NT Wright on the End Times (Second Coming)

Maundy Thursday

The word Maundy comes from the Latin mandatum, which means "commandment." At the Last Supper, Jesus gave the disciples a new commandment to love one another as he had loved them (John 13:34). Prior to breaking the bread with the disciples, Jesus washed their feet. As a result of these ceremonies the day received different names, all of which point to a church solemnity that evolved from Holy Week.

Readings of Exodus 12:1-42; John 13:1-17, 31-35

MEDITATION OF THE DAY: The three holy days before Easter, (known as the TRIDUUM), begins with today’s celebration and end with the Easter solemnity. The theme of the first lessons lays our attention on the Eucharist which is instituted in this “Last Supper” and yet some are surprised as John’s Gospel. Why all this attention to Jesus washing the feet of his disciples when he is giving us the Eucharist? Remember when Jesus was invited by a Pharisee to dinner and the discussion that ensued? The custom of the time was that the host would have his servants make the guests comfortable by cleansing their feet before they recline at table for the meal, conversation and fellowship. This is what Jesus is doing for his disciples in the upper room.
But this isn’t just a meal but the Passover celebration when faithful Jews recalled how Yahweh saved them from slavery and led them through the desert to their promised land. That event prefigures what Jesus is about to do for us all in this paschal mystery of salvation we are celebrating. And Jesus is present to his disciples in this meal as the servant. Are we people inclined to serve or be served tells a great deal about how we received the mysteries revealed this day?
PRAYER OF THE DAY: Almightyand eternal God,you told us to love. But we are weak. We do not love as Jesus did, or anything like it. Send us your Spirit to change us and to make us love like the Crucified and Risen One, which we may carry out your mandate. Amen

Maundy Thursday Discipline – Make an effort to commit to an act of humble servitude that you would not normally do on this day. In the evening go to the liturgy and participate in the foot washing.

Picture from Nathan Turner
Source: Meditations of the Day at Anglican Mainstream

Interview with John Burke from Gateway Church

A review of The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment. By Tim Challies.

In the midst of all doctrinal turmoils that the Church worldwide is facing, particularly the 'all-inclusive-feel-good-gospel' the following review of the book "The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment" fits perfectly. From Bill Muehlenberg's blog and via the Anglican Mainstream's site.

There was a time when it was a virtue to be known as discerning and discriminating. That was before Political Correctness set in. Now in an age of relativism and postmodernism, a fraudulent form of tolerance has arisen. As a result, people are terrified of speaking out on anything, for fear of being accused of being intolerant, narrow-minded and dogmatic.

Sadder still, this foolish idea of tolerance has crept into the churches as well. Now many believers are actually claiming that Christians should not judge, should not rebuke, and should not claim to have the truth. Somehow we have come to believe that spiritual maturity has something to do with the suspension of judgment and the absence of critical discernment.

But Tim Challies argues that the exact opposite is the case: spiritually mature Christians are those who have learned the discipline of biblical discernment. Indeed, a lack of discernment results in spiritual immaturity, backsliding and worse.

Challies defines spiritual discernment as the “skill of understanding and applying God’s word with the purpose of separating truth from error and right from wrong”.

It is, in other words, thinking biblically about life. He argues that it is a practice, like prayer and Scripture reading, which must be developed and maintained. Without the discipline of spiritual discernment, we will be ineffective for service in the Kingdom.

Challies offers many texts to make his case. He begins with the prayer of King Solomon in which he asks God for “an understanding mind” to govern his people, and that he “may discern between good and evil”. God was pleased with his request and granted it. Even today, we still speak about the wisdom of Solomon.

Of course Jesus had to upbraid his disciples for not being understanding, or discerning (Mark 8:17-21). The New Testament writers make much of this theme. In Eph. 5:10 Paul says we should “discern what is pleasing to the Lord”.

In Heb. 5:11-14 we are told that spiritual maturity comes when believers “have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good form evil”. Challies reminds us that the Hebrew Christians were not new believers, and they should have known better. But they were still stuck on the milk of the Word, and not able to handle strong meat.

Sound theology, in other words, is part of what makes for mature believers. We need to study the Word and distinguish truth from error, right from wrong. But many in the church today look down on theology, denigrate doctrine, celebrate doubt and rubbish the mind. That is a recipe for disaster says Challies.

Developing biblical discernment is part of the way in which we develop a biblical worldview. Unfortunately a secular worldview is far too often prevalent in the churches. Many believers have latched onto false notions of tolerance, have downplayed doctrine, have rejected the idea of truth, and have embraced the values of the world.

When believers stop thinking Christianly, their thoughts and values do not remain in neutral: they end up absorbing the beliefs, values and practices of the surrounding secular culture. We end up believing and acting pretty much like everyone else does.

