Restoring the Balance

This is an excerpt from “Restoring the Balance” radio show on Sunday nights on Triple J. (This article is to be read sarcastically)

“We don’t just sit and sing and talk about Easter, we also re-enact the life of Jesus in a stage show, it’s got everything, it’s got drama, and in particular we change the scene where Jesus threw the money lenders out of the temple. And instead turns the temple into one of the largest auditoriums in the area, and then he purchases surrounding acreage, builds a school next to the temple, café’s, gyms, boutique TV studios and all with state of the art audio visual equipment as well. That is a little twist that we give to the story, but it does remain truthful to the text, or even the broad narrative thrust of the story of Easter.”
It can be heard here:
http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/restoringthebalance/audio.htm
The live feed dating 8/4/07 (this particular section is about 5 min in roughly.

I think this is 1: funny, as it strokes my cynical side, but 2: Really disgusting, not because they are having a shot at the church, but because everyone else seems to be able to see the seemingly obvious distance between the story of Jesus and a lot of what the Church seems to champion. Is the Church that blind that it cannot see?

There have been some good blog article going around this past week (or 2) and I would encourage you to read these full article if you haven’t seen them already.

Tim from A foot in both places made this statement:

“I feel sad when I see articles like this. I see the institutional church playing as if it still sits at the centre of society and culture. The sooner it realises that things have changed and starts behaving that way the healthier it and the relationship between Christianity and our society will be.”

Dan from Poser or Prophet made this one:

“Therefore, the crisis that we face is not only one of imagination, it is also one of willing. Christians in the West have become far too comfortable within the structures of capitalism (after all, the wolf prefers to eat people overseas and not the wonderful people in my neighbourhood -- or so it seems) and, consequently, have imaginations that have run dry. We will begin to be able to imagine economic alternatives to capitalism when we begin to embody economic alternatives to capitalism. And it is one of those alternatives that I hope to begin to describe in my next post.”

Allan Hirsch brought up this quote from Jacques Ellul:

“No doubt some will reply that God is not a God of disorder, incoherence, or arbitrariness, but a God of order. Of course he is. Unfortunately the whole of the Old Testament shows us that God’s order is not that which we conceive and desire. God’s order is not organization and institution (cf. the difference between judges and kings). It is not the same in every time and place. It is not a matter of repetition and habit. On the contrary, it resides in the fact that it constantly posits something new, a new beginning. Our God is a God of beginnings. There is in him no redundancy or circularity. Thus, if his church wants to be faithful to his revelation, it will be completely mobile, fluid, renascent, bubbling, creative, inventive, adventurous, and imaginative. It will never be perennial, and can never be organized or institutionalized. If the gates of death are not going to prevail against it, this is not because it is a good, solid, well organized fortress, but because it is alive; it is Life that is, as mobile, changing, and surprising as life. If it becomes a powerful fortified organization, it is because death has prevailed.” — Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity

These three in particular speak of the very issue that the church faces. I think personally something has been lost; I remember a story I heard CB Samuels tell about an Indian friend of his that went to the U.S. to study the church, and on his returning, the group that sent him said;
“Well, tell us what you learnt.”
His response was something of the sort.
“It’s amazing how much they get done without the Holy Spirit.”

I wonder if we gave God the space he wants to speak through us through word and deed, what it our picture of church would look like. I hope and pray that I would have the rocks to stand up under the example of the resurrection and say, I refuse to settle for anything less than the kingdom. I refuse to compromise, consolidate or compartmentalise, God’s message is for the world, and I will be a spokes person and take it back to where it belongs, in the hands, hearts and imaginations of ordinary people.

In the words of blind Bartimaeus; “Jesus son of David have mercy on me.” I wish I had the gumption of this man. That even before receiving his sight, he throws off anything that he previously hoped in, he threw aside his cloak which probably had his money on it, and he threw aside his family and personal desires of using his new eyes. Then when Jesus said, “Go on your way”, there is only one way left, and said himself, I have found the most beautiful pearl, this worth me selling everything I have, and following Jesus.

I wish I had the gumption or courage to do the same.