On the Anniversary

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

Prayer of the Week

Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Prayer for the Week

Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in my heart the love of your Name; increase in me true religion; nourish me with all goodness; and bring forth in me the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

The Church will be led by China

China's place in the Christian movement has not been the propagation of Christendom and Western hegemony, as nearly everyone now agrees - in reality, Christendom has long been a historical anachronism. As Huo Shui, a former government political analyst observes, the Christian idea of love has introduced a new value system in China, including the idea of repentance "which is lacking in Chinese culture." He writes of a moral revolution in the New China where the "Christian faith became more indigenous . . . you can no longer say that Christianity is a foreign religion. The Churches are led by Chinese. You see Chinese Bibles. You hear Chinese worship songs. You experience a Chinese style of worship. The church looks and feels Chinese . . . Christianity has finally take root in Shenzhou - in China, the land of God." All this suggests that a China strengthened by its own resources and renewed in its own identity would be a China well endowed to assume a leadership role in the scheme of post-Western Christian developments.

- Lamin Sanneh, Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity (bold mine)

Prayer for Mission

For Mission

Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your Name. Amen.

From the daily office of The Book of Common Prayer, 1979.
dailyoffice.org

Identity, club-culture, and the Gospel

"As identities can be picked up from a variety of media sources, the construction of 'who we are' arises increasingly from how we imagine ourselves, rather than from where we live."

- Ian Condry, "Japanese Hip-Hop and the Globalization of Popular Culture" in Urban Life: Readings in the Anthropology of the City, 384.

And, at the same time, as Condry points out, there are places where imagined identity "shows up" and is developed. Condry borrows from the Japanese term genba, used in the hip-hop world to denote the hip-hop clubs as the "actual scene" where hip-hop happens. The word genba is used "in the hip-hop world . . . to contrast the intense energy of the club scene with the more sterile and suspect marketplace" (italics mine, Condry, 386). Condry uses the term genba to describe how within globalization there are global cultural forms that, instead of imposing a cultural imperialism of homogeneity, tend to get interpreted and shaped according to local culture so that there is heterogeneous multiplication of global cultural forms. The diversity and characteristic Japanese-ness of Japanese Hip-Hop is a prime example, and the clubs - the genba - is where it happens.

Condry (after spending over 18 months attending over 100 club events around Tokyo all held between the hours of 1 a.m. and 5 a.m.), describes how even though club culture is extraordinary and exotic it still is "embedded in Japan's political-economic structures, characteristic social relations, and the contemporary range of cultural forms. . . It is largely predictable what kind of pleasures can be expected, and also the generally unpleasant consequences for work or school after a night without sleep" (Condry, 380). This tension is most clearly seen when the clubbers board the first trains at 5 a.m. to return home as the businessmen and women get off the first trains to go to work. Even the train schedule dictates the socializing patterns of the club culture.

It's no wonder that the church has struggled to grow in Japan. When the leading edge of cultural change is centered in smoke-filled clubs between the hours of 1 a.m. and 5 a.m., a Sunday morning worship service that has more in common with a "sterile and suspect marketplace" rather than a place of intense energy and life such as the clubs will by default not capture the imagination of the kinds of people that shape culture in the clubs. Are there any Christians that are part of this club culture? Does anyone know? I sure hope so, because the energy of the club is only a shadow of what could it could be, and what it could lead to, when transformed by the Gospel.

Prayer for the Week

Almighty God, you have given your only Son to be for us a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life: Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of this redeeming work, and to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Urban Theology Overview (FTS_MN520)

Today I began my first of two one-week intensives, Encountering the City: Introduction to Urban Mission with Professor Jude Tiersma Watson. In this class we will learn the basic framework and skills to "exegete" the city and the people that live there, which essentially means that we will observe and interact with the different facets of the city in order to better understand who and what the city is. The end goal is that we would know how to "learn" a city and its people, so that we can more effectively join God in bringing his kingdom to bear on the city.