Indeed, researchers such as George Barna have documented the loss of a biblical worldview, and the resultant loss of character and biblical lifestyle. This is why spiritual discernment is so important.

Spiritual maturity, brought on by biblical discernment, will help us live lives of integrity and sound character, and will help preserve the gospel from error and deception. Both are vitally important.

Challies discusses the importance of judging, and looks at passages which seem to forbid it, such as Matt. 7:1. He rightly notes that hypocritical judgment is what Jesus warns against here. Challies examines the various passages that urge us to test all things and to discern, evaluate and assess.

He further discusses such things as the gift of discernment, the dangers of discernment, the development and practice of discernment, and the discipline of discernment. Thus this volume is a practical and level-headed look at a much needed spiritual resource.

We have plenty of books on the discipline of prayer, bible reading, fasting, and so on. But the area of Christian worldview and biblical discernment is not usually associated with such topics. But these disciplines all go together, resulting in spiritual growth and maturity.

Challies is to be praised for drawing to our attention the pressing need for spiritual discernment, and how it may be achieved.

Historic: The Jerusalem Declaration

Finally, after the GAFCON a Declaration was released. The full text can be found here.

8. We acknowledge God’s creation of humankind as male and female and the unchangeable standard of Christian marriage between one man and one woman as the proper place for sexual intimacy and the basis of the family. We repent of our failures to maintain this standard and call for a renewed commitment to lifelong fidelity in marriage and abstinence for those who are not married.

13. We reject the authority of those churches and leaders who have denied the orthodox faith in word or deed. We pray for them and call on them to repent and return to the Lord.

By affirming the historical and biblical teaching on human sexuality and rejecting the Ministry of those who don't even believe in the Resurrection or the uniqueness of heterosexual marriage, it seems obvious that Anglicanism is facing a split.
It seems obviuos that GAFCON Leaders do not recognize the ministry of those who uphold heretic doctrines (as the TEC or the Church of Canada). Now Lambeth ... Venables will be there as a voice from GAFCON, while the Bishop of Rochester cannot have communion with those who departed from the orthodox faith. Packer has requested Rowan William's resignation. The turmoil does not seem to pass away.

Conservatives are also 'split'. The main Orthodox scholar NT Wright has clearly expressed his opposition to the GAFCON movement. If he eventually becomes the head of the Anglican Communion as it has been suggested in the blogsphere, he or whoever inherits the Canterbury See will have to be very creative to keep the unitiy of the one Apostolic an catholic Church.

Flemish Vineyard Day 2008

Wonderings of the Anglican Communion (2)

After yesterday's post, i've found that last weekend FULCRUM had a specific meeting to address the issue of the Communion and the Anglican Covenant. The main speakers were obviously Tom Wright, and Andrew Goddard.

Tom Wright's lecture "Conflict and Covenant in the Bible" can be found HERE.

Andrew Goddard's lecture "Conflict and Covenant in the Communion" can be found HERE.

In any case, it clarifies very much the understanding of what's going on with the Anglicans, and definitely does not support any idea that +Tom would be making his way from Durham to Canterbury. +Tom actually supports militantly the role of +++Rowan Williams, and hopes for the unity of the Anglicans. Both lectures are long to read but worth.

Both lectures should be carefully read by those supporting +++Venables or +++Akinola in their attempts to bring their understanding of righteousness to the wider Church. And both make the point: it's not about homosexuality per se, but about the boundaries of the Communion. It seems that everyone made homosexuality the central issue, when it's not, it's simply the manifestation of a deeper problem.

I still have to think about ;-)

Vineyard 25th Anniversary Video

Vineyard USA 25th Anniversary from Vineyard USA on Vimeo.

"If we are only concerned about saving people's souls, we are irrelevant" Bert Waggoneer

Easter echoes

The most recent Easter Sermon by Bishop Wright was intendedly shocking. He made several points of denouncing unrighteousness. He highlighted the current debates on abortion, babies euthanasia, asylum seekers, and human-animal inter species genetic bending.

Peter’s message to Cornelius was that through his resurrection Jesus has been constituted as the judge of the living and the dead. The resurrection of Jesus is the beginning of the final putting-to-rights of all things. In the light of the resurrection, the church must never stop reminding the world’s rulers and authorities that they themselves will be held to account, and that they must do justice and bring wise, healing order to God’s world ahead of that day.

Bishop Tom Wright "The uncomfortable truth of Easter" a sermon at the Sung Eucharist in Durham Cathedral Easter Day 2008

The Anglican Mainstream blog echoed Wright's words and further elaborated on the recent Dutch protocol on finishing the life of suffering or disabled babies, with the several scientific support obtained by the medical community. The Church should have a saying. We still believe that humans are made to bear God's image, and therefore human life should be preserved with all available efforts, not terminated as easily as possible.

