Christ’s Passion: An Expanded View

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Mick Turner

Easter, a time of rebirth, restoration, and regeneration, is in many ways the most significant day in the entire Christian calendar. Although our culture seems to put more energy and faith into Christmas, I tend to gravitate more toward the Easter events as being central to our faith.

Recently, I was reflecting on the progression of events that the Christian tradition focuses on during this time of year. Following the preparatory season of Lent, the churches then tend to emphasize the death, the resurrection, and the ascension of Christ. Although these events are highly significant and are integral to the entire drama of Easter, I assert there are other aspects of the passion which are often overlooked. When these vital elements of the story are omitted, we end up with an incomplete picture of what Christ accomplished as his earthly sojourn drew to a close.

Rather than the traditional three-part passion consisting of death, resurrection, and ascension, I propose the following:

Transfiguration – Gethsemane -Crucifixion -Resurrection -Post-Resurrection Appearances -Ascension - Infusion.

In addition to the three traditional aspects of the passion, in this schemata you have the Transfiguration, the agonies of Gethsemane, the Post-Resurrection Appearances, and perhaps most significantly, the Infusion. Let’s take a brief look at these events:

Transfiguration – In some mysterious fashion, Jesus’ meeting with Moses and Elijah on top of the mountain, surrounded by brilliant light, created what I think was a sort of “spiritual body” that was instrumental in the resurrection. We often focus on the valuable lesson learned by the disciples who were there and this was important to say the least. However, by focusing on this we tend to miss the major event that took place on the mountain that night.

Gethsemane – Among other things, the events in Gethsemane brought Christ into full awareness of his humanity, which was vital to his mission of cleansing and forgiveness. I am convinced that Jesus’ experience in the garden was one of intense spiritual conflict. Many people tend to gloss over or minimize what went on during that visit to Gethsemane and in so doing they miss an important aspect of Christ’s sojourn here on earth. It was there in the garden that the Master got a full taste of what human weakness was all about. Further, he faced this with total isolation as his disciples were sawing logs and the Father seemed a thousand miles away. No wonder Jesus sweated blood. Yet just as the Master had defeated the strategies and temptations of Satan in the wilderness at the beginning of his mission, here in this quiet garden setting he overcame the enemy’s more subtle weapons of fear and aloneness as his mission was nearing its conclusion.

Post-Resurrection– In these events, Christ first and foremost reassured his disciples, devastated by the execution of their Master, that he was, indeed, who he claimed to be. Also, he gave them final instructions on their mission. Several monumental events took place during these post-resurrection appearances. For example, we are all familiar with the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit “came upon” the disciples with the sound of a roaring wind and with tongues of fire. However, how many are aware that the disciples first received the Holy Spirit during the post-resurrection appearances. Read John 20:22, where  you will discover that Jesus:

…..breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

In the following verse, we also discover that Jesus imparted to the disciples the power to forgive sins. For those of us who are Gentiles living 2100 years after this impartation of authority, perhaps this verse lacks the punch it originally had. If you were a Jew, however, living at the time of Jesus such an utterance would have been shocking. The Pharisees went apoplectic when Jesus claimed the power to forgive sins; now he is giving that same authority to a group of common fisher folk, former tax collectors and God knows what else. Many other things of great importance transpired during the forty days following the resurrection of Jesus. The Master instructed Peter to “feed his sheep,” and he went on to charge the disciples with what has come to be known as the “Great Commission.”

Infusion – Completely overlooked, what I call the “Infusion” is described in Ephesians 4:10, where Paul tells us Christ rose “higher than the highest heaven so that he may fill (infuse) all things with himself.” My friends, this may well be one of the most profound statements in all of scripture.

What we can say with certainty about the infusion is that it resulted in a new and deep intimacy with Christ in a life-giving, vivified cosmic hologram. Through his final act of self-emptying love (Greek kenosis), Christ has filled the entire universe with his character, his being, and his selfless love. We also have been filled with that same character, that same being, that same love. Just as we live in Christ, Christ lives in us. Again, our comprehension of these mysteries is minimal but fortunately, we don’t have to understand it all to reap its benefits. Through faith we partake of this divine hologram, or as Peter tells us, the divine nature.

