, Biblical Interpretation, Culture, Discipleship, Evil, Freedom.Tags: Creation, Genesis, Sin
add a comment
“The Story” is a 9 month series at the Southwest Church in Jonesboro, AR. We are reading the bible through, from beginning to end, as a church family. My series “The Story” here on this blog is nothing more than my wonderings and wanderings about that journey. Hope you will join the conversation
Perhaps the saddest passage in the bible is the story of Cain and Abel. It is the the first real movement that solidifies life outside God’s perfect intentions for Creation.
It’s easy to dwell on the details of what shook out in that story of the first murder (if indeed it is really the first murder). But the tragedy is much broader. The tragedy is rather typical of our own plight. The tragedy is that humanity has settled, rather comfortably, into life outside that pristine garden of love and community.
Murder happens to be the case, but is rather normalizing in this story. It comes into focus, in a ominous fashion, that this is somehow the new path of rebellion for humans. Now humans kill. For favor with God. Favor with others. Power. Control. Etc., etc., etc.
And what becomes increasingly more ominous is that we continue down the path of Cain still today. Moreover, we are rather good at killing in the name of God. And we know too much about the fear of being on the run as a marked people. Which begs the question… when will we begin to long for that original communion again? And if we are beginning to long for it now, when will we dare begin to return?
The Story #3: Creation and Community September 24, 2009
Posted by joejames in Bible Study, Biblical Application, Biblical Interpretation, Christianity, Theology.Tags: Creation, Pain, Rebellion, Sin, Suffering, The Fall
add a comment
“The Story” is a 9 month series at the Southwest Church in Jonesboro, AR. We are reading the bible through, from beginning to end, as a church family. My series “The Story” here on this blog is nothing more than my wonderings and wanderings about that journey. Hope you will join the conversation
I move fluidly between Creation and the Fall every day! It seems every time the Creator does a new thing within my life, or around my life, I invent newer ways of messing it up. And the scary, operative word here is fluid. It’s not that I wait crouching at the door, looking and scheming for ways to destroy the goodness God creates in me. It is rather that I recognize it, often deeply, yet move too freely away from it toward the “old ways of the old aeon”. Sometimes I think I have devised quite the convenient life for myself where the path between piety and sin is cleared comfortably for my easy movement.
And as I read the garden narrative it occurs to me that what Adam and Eve forsake is not morality, or righteousness, or sinlessness. Rather they forsake community. With one another, with the triune God.
As I ponder this alienation and deception that I myself am so accustomed to, I have yet another epiphany. That we fail because we forsake the indwelt community of Christ. I am not able to be moral, on my own. I am not able to love my enemy, on my own. I don’t have the courage to serve the weakest, on my own. I don’t possess the wisdom to do my acts of righteousness in secret, on my own.
But in community – more specifically the kind of community that is indwelt by the Spirit of Christ – all things are possible. And Creation is about God. The God of Community. The God who Creates. And his creatures that respond in love to him and one another. Community.
The Story #2: Psalm 33 and Creation September 24, 2009
Posted by joejames in Bible Study, Biblical Application, Biblical Interpretation, Poetry, Theology.Tags: Creation, Spiritual Formation, The Psalms
add a comment
“The Story” is a 9 month series at the Southwest Church in Jonesboro, AR. We are reading the bible through, from beginning to end, as a church family. My series “The Story” here on this blog is nothing more than my wonderings and wanderings about that journey. Hope you will join the conversation
Psalm 33
1 Sing joyfully to the LORD, you righteous;
it is fitting for the upright to praise him.
2 Praise the LORD with the harp;
make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre.
3 Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully, and shout for joy.
4 For the word of the LORD is right and true;
he is faithful in all he does.
5 The LORD loves righteousness and justice;
the earth is full of his unfailing love.
6 By the word of the LORD were the heavens made,
their starry host by the breath of his mouth.
7 He gathers the waters of the sea into jars [a] ;
he puts the deep into storehouses.
8 Let all the earth fear the LORD;
let all the people of the world revere him.
9 For he spoke, and it came to be;
he commanded, and it stood firm.
10 The LORD foils the plans of the nations;
he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.
11 But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever,
the purposes of his heart through all generations.
12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD,
the people he chose for his inheritance.
13 From heaven the LORD looks down
and sees all mankind;
14 from his dwelling place he watches
all who live on earth-
15 he who forms the hearts of all,
who considers everything they do.
16 No king is saved by the size of his army;
no warrior escapes by his great strength.
17 A horse is a vain hope for deliverance;
despite all its great strength it cannot save.
18 But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him,
on those whose hope is in his unfailing love,
19 to deliver them from death
and keep them alive in famine.
20 We wait in hope for the LORD;
he is our help and our shield.
21 In him our hearts rejoice,
for we trust in his holy name.
22 May your unfailing love rest upon us, O LORD,
even as we put our hope in you.
Here is my brief commentary on this beautiful poetry. Creation is not about a material world. Creation is about God. Creation reveals God, not matter. The material world is made to honor the God it reveals. When we make more than this of Creation, then God thwarts our plans. Too often the first chapter of Genesis has been made into a proof text to war against evolution. But in practicality, we are all evolutionists – to the extent we perpetuate the fallen plans of rebellious peoples and nations. Let us rise up, as the re-made people of God – and not just any God – the God of Creation. The one who is Creative. The one who is Creator. The one who tells us about Himself through His original world, his original story, his original people. “Let all the people of the world revere him.”
The Story #1: Creation, Sin, and Materialism September 23, 2009
Posted by joejames in Bible Study, Biblical Application, Biblical Interpretation, Christianity, Culture, Discipleship, Sin.Tags: Creation, Materialism, The Story
2 comments
“The Story” is a 9 month series at the Southwest Church in Jonesboro, AR. We are reading the bible through, from beginning to end, as a church family. My series “The Story” here on this blog is nothing more than my wonderings and wanderings about that journey. Hope you will join the conversation
As I read the first week of The Story with my church family, I was immediately struck by a theological question that I have trouble resolving. What was the sin in the garden?
Was it sexual? Was it some sort of power play? Was it violence? Was it envy or discontentment? What does the narrative represent?
Also, I tend to feel deeply painful when I read the garden narrative. It reminds me of how obliviously materialistic I am. I think we need a more simple and authentic vocation as the people of God, do we not? In what ways can we shed ourselves of the discontentment that marks our current lifestyle?
