The works of his hands are faithful and just...
Is there a way to keep this in the forefront of our minds as we continue working on our vision statement and other documents requested by our denominational officers? It is my sincere hope that we can.
Last night we had what was essentially an "annual meeting." We worked through our budget. We began to articulate the real nuts andd bolts of our one-year, three-year and five-year plans for growth and development. We certainly have our work cut out for us. As much as we have already completed and accomplished, there is that much yet to do.
But we are not alone in that work.
"The works of his hands are faithful and just" is the praise of the Psalmist and the promise of God. As we continue growing in understanding of the nature of the work we have been given, I would encourage us all to place it in the hands of our Lord. Keep us all in prayer. Ask for guidance, patience and growing wisdom.
Tuesday, January 31
Wednesday, January 18
Weekly Update
We are at a key time for Reconciler as we take time to look at who God calls us to be and how we are to live into that call and reach out to those in our circles and those who live in our neighborhoods. I think it might be easy though to be caught up in the planning as if we will make things happen. As we rewrite our vision statement and make a strategic plan as our denominations have requested of us, we need to remember that for this work to be more than just our human effort it must be prayer.
I mean several things by this: first that as we ask ourselves the questions of to whom and how well will reach out, and questions of money and time needed to be who we are called to be that we need to be asking these questions intentionally seeking the presence of God. Second, we need to open ourselves not to the possibilities that are before us in a year, three year or five years, but open ourselves to God, who holds all possibilities in his hand and who builds up his people. Lastly, we must keep in mind not who we think should come but be seeking God to send us the people he has for us.
This is important for all church plants but especially for Reconciler, as we are choosing to set aside the good success oriented models that use very good human rational for what is to be done and when and with how many people. We cannot fall back on a good rational plan because we have already simply begun without it all planned. All we can fall back on is God, but in the end in truth it is who we are called to rely, not on human wisdom and the wisdom of sociology but the wisdom of God, which is foolishness to all human wisdom and science. Thus, it is imperative that all we do is prayer, that is seeks to be in God and rely on nothing but what God is doing in our midst by the power of the Spirit.
Lately, I have purposefully been hanging out in the cafes and walked more the streets of our neighborhoods. As I have done this I realize that I do not know what God has in store. It is apparent that there are so many possibilities, the only way we will settle on the right one is to be open to what God has to as we plan to do so seeking what God is doing in us and in Edgewater, Andersonville and Roger’s Park. It was nearly two years ago that God brought a group of people together at Seabury and that group affirmed that the Spirit was at work, now we seek God to show us specific ways that we are at work.
Tripp and I as was announced last week have “office hours” in local cafes.
Monday nights Tripp is at Kopi Cafe (5317 N. Clark) in Andersonville from 7:00 - 9:00pm
Tuesday nights I am at Metropolis Café (1039 W. Granville) in Edgewater from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. (this is a revised time since Metropolis closes at 8:00 pm)
Wednesday nights Tripp is at Pause Café (1107 W Berwyn) just off the Berwyn Redline stop from 7:00-9:00 pm
Thursday nights I am at Ennui Café (6981 N Sheridan) in Rogers Park at Sheridan and Lunt from 6:30 to 8:30 pm.
Lastly Reconciler is coordinating a monthly meeting of Artist who are Christians or who are interested in the meeting of spirituality and art. We meet the third Thursday of each month. We meet this week the 19th at Moody’s Pub on Broadway.
God is at work in us may we continue to be prayerfully open to God’s continued guidance.
In Christ,
Larry
I mean several things by this: first that as we ask ourselves the questions of to whom and how well will reach out, and questions of money and time needed to be who we are called to be that we need to be asking these questions intentionally seeking the presence of God. Second, we need to open ourselves not to the possibilities that are before us in a year, three year or five years, but open ourselves to God, who holds all possibilities in his hand and who builds up his people. Lastly, we must keep in mind not who we think should come but be seeking God to send us the people he has for us.
This is important for all church plants but especially for Reconciler, as we are choosing to set aside the good success oriented models that use very good human rational for what is to be done and when and with how many people. We cannot fall back on a good rational plan because we have already simply begun without it all planned. All we can fall back on is God, but in the end in truth it is who we are called to rely, not on human wisdom and the wisdom of sociology but the wisdom of God, which is foolishness to all human wisdom and science. Thus, it is imperative that all we do is prayer, that is seeks to be in God and rely on nothing but what God is doing in our midst by the power of the Spirit.