Our intimacy with Christ remains as deep and as profound as always. Cynthia Bourgeault explains:

…..our whole universe is profoundly permeated with the presence of Christ. He surrounds, fills, holds together from top to bottom this human sphere in which we dwell. The entire cosmos has become his body, so to speak, and the blood flowing through it is his love…..mystical visionaries have tended to claim that this “pan-cosmic” saturation of his being into the deepest marrow of this created world was the cosmic cornerstone turned in his passage through death. Without in any way denying or overriding the conditions of this earth plane, he has interpenetrated them fully, infused them with his own interior spaciousness, and invited us all into the invisible but profoundly coherent energetic field so that we may live as one body – the “Mystical Body of Christ,” as it’s known in Christian tradition – manifesting the Kingdom of Heaven here and now. Jesus in his ascended state is not farther removed from human beings but more intimately connected with them. He is the integral ground, the ambient wholeness within which our contingent human lives are always rooted and from which we are always receiving the help we need to keep moving ahead on the difficult walk we have to walk here. When the eye of our own heart is open and aligned with this field of perception, we recognize whom we’re walking with.

The implications of Christ’s work as recorded in Ephesians 4:10 are staggering. If what Paul is telling us is true, and I firmly believe that it is, the outworking of our response to Christ’s kenotic love in our daily lives is far reaching. To begin with, at least in my experience, it opens my mind and my heart to a level of gratitude and love that quite frankly I could never find in the time-worn “he died for my sins” theory. Secondly, viewing the entirety of Christ’s work from this cosmic perspective creates a sincere motivation to do all that I can, with the aid of the Holy Spirit, to further expand my field of spiritual vision by opening the eyes of my heart. Only in this way can I discover the complexities of Christ’s will for my life and how I fit into the unfolding of his cosmic plan of restoration and rejuvenation.

My daily walk of faith is further impacted by this way of understanding Christ’s mission in that I understand at a deeper level the significance of disciplined spiritual practice. The classical spiritual disciplines of our faith are the methods whereby we can open the eyes of our heart, discover more profoundly the ways in which Christ is continuing to carry out his mission in this universe, and align myself with this divine unfolding.

© L.D. Turner 2011/All Rights Reserved

We Are the Body of Christ

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Mick Turner

Many of us, myself included, have spent a great deal of time seeking to find God’s will for our lives. For those among us with a tendency to complicate simple things, we seek not only God’s will, but break it down into his “universal will” and his “personal will.” As interesting as these endeavors are, they often result in spiritual paralysis, which is another way of saying we wind up doing nothing.

God’s will is not a mystery. Jesus told us clearly what our marching orders are – go and make disciples. He also told us on numerous occasions to take care of the poor, the sick, those in prison, as well as any other manifestation of “the least of these.”

We are the Body of Christ here on earth and our task is to continue to incarnate the grace that he inaugurated when he came into being on this planet. His opening salvo in his mission mentioned things like repentance, the kingdom of God, bringing good news to the poor and the release of captives. These are our work orders as well. There is really no need to complicate this business of God’s will. The following quotation sums things up in a very cogent manner, so I will leave you with these words:

Christ has no body on earth but yours,

no hands but yours,

no feet but yours.

Yours are the eyes through which

Christ’s compassion for the world is to look out;

yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good;

and yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now.

(Teresa of Avila)

Christianity: Rugged Individuals Need Not Apply (Part One)

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Mick Turner

Over the course of the centuries, the Christian faith has undergone numerous changes in terms of both doctrine and practice. Largely dependent upon sociological factors associated with a particular location and culture, these changes often reflected the dominant worldview of the society in which the faith existed. The brand of Christianity commonly practiced in America is no exception to this socio-theological phenomenon.

Over the course of several centuries, Christianity in America has imbibed and digested several prominent cultural ideals and this process has had a significant impact on the faith as we know it. In fact, this process of taking on cultural baggage has resulted in the “Americanized” brand of Christianity to become the accepted norm – the status quo – against which all other manifestation of the faith are judged. This, as we shall see, is highly unfortunate because the status quo brand of American Christianity is far from the faith inaugurated by Jesus and carried forward by the apostles and the early church.

