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The desire for social status drives so much of our lives -- from education, friends, money. We want respect -- indeed we want to demand respect and influence.

Our Scriptures distinguish between fleeting respect and influence and lasting, eternal respect and honor. Why is it necessary to keep these properly ordered? What happens to our works if we forget these Scriptures?

We will read the Psalm, Hebrews, and Gospel this Sunday. The build on each other that arises from building life on what is eternal rather than which is temporal. Enjoy the readings!

Psalm 112

The distinction in the text is between those who "fear the Lord" and "the wicked". How does fear of the Lord make a concrete difference. Maybe you can list the characteristics of these groups in order to compare them?

Hebrews 13:1-8

Why is mutual love important in a congregation? Why must one remember the stranger and remember those in prison? What is the relationship beween this and marriage and the prohibition of the love of money?

Luke 14:1, 7-14

Jesus speaks to two groups in this narrative: the Pharisees and the owner of the house. There is irony that the Pharisess "were watching Jesus closely", but it is their practices become most obvious. What is it that he tells them about their behavior? What does he say to the person who invites to the banquet? How does Jesus' teaching to the two groups relate? What is the underlying rationale for Jesus' teaching?

How should we live out these teachings? More importantly, why should we live this way. What is presupposed about the church and the world in these characteristics? Have a wonderful evening!

Posted by johnwright at 4:37 PM | Comments (0)

In a few minutes, before I finish this post, I will change clothes to move to a memorial service for Roberta Reed, the wife of a Rev. Dr. Gerard Reed, a colleague who retired at the end of next year. Roberta struggled with a rare form of cancer, and in June, went through an experimental treatment to help her fight off the cancer -- a form that attacked the immune system. The treatment actually worked -- the cancer was cured. Unfortunately, the treatment evoked other problems in her system, and she died as a direct result of her treatment. Roberta died the day before Gerard formally began his retirement. Gerard will deeply miss her -- he is as devoted of a husband that one could ever imagine. Yet what could be seen as an utter tragedy takes on different light as Roberta was a faithful follower of Jesus Christ -- and thus lived, even in her illness, as one not without hope. She faced the last years of her life, with Gerard by her side, with a tremendous dignity, grace, and love -- even amid the trials that her "treatments" provided for her.

We live in a culture that turns death into a sentimental "he or she is always there looking down on us" or repressing its reality -- both symptoms of denial. Denial comes from the paradox fear of death and love of death that our culture exhibits -- two sides of the same coin. This covenant with death reduces our lives merely with "values" -- a significance that we or others must project upon our lives. Rather than finding our selves living from God to God, we live towards death -- and try to cram as much "fun" in before it comes. Death provides a refuge for the ultimate ending of the struggles of our life -- nothing more.

Yet with Gerard and Roberta, we know the "more" -- that Love that transcends us because it has become us in Jesus Christ, crucified and raised. Our readings take us here this week. The readings take us past the "I'm okay, you're okay" covenant with death to a live lived on a cornerstone -- what the Scriptures call, a live that is really life, an image that the Scriptures invoke through the image of Zion.

Isaiah 28:14-22

As you read the Isaiah passage, compare those who look to "a covenant with death" for their immediate salvation versus those who dwell in Zion, built on the cornerstone. Can you think of situations in our culture of persons who try to survive by a "covenant with death"? Traditionally "Zion" has been seen as a typology for the church (i.e., local congregations) as well as the "cornerstone" being Jesus Christ. What is the differences of trust? Why does where one places one's trust/loyalty make a difference? Why does destruction/judgment attend to those who enter a covenant with death?

Hebrews 12:18-19,22-29

The Hebrews passage begins with an allusion to Exodus 19 -- God's address to Israel at Mount Sinai. What is it that one finds in "Mount Zion"? How? Why does one "receive the kingdom" rather than "build it"? What is the relationship between the kingdom and Mount Zion?

Luke 13:22-30

Does Jesus answer the question that "someone asked him"? What question does Jesus answer? What is his answer? Who "enters the door"? Why are people turned away for an answer that is inadequate?

