Monday, October 31st, 2011

Disciple or Companion?

Monday nights this Fall we are having great conversation around a DVD series First Light: Jesus and the Kingdom of God.  This week one of the featured scholars, John Dominic Crossan, explained that the men and women who followed Jesus were companions rather than disciples.  The word disciple, he says, means student and teachers do not ask students to do what teachers do.  Jesus engaged his followers in his ministry.  They were Jesus’ companions.  Jesus told them to ‘just do it’.  Jesus, not Nike, crafted those words, Crossan offers.  Just do it!

I was still thinking about that Tuesday afternoon as I prepared for the Deanery Fresh Expressions session exploring leadership and discipleship for the missional church.  Discipleship.  In the gospels, Jesus’ followers are disciples, but in the book of Acts, they are called apostles, teachers.  I wondered about John Dominic Crossan’s portrayal of followers as companions.  Disciples and Apostles or Companions?

One of my primary complaints about contemporary Christians is our proclivity to put Jesus on a pedestal so high above our daily life that his life becomes a glorious image rather than a life we are invited to engage in ourselves.  Is Jesus a royal doulton figure, something you cherish and dust from time to time or is Jesus actively involved in shaping your life?

If disciples are students and apostles are teachers, who are the doers?  I guess that would be us!  Companions, we are!  Companions in this journey towards God’s vision of the world, the kingdom.  Throughout the day, we converse with the one who taught us to pray, to sit with the marginalized and rich alike.  When confronted with those who accuse us unjustly, we are not alone.  Jesus stands with us, just as he stood before Pilate.  Someone once told me, ‘Never under-estimate the power of truth.’  Companions, let us walk with Jesus day by day.  Surely we live in a different cultural milieu, but once again, Jesus is not a china figure to be valued from afar.  Jesus is God in human flesh, Emmanuel today and always. 

Pray, chat with the one with whom we sojourn.  Shall we be companions?  Friends, I think we are.  Rather than learning so much about Jesus, let’s just do it!  Live the way of the Lord.

Posted by Archdeacon Kim at 7:18 pm

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

Easter Monday Reflection

Easter: A Resurrected Lord and a Resurrected People

As I write this, I realize that Easter is old news for many people. Holiday is over. People are back at work. Easter baskets put away for another year.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Sunday morning churches throughout Windsor and Essex County proclaimed the Risen Lord!! With loud sound, young and old marching around our worship spaces, we sing the good news that Jesus has risen. The God in whom Jesus trusted, has shown us that evil does not have the last word. The oppressive powers that try to snuff out the light of the world, do not succeed.

Easter morning we affirm our faith in this radical way of living that is Jesus. Christians proclaim a resurrected Lord and commit to living as a resurrected people. As Bishop Terry Dance told us on Sunday, Jesus’ resurrection is our resurrection! This is serious business. Such a way was misunderstood or perhaps understood and greatly feared two thousand years ago. What will be the response in Windsor and Essex as we live this way here and now?

Trusting in God’s love with the radical trust Jesus had ought to enable us to treat others with dignity, fairness, and compassion. Such trust ought to give us the courage to stand up for those who are too weak to effect change themselves. Who are the voiceless today? Jesus healed the sick, the possessed and dispossessed because they had been rejected by a system that had wandered away from the heart of God. He heals a culture as much as he heals an individual.

As Jesus’ own, we do the same. I recall the transforming Do the Math Challenge offered by Pathways to Potential in Windsor. How can one raise a healthy family on high sodium, high carb diets that many who live in poverty are forced to accept? Community gardens, fresh fruits and vegetables will transform this injustice in our time.

Our lives do make a difference. The litmus test of faith, any kind of faith, is more than how many bible passages you can quote or how succinctly you can express theology. Faith is something incarnated, born out through our lives – how we live and how we treat each other.

Our Easter hope? Our old ways will pass away and the new ways of love and justice will be born in all aspects of human life. What ‘s the point of a resurrected Lord, if those who proclaim him Lord, do not also allow the transformation of their lives? Such transformation is the hope for the world.

Posted by Archdeacon Kim at 1:58 pm