Lately, I have purposefully been hanging out in the cafes and walked more the streets of our neighborhoods. As I have done this I realize that I do not know what God has in store. It is apparent that there are so many possibilities, the only way we will settle on the right one is to be open to what God has to as we plan to do so seeking what God is doing in us and in Edgewater, Andersonville and Roger’s Park. It was nearly two years ago that God brought a group of people together at Seabury and that group affirmed that the Spirit was at work, now we seek God to show us specific ways that we are at work.
Tripp and I as was announced last week have “office hours” in local cafes.
Monday nights Tripp is at Kopi Cafe (5317 N. Clark) in Andersonville from 7:00 - 9:00pm
Tuesday nights I am at Metropolis Café (1039 W. Granville) in Edgewater from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. (this is a revised time since Metropolis closes at 8:00 pm)
Wednesday nights Tripp is at Pause Café (1107 W Berwyn) just off the Berwyn Redline stop from 7:00-9:00 pm
Thursday nights I am at Ennui Café (6981 N Sheridan) in Rogers Park at Sheridan and Lunt from 6:30 to 8:30 pm.
Lastly Reconciler is coordinating a monthly meeting of Artist who are Christians or who are interested in the meeting of spirituality and art. We meet the third Thursday of each month. We meet this week the 19th at Moody’s Pub on Broadway.
God is at work in us may we continue to be prayerfully open to God’s continued guidance.
In Christ,
Larry
Tuesday, January 17
Sermon Second Sunday After Epiphany
I Samuel 3:1-10, (11-20)
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
John 1:43-51
The physical and spiritual are taken as dichotomous. Seeing body and spirit as differences within a unity is less common. Christianity is sometimes accused of being dualistic: preferring the immaterial, the other worldly and the disembodied to the material, to this world and to bodies. Some even will attempt to lay this dualism at the feet of the apostle Paul. Yet our Scriptures for today suggest that this accusation isn’t just a misinterpretation of Paul but of the entire Christian and Biblical outlook. Paul in Corinthians gives us the strongest possible valuation of our bodies: calling them the Temple of the Spirit. He does so based on the basic presupposition of Scripture: god is Spirit and without form but as a creator and for Christians as the incarnate Word, our encounter with God is through the body and the physical.
Samuel we meet in our reading as a young boy, yet to become the great prophet and judge of the people of God. As a boy dedicated to god he lives with the high Priest and sleeps with in the precincts of the tabernacle. One night he goes to bed as he always has not far from the Holy of Holies where God dwells. But tonight he is restless and can’t get to sleep. He hears a voice call his name, not in his head so that he is left wondering did I hear something. No this is a clear and distinct voice outside himself. Samuel naturally thinks it is Eli, the only other one there right. Well not exactly. Eli who is old and tired has already fallen asleep and groggily sends the boy back to bed. Samuel hears the voice and wakes Eli three times, before Eli is awake enough to realize that the boy is hearing an actual voice and that it must be God. Eli hears the voice of God and speaks with God. While literally, hearing God might be strange to us and should someone tell us that they were hearing god speak to them we would think they were hearing voices in their head and might send them to a psych ward. Not only is not this uncommon in the Scriptures but God is not only heard but also encountered in other physical ways. The prophets’ patriarchs and spiritual people in the Scriptures encounter God in vary physical ways, sight hearing, even wrestling. God may be essentially without form but as creator and we as God’s creatures, God is encountered in and through bodies not by transcending them.
In the Gospels, we have this physical encounter with God heightened in the ministry of Jesus. In case one missed it in the other Gospels, John in the first chapters of his Gospel drives this home. So we have in John the height of theological reflection paired with the affirmation that God in the person of the Word became flesh and lived among us humans as a body. The first disciples don’t discover Jesus to be the Christ by sitting and contemplating the essence of God, but by being with John the Baptists as he baptizes in the Jordan, and seeing who John points out to them as the Christ and then walking in the dusty roads litterally following Jesus seeing where he sleeps, and talking with Jesus. The disciples and others who follow and encounter Jesus find themselves transformed by that encounter, as bodies through encountering Jesus as a body with needs and whose feet get dusty like everyone else. In these first chapters of John we have water we have seeing we have walking and conversation, we have very human and physical things and through those things the first disciples are changed and encounter God in Jesus Christ, the word made flesh.
