Sacramental Living

I love the Pauline letters to the Corinthian church.  I’m amazed that he included in those writings some of the things he did.

Paul must have known that his reading audience in Corinth would be reading these letters thinking, “Paul is a complete idiot,” “He doesn’t grow the church the way Apollos does,” “Paul is weird,” “Paul sure seems stuck on himself and his way of following Jesus,” “Paul just doesn’t understand what it’s like to live in Corinth,” and so on.

I find myself identifying with Paul’s missionary plight more and more in recent days.  I wish I didn’t.  I mean, even the religious elite in his own movement (i.e. Peter and the Council at Jerusalem) would look down on him … not to mention his former tribe (the Jewish leaders).

And yet, in the face of opposition from every side, and even from those who should be supporting him, Paul writes:

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. - 1 Corinthians 1:27

It’s frustrating to be considered foolish.  It’s frustrating to have “the system” breathing down your neck because leaders have aligned themselves more closely with the cultures of this individualistic, business-driven world than they have the Prince of Peace and God’s Kingdom.

Part of me wants to see the “shaming of the strong.”  God forgive me for that, even as much as I forgive the strong.

Still clinging to foolishness …

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
How do you deal with walking the foolish path of Jesus?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Yesterday, I resigned from my position as lead pastor at a local parish.  God has been leading me and my family into something different.  It has been gaining traction and synergy for some time, and I will soon tell more.

For now, I must share the page from Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest for yesterday, September 30.  It was timely and a perfect expression of where I am these days:

The Assigning of the Call

” I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church . . . “

-Colossians 1:24

We take our own spiritual consecration and try to make it into a call of God, but when we get right with Him He brushes all this aside. Then He gives us a tremendous, riveting pain to fasten our attention on something that we never even dreamed could be His call for us. And for one radiant, flashing moment we see His purpose, and we say, “Here am I! Send me” ( Isaiah 6:8 ).

This call has nothing to do with personal sanctification, but with being made broken bread and poured-out wine. Yet God can never make us into wine if we object to the fingers He chooses to use to crush us. We say, “If God would only use His own fingers, and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way, then I wouldn’t object!” But when He uses someone we dislike, or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, to crush us, then we object. Yet we must never try to choose the place of our own martyrdom. If we are ever going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed- you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.

I wonder what finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you? Have you been as hard as a marble and escaped? If you are not ripe yet, and if God had squeezed you anyway, the wine produced would have been remarkably bitter. To be a holy person means that the elements of our natural life experience the very presence of God as they are providentially broken in His service. We have to be placed into God and brought into agreement with Him before we can be broken bread in His hands. Stay right with God and let Him do as He likes, and you will find that He is producing the kind of bread and wine that will benefit His other children.

The grapes are being squeezed.  This is the sacramental life!

In just over a week, I’ll be joining with friends to celebrate the founding of my tribe.  I previously mentioned this.

I’m honing in more on the similarities between my plight and that of my spiritual grandfather, Phineas Bresee.

Bresee was rejected by the establishment of his tribe.  His rejection culminated in the formation of a new tribe about 10 years later.

He was rejected because he wanted a Christian life that was not just about words.  Bresee not only believed that ministry to the urban poor was important, he intentionally stood with the poor in ruined communities. He and those around him defended the poor, advocated against the injustices that fueled poverty, and developed spaces of belonging and access in which the poor were, not only welcome, but at home.

Bresee and the early Nazarenes challenged social injustices.  They urged their church familiy to move from merely preaching a holiness of heart to expressing holiness of life–in the physical, ordinary, and mundane–as solidarity with the disenfranchised. This is in the direct line of my spiritual great-grandfather, John Wesley.

Because of the poor, Bresee called for radical simplicity of church facilities, not only because ostentatious styles were off-putting for the poor, but the sheer cost of unnecessary embellishments were poor stewardship of resources of God’s people. Tithes and offerings should be used to serve the poor, not build impressive structures. Likewise, words, dress, and lifestyle were to be simple … because of the implications for the poor.

Bresee once wrote:

The first miracle after the baptism of the Holy (Spirit) was wrought upon a beggar. It means that the first service of a Holy (Spirit)-baptized church is to the poor; that its ministry is to those who are lowest down; that its gifts are for those who need them the most. As the Spirit was upon Jesus to preach the gospel to the poor, so His Spirit is upon His servants for the same purpose.

And so Bresee was rejected by his church establishment for challenging Christians to live like Jesus.  He was rejected for being Jesus to the disenfranchised and seeing Jesus in them.  He was rejected for not becoming like the ones who already called themselves Christians.  He was rejected for suggesting church resources should be used for something other than maintaining an institution, a building, an flawed paradigm.  He was rejected for moving beyond a stale, useless, faith.

Bresee was rejected, just as Jesus was.  His primary persecutors were the most “religious” people of his day … as were Bresee’s.

So when I celebrate a centennial marker next week, I’m not celebrating the dawn of yet another schism in the Church universal.  I’m not celebrating the founding of a particular tribe in which I happen to be an ordained elder.  I’m not celebrating the misguided and failed ways we have exercised the inheritance of our spiritual ancestors.

Instead, I’ll be celebrating a wonderful idea made tangible: preaching the gospel to the poor in word and deed.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
Can you identify with the plight of Bresee?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.