From an introductory article by our professor:

• In 1900 only 10% of the world's population lived in cities, now 50% of the world's population live in cities, and in 20-30 years it will be 70% with most of the growth in Africa and Asia.
• Latin America is already 80% urbanized.
• Within in the U.S., poverty is now expanding to the suburbs as the affluent "gentry" are returning to the city center.
• Because of the rapid change of cities globally, "much of what we have learned about life in cities, and the theology of cities, may not be relevant for the cities of the future."
• "Urban is both a place and a process. Urbanization is the process of growth within the city. Urbanism is the cultural impact of urbanization."
• The terms "urban ministry" and "inner-city" have been used not so much to designate a location but a certain group of people, the poor and at-risk. With the expansion of poverty to the suburbs, will our language change to match reality?
• Anti-urbanism is deep within the fabric of our nation, especially in our majority culture, and especially in the church. The American Dream is not an urban dream. "The greatest barriers to urban mission are not within the city but wihin the church."
• There is a need for further development of urban theology that focuses on praxis, narrative communication of theology, issues of justice, power, exclusion, racial reconciliation, and how the city is interconnected with suburban and rural areas.
  

Throughout this class I will be especially interested in how to apply city research methods to the university campus and surrounding community as well as looking at how universities are interconnected with the city. This should prove fruitful for campus ministry, especially in urban-based, heavily commuter campuses.

Reflections on... Free Churches (FTS_MC500)

For our last class we took up the topic of the ecclesiological grouping known as the Free Churches, which includes everything from Baptist to Assembly of God, from Nazarene to Quaker. For the sake of ease of discussion, we covered the beginning of the Free Church from at the time of the Reformation, the Anabaptists. Their movement was referred to as the Radical Reformation, because not only did they take up the reforms of Luther and Calvin, but they also went even further to deconstruct the entire structure of the church as it existed. Whereas the Reformation continued to maintain the symbiotic partnership between church and state and the expression of the church as one visible institution, the Radical Reformation broke ties with both the government structures and the visible institution of the church. This movement began with a Bible study led by Ulrich Zwingli, from which many left to form independant communities of re-baptized adults. Zwingli, one of the leading Reformers, distanced himself from these Anabaptists ("ana" meaning "again"). Charactersitc of the Anabaptist and most Free Church movements is, of course, adult baptism, an emphasis on holiness, a central focus on the Scriptures, an understanding of the church as against the world, a more thorough emphasis on the priesthood of all believers, and an understanding of sacraments as merely symbols.

We finished the discussion on Free Churches with a brief overview of the modern global Pentecostal movement. Most Pentecostals would trace their roots to the Azusa street revival of 1906 in Los Angeles, and since then, according to Dr. Bolger, the Pentecostal movement has become the fastest growing social movement anywhere in the world and at any time of history. Pentecostalism is more appropriately described as a movement, since there are many different denominations within Pentecostalism, not to mention all the independant churches scattered throughout the world. The two striking characteristics of the early Pentecostal movement were, of course, the phenomena of speaking in tongues, but also, and perhaps more significantly, the radical racial and gender diversity within the same movement. From the very beginning the poor and rich, men and women, and people from all ethnicities and nationalities were in together in fellowship, in leadership even. According to Dr. Bolger, one could sum up the basic Gospel message of the Pentecostals as: Jesus is your savior, he will baptize you in the Spirit, God heals, and Jesus is coming again. With this basic foundation, Pentecostalism has swept the globe and become the second largest Christian movement next to Roman Catholicism.

This ends my reflection on lectures from my class, Church in Mission. This next week I will be starting a class called, Encountering the City. I plan on blogging through the daily lectures there as well. I hope it proves helpful for all of us!

Reflections on... Calvin and the Reformed Church (FTS_MC500)

Here's a few little interesting background bits about John Calvin: he studied law and philosophy before getting into theology, he was mild-mannered in contrast to Luther's hot-tempered nature, he wrote his first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion before he was 30 and with no theological education, and he like to sing the Psalms.

What Calvin did in Geneva during his time there was to help create a fully Christian society where the government, society, and the church lived symbiotically together. Laws were in place such that everyone was required to go to church, take communion (provided they were not excommunicated), etc. To some it would seem that Calvin was a controlling and domineering religious figure. But, with respect to his context there's a few things to note.

Calvin did not view laws as producing Christians directly. He did not seek to legislate morality in that sense. Laws were in place because they expressed God's will for society, but the Gospel was preached because people could not keep the laws. The function of the law in Geneva was not to make people holy, it was to make them repentant. Calvin believed that in the context of law and the preaching of the Gospel, people would repent and believe Christ for salvation from the penalty and power of sin.