This fundamental belief in the physicality of spiritual encounter and transformation is the only thing that can make sense of Paul’s words to us in Corinthians. Paul is telling us that our bodies are not immaterial to our spirituality; what we do with ourselves as bodies and our bodily urges, desires, and passions has spiritual import. Food and sex Paul says are spiritual.
Paul claims for the Gospel neither an absolute freedom nor a legalistic asceticism in regards to our bodies. The question is not our freedom to act on bodily urges or desires, nor the absolute denial of them. Rather the question surrounds how the bodily drives are the place of our freedom and how they are bound up with our spiritual life. In Chris all things are allowed me, however sine our bodies are not immaterial to righteousness, justice, truth and beauty Paul directs us to consider what is beneficial and frees u from dominations.
As most of you know my diet is mostly vegetarian. I became a vegetarian while I was an au Pair in Austria. The family I was with was vegetarian, so although I could have bought my won meat, I chose to live according to their diet—it was an economically beneficial to do so. I remained a vegetarian after living with them because I felt, better more alert and less tired. I discovered that it was beneficial to me to have a restricted diet. I did though desire a steak or hamburger. This was difficult since my home was in Southern California that is home to In-N-Out Burgers which has the tastiest hamburgers in the world. Even so, it has now been about 12 years since I have had a hamburger or steak, and the desire to eat them has passed. The smell of beef is now slightly repulsive to me. Not only has the desire to eat beef gone but also I am more aware of my bodily desires and what my body actually needs verses simply craving. Becoming a vegetarian helped me become more attentive to my body and what its desires and urges (in regards to food) actually meant.
I tell you this story not because I think everyone should be vegetarian, but because how I became a vegetarian illustrates in a small way Paul’s teaching on the body. The vegetarian diet was not forced on me, but I made a choice based on economic benefit. I then chose to continue as a vegetarian because I was healthier. I was free and remain free to eat what ever I want, but I chose to not eat meat because it is to my benefit not be dominated by the desire to eat meat.
Paul wants us to think in terms of the spirituality of our bodies both what is truly beneficial as well as freed from the domination of our bodily desires. We are bound to our desires and cannot distinguish easily between what is truly good for our bodies because of the fall and the dominion of sin and death, form that we are freed due to the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But Paul goes further and makes a quite astounding theological assertion: The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, lives in our bodies! Our bodies, not our souls or spirits, or our mid, or hears tar the temple where God lives. Our bodies are the Holy of Holies. This is why what we eat and our sexualities matter.
We may find ourselves in disagreement with Paul about his particular opinions about sex and our bodies, but we should be careful let this disagreement lead us to discount the importance of our bodies for our spirituality. If we down play the importance of our bodies for our spirituality, we risk denying the truth of our baptism and of communion. Our bodies our whole selves do not belong to us but we are God’s. Our bodies through faith, baptism, and communion belong to the Trinity. We are nourished by and identify with Christ and the Holy Spirit lives in our bodies. God is in you. Your body is the place of your encounter with God. Therefore, we are baptized and so we listen to the Scripture and so we eat bread and drink wine. Therefore what you eat and your sexuality have spiritual consequence and can either bring one closer to God or create a barrier between you and God. True Christian faith cannot divide body and Spirit because as members of Christ God in the person of the Holy Sprit lives in our bodies
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
John 1:43-51
The physical and spiritual are taken as dichotomous. Seeing body and spirit as differences within a unity is less common. Christianity is sometimes accused of being dualistic: preferring the immaterial, the other worldly and the disembodied to the material, to this world and to bodies. Some even will attempt to lay this dualism at the feet of the apostle Paul. Yet our Scriptures for today suggest that this accusation isn’t just a misinterpretation of Paul but of the entire Christian and Biblical outlook. Paul in Corinthians gives us the strongest possible valuation of our bodies: calling them the Temple of the Spirit. He does so based on the basic presupposition of Scripture: god is Spirit and without form but as a creator and for Christians as the incarnate Word, our encounter with God is through the body and the physical.
