Weekly Newsletter, v. 25

End of the Year Party!

Click here for your invitation!

This is the last call for our party on April 9th! Sign up on Facebook or email Mike to reserve your seat at the Grad Club for dinner.

Word of the Week: Isaiah 50:4-9 (ESV)

“The Lord GOD has given me
the tongue of those who are taught,
that I may know how to sustain with a word
him who is weary.
Morning by morning he awakens;
he awakens my ear
to hear as those who are taught.
The Lord GOD has opened my ear,
and I was not rebellious;
I turned not backward.
I gave my back to those who strike,
and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard;
I hid not my face
from disgrace and spitting.

But the Lord GOD helps me;
therefore I have not been disgraced;
therefore I have set my face like a flint,
and I know that I shall not be put to shame.

He who vindicates me is near.
Who will contend with me?
Let us stand up together.
Who is my adversary?
Let him come near to me.
Behold, the Lord GOD helps me;
who will declare me guilty?
Behold, all of them will wear out like a garment;
the moth will eat them up.”

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This is the last newsletter of the academic year. We have less than a week of classes left. We have less than a week until Holy Week – that one week out of the year when we intentionally remember the love of God that was poured out for us in the selfless life, ministry, and death of Jesus. And beyond that is exams, summer, and the rest of life.

How much time have you spent this year reflecting on life? In the midst of classes, exams, papers, other clubs and activities, how much space has been left for self-reflection and pondering of life? It’s odd, really, when you stop to think about life in this world. If we look around, what seems permanent and lasting in our world is strife, war, aggression, violence, competition, anger, enmity, poverty, suffering, loneliness, and despair. It’s goodness and justice and peace that seem to get beaten every time. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Jeans wear out, fade, rip, and fray. Friends move far away. Pets die.

That’s the way the world seems to be. And yet, there are whispers of something else. There are those small, barely noticed hints of another world. Like the little lyric from U2′s new album, No Line on the Horizon, that keeps running through my mind: “We’re gonna make it all the way to the light” (From I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight).

What if that were really true – that we are going to make it, that every force or structure that keeps us from a flourishing life in Christ will fail? What if there were a subtlety and subversiveness for good loose in the universe? What if a middle-aged Jewish man being executed by the Romans 2 millennia ago really wasn’t defeat but a cloaked victory?

As you finish the year,
As you graduate
and enter the next chapter of your life,
As you journey through this world -
filled with dark valleys and exhilarating mountaintop vistas -
May the Spirit of Jesus give you
the imagination to perceive God’s mysterious ways,
the love that can only be born in us from above,
and the hope that in the end everything that stands against us will fall.

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You say you see no hope, you say you see no reason
We should dream that the world would ever change
You’re saying love is foolish to believe
‘Cause there’ll always be some crazy with an Army or a Knife
To wake you from that day dream, put the fear back in your life…

Look, if someone wrote a play just to glorify
What’s stronger than hate, would they not arrange the stage
To look as if the hero came too late as if he’s almost in defeat
So it’s looking like the Evil side will win, so on the edge
Of every seat, from the moment that the whole thing begins
It is…

Chorus:
Love who mixed the mortar
And it’s love who stacked these stones
And it’s love who made the stage here
And made if feel like we’re alone
Within this scene set in shadows
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it’s love that wrote this play…
So that in this darkness love can show the way
And where else but in this world today, to show the way.

So now the stage is set. You feel your own heart beating
In your chest. This life’s not over yet
so we get up on our feet and do our best. We play against the
Fear. We play against the reasons not to try
We’re playing for the tears burning in the happy angel’s eyes
For it’s…

chorus

Weekly Newsletter, v. 24

Stuff Happening This Week

Click here for your invitation!

• Wednesday: Graduate Christian Fellowship @ 9am. We’ll be watching a video by Rev. Dr. Tim Keller (pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City) in which he explores the different historic ways non-religious people have tried to silence or sideline religious people (and some responses that can be offered). As always, a light breakfast will be served.
• Thursday through Sunday: I will be in Grand Rapids, MI, at the Festival of Faith and Music. There will be no Connection this week. But, keep reading…
• Thursday, April 9th: End of the Year Party! Come together for a fun evening of food, recognition of graduates, and a great Grad Club Dinner. This will bring our programming for the year to an end and also give you opportunity to hear about plans for ministry next year. RSVP to Mike by Monday, April 6 to reserve your seat!

Word of the Week: John 12:20-36 (ESV)

“Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ Philip went and told Andrew; Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. And Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.