The the Scriptures all make strong distinctions between "Zion" and "those left outside". What does this tell us about God? What does it tell us about "covenants with death" and life built on the cornerstone in Zion? What is necessary to insure the importance of one's activities in the world now?

Posted by johnwright at 1:00 PM | Comments (0)

It's hot out today. Pastor Jeff tonight is taking sandwiches and water to those who sleep on sidewalks or canyons in the downtown San Diego area. This is not primarily because they have a "need"; from what I know of this people, they have tremendous survival skills and will find a way through, with us or without us. The need is ours. We have the real need to fulfill the command of our Lord to feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty, to be personally present with the poor, those with whom we find Christ.

It's a Padres game night as well. Those with wealth will be traveling to the same area for recreation and amusement. As we have heard before, it is entirely possible that those giving food and drink will be criticized for supporting the poor, helping them out and continue their life in the area, and thus get in the way of the economic interchange of the area. It becomes a challenge being gracious and kind as such a conflict can easily arise amid a city where today an editorial was printed, "Homelessness in San Diego: Fighting the problem effectively." What is the problem? The cost to the city for "homeless services." The solution: provide proactive housing and services because it is cheaper than what it costs now.

For those of us who have gotten to know those people, including those of us who live as one of these people, we recognize a difference in the way we see persons in light of all of our origins and ends in God versus those who see persons in terms of their economic "value" to those who control and benefit from the cities tax revenues. We also know that this can produce conflict with those whose faith, allegiance, or loyalty (the biblical pistis or faith) is to human patrons who control wealth and status rather than to the triune God. This provides a simple background to the passages for this weekend.

Conflict is no fun, nor should conflict ever be sought for conflicts sake. Yet obedience to God through Jesus Christ as part of his body, the church, our local congregation, can inevitably lead to conflict. We then have to learn to be made into a person and a people who can stand in conflict with love and obedience to Christ, without malice for the right reasons, rather than reasons of our own sinfulness.

Jeremiah 23:23-29

What is the point of the Jeremiah passage? Why would prophets prophsy lies? What has straw in common with wheat? If we understand the Word of God to be a reference to the Word of God, Jesus Christ, what does this passage say?

Hebrews 12:1-7(8-10)11-14

In this Hebrews section we must understand faith in terms of "loyalty." What all is involved in loyalty? How is Jesus the pioneer and perfector of our "faith"? What does it say that Jesus evoked such angry hostility towards him? What does endurance of trials do to loyalty, ie, why are Chicago Cubs fans so firm in their allegiance to the Cubs? How do such trials allow us to participate in Christ's holiness? Why is it important to "pursue peace with everyone, and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord" as one goes through this conflict and difference?

Luke 12:49-56

On the basis of the above discussions, read together Luke 12:49-52. How is it that Christ came not to bring peace, but division? What is it to interpret the present time correctly? What is the difference between the church and the world?

How does one discern whether a conflict comes from a difference of loyalty to Christ or not or arises from our own personal preferences or our own sin? How does one commit to loving the enemy in such circumstances?

Pray for those on the streets this time of year. It's hot.

Posted by johnwright at 4:32 PM | Comments (0)

Saturday night I listened to the story of a man from Cambodia speak of his experience with the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Rounded up at midnight, he hid his identity as it would have led to his execution. Rightfully suspected of ties to the earlier government, soldiers chained him by foot with other suspect persons. They undertook days of forced march into the countryside and then forced labor to clear ground for an agricultural commune, fed thin rice porridge twice a day. Under interrogation, one member of his chain gain died in chains; others' pasts were confirmed and they were executed. My friend kept consistent with the same story -- he was merely a poor peasant, one of those for whom the Khmer Rouge undertook their revolution. Authorities eventually took off the chains after six months; he eventually escaped to the Phlippines through Thailand.