If one character trait can be described as peculiarly American, it would be “rugged individualism.” In our nation, the individual and his or her freedom, rights, and property are considered sacred. This belief in the sanctity of the individual permeates all aspects of our culture and so it is not at all surprising to see that its tentacles have reached deep into the American form of Christianity. American Christianity, for all its claims to the contrary, is largely a privatized affair. One’s “personal relationship” with God and Jesus is seen as the most fundamental aspect of the faith. Although the church gathers in community once or twice a week, what really matters is the relationship between the individual and God. We can even see this phenomenon at the very outset of a person’s walk of faith, at the time of conversion. One is considered a Christian and saved if one has accepted Jesus Christ as his or her personal savior.

Most American Christians are mortified to discover that these words are not found anywhere in scripture. In fact, the whole notion of “accepting Jesus” is also absent from the Bible, but has become a mainstay of American Christianity.

I mention all of this because it is imperative that the church return to its more original beliefs, especially those which stress community, compassion, and service to others.  The notes below are from Mike Erre’s “Death by Church.”

Jesus’ announcement of the kingdom was coded with imagery to indicate that the centuries-old exile of Israel among the nations was finally ending and that He intended to reconstitute a new community of God, formed around Himself. This means, among other things, that “what Jesus was to Israel, the church must now be for the world. Everything we discover about what Jesus did and said within the Judaism of his day must be thought through in terms of what it would look like for the church to do and be this for the world.

After setting Jesus’ mission and teachings firmly within the context of First Century Judaism, Erre goes on to draw parallels between Jesus and the church of today. As we look at these notes from Erre, it will be apparent how far away from the original teachings American Christianity has drifted.

Central to understanding this call of Jesus is the idea that it concerned itself less with the salvation of individual souls and more with the formation of a renewed Israel, a community of disciples that would collectively embody the kingdom once Jesus ascended to the Father. The kingdom of God and the community it creates are primarily public and therefore social entities. To be brought into the kingdom involves membership, citizenship, adoption into a new family, new loyalties and allegiances, and a fundamentally new identity. This is no mere “personal relationship with Jesus.” To be a citizen of the kingdom is to be given privileges and obligations that entail relationships with other people. These dimensions of kingdom life supersede individual faith, experience, and practice. Kingdom citizenship reorients our relationships to the King, to the other citizens of the kingdom of God, and to other kingdoms. That is why so much of the New Testament contains ethical teaching regarding relationships with other members of the kingdom and with those who stand outside it.

Naturally, this reorientation brought about by the kingdom perspective radically alters the nature of the church in both its mission and its teaching. No longer will the individualized religion of the status-quo rule the day. Instead, the “kingdom church” will be a collective of mutually interdependent members of Jesus’ kingdom on earth – a place where service to others holds sway over individualized religion and unity of mission trumps bruised egos and personal agendas. Erre continues:

Jesus’ announcement about the kingdom of God refers to the rule of God in our hearts and relationships. God was at hand in Jesus, living amid people and calling them to obedience. The church is the assembly of people who have welcomed God’s reign in their hearts and relationships. The church consists of citizens of the kingdom. It’s the body of Christ composed of obedient disciples following in the way of Jesus. The church isn’t a building, sanctuary, or program. It is the visible community of those who live under the authority of the King.

And this King has decreed that independence has no place in His kingdom. Instead, collective interdependence is demanded. Privacy and individual rights are supplanted by mutual submission and relational accountability. Those who yield their hearts to the King find they must yield their relationships also. The reign of God creates, orders, and sustains a collection of relationships that bind the King and His subjects together.

Given the repeated scriptural references to community and the development of one’s faith within that context, Erre expresses surprise that we Americans could have drifted so far in the opposite direction:

…….given such blatantly communal and social language in the Bible as exodus, kingdom, church, family, and household, it can be difficult to comprehend how we have managed to so thoroughly privatize New Testament faith. Pastoral ministry has now been reduced to marketing and psychotherapy – disciplines that both concentrate exclusively on the individual. The message of the gospel is treated the same way. The American gospel concerns itself solely with the inner, private world of people as they exist only in relation to God. There is usually no talk of community, tradition, or public accountability………….But this is not New Testament faith. It is not of Jesus or His apostles, nor is it the understanding of the earliest Christians. Reception of the kingdom, far from being a matter solely between the individual and God, amounts to being grafted into a new people. People believe the gospel and through it become God’s covenant people. The early church never saw itself as a collection of individuals gathering to pursue their own individual spiritual programs for growth. To view the church in these terms is to deny the very purpose for which it was called into existence: to testify to the reality of the kingdom-inaugurating agenda of Jesus Christ. By His Spirit and through His people, He is working to put everything back the way He wants it.