Calvin also emphasized that each person is endowed by God with something special, some gift, to be developed and employed for the worship of God. Among the many other ways in which Calvin impacted the Reformation, this was a unique contribution of his.

Where Calvin and Luther differed with respect to church traditions, Calvin moved away from Catholic teaching on the Eucharist by clarifying that it is not the "real presence" but the "true presence" of Christ that is mediated in Communion. By this he meant that Christ is not brought down to indwell the bread and wine but that by the bread and wine we are brought up into the presence of Christ at the right hand of the Father.

Reflections on... The Reformation and Luther's Eccelesiology (FTS_MC500)

Making our way through the centuries of the church in mission, we finished our general discussion of the church after Constantine. We noted that ecclesial authority and civil authority functioned more and more symbiotically until at last, under the new kings after the fall of Rome, the church and state were one and the same. The new kings, after having conquered and destroyed the Roman empire, had no civil structure for authority except for the institution of the church. The bishops became mayors and governors, so to speak, and the state effectively appropriated the church for civil, as well as, religious authority. The sacraments, as a result, become the property of the state, baptism, for example, being the entry into not only the kingdom of God, but also the entry into the kingdom of whichever king was ruling at the time. The church continues to serve as the social service arm of the government. The only true witness to the kingdom of God and the Gospel of Christ was the monastery, which became the primary educator in the empire. This mixture of empire and church created the cocktail in which Martin Luther and the Reformation would explode across Europe in the 16th century.

Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk and Bible teacher, reacted against the corruption and control of the Roman Church's hierarchy and doctrine, responding with two major themes: justification by grace through faith and the priesthood of all believers. For Luther, every single doctrine and practice of the church was reinterpreted and refashioned according to this doctrine of justification by grace through faith. Although many things changed in this reconstituting of the church around the doctrine of justification by grace, ecclesiology remained largely the same. Baptism was still the way by which infants were joined to the church and society, and the partnership between church and state remained central to society.

As we reflected on the work of Luther and the Reformation, especially with regards to ecclesiology, I was reminded of a few observations made by Luther in his The German Mass and Order of Divine Service (thanks to Alan Knox for the reference). It seems that there were both "seeker-sensitive" and "incarnational/organic church" models in Luther's mind as well! I will quote at length. First, Luther's "seeker-sensitive" model:

Next, there is the German Mass and Divine Service, of which we are now treating. This ought to be set up for the sake of the simple laymen. Both these kinds of Service then we must have held and publicly celebrated in church for the people in general. They are not yet believers or Christians. But the greater part stand there and gape, simply to see something new: and it is just as if we held Divine Service in an open square or field amongst Turks or heathen. So far it is no question yet of a regularly fixed assembly wherein to train Christians according to the Gospel: but rather of a public allurement to faith and Christianity.

But Luther would have preferred a more organic/incarnational model, had he had the leaders for it.

But the third sort [of Divine Service], which the true type of Evangelical Order should embrace, must not be celebrated so publicly in the square amongst all and sundry. Those, however, who are desirous of being Christians in earnest, and are ready to profess the Gospel with hand and mouth, should register their names and assemble by themselves in some house to pray, to read, to baptize and to receive the sacrament and practise other Christian works. In this Order, those whose conduct was not such as befits Christians could be recognized, reproved, reformed, rejected, or excommunicated, according to the rule of Christ in Matt. xviii. Here, too, a general giving of alms could be imposed on Christians, to be willingly given and divided among the poor, after the example of St. Paul in 2 Cor. ix. Here there would not be need of much fine singing. Here we could have baptism and the sacrament in short and simple fashion: and direct everything towards the Word and prayer and love. Here we should have a good short Catechism about the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer. In one word, if we only had people who longed to be Christians in earnest, Form and Order would soon shape itself. But I cannot and would not order or arrange such a community or congregation at present. I have not the requisite persons for it, nor do I see many who are urgent for it.

From the rest of his writings on the mass, it is clear that Luther was aware of issues of contextualization as well as some of ecumenism. How far he went with these is apparent in the history, but it is interesting, even encouraging, to see them in writing.

