One Savannah cop models following Jesus on the beat (intentionally or not).
What to Expect Sunday (7/29)
on the life in a neighborhood
Cruises and Christ
What would it be like to live as a Christian in Savannah like the passengers on a cruise ship? As Michael Black writes in the New York Times,
"Close quarters among guests and crew demand constant interaction, which results in one of the best qualities of a leisure cruise: civility. For a week, I never heard a single argument. I never even heard a raised voice. People treated each other well, and I can’t count the number of times I heard guests asking crew members questions about their lives: their time at sea, their families, their adventures ashore. Everybody seemed to care."
Back on land, we self-select who we will be around, without reference to location, based on who we think is in our tribe. But the way of Jesus is different. Its the way of the cruise ship. In the parable of the Good Samaritan found in Luke 10, Jesus calls his followers to acts of radical love and hospitality, not towards their own tribe, but to the actual neighbor who is there, in physical space, close to them. By living humbly in place, aware of our surroundings, we come into contact with all the diversity of humanity.
What to Expect this Sunday
Chaos. Kids everywhere. A taco bar. Baxter the dog (see image). And singing and prayer and Scripture. Join us this week!
Songs For When Things Don't Change
God promises that, though we have abandoned him, he will not abandon us. That he will not leave us. That he will be faithful to us, and that through his presence among us, his kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven. And even though in Jesus Christ this kingdom has already come, it is at the same time not yet here. The darkness is (still) passing away. The songs we will sing this week reflect the tension of life as humans in a time when Jesus' kingdom is both already and not yet here.
Bifrost Arts' "How Long" is a meditation on Psalm 13. The Psalmist uses the absence of the kingdom not as a reason to doubt the existence of God, but instead to throw himself deeper into relationship with God. So he repeats the title phrase as a longing question to God: How long will you turn your face away?
As Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing suggests, Jesus is already the source of every blessing, and we put up monuments ("Ebenezer") to that goodness.
Because sometimes, in this life, it is hard to remember.
God's Presence in a Fractured World
Marten van Valckenborch, The Tower of Babel, circa 1600
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold..."
A 2016 analysis by Factiva showed that these lines, written by the Irish Poet W. B. Yeats a century ago, were quoted more often in the first seven months of 2016 than in the previous 30 years put together. Our cultural and civic moment is fractured; we feel like we have less in common with our neighbors than ever before.
We have been here before, humankind. That first moment of fracture at the Tower of Babel (cf. Genesis 11:1-9) pitted neighbor against neighbor in a triumph of misunderstanding and mutual animosity, as each asserted himself as King. And "there was war in the night, and no man knoweth whom he strikes." But into that conflict, God called Abram, not to destroy his enemies, or (more difficult to resist, for anyone who has spent time on Nextdoor or Facebook) his neighbors, but to bless the nations with the same love that God had shown him. God's healing presence with His people would become God's healing love for the world. That healing presence, finding its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus, the King, the Prince of Peace.