“‘Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’ Then a voice came from heaven: ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’ The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, ‘An angel has spoken to him.’ Jesus answered, ‘This voice has come for your sake, not mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die. So the crowd answered him, ‘We have heard from the Law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?’ So Jesus said to them, ‘The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.’

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“Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead and He shouldn’t have done it. He thown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can – by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness” (The Misfit in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor).

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“We human beings live by the pleasure principle. We can do no more than avoid pain, whatever its source – other people, finitude, failure, risk, truth. We are all practical hedonists to the core, asking no more of ourselves than that we have a nice day. So what can we understand, intellectually speaking, of a twisted body hanging from a cross? It is not by understanding that we are saved. As Barth says, ‘Here is a truth we cannot understand – we can only stand under this truth.’…Alas, we would strip the body off the cross, embalm it and cover it with cosmetics, render the cross in bronze, polish it, make it triumphant and clean…We can understand that” (William Willimon, “Drawing All to Himself” in the Christian Century).

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It’s interesting to me that Jesus talks about glorifying the Father and the entire purpose of his incarnation when some Greeks want to talk to him one day in the Temple. Jesus has been clear before: he came for the Jew, the people of Israel. But now Jesus opens things up and begins to explain that his imminent death, his sacrificial death, is not just for one particular group. His mission is not to serve those who stand before God in a privileged position. No, Jesus came to draw all people to himself. Jesus goes to the cross in order that God’s redemptive promises might reach to the ends of the earth and include everyone – the Jew AND the Greek. It’s sort of like Jesus keeping a nice, juicy secret from his good Jewish disciples. And then when the Greek boys come along, Jesus lets the cat out of the bag so that God’s overflowing joy might be experienced by everyone. I mean, this is love. Jesus reveals to us the depth and the extent and the radical nature of God’s love. And as Flannery O’Connor shows us, if there ain’t love like this that holds the universe together then, really, anything goes. Either God loves the entire world this much or you might as well go and do any ol’ damn thing you want to because nothing matters in the end anyway.

Weekly Newsletter, v. 23

Stuff Happening this Week

• Wednesday: Graduate Christian Fellowship @ 9am.
• Wednesday: Theology on Tap – Happy Hour @ 7pm, Talk @ 8pm in the Grad Club. The title of this final talk is `Everything in its right place: Re-reading reality with Radiohead.` This will be a reflective, Christian engagement with the music of the band Radiohead as art challenges power structures and fuels a re-reading and re-visioning of human life and its flourishing. Join us one last time this year for `Good Food. Great Beer. Excellent Conversation.‘ One additional note: If you are interested in what`s happening with Theology on Tap in the 2009-2010 year, you are invited to stick around at the conclusion of this event for a conversation about what`s in the works for next year. Specifically, we will be interested in talking with any students who would like to be a part of a student leadership team for TonT and making a commitment to a specific area of leadership. Consider joining us for this important chat!
• Thursday: The Connection @ 5.30pm. Join us for soup and fellowship with other Christians.
• ADVANCE NOTICE: Thursday, April 9th @ 6.30pm. Join us for our End of the Year Party! Food, fun, recognition of graduates. Everyone and anyone connected to our campus ministry community at Western is warmly invited to join us. All you need to do is email Mike at mwagenma (at) uwo.ca and you’re golden!

Word of the Week: John 3.14-21 (ESV)

“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

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“There are no great deeds. There are only small deeds done with great love” (Mother Theresa).

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“I became a writer, I now believe, to sort out words used and misused by the church of my youth.  Although I heard that ‘God is love,’ the image of God I got from sermons more resembled an angry, vengeful tyrant.  We sang, ‘Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight…’ but just let those red, yellow, or black children try entering our church” (Philip Yancey, Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church).

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“In the past much of the spiritual life was presented to people in the negative terms of self-denial, self-abasement and rejection of the ‘world’ and this constant negativity played its part in creating the murky world out of which sexual abuse arises…During the last millennium the Catholic Church reflected far too much of the angry god. At its worst people were ordered to perform the impossible task of loving a most unlovable god under pain of damnation. Millions of people were affected by these ideas and their lives were, to a lesser or greater degree, made sadder and poorer. Many of the worst pages in church history came out of belief in an angry god…In recent decades there has been a strong reaction against the angry god. It has been a good reaction in so far as it has rejected the false idea of a jealous god who is greatly concerned with power and majesty and quick to take offense. It has been good in rejecting the idea of life as walking through a minefield of ‘mortal sins’ that are likely to explode at any second” (Australian Roman Catholic Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus).

