Announced this week: They’ve invented a new pint glass that is shatter proof. This made me think, “that’s good news I suppose, but why is this worthy of p. 2 in the newspaper?” I continued reading only to learn that this glass was developed by the British government in an effort to save health care costs. HUH??
It turns out that bar fights in Britian are so common, that stab wounds caused by shattered beer glasses cause 87 000 injuries and dozens of deaths each year! It works out to an average of 240 hospital visits every night! When totalled with court and police costs they figure it costs the British Government $170 million dollars each year.
I don’t know where to start with this one! Is it possible there is an issue with unhealthy alcohol consumption that should be dealt with first? Are we to assume that now that the glasses can’t shatter the drunks involved in these altercations are going to “bear the offense more nobly” rather than find something else to stick their mates with?
Perhaps we are going after the symptom and not the problem here.
This Sunday we are talking about Mark 14: 22-31 where Jesus institutes what we call ‘The Lord’s Supper.’ or the observance of Communion. In my church tradition, we observe this symbolic feast each week.
This wasn’t just any meal that Jesus was eating when he did this but was actually the Passover meal that Orthodox Jews would eat each year. This meal is meticulously described in Deuteronomy 16: 1 - 8, Exodus 12: 1 - 20, and Leviticus 23: 4- 8.
Other traditions became part of the observance of Passover in addition to what God had prescribed in the Torah. One of those new traditions was the Four Cups of Passover. When a family gathered to eat there were four cups that would be shared by everyone at the table.
The first is called a cup of sanctification (setting apart). The word for it literally means, “I will bring out.” The second is a cup of Deliverance, freedom from slavery. The third is called a cup of salvation, or redemption (literally “I will redeem”), and the fourth is called the cup of ‘Hallel’, the Hebrew word for praise.
While sharing this meal Jesus and his disciples would drink the Cup of sanctification as they began the meal. They would share the Cup of Deliverance once the story of the Exodus had been recited to each other. In Mark 14: 24 Jesus takes the third cup, the cup of redemption and says to his disciples after they have shared it, “This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many.”
Jesus then shocks his disciples by adapting the prepared Passover script and says that He will not drink the fourth cup, the cup of praise until the day of the beginning of the new kingdom. The disciples would have been shocked. Not once in their lives would they have missed drinking each of these cups during Passover. This cup was left strangely full on the table as the disciples left to pray on the mountain. Read more »
There are 260 chapters in the whole New Testament and guess how many have to do with instructions or discussion of orderly worship practices?
Parts of two.
Why is it that there is so much ink spilled about worship and church organization when the New Testament spends so little time talking about it? A sermon I was listening to this week calls the New Testament a Missionary Handbook and we ignore that when we fuss over worship issues.
First let’s review; the gospel is: Jesus was born, lived a sinless life and died in order to satisfy the wrath of God for my sin, and to remove it once and for all. 1 John 2:2; 4:10 By absorbing the punishment for my sin Jesus has preserved God’s honour as being truly just and totally righteous. When God looks at my sin how can He just ‘let it go’ if my sin has wounded someone else? How is that just or fair to them? My selfish heart wants grace for me and my sin, and justice for everyone else.
Jesus has also entered the world and bears the shame and the pain we cast on each other. In the Peasant Princess Study we are doing, Mark Driscoll says, “Someone in your marriage is going to be crucified: either you let Jesus be crucified for the sins in your marriage or you will spend your married lives trying to crucify each other for their sins.” Read more »
If you have seen the pictures and video from Haiti over the past couple of weeks I am sure that you were overwhelmed with a sense of helplessness. While I can send money in an effort to help, I feel so overwhelmed by the scope of the disaster. A country without social services, without addresses, without adequate utilities is now devastated. More than half of the buildings in Port Au Prince are destroyed. Two million of the nine million Haitians are homeless with the specter of dysentery and malaria on the horizon.
Theories on the nature of suffering come cheap when disasters are safely distant but I want to suggest that the pressing sense of helplessness is exactly where we need to be right now. Disasters come to train us in our powerlessness and should first lead us into complete and total dependance on God as the Almighty One and then lead us into ministry in the strength that Jesus Christ provides (1 Pet 4: 11). There is a great danger in seeing ourselves as ’serving’ God (Acts 17: 25) for we do not glorify God by providing for His needs but by inviting him to provide for our needs and the needs of others. A prayer of helplessness exalts God as capable and worthy and us as needy.
When we feel useless and unfit for the task in front of us we are finally ready to be used. When we serve in our own strength we glory in it and we are tempted into the wicked thought that God is in our debt.