Reflections on... St. Patrick (FTS_MC500)

Today in class we discussed the church after Constantine in preparation for our next class on the Reformation. In lieu of the discussion we watched a short video about the life of St. Patrick and his mission to the Irish. We started the class by reading the Lorica, the prayer of St. Patrick also known as the Breastplate of St. Patrick.

St. Patrick was the son of wealthy landowners who was taken as a slave by the invading Irish. After receiving his freedom God called him in a dream to come back to Ireland with the Gospel (cf. Paul and the Macedonians). After 12 years of study and preparation, Patrick went to Ireland (cf. Paul and his time in the wilderness as referred to in Galatians). Patrick would camp with tribe after tribe of Irishmen, witnessing to the power of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. By the time of Patrick's death, all of Ireland was Christian.

It seems significant to me that Patrick spent 12 years preparing after receiving such a clear call from God to go to Ireland. It seems that the expectation nowadays is that obedience to a call should look like immediate action, whereas for St. Patrick, it took preparation, 12 years of it. Also, Patrick's method, of going tribe by tribe and implanting the Gospel and the church into the Irish culture was healthy and effective. It was the Irish Christians who saved Western civilization through their scholarship during the Dark Ages. Education was important. Finally, Patrick was known for confronting the evil powers of the Irish tribal religions. Power encounters were not uncommon.

In light of all of the conversion that occurred during the years following Constantine, the conversion of Ireland under St. Patrick stands out as a shining example of mission gone well.

Reflections on... The Pre-Constantinian Era (FTS_MC500)

Today we finished our discussion on the the era after the first century and before Constantine. Some of the changes during this era included the re-institutionalizing of religion after Jesus had deconstructed it during the first century. Whereas Jesus deconstructed the power structures and religious perspectives of Judaism, after the first century the church began to re-implement similar values of power in hierarchy and professionalism of a special clergy-class. Whereas Jesus said, "where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them," the pre-Constantinian church said, "where they are gathered around a rightly consecrated bishop rightly administering the the Eucharist, there is the church, the presence of Christ. Where there is no bishop, there is no church." The reasons for this may have been practical as well as theological: the church grew from roughly 10,000 in AD 100 to around 6,000,000 in AD 300. It took quite a bit more effort to care for a maintain the church at the end of the third century than it did at the end of the first.

One observation that Dr. Bolger made was that even though such growth over the second two centuries of the church seems massively exponentional, spaced out over the course of 200 years, it is more of a consistently steady growth over a long period of time. This brings home the reality that in the first few centuries, just as in the last few centuries, the backbone of church evangelism and growth has been through slow, steady conversion of friends and family members. Though there have been missionaries to new locations and mass revival type meetings, the long-lasting growth of the church has occurred as friends and family members are drawn into the church through exposure to life transformation and honest witness.

Finally, another interesting historical fact was a reference to a statement by one of the early church fathers, Tertullian, around AD 200. He made some comments to the effect that when people come to worship they should bring their own contributions, such as hymns. Over the course of the next few centuries, the church gathering went from being more active/participatory to more passive/receptive. It reminds me of something I've said before, that if you can still have the meeting with no one in attendance, then you're really not having a meeting, you're putting on a show. Shows have their place, but not in a family gathering.

Reflections on... The Church before Constantine (FTS_MC500)

Today we covered the church before Constantine. I should have known this, but only today did I realize that the structure of our lectures follows the "church worksheet" that we have for the class. Over the course of the class we will discuss the church in light of its mission at several different stages and in many of its forms. For each stage or tradition we will discuss it with respect to that particular church tradition's understanding of the nature of the church, its liturgy and sacraments, community and service, mission and witness, and organization and leadership. Today we discussed the church prior to Constantine and the "officializing" of Christianity in the empire. (I didn't say what I have commonly heard said concerning Constantine, that he "Christianized" the empire. Though that could be said, and I stand to be corrected, from what we discussed in class, it seems more that Constantine appropriated the already massive and well-organized institution of the fourth century church. Yep, I don't think we can blame the setbacks of Christendom on Constantine alone. If the picture of the Jewish religious leaders in the Gospels are of any help here, it seems that the tendency towards over-institutionalizing and professionalizing religion runs deep.)

