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September 20, 2007
evoking,
enacting, embodying the Kingdom
I just read The Challenge of Jesus by N.T. Wright, and
found he articulated things that I have felt in my bones but never had words for:
The principalities and powers that kept us
in exile have been defeated; they need reminding of this, and we need reminding of it too, but it is a fact—if it isn’t,
the cross was a failure…
The human race has been in exile; exiled from the garden, shut out of the house, bombarded with noise instead of music.
Our task is to announce in deed and word that the exile is over, to enact the symbols that speak of healing and forgiveness,
to act boldly in God’s world in the power of the Spirit....to declare, in symbol and praxis, in story and articulate
answers to questions, that Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not; that Jesus is Lord and Marx, Freud and Nietzsche are not; that
Jesus is Lord and neither modernity nor postmodernity is. …
But if we are to be kingdom-announcers, modeling the new way of being human, we are also to be crossbearers…sharing
and bearing the pain and puzzlement of the world so that the crucified love of God in Christ may be brought to bear healingly
upon the world at exactly that point. … God is groaning too, present within the church at the place where the world
is in pain. God the Spirit groans within us, calling in prayer to God the Father. The Christian vocation is to be in prayer,
in the Spirit, at the place where the world is in pain, and as we embrace that vocation, we discover it to be the way of following
Christ, shaped according to his messianic vocation to the cross, with arms outstretched, holding on simultaneously to the
pain of the world and to the love of God.
…our great opportunity, here and now, [is] for serious and joyful Christian mission to the post-postmodern world…The
gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music
and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even, heaven help us, biblical studies, a worldview
that will mount the historically rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way into the
post-postmodern world with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom.
I believe we face the question:
If not now, when? And if we are grasped by this vision, we may also hear the question: If not us, then who? And if the gospel
of Jesus is not the key to this task, then what is?
I wept when I read this, because I have
long groaned in that pain and puzzlement, thinking there was something wrong with me, with the Church, with God’s world,
as of course there is. But now I see that this is what it means to “fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard
to Christ's afflictions,” (Col. 1:24) and “the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings.” (Phil 3:10) For
me, it helps to have words for what I experience. Our ministry here consists of listening
to God and listening to the people to find those points of pain where God wants to use us. Each project and initiative that
we have came not from an advance plan, but arose organically through presence and relationship.
You might say we follow our noses, grope in the dark, walk by faith and not by sight. I won’t kid you that it’s
not scary. But each time after we “obey our way out of” a spiritual muddle, as Oswald Chambers says, we see how
each piece fits into the Kingdom program. So to the question “When?” we say “Now!”; to “Who?”
we say “Send us!”; and to “How?” we say, “Announcing and enacting the good news that King Jesus
has fulfilled God’s saving plan and the new creation has been inaugurated."
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embodying the
Kingdom with septic fields
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Educatodos Literacy Program
Begun in 2007 for pastors, church members
and non-Christians, this project allows us not only to equip the saints, but also to build relationships with seekers. Educatodos
is a distance-learning curriculum developed by USAID and the Honduran government. We recently received a grant to help with
the textbooks, audiotapes and other expenses for six months. We have 26 students, youth and adults, from first to ninth grade,
with classes meeting seven days a week to accommodate work schedules. Pastor Miguel Medina and his wife Norma are in first
grade, learning to read and write.
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Field Trip
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Jubilee
Loan Cooperative
In 2006 we initiated this micro-enterprise and
debt relief program, following the 2006 Nobel
Peace Prize winners. We have made 17 loans to 13 pastoral families, ranging from $25 to $200. Recipients have
used the money to pay off debts that were at usurious rates of interest, and to start businesses such as selling used clothing
and making food for sale house to house. As they pay off each small loan, they are eligible for another, larger one. One family
is now on its 4th loan. The loan fund began with $500, and currently is close to $700 due to interest.
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Tamales ready for steaming
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Septic Field Initiative
Diarrheal and parasitic diseases are endemic in Honduras.
There is no sanitation in the squatter communities where our pastors live. They use simple pit latrines which often fill up
and overflow in the rainy season.
At Pastor Rafael’s suggestion, Pastor Elías Ramírez
installed a septic field on his property. He dug the pits for the settling tank and leaching field and constructed them with
materials provided by our ministry. Three more pastors have begun digging septic pits. We are seeking sponsorship for the
bricks, sand and gravel necessary to complete them. Other
Initiatives Even though education is ‘free’ in the public schools, the cost of uniforms, school
supplies, bus fare, etc. can be out of reach. And high school graduation costs $200-$300, an astronomical sum for
many pastors. For Christians with children to legally marry their common-law spouses.
The
churches collected an offering to send to my niece who was a short-term missionary in Burundi. The money is to purchase medicines for the children in the orphanage where
she worked.
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You can download our full reports here
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