Samuel we meet in our reading as a young boy, yet to become the great prophet and judge of the people of God. As a boy dedicated to god he lives with the high Priest and sleeps with in the precincts of the tabernacle. One night he goes to bed as he always has not far from the Holy of Holies where God dwells. But tonight he is restless and can’t get to sleep. He hears a voice call his name, not in his head so that he is left wondering did I hear something. No this is a clear and distinct voice outside himself. Samuel naturally thinks it is Eli, the only other one there right. Well not exactly. Eli who is old and tired has already fallen asleep and groggily sends the boy back to bed. Samuel hears the voice and wakes Eli three times, before Eli is awake enough to realize that the boy is hearing an actual voice and that it must be God. Eli hears the voice of God and speaks with God. While literally, hearing God might be strange to us and should someone tell us that they were hearing god speak to them we would think they were hearing voices in their head and might send them to a psych ward. Not only is not this uncommon in the Scriptures but God is not only heard but also encountered in other physical ways. The prophets’ patriarchs and spiritual people in the Scriptures encounter God in vary physical ways, sight hearing, even wrestling. God may be essentially without form but as creator and we as God’s creatures, God is encountered in and through bodies not by transcending them.
In the Gospels, we have this physical encounter with God heightened in the ministry of Jesus. In case one missed it in the other Gospels, John in the first chapters of his Gospel drives this home. So we have in John the height of theological reflection paired with the affirmation that God in the person of the Word became flesh and lived among us humans as a body. The first disciples don’t discover Jesus to be the Christ by sitting and contemplating the essence of God, but by being with John the Baptists as he baptizes in the Jordan, and seeing who John points out to them as the Christ and then walking in the dusty roads litterally following Jesus seeing where he sleeps, and talking with Jesus. The disciples and others who follow and encounter Jesus find themselves transformed by that encounter, as bodies through encountering Jesus as a body with needs and whose feet get dusty like everyone else. In these first chapters of John we have water we have seeing we have walking and conversation, we have very human and physical things and through those things the first disciples are changed and encounter God in Jesus Christ, the word made flesh.
This fundamental belief in the physicality of spiritual encounter and transformation is the only thing that can make sense of Paul’s words to us in Corinthians. Paul is telling us that our bodies are not immaterial to our spirituality; what we do with ourselves as bodies and our bodily urges, desires, and passions has spiritual import. Food and sex Paul says are spiritual.
Paul claims for the Gospel neither an absolute freedom nor a legalistic asceticism in regards to our bodies. The question is not our freedom to act on bodily urges or desires, nor the absolute denial of them. Rather the question surrounds how the bodily drives are the place of our freedom and how they are bound up with our spiritual life. In Chris all things are allowed me, however sine our bodies are not immaterial to righteousness, justice, truth and beauty Paul directs us to consider what is beneficial and frees u from dominations.
As most of you know my diet is mostly vegetarian. I became a vegetarian while I was an au Pair in Austria. The family I was with was vegetarian, so although I could have bought my won meat, I chose to live according to their diet—it was an economically beneficial to do so. I remained a vegetarian after living with them because I felt, better more alert and less tired. I discovered that it was beneficial to me to have a restricted diet. I did though desire a steak or hamburger. This was difficult since my home was in Southern California that is home to In-N-Out Burgers which has the tastiest hamburgers in the world. Even so, it has now been about 12 years since I have had a hamburger or steak, and the desire to eat them has passed. The smell of beef is now slightly repulsive to me. Not only has the desire to eat beef gone but also I am more aware of my bodily desires and what my body actually needs verses simply craving. Becoming a vegetarian helped me become more attentive to my body and what its desires and urges (in regards to food) actually meant.
I tell you this story not because I think everyone should be vegetarian, but because how I became a vegetarian illustrates in a small way Paul’s teaching on the body. The vegetarian diet was not forced on me, but I made a choice based on economic benefit. I then chose to continue as a vegetarian because I was healthier. I was free and remain free to eat what ever I want, but I chose to not eat meat because it is to my benefit not be dominated by the desire to eat meat.
Paul wants us to think in terms of the spirituality of our bodies both what is truly beneficial as well as freed from the domination of our bodily desires. We are bound to our desires and cannot distinguish easily between what is truly good for our bodies because of the fall and the dominion of sin and death, form that we are freed due to the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But Paul goes further and makes a quite astounding theological assertion: The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, lives in our bodies! Our bodies, not our souls or spirits, or our mid, or hears tar the temple where God lives. Our bodies are the Holy of Holies. This is why what we eat and our sexualities matter.