We discussed how understanding of the sacraments changed over the next few centuries before Constantine. As the sacraments gained theological weight, so did the regulations and requirements surrounding them. The combination of high salvific effectiveness attributed to baptism, the high infant mortality rate, and the growing belief in original sin led to increasing practice of infant baptism. This of course, necessitated something like confirmation, to ensure the conversion of the baptised. So, how do you have a high theology of the sacraments while avoiding the high control that resulted? The priesthood of all believers. The sacraments belong to the church, not to a certain group within the church. That is why I think it is good to practice the "you catch 'em, you clean 'em" approach to baptism. (Though that's such a weird way to put it.) My former pastor once told me that he though we para-church campus ministers should be baptizing our new believers. I think he's right, given that we do so in view of the church - the church on campus or the church in the community, it does not matter which. The lines between Church universal, local church, and para-church are not so sharp as we imagine them. The important thing is that we remain aware that we all represent the Church, regardless whether that shows up on our business card or in our email address or not.

Similarly, with the Lord's Supper, teachers began to attribute more and more signifance to the physical bread and wine in response to the Docetists who downplayed the physical and material nature of Christian faith. Because of the growing significance of the Lord's Supper, and the growth of groups within the church whose practices were less than orthodox, bishops had to exercise more and more control. Though I'm sure that the motivation wasn't merely for power and control, over the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries, the divide between the clergy and laity grew so that the clergy became spiritual "providers" instead of one gifted believer among many. Just in case it's not clear, I think that was not the most helpful development...

We watched another video in class, this time from PBS Frontline, "From Jesus to Christ." In the video we were shown a piece of paper that one would receive for sacrificing to the emperor. This "receipt" was necessary for avoiding persecution for not worshiping the emperor at the appointed times. Though they didn't mention it in the video, I suspect that punishmet for not having the ticket ranged from fines to imprisonment to beatings to death. It's not hard to imagine that some of the 3rd century Christians found in this a direct fulfillment of the "mark of the beast" in John's Revelation.

Reflections on... First Century Churches (FTS_MC500)

Today we wrapped up our discussion on First Century Discussion, beginning with a small group discussion time centered on Acts 2:42-47. It's always interesting to discuss passages that we in Campus Crusade for Christ focus on so heavily. Not that we own any of these passages, far from it, but discussions outside of a CCC context always bear out how we selectively read passages, for good and ill. We call this one the Transformational Community passage, because it is the first example of a transformational community where people are being won to Christ, built up in their faith, and sent out to reach others. We emphasize well the reality of "biblical teaching, prayer, and real koininia (fellowship)" present in the "Acts 2" church. At the center of our hope for the college campus is the vision of seeing students embody this kind of community where they and the surrounding community will be awe of the ways in which God is at work, seeing others added to the community of believers with great regularity, until "everyone knows someone that truly follows Jesus," as we say. Of course, our reading of Acts 2 is selective, as are others'. The problem is that in our standard schema of a "transformational community" for the campus we leave out some of the most prominent characterizations of this Acts 2 community: celebrating the Eucharist (if that is indeed what "breaking bread" refers to; if not then at least true table fellowship should be practiced on campus), "signs and wonders" (which here was done by the apostles but seems to have spread throughout the church in the New Testament [Phillip in Acts 8:4-8, many in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11, 27-31), observance of regular prayer times, radical hospitality and generosity for the common good, finding favor with outsiders, and daily interaction with each other and those outside such that there could be daily entrance into the new community of "the saved." I see some of these things changing on a grassroots level, but I hope that we as leaders and campus workers will promote it and not resist it in the eyars to come.

We also discussed Christian Worship in the First Century, Christian Mission in the First Century, and Leadership in the First Century church. It was interesting to note that the "order of worship" in mostly Jewish churches was inherited from the synagogue: opening prayer and praise, creedal confession and benedictions, reading from the Scriptures, and a homily. According to Dr. Bolger, many of these first Jewish churches, the house in which the synagogue met became the house in which the church met. The order of worship in those churches which had little to no Jewish influence were much more fluid and varied, cf. the letters to the Corinthians and the Thessalonians. As we were discussing, I was reminded of stories Dr. Jay Travis told about Muslims who begin to believe in Isa (Jesus) and meet to read the Quran and the Injil (New Testament), pray for each other, and apply the teachings of Jesus to their lives. The form of their meetings remain the same, but the content and the resulting community changes.

