I'm reading through Bosch again with my pastor, and oh, it's good. There are times when you just have to stop and think through each and every sentence because there's so much density of thought in there. Here's a gem we turned up yesterday.
In much of the "electronic church", materialism is baptized. The Jesus of revivalism appears to have more in common with the Chamber of Commerce and the entertainment world than with a simple cave in Bethlehem or a rugged cross on a barren hill. Preachers steer clear of controversial social issues and concentrate on those personal sins of which most of their enthusiastic listeners are not guilty. However, what criterion determines that racism and structural injustice are social issues but pornography and abortion personal? Why is politics shunned and declared to fall outside the competence of the evangelist, except when it favors the position of the privileged in society? How is it that preachers who appear to have an interest only in the otherworldly destiny of their listeners can be so thoroughly worldly in their ethos and methods?
What he said.
I'm currently preparing the Christmas Sunday message for my church, and the theme is on the poverty of Jesus. Far from baptizing commerce and materialism, our God came into the world with nothing, as the bastard child of a carpenter whose own family, in his own home town, couldn't find him somewhere to stay. The saviour God was welcomed into the world not by the great and the good of his own people, but only by foreigners and the pastoral underclass.
As well as having nowhere to be born, he went through life with "nowhere to lay his head." Actually, he had nothing; he borrowed everything. When he needed a boat to preach from, he had to borrow one from a friend; when he died, alone and rejected by his friends, he was laid in a borrowed grave.
Nowhere to be born and nowhere to die, depending meekly on the kindness of others. That's the kind of God we serve. Then as now, Jesus resists our attempts to make him impressive, for he knows that it is through weakness and poverty, not through riches and strength, that God works in the world.
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