Soul Cravings
One strength of Urban Bridge church is in challenging assumptions, We accept little at face value but lets begin 2012 by putting our doubts and skepticism in perspective.
Soul Cravings
The soul craves experiences that offer it the rich depths of God. Silence, solitude, holy leisure, simplicity, prayer, journaling, the Eucharist, rituals that touch the space of Mystery, symbols and images, the Bible, laughter, delight in the divine Presence, deep encounters with creation, and the merciful coming together of human hearts. All these feed the soul, producing energy for living the transformed life.
Sue Monk Kidd
Acts chapter 10
In Caesarea there lived a Roman army officer named Cornelius, who was a captain of the Italian Regiment He was a devout man who feared the God of Israel, as did his entire household. He gave generously to charity and was a man who regularly prayed to God.
One afternoon about three o’clock, he had a vision in which he saw an angel of God coming toward him. “Cornelius!” the angel said. Cornelius stared at him in terror. “What is it, sir?” he asked the angel. And the angel replied, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have not gone unnoticed by God! Now send some men down to Joppa to find a man named Simon Peter. He is staying with Simon, a leatherworker who lives near the shore. Ask him to come and visit you.” As soon as the angel was gone, Cornelius called two of his household servants and a devout soldier, one of his personal attendants. He told them what had happened and sent them off to Joppa.
The next day as Cornelius’s messengers were nearing the city, Peter went up to the flat roof to pray. It was about noon, and he was hungry. But while lunch was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw the sky open, and something like a large sheet was let down by its four corners. In the sheet were all sorts of animals, reptiles, and birds. Then a voice said to him, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat them.” “Never, Lord,” Peter declared. “I have never in all my life eaten anything forbidden by our Jewish laws.” The voice spoke again, “If God says something is acceptable, don’t say it isn’t.” The same vision was repeated three times. Then the sheet was pulled up again to heaven. Peter was very perplexed. What could the vision mean? Just then the men sent by Cornelius found the house and stood outside at the gate. They asked if this was the place where Simon Peter was staying.
Meanwhile, as Peter was puzzling over the vision, the Holy Spirit said to him, “Three men have come looking for you. Go down and go with them without hesitation. All is well, for I have sent them.” So Peter went down and said, “I’m the man you are looking for. Why have you come?”
They said, “We were sent by Cornelius, a Roman officer. He is a devout man who fears the God of Israel and is well respected by all the Jews. A holy angel instructed him to send for you so you can go to his house and give him a message.” They arrived in Caesarea the following day. Cornelius was waiting for him and had called together his relatives and close friends to meet Peter. Peter told them, “You know it is against the Jewish laws for me to come into a Gentile home like this. But God has shown me that I should never think of anyone as impure. So I came as soon as I was sent for. Now tell me why you sent for me.” Cornelius replied, “Four days ago I was praying in my house at three o’clock in the afternoon. Suddenly, a man in dazzling clothes was standing in front of me. He told me, ‘Cornelius, your prayers have been heard, and your gifts to the poor have been noticed by God! Now send some men to Joppa and summon Simon Peter. He is staying in the home of Simon, a leatherworker who lives near the shore.’ So I sent for you at once, and it was good of you to come. Now here we are, waiting before God to hear the message the Lord has given you.”
Peter then explained Christ’s coming to earth, his death, resurrection and the resulting hope and new creation for those who believed.
Even as Peter was saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who had heard the message. The Jewish believers who came with Peter were amazed that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out upon the Gentiles, too. And there could be no doubt about it, for they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God.
Then Peter asked, “Can anyone object to their being baptized, now that they have received the Holy Spirit just as we did?” So he gave orders for them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Afterward Cornelius asked him to stay with them for several days. Acts 10:1-48 New Living Translation
This narrative is simple, straight up. It is difficult to miss the message. Right? This story would be less straightforward if we were living it. If you or I were Peter and our core assumptions of faith and practice were being challenged,…it would not be so simple. We are not so different. We critique and measure this passage against our favourite philosopher, theologian or ideology. We are wondering about its relevance for now, for us, for those in our world.
That is the beauty of this community called Urban Bridge Church and the culture we are intentional in bridging. Our strength is in challenging assumptions, We accept little at face value but lets begin 2012 by putting our doubts and skepticism in perspective. We need hope and there are many others who need the same hope and faith that comes through belief in Christ.
Christianity is a strong and agitating religion. To boil down its truth to bland and unchewable mush is a an offense at best and turns it into an entirely different religion at worst. So Says Leonard Sweet Nudge: Awakening Each Other to the God who is already There Leonard Sweet pg 193.
