didache - training in the way

The mark of Didache (pronounced “did-a-kay”) means “teaching”, “formation”, “training”.  It is a mark of Christian community because the church is a school. In it we are taught the Way of Jesus Christ in the same manner that apprentices are taught a trade – through lifelong practice in repentance and confession, in forgiveness and reconciliation, in servanthood and sacrifice, in pastoral care and in social witness. Didache is less about learning a body of knowledge and more about becoming a new people. A congregation that bears the mark of didache is not a “come as you are, stay as you are” church. Resistance to the notion of conversion is dwindling in such places for these are communities in which people increasingly long to be converted from the anxiety-producing ways of the world to the peaceable Way of God’s kingdom come. In their desire to learn a new way of life – to “learn Christ” (Ephesians 4:20) – such congregations evoke memories of the name claimed by the early Christian community: “The Way” (Acts 9:2). Here Christian education is not simply a matter of teaching children to become belief-ful adults. Here the whole congregation is made up of disciples – students – who are learning a new life as adopted children in the household of God. Here it is clear that once we have heard the kerygma – the good news – nothing can stay the same.

galatians - week three

Here is the introductory page for Galatians chapter three and week three of our congregational conversation about Paul's Letter to the Galatians ...

In preparation for our time together read Galatians, chapter three. Note your own questions and insights. Bring them with you to our conversation. Consider these questions:

In verse one Paul says: “It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified!” We have glimpses of the description that Paul offered of the events of Holy Week in I Corinthians 11:23-26 & 15:1-11. What is your reaction to Paul’s focus on the cross and resurrection rather than on the life and teachings of Jesus?

children of the promise

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

It is a primal story, an odd story, our story. Paul names it as a taproot gospel story. It is the story of Abraham. He and aging wife Sara have left home and family, risking everything on God. Still there is no child, no home, no sign of the future God has promised. Now the LORD appears in a vision: “Do not be afraid, Abraham, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” Abraham is the great-great grand-father of the faith. Abraham is the primal figure of faithfulness. When God promises Abraham safety and a future we expect Abraham to say “Yes, Lord”. But, no. Abraham questions God’s integrity: “O LORD God, what will you give me, for I continue childless … You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” Abraham puts God on the witness stand and pokes holes in God’s testimony. “Oh, really”, says Abraham, “and on what basis am I to trust your promise since there is no child yet? In case you hadn’t noticed, we are not getting any younger.” We expect the story about the progenitor of the faith to portray him as confident, sure, as - well - trusting. But it does not. It makes a point of noticing that Abraham struggles to trust in God’s promise of an improbably blessed future. All the evidence suggests that Abraham and Sara are not the beginning of a new people in whom “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). Everything points to them being the end of the line. Abraham and Sara are proto-types. They are proto-types for all those who follow their footsteps in the faith - in the trust - that God will birth a future out of barrenness. It turns out that it is proto-typical for believers to disbelieve.

kerygma - the message

Kerygma, one of five marks of the church, is at the heart of the church’s life. Kerygma means “proclaiming”, “announcing”, “preaching”. A congregation lacking kerygma is a community without the extraordinary news – “The Message” – that is the church’s reason for being. The kerygma is not simply a neighbourly commitment to generic values of hope, faith and love or to peace and justice. The gospel is not the best of humankind’s attempts to reach out to God. It is, instead, the incredible announcement that, in Jesus Christ, God has broken into history to save and redeem the Creation. The good news is a cruciform story of God’s capacity to bear the world’s suffering and to overcome the powers of death. A kerygmatic congregation is learning that the glory of the God it meets in Jesus Christ is, paradoxically, revealed in weakness. To paraphrase Paul, believers long for proof that God is real (signs) while unbelievers expect a reasonable contemporary spirituality (wisdom) but the church announces Christ murdered (crucified), a scandal to believers and idiocy to unbelievers (I Corinthians 1:22-23). The church that God grows springs from the seed of the cross and resurrection. Where this message takes root and comes to flower one finds a people undeterred by hardship, unsurprised by tragic loss, unprepared to give up on the least and the last because it is coming to trust in the power of God to make new.

galatians - week two

Here is the introductory page for Galatians chapter two and week two of our congregational conversation about Paul's Letter to the Galatians ...

tested

Luke 4:1-13

How appropriate it is that we celebrate Caleb’s baptism today, the first Sunday in Lent. Lent is the church’s great season of formation and little Caleb is deeply into formation in this first year in his life. When Lent began it was the culmination of the preparation of adults for baptism that would take place in the early morning hours of Easter Sunday. It was a baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus. Caleb is also baptized today into Christ’s death and resurrection here, already, at the beginning of Jesus’ journey to the cross and empty tomb.

after velcade, a breather

After forty weeks and eight cycles on Velcade and dexamethasone today marks the beginning of my break without treatment. Normally I would have been at St. Paul's hospital this morning for the first of my four weekly injections. It also means that I am not taking any steroids for the next eight weeks. Even though I only take a dose of dexamethasone once a week I still find that this is a challenge (much less than four times a week as when preparing for the stem cell transplant, but a challenge nonetheless). I am looking forward to living without the ups and downs that are the side effects of dex. I will be living normally, without treatments, at least until April 8 when I next see my hematologist. Between now and then I am planning on eating well, getting exercise and just generally enjoying life.