I share this story because we have to understand that the care for the poor, the care to stop the ravages of global capitalism, stood behind the Khmer Rouge. It was a revolution to establish an agrarian, egalitarian community that would eliminate poverty and class distinctions. Yet the revolutionaries were not nearly revolutionary enough. The mirrored the same commitment of life that upholds capitalism: the material realm is the ultimate realm of life. There is no thing outside our life now. Life becomes expendable to establish a more "just" realm of history now. The person becomes unimportant in light of the distribution of wealth in society. As our society treats the life death of the poor without significance, providing programs of incineration with ashes delivered to the land fill for the poor deceased, the Khmer Rouge treated the life of the "rich" without significance for the sake of the poor. All there is is the material remains of this world. Therefore there really is nothing -- just disposable material objects that must be moved around for the economic advancement of the nation-state's chosen clients. There is no end to life outside itself; therefore life itself does not matter.

Our Scripture readings this weekend remind us the irony that to save the material realm, to be for the material realm, we must understand that we have a supernatural end that is outside history, beyond the material realm in God through Christ. Material reality, wealth bears signficance only when its use finds its end beyond itself in God. We see this most fully in the truest human, Jesus Christ, who was also fully divine in one person.

Ecclesiastes 1:12-14;2:1-7,11, 18-23

The Eccelesiastes passages aren't exactly the stuff that that Prayer of Jabez is made out of. What does the Teacher find in this realm of life considered in and of itself? What is it about life and its struggles considered strictly within the material realm that find it as vanity? What good does the accumulation of wealth, wisdom, and prestige in itself do for the "Teacher"?

Colossians 3:5--17

The Colossians passages seems to differentiate between "earthly" desires versus found in Christ as members of specific and catholic (universal) congregations. What is the difference between them? What must the earthly be put to death? The passage presupposes a massive shift of life as a result of baptism -- the references to stripping, and being clothed with a new self is baptismal language -- check out Galatians 3:26-29. What changes when we realize that "Christ is all and in all"? What is the process that we must undergo from the earthly to the life as Israel, God's chosen ones. How do we sustain the harmony within the congregation that the passage requires? What role does "whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him" play in this? Why?

Luke 12:13-21

How does Jesus respond to the cry from the crowd to establish justice to settle a familial conflict over material goods? Why? Why does life not consist in the abundance of possessions? How do the previous passages, with this one, help us to understand what it is to be rich toward God?

Maybe it might be good to discuss what it is to be "rich toward God" as persons and as a congregation, how we can move beyond the "left"/"right" nihilism of our age as we life with and for the poor in Christ. I'm appending a letter to the editor that I wrote to the San Diego Union Tribune in response to a "Just Fix It" Column that they ran last Friday to try and show how the poor gets practically treated as nothing in our capitalistic society. How as persons and a congregation can we show that there is an alternative to the way persons are treated in our culture? What sort of inner transformation must we each undergo?

Friday July 27's "Just Fix It" column deeply saddened me. Those most endangered by a threat of fire in the canyon were the inhabitants of the canyon themselves. They are not "homeless people," for they had a home in the canyon. They are human beings forced into a ravine by lack of an available home elsewhere. Your "fix it" turned them into exactly what you saw -- homeless people. Rather than talk with them, listen to their story, seek a genuine fix for all concerned, you dismissed them as participants in the situation. The language used in the article reduced these persons to a "problem" that the mayor's office could "clean up" like dog excrement on a sidewalk in the Gas Lamp District.

What much of San Diego calls homeless people are persons without access to what the law calls "real property" because of their lack of economic resources. Without "real property" to store their personal goods, Cal Trans and others wait for persons to leave their personal property upon public land and then "clean up" -- a euphenism for governmental theft of personal property. Those without access to "real property" face constant harrassment from city, state, and federal officials for their "crime" of lack of access to "real property." It becomes criminal to be poor and visible, and now even poor and invisible, hidden off in a canyon or to the side of an off-ramp.

The poor, those without real property, are not "a problem" -- the problem is the wealthy, those who have resources, but use them for luxurious comfort rather than giving alms to the poor. If the Union Tribune wished to fix something, perhaps it could begin by reminding its readers that the poor, even those without real property, are human beings, created in the image of God. Any "fix" must acknowledge that one's humanity is not based upon one's real property, but by the gift of life itself.

Rev. Dr. John W. Wright
Senior Pastor, English Speaking Congregation
Church of the Nazarene in San Diego

Professor of Theology and Christian Scripture
Point Loma Nazarene University

Posted by johnwright at 8:44 AM | Comments (2)