I truly appreciate the clarity and precision used by Erre to describe how the early church saw its primary purpose: “to testify to the reality of the kingdom-inaugurating agenda of Jesus Christ.” We contemporary Christians would do well to remember and implement this mission on a daily basis because, after all, it remains our primary task.

………to be continued

(c) L.D. Turner 2011/All Rights Reserved

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Wise Words for Today

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Being “religious” connotes belonging to and practicing a religious tradition. Being “spiritual” suggests a personal commitment to a process of inner development that engages us in our totality. Religion, of course, is one way many people are spiritual. Often, when authentic faith embodies an individual’s spirituality, the religious and the spiritual will coincide. Still, not every religious person is spiritual (although they ought to be!), and not every spiritual person is religious……..”Spirituality is a way of life that affects and includes every moment of existence. It is at once a contemplative attitude, a disposition to a life of depth, and the search for ultimate meaning, direction, and belonging. The spiritual person is committed to growth as an essential, ongoing, life goal. To be spiritual requires us to stand on our own two feet while being nurtured and supported by our tradition, if we are fortunate enough to have one.

Wayne Teasdale

(from The Mystic Heart)

Christ’s Identity: Making It Personal

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Mick Turner

In an attempt to express the complexities of the Christian path in as simple a fashion as possible, I am increasingly looking at things in a broader, yet at the same time more personal, perspective. Considering this, it seems to me that in order to fully grasp the significance of Christian spiritual formation, we have to at least begin with the following:

1. Come to understand exactly who Christ is.
2. Come to understand exactly what He accomplished in His mission on earth.
3. Once we comprehend fully the above two aspects of Christ, his identity and his work, we must then make a decision as to what our personal response to Christ will be.

This decision should be made based on our understanding of who Christ was, is, and what he accomplished. Our personal decision must not just be the standard “accept Christ as your personal savior” bit. Instead, it must be formulated deeply in relation to:

1. How much am I willing to surrender my life and will to Christ?
2. To what extent am I aware of what following Christ means in general and what it means in my personal situation in particular? Also, to what extent am I aware of what it means to be a Christian disciple within the ever-shifting and highly fluid parameters of this exciting but spiritually challenging age?
3. The above two points are directly related to Christ’s instructions that a person should “count the costs” of real discipleship. Am I ready to put my hand to the plow and not look back?
4. In addition to the personal aspects of our response to Christ, we must look at all this in terms of the corporate response to Christ. How is the Body of Christ, in all its various forms, supposed to respond to Christ’s true identity, His accomplishments, and His ongoing mission?

Approaching the faith within the parameters of these four vital questions goes a long way toward giving us a sort of “broad brush” perspective on not only what following Christ means, but specifically, what it means to each of us as individuals.

Further, I think these are questions that every believer should ask himself or herself on a fairly regular basis. I say this because at any given time, the particulars of our response may be different. At one season of life Christ may be calling you to one course of action, while at another time, he may be calling you to another. I say this not from general theory, but from personal experience. Over the course of my life Christ has called me into arenas of service involving not only the church, but also in working with the elderly, with the mentally ill, with alcoholics and drug addicts, with AIDS patients, with the homeless, and even to the mission field in Asia, where I served five years.

I encourage those who read this short article to spend some time in prayerful reflection over these four areas of concern. Ask for insight and wisdom, as well as discernment, and I feel very assured it will be forthcoming in due time.  And I especially encourage you to truly reflect on the incredible, mind-boggling reality of just who and what Jesus Christ was and is. I promise you that if this reality truly penetrates your mind and your heart, you will never, ever be the same.

