Selling Water by the River (2): No One Comes to the Bible without a Lens

In the second chapter of the book, Selling Water by the River, Hipps talks about the lenses through which we read scripture and life:

"No one comes to the Bible or life without a lens...A lens can be a set of assumptions or beliefs that we have...When it comes to the Bible, religious authorities usually tell us which lenses we should use. We learn what to believe about the Bible as a way to help us understand how to read it. We are also taught what to be afraid of or angry about..."

The author goes ahead to list the first set of biblical lenses he was given, which included such things as: 

*The Bible is flat; no teaching or doctrine in the Bible is privileged above another...

*The Bible is unified in its message...

*God doesn't speak outside the Bible...

(Authority figures also taught him what lenses he should NOT look through at the Bible.)

"Our lenses - our assumptions, our way of seeing the world - shape the way we interpret the Bible and how we relate to God and those in the world around us...When we see our lenses, we can evaluate them consciously...An examination of our lenses is not a process of changing the Bible, the world, or truth; it is a process of changing ourselves. 

     "The most limited Bible interpreter is one who claims to have no lens." 

        "Even Jesus, the Son of God, made deliberate use of a lens..." 

Hipps goes on to illustrate this by showing how Jesus elevated certain scriptures over others. The Pharisees tried to trick him by asking which was the greatest commandment, believing that the only correct answer could be that all of the commandments are the greatest. But Jesus didn't hesitate to respond in a way that shows his understanding that some commandments carry more weight than others and that all of them should be understood in the light of the two commandments to love God and our neighbor.

"The implications of what Jesus says here are enormous and often overlooked. He is actually showing us that he has a lens - a set of assumptions. He doesn't see the Bible as flat...

"We all have lenses, but not all lenses are created equal. Some help us see more, some cause us to see less...Perhaps this Jesus-centered lens is one we should adopt. One that elevates love of God, and love of neighbor and self as the interpretive keys to the Bible."

Selling Water by the River

In the coming weeks I will share quotes from parts of Shane Hipps' book, Selling Water by the River, "a book about the life Jesus promised and the religion that gets in the way".

This book had a significant influence on my early years of unlearning and relearning and reworking much of what I was raised to believe about God and Jesus and Christianity. 

The summary on the book jacket says of this book: "Work, sex, ice cream, religion - they all promise fulfillment. But what they deliver is fleeting...We want something that lasts, that doesn't rise and fall with the fate of the stock market. Jesus understood this quest. He came to show us that peace is possible in this life, not just the next one. Yet Christianity, the very religion that claims Jesus as its own, has often built the biggest barriers to him and the life he promised."

In this book Hipps shows how available the water of life is; it's a river available to all, but we have built our institutions next to the river to sell the water. In so doing, we often create hindrances for people to get directly to the river of life - Jesus.

"...problematic are the beliefs we are taught to adopt that truncate our imagination of God...Then there is...fear. Fear is one of the great barriers to this river...Ironically, religious Christianity is often the purveyor of the very beliefs and fears that get in the way of the water.

"...What we believe matters, but not for the reasons we may assume. Our beliefs (or lack of beliefs) do not qualify or disqualify us from the river. Instead, they determine how clearly we will see the river...Some beliefs clear the way and give us high visibility, while others create a thick fog..."

Uncontrolling Love (4) - When God is a Child, None Shall be Afraid

In the chapter, "God is a Baby", of Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God, Ricardo Gouvea speaks about the coming of God as an infant from Luke 2:12. He challenges us to take seriously the manifestation of God in a baby and to realize that it is as much a part of God's story as is the crucifixion. It matters greatly that God manifested himself in this way if we are to better understand who he is and what he is like. 

He argues that by bringing Easter themes (personal salvation) into the Christmas story (which American evangelicalism likes to do) obscures and takes attention away from the message of the birth and infancy of Jesus, and that message is that God is revealing his true nature. Gouvea says the following:

"...The inferences we can take from this are astonishing...first of all, a reconsecration of matter itself ...Matter becomes sanctified. It means the sanctification of time and history...time and history became the abode of God...it also implies the sanctification of the human condition...the annulment of the curse...

"That the Eternal Word became a baby also points to something even more shocking that goes against the grain of our accustomed theological conceptions: it denotes the sanctification of tenderness and fragility...God was revealed to us as fragile and tender.