Make no mistake; we are called to be servants of God. In Romans 12:11 we are commanded, “Serve the Lord!” Those who do not serve Christ are rebuked. (Rom 16: 18) “Serve the Lord with gladness,” (Psalm 100: 2) but do not serve in a spirit of entitlement or with an attitude of self-importance. When we ‘help those less fortunate’ we are operating under an arrogant assumption that we have it together and they don’t: Since we are ‘more fortunate’ we will give to the ‘less fortunate’. This attitude is entirely foreign to the heart of Jesus Christ for it reinforces an ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ mentality and maintains a selfish motivation for helping.
As long as the help we offer to others is motivated primarily by the changes we may accomplish, our service cannot last long. When results do not appear, when success is absent, when we are no longer liked or praised for what we do, we lose the strength and motivation to continue. When we see nothing but sad, poor, and sick people that remain sad, poor and sick no matter what we do, we do the only reasonable thing we can do: we distance ourselves to prevent ourselves from becoming cynical or depressed. Then Haiti moves to page six, then page twelve, and then disappears altogether.
The service we provide when we embrace our weakness is a participation in the sufferings of Christ. This is why prayer is not our last resort. It should be our first response. In prayer we enter the suffering of those who suffer. We share their vulnerability and enter into their pain and then we do what God can do through us.
A month ago I wrote about my friend Matt in Texas. He is the lead pastor of The Village just outside of Dallas and he has an inoperable brain tumor. Here is an update on his situation from:
I gave Julie a Sara Groves CD for Christmas, “Fireflies and Songs” and I have totally fallen in love it. Julie and I both listen to it front to back and on more than one occasion I have found myself singing the opening line from the title track, “Thirty years ago I was a little girl…”Now that we have been listening to it for a month we are starting to engage the lyrics on the various tracks. Groves has a beautiful Folk, Bluegrass, Country sound and lyrics that will break your heart if you dare to listen too closely.
In Fireflies and Songs she sings about the human need for intimacy and there is an obvious analogy to our search for God. She compares it to a song you hear and then desperately want to lay hold of.
We’re looking for the music
in the music box
tearing it to pieces
trying to find a song
Later she compares this search to searching for a firefly,
We’re looking for a firefly
moving through the night
staring at that one place
swear it never lights
This guy Waldo is supposed to be on every page. The author assures us that it is so. But you couldn’t prove it by me. He is often hidden to the untrained eye. You have to be willing to look for him. “Surely Waldo was in this place, and I knew it not.” When you find him, there is a sense of joy and accomplishment. In fact, developing the capacity to track him down is part of the point of the book. If it were too easy-if every page consisted just of a giant picture of Waldo’s face-no one would ever buy the book. The difficulty of the task is what increases the power of discernment. Read more »
Tim Tebow, quarterback of the Florida Gators has been making headlines this year with his passionate witness for his faith. He routinely writes Bible verses on his eye black patches (he’s even promoting my blog!)
The Toronto Star featured an article today about a battle brewing on the horizon. Tim Tebow and his mother Sam will be featured in a 30 second commercial during this year’s Super Bowl; not one with bikinis or beer, horses, or hamsters being shot through a cannon. This ad is paid for by a Pro-life group in the US and supporters of the Pro-Choice movement are furious that CBS is allowing this ad to be shown during the Superbowl.
“An ad that uses sports to divide rather than to unite has no place in the biggest national sports event of the year - an event designed to bring Americans together,” Jehmu Greene, president of the Women’s Media Center, said in a statement this week. “This un-American hate doesn’t have a place in this all-American pastime,” Kierra Johnson, executive director of Choice USA, told Fox News.
Here we see the great paradox of the Postmodern Western Culture: The only thing we can’t tolerate is intolerance. You are free to have any opinion you want as long as you agree with our opinion. Greene and Johnson are suggesting that the promotion of a Pro-Life agenda is divisive and hateful. Are we to assume that a Pro-Choice agenda is unifying and loving? Sadly, neither side of this issue can claim the high ground. Both sides are wildly, bitterly partisan.
I am not in favour of this ad for a totally different reason: Is this a responsive way for the Pro-Life lobby in the US to spend $3 million dollars? On a 30 second ad? Are there other initiatives where this money would be better spent? Homes for Teen Moms? Prenatal care for Moms in crisis? Nutritional supports, job training for young women? Parenting training? Counseling for people who have previously aborted babies?
No one can argue that $3 million spent on Superbowl advertising will definitely get more eyeballs than $3 million spent just about any other way but what are you blowing this much money to say? Are you offering unconditional support to Moms in crisis or are you propositionaly engaging the nation in an effort to convince the public of the correctness of your position?
We need more love in the abortion debate and not more information.
Church and Culture, Personal, Random, Suffering | ncwalker | 
February 8, 2010 7:50 am | 
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