© L.D. Turner 2011/All Rights Reserved

Wise Words for Today

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The gospel of the kingdom is an invitation to a different reality, a different way of living. The kingdom is a new way of relating as people. Where ordinary human life is based competitiveness and defensiveness, domination and subjugation, treachery and violence, the kingdom is based on the self-giving love of God. The kingdom grows from the seed that falls to the ground and dies – it grows to new life from the death of Christ, which is God’s love exhibited to us in its most brilliant glory…The kingdom brings liberation instead of confinement, celebration instead of despair, a crown of beauty instead of the ashes of mourning. It brings solace to the brokenhearted and the good news of hope for the poor (see Isaiah 61:1-3). The kingdom is a life of flourishing (see John 10:10), an experience of the ongoing presence of a tender, protecting Father, along with His Son and Spirit (see John 17). It means a life of love, peace, self-control, and virtue (see Galatians 5:22-23)…..In short, the kingdom is a vision worth dying for. It is a life worth fighting for – against the vision of a world of isolated, self-centered and empty selves, all vying for prominence and grasping for what they feel life owes them.

J.P. Moreland and Klaus Issler

(from The Lost Virtue of Happiness)

Lazy Minds: A Luxury We Can No Longer Afford (Part Two)

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Mick Turner

( continued from Part One)

Later on in Ephesians 4, Paul reiterates the importance of taking serious our calling to become more like Christ and he does this in words that must have been startling to his early readers. Notice that he doesn’t say that our goal is to become “at least somewhat like Christ,” or “as much like Christ as humanly possible,” or, as many of us might have it, “as much like Christ as is convenient, given my present circumstances.” No, the Great Apostle, who opened this chapter by describing himself as a “prisoner for serving the Lord,” lays the goal of Christian discipleship out in terms that ring with clarity. We are to be:

…..mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full stature of Christ. (Ephesians 4:13)

 I don’t know about you, but when I read this my mind immediately starts rattling off reasons why Paul couldn’t have possibly meant what he said. He must have been engaging in a bit of literary hyperbole, perhaps. Or maybe he just got carried away as he was writing this particular section of the letter. Or maybe there is a problem with the translation of the phrase “the complete stature.” After all, some of those Greek words are a bit nebulous in their meaning, usage and application. Yes, that must be it. It is a translation problem.

 Friends, the fact is Paul lays this out without equivocation, reservation or loopholes. He leaves no wiggle room for those who would profess to be disciples of the Master and still settle for anything less than the full stature of Christ.

 Does this mean we will be the same type of spiritual being as Christ, God’s son? No, we will not become divine, but we will have the same stature as Christ and are held to the exact same standard of thought, word, and deed. In fact, the New Living Translation states that we are to “measure up to the full and complete standard of Christ. Will we become perfect and sinless? I can’t speak for you, but I doubt that I will. Yet still, this is the standard I am to shoot for. Christ himself told us to be perfect as the Father is perfect.

 My point in all of this is simple. We began by discussing the fact that far too many of us are basically what Craig Gross and J.R. Mahon, in their book Starving Jesus, call “born-again lazy.”

 Gross and Mahon give a very poignant yet all too accurate description of many of us who wear the mantle of Christ-follower in general and “born-again” in particular. The authors describe a phenomenon they call “born-again lazy.”

 For years, Christians have created excuses to justify living like lazy followers of Christ. We come up with some pretty distorted arguments for not pursuing a higher relationship with God. One truth about being Born Again Lazy is that the world loves how it looks – it looks good.

 The world sees people who go to church living fully functioning lives, making money, having relationships, getting it done – and everyone has a big, toothy grin doing it. It does look good. What we really need to show the world is life-changing functionality. We need to mirror Christ in all our activities. This doesn’t mean we wear robes, travel with a bunch of ragtag crazies, speak differently, and live poor. It means we come clean about the sin in our lives and live out our lives in faith….James tells us to help the widows and orphans. Translation: Get up and out and help people. We have become consumed with what faith looks like instead of what it is doing. God says the religion he wants comes in the form of helping people, not playacting with flat, empty, good-looking smiles filled with selfish desire, wrapped around nothing to say or do.

 The point is that Christ expects far more from us than we tend to realize. Perhaps due to the long-standing “faith/works” debate, we have become far too complacent in our walk of Christian discipleship. Perhaps we have come to the erroneous assumption that we can continue to live as we always have lived, or conduct ourselves with the same comportment as the world around us. Worse still, perhaps many of us have adopted either of these mistaken assumptions, built our discipleship upon it, and are completely unaware that we have done so.

