Friends,
Last week I started reading Shane Claiborne’s book, The Irresistible Revolution, Updated and Expanded: Living as an Ordinary Radical. I started the book after hearing another pastor speak of reading the book and how it has been transformative for him. The book is an early memoir of a community that has sought to live the words of Jesus.
“If you find yourself climbing the ladder of success, be careful or else on your way up you might pass Jesus on his way down" (p. 40)
I am currently four chapters, twenty-five percent, of my way through the book (I know it is a little crazy to suggest a book so early on, but I am doing it anyway). As one who has never been at home in the consumer-driven American church, struggling to find a place to fit in, whose questions were not welcome, and feeling pushed to the margins I found Shane’s book both hopeful and challenging. I highly recommend the book to anyone searching for hope in these complex times.
"We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor" (p. 99)
I know that Shane is a bit of an enigma in the church world. A man who lived and worked with Mother Theresa but also spent time working at Willow Creek. Two church worlds that could hardly be farther from each other. His views are often controversial but they are spoken with such love and compassion it is hard to turn away and dismiss him. John Wesley once said, “Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on Earth.” I think, perhaps, this is a community seeking to live this out in our present day. There is hope in the margins.
"My friends and I had a hunch that there is more to life than what we had been told to pursue. We knew that the world cannot afford the American dream and that the good news is that there is another dream. We looked to the early church and to the Scriptures and to the poor to find it" (p. 104).
Blessings,
Stephen
The Milk Can returns! After a needed break we are back. In 1 Corinthians Paul says some things are spiritual milk and other things spiritual meat. The Milk Can remains a quirky look at life and an encouragement for your week.
This is the Kingdom of God. This is the power of the Gospel. To change hearts and make friends out of enemies. To unite people who have no reason to be united. Only in the Kingdom of God is it possible for there to be true unity across economic, gender, ethnic, and social lines. This is the example Jesus gave to us and to which Paul calls us in Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (3:28, NIV).