"...The incarnation and the theophany (manifestation) of God in Christ speak to us, therefore, of God's own frailty, fragility, and...of God's interest in taking risks; for the tenderness of babyhood is very risky, and God took that risk, out of love.

"...When we see with the eyes of faith that God is a baby, we see God's love in its utmost depth...and we are absorbed by God's love and we love God back with the deepest love possible, and this perfect love drives out all fear, including all fear of God and of judgment and of punishment, for God is love (I John 4:8)...driven by the power of love, we can become disciples of Jesus Christ, followers of Jesus in his love...

"God is a child, and as such God calls for our help, for our tender love and care...God has revealed God's own being, nature, and character to us in Christ as a poor little baby who needs and wants to be tenderly embraced, who needs and wants to be loved, and who wants to become our friend and play with us. God is not a menace...

"...when God is a child, the last shall be first and the weak shall be strong, and none shall be afraid."

I will close this post with a quote from Leonardo Boff which Gouvea includes in this sermon: 

"...every child wants to be an adult, and every adult wants to become rich and important like a king, and every rich, important person wants to be a god; but God wanted to be a child."

Uncontrolling Love (3): Earthquakes that Break Open Closed Minds and Hearts

Continuing this series on the uncontrolling love of God (Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God), I'm   quoting from Patricia Adams Farmer and her sermon on Matthew 28:1-10:

"I have always associated earthquakes with fear and destruction...in this passage in Matthew, we discover another kind of quaking -- the kind that wakes us up, gets our attention, jolts us out of our everyday assumptions about the world. These are the earthquakes that break open tightly closed minds and hearts--the kind of quake that issues forth new life and fresh possibilities.

"The Easter story in Matthew begins with this kind of earthquake: a quaking of pure wonder, awe, astonishment...(the text says that) 'they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy.'

"With this astonishing news (of an empty tomb), we are jolted out of our limited vision of ourselves and our world...This is the earthquake of Easter: it shakes us out of our everyday world with its heartbreaks, injustices, and might-makes-right philosophies; it cracks open an astonishing world of divine possibility and spiritual treasure...

"When the world values brute force and violence, we are astonished to see that, after all the destruction and suffering, it is love that survives -- love that triumphs. Love is the greatest power in the universe because God is love...

"But moving from death to resurrection, from darkness into light, from the world as it is to the world as it might be, is not as easy as it sounds...when fear becomes the master of our lives and lodges itself like a boulder inside our psyche, our worldview, even our religious life, it keeps us prisoners inside tombs of spiritual darkness. Such intrenched fear leads to depression and despair or mutates into hate and us-vs-them worldviews. 

"Twice in this passage in Matthew, we hear the words: 'Do not be afraid.' Radical transformation can be a scary thing. Fear is more familiar so we cling to what we know best. But in order to meet the risen Christ...we must, like the two Marys, muster the courage to move past that heavy boulder of hard stultifying fear, and accept the divine invitation to enter a world of fresh imaginings..."

Uncontrolling Love (2): Power Exercised by the Beast in Contrast to Power Exercised by the Lamb

In a similar vein as the previous post, this chapter by Ronald L. Farmer from Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God deals with Jesus' words in Matthew 22:15-22 in which he responds to the Pharisees and Herodians who team up to attempt to trap Jesus with a question about paying the census tax which had to be paid with a Roman denarius. (The denarius in itself was considered an idolatrous object by many Jews.)

While theologians have historically and correctly used this passage for guidance in the delicate dance between the state and God, Farmer brings out a third teaching and says,

"Most Christians are aware of the danger of 'rendering to Caesar things that belong to God,' but the danger of 'rendering to God things that belong to Caesar' is often overlooked...

"...This error occurs whenever people conceive of God in terms of Caesar, in essence creating God in Caesar's image, only 'bigger'. This all-too-common theological error results in Christians picturing God as exercising coercive, controlling, unilateral power like Caesar, except raised to the Nth degree (mathematically speaking). 

"Herein lies contemporary Christianity's fundamental flaw, the nearly ubiquitous error that alters, or at least taints, every other theological and ethical teaching and practice--including one's assessment of and vision for the socio-political order...