 Christ came to this earth on a mission of restoration. Part of his ongoing mission involves each one of us. We are his hands, his feet, his arms, and his heart in this world. Each of us has a job to do in the over-arching mission of establishing his kingdom here on earth and he has equipped us to be successful in that personal calling. It is up to us, however, to hone the skills and talents he has placed within us. Unless we develop those talents, we won’t be successful and we won’t develop those gifts unless we are serious, consecrated, and committed to becoming as Christ-like as possible, with the goal of achieving the “full stature of Christ.”

 The church faces many challenges during this time of social and cultural transition. Many have left the faith and fewer new followers are coming through the doors. One of the ways that we can help rectify this situation and bring the church into an era of Renaissance is to walk the walk, whatever the cost. It is time we became serious about being a follower of Jesus Christ and putting into action those things we claim to believe in. It is time, my friend, to step out of the confines of lukewarm faith and taste the freedom of true, consecrated, inspired discipleship.

 It is time for us to get real and get on with it.

 © L.D. Turner 2011/All Rights Reserved

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Wise Words for Today

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One of the most familiar of Jesus’ teachings is “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But we almost always hear that wrong. We hear “Love your neighbor as much as yourself.” (And of course, the next logical question then becomes, “But I have to love me first, don’t I, before I can love my neighbor?”) If you listen closely to Jesus’ teaching, however, there is no “as much as” in there. It’s just “Love your neighbor as yourself” – as a continuation of your very own being. It’s a complete seeing that your neighbor is you. There is not two individuals out there, one seeking to better herself at the price of the other, or to extend charity to the other; there are simply two cells of the one great Life. Each of them is equally precious and necessary. And as these two cells flow into one another, experiencing that one Life from the inside, they discover that “laying down one’s life for another” is not a loss of one’s self but a vast expansion of it.

Cynthia Bourgeault

(from The Wisdom Jesus)

The Church as Alternative Community

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Mick Turner

If we truly desire to see positive change in the world, not just cosmetic window dressing which does little to alleviate the causes of social ills such as crime, violence, and crippling poverty, then that positive change must first be seen in the Body of Christ. The kingdom of God is not a reality to be discussed, but instead, is a body of principles that are to be lived. Just as Star Trek’s Captain James T. Kirk and his cohorts aboard the Enterprise had a “Prime Directive,” so we, as Christ-followers, have an overriding directive from our Master. As Christians, our prime directive is to give flesh to grace.

The church is meant to be an alternative community, a place where new principles, values, and interpersonal ethics are lived out in healthy, balanced social relationships. Gandhi nailed it when he said, “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” If we are faithful to living by kingdom principles, people will take notice and naturally be drawn to the peace, justice, and grace they see being lived out in this alternative society. It was this very reality that led to the widespread success of the early church. People were drawn to the fledgling Christian communities because they lived the prime directive – they gave flesh to grace. Jim Wallis, long-time Christian activist and founder of Sojourners, speaks to this aspect of kingdom living, where the church:

…………is meant to be an alternative community living a new way of life, visibly demonstrating the values of Jesus and the kingdom of God. That necessarily will create a countercultural community living by different values than the surrounding society and providing a real evangelistic model of the healthier and more human way of life that the gospel offers.

Or, in the very succinct words of John Howard Yoder:

The church is called now what the world is called to be ultimately.

On a practical level, what this means is that the church, although intimately in contact with the surrounding culture and in fact deeply embedded within that culture, must not take on the core values of that culture. Although some within the Emerging Movement might take issue with this idea, I think that as a Christian community, we are called to a different reality. Throughout its history, when the church has been at its best and most influential, it has been a counter-cultural force – often a revolutionary alternative community. Jim Wallis describes the church’s position this way:

…….the Christian presence in the world is a perpetually revolutionary posture. This is not, however, another call to violent insurrection; it is much deeper and more “revolutionary” than that. . . . . . .The kingdom of God literally brings a great reversal to the values, assumptions, and norms of the world as we have known them. This is why Christianity in defense of the established order – “Christendom,” “Christian civilization,” “Christian nation,” “Christian empire,” and the rest – has never made sense.