“[W]e are moving toward a medical system,” says Smith, “in which babies are put down like dogs and killing is redefined as a caring act.” But this can happen only in a society that has forgotten that every human life is made in the image of God—and, therefore, worthy of protection. Think worldviews do not matter? Think our Christian heritage is irrelevant? Too bad we cannot ask the infants of Groningen what they think. Deadly Trend, by Chuck Colson 3/14/2008 The Infanticide Protocol

Furthermore, it makes me think of a global covenant with death. May the Truth of Easter bring true light to our paths!

Easter Sunday: He is risen!

Holy Week 2008

At the end of this week, specifically on Friday, our Church has organised a small gathering for the celebration of the Communion. I've gotten the responsibility to prepare some thoughts, maybe a meditation on the Last Supper (or maybe the First Kingdom Celebration). I guess that there are many places where it has been done already, so it would not be anything new. However, I'm not planning to simply surf on internet and cut-and-paste some nice thoughts, even if it is really tempting.

King Jesus is amazing. He left us a simple meal, bread and wine to celebrate his Kingdom, and to announce out loud that he is indeed coming back. Somehow the "already-not yet" tension is manifested in this meal. We join together with Jesus in the upper room, we join together with all those who through history have celebrated King Jesus in the same way, and we anticipate the consummation of times, when Jesus will appear for ever.

What is also more important is that as we celebrate communion, as we share the bread and the wine with each other, we declare that there's no more division between "Jews and Gentiles", for both have been inserted in Jesus, the true Vine. We proclaim that forgiveness of sins is available for all those who welcome King Jesus in their lives, and that are made co-heirs of the Kingdom.

The Supper is also a symbolic representation of the lifestyle of love. Love is not at all a simple feeling. It is a lifestyle that embraces the other, that campaigns for social righteousness, that actively engages in the preservation of our heritage (the Earth), that longs for the end of poverty and hunger. Actually, Jesus said that his disciples were going to be known because they loved each other in a way that would put the social systems upside down.

My question today and that probably will remain: how do we embody as Church this love-vocation?

I found the image here.

Navidad donde los Impens

Gert, Sensi, Junior, Evelyn y yo.

Hunger for worship!

A very good interview to Bishop NT Wright, by the Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies on Worship of course!

Radical Christianity

Worth to see the full video!

The Evangelical Crackup

Yesterday i went to watch the film "Jesus Camp". And I was very much impressed of the political content of it. It's already known that most US Evangelicals are skewed to the right in politics, but it was shocking to see how can they exaggerate and become non-biblical in their practices. When they brought a body size image of the US President to a prayer meeting, i felt like the times when people had to worship the images of the Roman Emperors! The sad part is that the label -and its implications- affects to all of us outside the US, who are proudly spiritual descendants of the Reformation.

However, there seems to be hope. In a New York Times article, the authors discuss objectively the shortcomings of the Christian right, and at the same time highlight that the younger generation of leaders are taking things with a renewed and probably more biblical approach. The following extract exemplifies the former statement:

Meanwhile, a younger generation of evangelical pastors — including the widely emulated preachers Rick Warren and Bill Hybels — are pushing the movement and its theology in new directions. There are many related ways to characterize the split: a push to better this world as well as save eternal souls; a focus on the spiritual growth that follows conversion rather than the yes-or-no moment of salvation; a renewed attention to Jesus’ teachings about social justice as well as about personal or sexual morality. However conceived, though, the result is a new interest in public policies that address problems of peace, health and poverty — problems, unlike abortion and same-sex marriage, where left and right compete to present the best answers.

Recuerdos/Memories

Some of these Christian songs are part of my early days as believer. I thought that they were appropriate to celebrate the Reformation Day.

Happy Reformation Day

On October 31st 1517, 490 y ago, Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses at the door of the Cathedarl in Wittemberg, Germany. Church doors functioned as bulletin boards in that period of history. These theses were an answer to the controversial selling of indulgences by the Roman curia to build the Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. This action has been considered as the igniting of the Reformation. Later on, Martin Luther translated the Bible to German language, and blessed eventually the whole Western World with the access to the Word of God in lay language. He changed the history of the Western World.

Vineyard Benelux leaders retreat

Short video of the afternoon's worship time at the Vineyard Office in Utrecht on 22/09/2007. It's simply a very nice souvenir.

Christian inspiration

I wonder, when in history the gospel of King Jesus stopped of being preached as a radical message ... Today reading a blog in Spanish, a Christian singer and pastor, Marco Barrientos, challenges the believers not to fear fellowship with non believers, who desperately need Jesus. According to Marcos Barrientos, we should not be afraid to be the light of the World. The full interview here.

Reformation heritage

Reformation Heritage



Fathers of the Reformation



Receive the challenge of their lives!