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To live the Christian life today is to recognize that in much of the history of Christianity, Christians have turned love into hate, welcome into exclusion, compassion into abuse. After recognizing and admitting this sad history, then from a posture of humility and lament (it’s Lent after all), we are called to live a life of love. This is not just mere moral performance – pulling ourselves up by our religious bootstraps, clenching the jaw and facing the world with a stiff upper lip and heartless good works. No, this is the call to live deeply and radically in the love of God poured out to us in Jesus Christ and then to open our full selves to the joy and pain of the world, to allow the love of God to flow through us to our ravaged yet redeemed world. Then our world has the hope of encountering a new kind of grace.

Weekly Newsletter, v. 22

Events this Week

• Wednesday: Graduate Christian Fellowship @ 9am. Mordechai Silberberg, the Jewish Chaplain at UWO, will be with us to talk about the place and practice of prayer in Jewish life and faith.

• Thursday: The Connection @ 5.30pm. We’ll be doing something a little different this week. Join us for an informal social time over pizza from 5.30-6.30pm. We’re cutting our time short this week in order to attend the evening Taize prayer retreat happening at Kings. After pizza we’ll walk over to Kings together for prayer.

• Thursday: Taize Evening Prayer Retreat @ 7pm. Join with other Christians from around campus and the southwestern Ontario community and Brother Emile from Taize for prayer, meditation, and reflection. For more information on Taize, please see their website. This is an opportunity you don’t want to miss – especially the opportunity to pray in the midst of a very busy time of the semester.

• ADVANCE NOTICE: Our final Theology on Tap event of the year will take place on Wednesday, March 25. Happy hour begins at 7pm, with the formal part of the evening beginning at 8pm. Our speaker is Fr. David Tiessen, PhD cand. at Wycliffe College, U of T. His topic is “Everything in its right place: Re-reading reality with Radiohead.” What do the music of Radiohead and 1st century Christian writings have in common? Join us as we examine how art challenges power structures and fuels a re-reading and re-visioning of human life and its flourishing. We’ll be at the Grad Club (lower level, Middlesex College).

Word of the Week: 1Corinthians 1.18-31 (ESV)

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ [is] the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

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“I have come to understand that God has asked something far greater of us, of me, not just to wear an ashy cross or a silver one or even a habit to set us apart from those who do not have a relationship with God. He has asked us to live a holy life, a life marked by love for one another, for personal sacrifice for the good of others, for his glory, not our own” (Carol Brennan King, catapult magazine).

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“The ordinary idea which we all have before we become Christians is this. We take as starting point our ordinary self with its various desires and interests. We then admit that something else – call it ‘morality’ or ‘decent behaviour,’ or ‘the good of society’ – has claims on this self: claims which interfere with its own desires. What we mean by ‘being good’ is giving in to those claims. Some of the things the ordinary self wanted to do turn out to be what we call ‘wrong’: well, we must give them up. Other things, which the self did not want to do, turn out to be what we call ‘right’: well, we shall have to do them. But we are hoping all the time that when all the demands have been met, the poor natural self will still have some chance, and some time, to get on with its own life and do what it likes. In fact, we are very like an honest man paying his taxes. He pays them all right, but he does hope that there will be enough left over for him to live on. Because we are still taking our natural self as the starting point.

“As long as we are thinking that way, one or other of two results is likely to follow. Either we give up trying to be good, or else we become very unhappy indeed. For, make no mistake: if you are really going to try to meet all the demands made on the natural self, it will not have enough left over to live on. The more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience will demand of you. And your namtural self, which is thus being starved and hampered and worried at every turn, will get angrier and angrier. In the end, you will either give up trying to be good, or else become one of those people who, as they say, ‘live for others’ but always in a discontented, grumbling way – always wondering why the others do not notice it more and always making a martyr of yourself. And once you have become that you will be a far greater pest to anyone who has to live with you than you would have been if you had remained frankly selfish.

“The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says ‘Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked – the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity).

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“When Christ calls someone, he bids them come and die” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship).

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“The Christian good news is all about God dying on a rubbish-heap at the wrong end of the Empire. It’s all about God babbling nonsense to a room full of philosophers. It’s all about the true God confronting the world of posturing, power and prestige, and over throwing it in order to set up his own kingdom, a kingdom in which the weak and the foolish find themselves just as welcome as the strong and the wise, if not more so…When this announcement is made, people change. Human hearts change. Situations change. New communities come into being, consisting of people grasped by the message, believing it’s true despite everything, falling in love with the God they find to be alive in this Jesus, giving Jesus their supreme loyalty…That is as true in the 21st century as it was in the first – however much people today, exactly in Paul’s day, defend their own power and prestige by declaring that it’s all folly” (N. T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, The Church of England).