"I write in my commentary on the book of Revelation: 

'A person's conception of divine power greatly influences his or her understanding of power on the human level...Thus if divine power is viewed as coercive, all-controlling, and unilateral, then the corresponding understanding of the highest/ideal form of human power will be coercive, all-controlling, and unilateral--like the power exercised by the beast, the Roman empire. But if divine power is understood to be persuasive, all-influencing, and relational, then the corresponding understanding of the highest/ideal form of human power will be persuasive, influencing, and relational--like the power exercised by the Lamb.'

Uncontrolling Love (1): A Theology that Starts with Love Takes Us to a Different Place than One that Starts with Power

Because love desires the full freedom of the loved one, it is not controlling. If God is Love, then God is not controlling.

The implications of this statement mess with the ideas/beliefs that many of us who call ourselves "Christian" have been taught about the nature of God. They force us to reconsider how we think about the One we call God and his way of relating with his creation and how we, who profess to follow his ways, live and act. 

I have been working with this for a number of years and am delighted to find more and more material available to help give me language and to expand my heart and mind as it relates to God and others. Because this has been such a help to me, I want to do a series of posts about the uncontrolling love of God. These will be sporadic and short posts with quotes taken from the book, Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God. Each chapter is by a different author, giving a wide range of input on this theme.

The following is from Ignacio Castuera in his sermon on Hosea 11:1-4 and Matthew 7:7-11:

"(...in the passage from Hosea) the image of God saying it was God who taught Ephraim to walk is one that is filled with tenderness. Jesus (in Mt. 7) is building on that. Our faith...echoes that strong division in the Bible between the faith of the religion of rules, regulations, and rituals of the temple, and the faith taught by the prophets about a loving God, a caring God, a God who wants us to love each other and to spread that love...it started with the teachings of Jesus...and that image of Jesus when he says, 'if you, filled with faults as you are, can give good gifts, how much more your heavenly papito, your heavenly Abba...' That image is one that impels the church to become the force that it was in the Roman empire.

"But Constantine saw that that force could be used for his purposes...the Caesars of Rome hired the theologians of the church to create the images of power that have been passed down to us. All of the attributes of Caesar were assigned to God and the vision of tenderness that Jesus and the prophets had given us almost disappeared...

"The religion of the God with the attributes of Caesar is challenged by the religion of love, of a caring loving God. It is not omnipotence that is important for us as followers of Jesus. Instead, it should be love...

"A theology that starts there is going to take us to very different places from a theology that starts with images of power."

Brute Force, Cunning Strategy, Ruthless Competition, and "Winning"

 A short article by Kenneth Tanner, The Great Humility that Redeems the Cosmos, expresses well how wonderfully different God's ways are from ours and how far astray the church in the west is from God's ways. He writes:

The gospels upend every human (perhaps every rational) notion of strength.

The cosmos—superclusters of galaxies, delicate wildflowers on countless meadows, the waves of every ocean—thrives on one source of energy, a hidden force of charity that does not seek its own, a Person with an unremarkable face, who came not to be served by his creation but to serve.

...The biggest challenge presented to humanity by his gospel is our mistaken bedrock belief that what drives the universe is an unbridled might that rules by fiat. This is after all the only form of power we humans recognize: brute force, cunning strategy, ruthless competition, and, above all else, "winning."

 

It goes against everything that man has built and everything that man has ventured to accept the idea that the real power that sustains all movement and all life, that binds all things together—from subatomic particles to intergalactic distances—is a self-sacrificial love without measure.

 

"If you cling to your life, you will lose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it."  Jesus is not just talking about your life but is describing how *everything* works.

 

The losers in this scenario do not "win" but instead come to participate forever in the life of him who lays down his life for the life of the world and in so doing—by a great humility—redeems the cosmos and makes all things new, makes all things well.

 

This belief is not going to get you anywhere in the world that humanity has made but you can serve that world—this world that Christ loved before it loved him—by embracing this sacred path of humility and renouncing all the other ways and means and kinds of power.

 

All of them. Political. Military. Intellectual. Physical. All.

 

It is telling that almost every news story that compels the urgent attention of Christians these days can only do so because we have denied that we serve a Lord that rules by a mysterious humility that conquers all hearts by self-giving.