But, you say… Doubt is forming. Listen to Soren Kierkegaard on Answering doubt
Have you ever doubted? I wonder whether you have ever born the marks of imitation? I wonder whether you have forsaken all to follow Christ? I wonder, whether your life has been marked by persecution? Indeed, many have doubted. And there have been those who felt obliged to refute their doubt with reasons. But these reasons backfire and foster a doubt that gets stronger and stronger. Why? Because demonstrating the truth of Christianity does not lie in reasons but in imitation: what resembles the truth. Yet we Christians prefer to take this proof away.
The need for “reasons” is already a kind of doubt – doubt lives off reasons. We fail to notice that the more reasons, one advances, the more one nourishes doubt and the stronger doubt becomes. Offering doubt reasons, in order to kill it, is just like offering a hungry monster food it likes, in order to eliminate it. No, we must not offer reasons to doubt – at least not if our intention is to kill it. We must do as Luther did, order doubt to shut its mouth, and to that end we must keep quiet.
Provocations: Spiritual writings of Kierkegaard pg 77.
How different our world would be if Peter had paused, doubted and reasoned when God said, “Go down and go with them without hesitation.”
An often used Christian response to doubt is: “our questions will be answered in heaven” – we offer hope for life after death. Is that it? We have a chance, even a responsibility to bring Hope for life before death. In accepting that doubt cannot always be reconciled, may never be reconciled we are in effect telling it to shut its mouth. Doubt put in its place creates a healthy tension, giving hope its strength
How should we express this hope and faith that comes through belief in Christ? NT Wright believes the message of hope in Christ, the mission of the church, is expressed through Beauty, justice and evangelism. Part of the task of the church must be to take up that sense of injustice, to bring it to speech, to help people both articulate it and, when they are ready to do so, to turn in into prayer…. And the task then continues with the churches work, with the whole community…. Surpised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church NT Wright. Pgs 230-232.
We understand justice, 20% of our income goes to mercy. The next three weeks will be spent in conversation about Justice. We are constantly exploring new ways to be Bridge Christ and culture through justice.
Wright also says Beauty has been subverted in the shoulder-shrugging functionalism of postwar architecture, coupled by the passivity born of decades of Television, has meant, that,for many people the world appears to offer little but bleak urban landscapes on the one hand, and cheap entertainment on the other. When people cease to be surrounded by beauty, they cease to hope. They internalize the message that whispers that they are not worth very much, that they are in effect less than fully human. Surpised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church NT Wright. Pgs 230-232.
We embrace the creative. The Bleeding Heart Sacred Space being created on Alberta Ave by some of you will help those lost in hopeless find their full humanity through relationship with Christ.
Then we have Evangelism, gathering baggage and negative connotations in a post Christian world and weighing us down with guilt even as those, like a present day Cornelius, search for more. Malcolm Muggeridge the 20th century thinker, writer, satirist, communist and agnostic commented on his journey to Christ.
I grasped that over it lay, as it were, a cable bridge, frail, swaying, but passable. And this bridge, this reconciliation between the black despair of lying bound and gagged in the tiny dungeon of ego, and soaring upwards into the white radiance of God’s universal love-this bridge was the Incarnation, whose truth expresses that of the desperate need it meets. Because of our physical hunger we know there is bread; because of our spiritual hunger we know there is Christ. Malcolm Muggeridge – “Jesus Rediscovered” as cited in “The Book of Jesus”, Simon & Schuster, edited by Calvin Miller, at page 236
Wright believes evangelism flourishes when the church gives itself to works of justice and works of beauty. When we the church are living and being as we should Evangelism happens, surprising us. There is a new world, and it has already begun, – the kingdom of heaven on Earth – and it works by healing, and forgiveness, and new starts and fresh energy. …and it comes about as people worship the God in whose image they are made, as they follow the Lord who bore their sins and rose from the dead, as they are in-dwelt by his Spirit and are thereby given new life, a new way of life….Surpised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church NT Wright Pg 230-232
Yes, pushing back against arrogant certainty is valid, but to reason away our hope in Christ would be tragic. I believe that Christ can accommodate both our certainty and our doubt in our quest for hope in Him.
Already arrived
In one sense we are always traveling, and traveling as if we did not know where we were going. In another sense we have already arrived. We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, and that is why we are traveling and in darkness. But we already possess Him by grace, and therefore, in that sense, we have arrived and are dwelling in the light. But oh! How far have I to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived!
Thomas Merton
Lets make this year a year of hope for us and those whose lives we bridge.
A strength of Urban Bridge church is in challenging assumptions, We accept little at face value but lets begin 2012 by putting our doubts and skepticism in perspective.