I’ve gotten behind on posting what I’ve been speaking in worship lately.
For Easter, I wanted to clearly present the good news of Jesus, that it is for everyone without boundaries. I also wanted to expand our understanding of the good news to include more than forgiveness, but also the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. I used Acts 10: 34-46. You can read that here, if you wish.
Back in January, I decided to continue the “Are we really going to talk about…?” series by dealing with the Atonement right after Easter. How we define what happens in restoring our relationship with God is fundamental to our belief system about God and the world, but we rarely unpack it carefully. Steve Sherwood is a part of our church, a long time Young Life worker, and a professor at George Fox University. He’s pursing a doctoral degree, and his emphasis of study is the Atonement; I knew I wanted him to share the message with me. We realized as we worked on it, that there was more than one message could address. So, on March 30, I gave the intro/overview: “What do the cross and resurrection do for us?” It was right in the middle of the worst of my illness, so I didn’t feel like I got it down as I would have liked. You might want to listen to the podcast instead; I changed the opening and several other things when I spoke; click on March 30.
When Steve and I shared the message on April 6, we did “Are we really going to talk about the Atonement?” Steve took the lion’s share of the day, and he did an amazing job. I told him that it was humbling and moving to watch someone do part of what they were created to do. He did a masterful job with the bible texts (using Hosea and the Prodigal Son to explicate the cross), and his theology and use of the Old Testament was articulate and solid. But what stands out is that he really wants people to live and breathe in a relationship with God through Jesus. I don’t have any printed material from the day, but you can listen here; click April 6. You can also see the basic gist of what he said here…Steve won a contest looking for new expressions of the Atonement.
This past Sunday, the theme was “Are we really going to talk about poverty?” I have a passion and desire to keep Christian churches from narrowing the gospel to only salvation, so this was close to the core for me.
And I’m even further behind in my blog reading – so I’m just now getting to your messages. This morning, I only read the Easter one. But that’s enough for one day – I think it may work in me for a while.
The first response I had was a connection between this good news and a workshop I’m going to try out at my Meeting next month about what Quaker Plain means to me, and exploring what it can mean for others in a postmodern world. This message reminded me to be clear that it’s not about wearing “the right clothes” or using “the right words” – God’s love is beyond these externals. One of the things that matters so much to me is that we believe in the possibility of transformation – that I don’t have to have it all together before I can even start to follow Jesus. I will have to think about how to present where that path has taken me so far – acknowledging where I was when I started, and how it’s okay that we’re all starting in different places, so our paths will necessarily look a little different, even if we’re aiming to end up in the same place.