With these counter-cultural realities in mind, exactly how does this play out in the context of our contemporary socio-economic and cultural values? If the church is to be a model of alternative community, what are some of the guiding kingdom principles that must be both visible and defining? Without a doubt, the Christian socio-economic ethic of justice and equality take center stage. As followers of the Master Jesus, we must model and ethic built upon the principles of fairness, equal opportunity, and yes, even more equitable distribution of wealth.

 As Christians we are to be guided by the principles of the Sermon on the Mount in general and Matthew 25:31-46 in particular. Perhaps this flies in the face of the current status quo and especially runs counter to those Christians who have become joined at the hip to one political party for years. Personally, as Christians, I firmly believe that it is detrimental to our witness to publically declare allegiance to or agreement with any political party. Instead, I believe we should do all that we can to work toward eradicating the causes of such rampant, systemic poverty in this nation while, at the same time, working toward helping people become more self-sufficient. In this sense, we are to all become maladjusted.

I love the following words by Dr. Martin Luther King. In my mind, they encapsulate in a highly cogent manner the Christian principle of being in the world, but not of the world.

But there are some things in our social system to which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I suggest that you too ought to be maladjusted. I never intend to adjust myself to the viciousness of mob-rule. I never intend to adjust myself to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic inequalities of an economic system which takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. I never intend to become adjusted to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating method of physical violence. I call upon you to be maladjusted. . . . The world is in desperate need of such maladjustment. Through such maladjustment we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.

In this present age of social and cultural transition it is especially important for people in general and the church in particular to be maladjusted. For it is only through such concerted, unified, and purposeful non-conformity that a new social reality can emerge – a rejuvenated, vital, and equitable social order, built upon principles of economic justice and true Christian love. A significantly positive sign is the emergence of a new generation of Christians that is catching fire with an enthusiasm that has not been seen for decades in the organized church. These young firebrands may well represent the spark that sets off a conflagration of renewal passion and purpose in the Christian faith, something that is currently lacking and sorely needed. Jim Wallis describes these committed believers this way:

The greatest sign of hope…..is the emergence of a new generation of Christians eager and ready to take their faith into the world. The Christianity of private piety, affluent conformity and “God Bless (only) America” has compromised the witness of the church while putting a new generation of Christians to sleep. Defining faith by the things you won’t do doesn’t create a compelling style of life. And young people are hungry for an agenda worthy of their commitment, their energy, and their gifts. . . . . . . . . . . .This new generation of believers are waking up and catching fire with the gospel again. Theirs in an emerging Christianity that could change the face of American religion and politics. Their vision cannot easily be put into categories of liberal and conservative, left and right, but rather has the capacity to challenge the categories themselves. I’ve met these new Christians across the country and have worked with an extraordinary group of them at Sojourners. Their faith is intended to change this world, not just prepare them for the next. God is again doing something new.

Although it is hard to pin down exactly what form and what direction this new and vital force within the Christian faith will take, one thing is certain: we can no longer afford to march along in lock-step with the status quo and grant blind approval to a system which systematically fattens the pockets of the privileged few while increasing numbers of hard-working, decent people are pushed below the poverty line.

 If such an economic and social ethic is the norm, and in this country that seems to be the case, then I am proud to be a maladjusted discontent. I refuse to be contented with an economic system riddled with injustice and that keeps a boot on the throat of the last, the littlest, and the least. It is not the way of compassion and it surely is not the way of Christ.

© L.D. Turner 2011/All Rights Reserved

Wise Words for Today

The greatest sign of hope…..is the emergence of a new generation of Christians eager and ready to take their faith into the world. The Christianity of private piety, affluent conformity and “God Bless (only) America” has compromised the witness of the church while putting a new generation of Christians to sleep. Defining faith by the things you won’t do doesn’t create a compelling style of life. And young people are hungry for an agenda worthy of their commitment, their energy, and their gifts. . . . . . . . . . . .This new generation of believers are waking up and catching fire with the gospel again. Theirs in an emerging Christianity that could change the face of American religion and politics. Their vision cannot easily be put into categories of liberal and conservative, left and right, but rather has the capacity to challenge the categories themselves. I’ve met these new Christians across the country and have worked with an extraordinary group of them at Sojourners. Their faith is intended to change this world, not just prepare them for the next. God is again doing something new.

Jim Wallis

(from The Great Awakening)