One last bit of interest: it was observed that there is little evidence that collecting money was a regular (certainly not weekly) part of the meeting together of the first churches. As Ravi Zacharias has wryly asked in this regard, what does it say about us that we hold tightly to a weekly offering but with reluctance institute a monthly Lord's Supper of stale crackers and a thimble of grape juice? It betrays our financial and dogmatic fears at worst, and our troublesome professionalizing of the clergy at best. Rather, it would seem, we should celebrate communion weekly in smaller setting where people are know and food can be enjoyed, and congregational giving should be generous and according to needs.

Reflections on... Jesus, the Kingdom, and the Church (FTS_MC500)

The following reflections will be regarding the lectures from MC500: Church in Mission, in which I am currently enrolled at Fuller Theological Seminary and for which I am publicly reflecting in at least 50 words in fulfillment of my class participation assignment.

Today, much of what we covered was as an orientation to the class: context for its development, overview of its content and aims, details about the assignments, etc. Before this first day, I have considered the reading list to be worth the price of admission (though, of course, I could have found the list and read the books apart from the class). I'll add onto these benefits received the assignments that are required for the class, lots of interactive writing: these daily entries in response to class discussion, notes from the readings in view of the final paper, participation in a local church of a different culture/tradition/ethnic background with an accompanying 2000 word paper, and the final paper, 3000 words considering my church tradition and what it might learn from other traditions in terms of "nature, liturgy, community, mission, and organization". One of the main reasons I've been excited about going "back to school", believe it or not, is the task of writing papers. We'll see how long that holds up... ;)

The second half of our class time was given to the first unit of discussion: Jesus, the Kingdom, and the Church. Dr. Bolger led us through a discussion around certain parts of an ABC News special series with Peter Jennings called The Search for Jesus, which is essentially a documentary through much of the recent research surrounding the Quest(s) for the Historical Jesus. We discussed how the idea of the Kingdom of God was not original to Jesus, but instead it was a conversation and an expectation that Jesus entered into, albeit uniquely, but not originally. The Kingdom of God (or Kingdom of Heaven as Matthew emphasizes it in his gospel), was the hope of a Jewish people who were still in exile from the fullness of what YHWH had promised to them, not limited merely to the promised land, but also to full human flourishing within the nation under YHWH, which necessarily meant that Roman occupation was not all that God had intended for them. The occupation, in fact, reminded that they were still in exile and under YHWH's discipline. Jesus came to announce the end of exile, and to usher in the Kingdom of God, not over and against the Roman occupation, but under and within the Roman occupation, to subvert the reigning paradigm and transform the people of God into one that would be a "blessing to the nations" as was intended. So, in light of this, the question comes to mind, if Jesus' ushered in the 'end of exile' for the nation of Israel, to enable them to fulfill their calling to be a light to the Gentiles and a blessing to the nations, then what do we make of 'exile' language in the New Testament after the Gospels? If Israel was in exile from God's presence among them in the temple, which brought about full national flourishing, then how in fact was exile ended if the temple was destroyed just 40 years after Jesus' ascension?
So then, it seem the 'end of exile' rather refers to YHWH's return to his people in Jesus, followed by the opening up of and expansion of the kingdom to include the entire earth, with YHWH's presence not in the Temple in Jerusalem but in the temple of the church. This begs the question, why then do the NT authors refer to the church as still in exile, as aliens and strangers? Is there some sense in which humanity is still in exile from the Garden of Eden to which we will return in the New Heavens/New Earth? Or is the hope more specific, that New Humanity (the church) awaiting full return from exile in the descent of the New Heavens/New Earth? Hmmm... Maybe I'll find out in the next class.

One last thing from class that was interesting was to think about was that, with respect Jesus' actions - his offering forgiveness outside the temple, his healing on the Sabbath, his sharing table fellowship with sinners and Gentiles, his valuing of women, his teaching in the sermon on the mount - Jesus was a destabilizing force in the religious, political, economic, and social structure of the time. How might our teaching, working, serving, relating be a kingdom-centered destabilizing force in our current contexts?