We may find ourselves in disagreement with Paul about his particular opinions about sex and our bodies, but we should be careful let this disagreement lead us to discount the importance of our bodies for our spirituality. If we down play the importance of our bodies for our spirituality, we risk denying the truth of our baptism and of communion. Our bodies our whole selves do not belong to us but we are God’s. Our bodies through faith, baptism, and communion belong to the Trinity. We are nourished by and identify with Christ and the Holy Spirit lives in our bodies. God is in you. Your body is the place of your encounter with God. Therefore, we are baptized and so we listen to the Scripture and so we eat bread and drink wine. Therefore what you eat and your sexuality have spiritual consequence and can either bring one closer to God or create a barrier between you and God. True Christian faith cannot divide body and Spirit because as members of Christ God in the person of the Holy Sprit lives in our bodies
Wednesday, January 11
Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.
As God's light dawns on this world, there is much to share about life at Reconciler.
Soon you will find a change online. We will move to www.jesuschristreconciler.org, a new webspace. We hope you visit often.
Larry and Tripp have office hours! In an effort to make ourselves more available, Larry will be meditating (read: hanging out) at Metropolis and Ennui, two local coffee shops. You can find him at Metropolis (1039 W. Granville) on Tuesdays from 6:30pm - 8:30pm and Ennui (6981 N Sheridan) at the same times on Thursdays. Tripp will be at loitering at Kopi Cafe (5317 N. Clark) on Mondays from 7:00 - 9:00pm and at Pause (1107 W Berwyn) on Wednesdays at the same time. The hope is to be more visible and available to those who attend Reconciler and the community at large.
This Sunday we will begin a contemplative prayer group at 5:30 before our service begins. All are invited to attend.
Finally, Keep your eyes peeled for advertisements in the Reader, Performinc, and Streetwise papers. You may seen an advertisement or two.
This is the season of Epiphany. It is a season devoted to dreams and visions, stars and wisdom. Has God given you a vision this season, a vision for yourself, Reconciler, the Church or the world? May God grant you the faith and courage to share it with us.
Tripp Hudgins
The Pastoral Team
As God's light dawns on this world, there is much to share about life at Reconciler.
Soon you will find a change online. We will move to www.jesuschristreconciler.org, a new webspace. We hope you visit often.
Larry and Tripp have office hours! In an effort to make ourselves more available, Larry will be meditating (read: hanging out) at Metropolis and Ennui, two local coffee shops. You can find him at Metropolis (1039 W. Granville) on Tuesdays from 6:30pm - 8:30pm and Ennui (6981 N Sheridan) at the same times on Thursdays. Tripp will be at loitering at Kopi Cafe (5317 N. Clark) on Mondays from 7:00 - 9:00pm and at Pause (1107 W Berwyn) on Wednesdays at the same time. The hope is to be more visible and available to those who attend Reconciler and the community at large.
This Sunday we will begin a contemplative prayer group at 5:30 before our service begins. All are invited to attend.
Finally, Keep your eyes peeled for advertisements in the Reader, Performinc, and Streetwise papers. You may seen an advertisement or two.
This is the season of Epiphany. It is a season devoted to dreams and visions, stars and wisdom. Has God given you a vision this season, a vision for yourself, Reconciler, the Church or the world? May God grant you the faith and courage to share it with us.
Tripp Hudgins
The Pastoral Team
Thursday, January 5
Baptist World Alliance Sunday at North Shore Baptist Church
This is from the ABC Metro Chicago office:
-Tripp
Baptist World Alliance Sunday is February 6. On that day, North Shore Baptist Church, 5244 N. Lakewood Avenue, Chicago, will welcome as guest preacher in the 11 a.m. worship service Baptist World Alliance (BWA) General Secretary Dr. Denton Lotz. His sermon will be "Every Baptist a Missionary." The celebration of the BWA will be a continuation of the congregation's celebration of its own centennial.I will be there.
Following the worship service, the congregation will host a catered luncheon in honor of the guest preacher. Luncheon reservations must be made by Wednesday, February 1. Tickets will cost $7 for adults or $3.50 for children. Phone the church at 773-728-4200 to make reservations.
After lunch, Dr. Lotz will lead an informal time of discussion on the topic of "The Church in the 21st Cenbury and the Clash of Civilizations." Those in attendance will have the opportunity to ask questions of Dr. Lotz, and to hear about the current state of the BWA.
The church is on Lakewood Avenue between Berwyn and Foster Avenues, 2 ½ blocks west of the Berwyn stop on the CTA Red Line. From Lake Shore Drive, exit west at Foster Avenue and proceed approximately ½ mile to Lakewood, and turn right. From the eastbound Kennedy Expressway (Interstate 90), exit at Austin, proceed a short distance south to Foster, and then travel east on Foster to Lakewood, and turn left.
-Tripp
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)