// Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way //

[hermionesviolin]

CHPC: Scripture readings were Psalm 62:5-12 and Jonah 3:1-10.  LizL gave the sermon.  She talked about what a reluctant prophet Jonah is -- in the part we read, he only walked one third of the way through the city and he just says, "Forty days and Nineveh will be destroyed" (nothing about justice or the poor or anything).  She said she thinks the real hero of the story is the Ninevites.  They hear this prophecy and they believe.

I stuck around through coffee hour, and I ended up chatting with Rachel and LizL and we went out for lunch at Rosebud, which I had never been to before.  We ordered a Greek mega-omelete and an order of French toast, and split it all between the three of us.  Good stuff.  (For my reference -- recurring jokes: "let's overshare in an uncomfortably gay way" and "we're just preparing you for the ministry.")  It was a really enjoyable and comfortable time together, which was a really pleasant surprise.

***

CWM: Scripture readings were 1 Corinthians 7:29-31 and Mark 1:14-20.
Tiffany quoted from MLK's "I Have Been to the Mountaintop" speech and talked about about kairos time versus chronos time.
She said that the Corinthians passage says "kairos time has grown short" and in Mark, the first thing Jesus is reported as saying after his baptism is, "The kairos has come, and the kin-dom of God has come near.  Repent and believe."  She talked about being a slave to the status quo and how repentance is about changing the future -- the Hebrew literally means "to turn around."

***

"Joy Sadhana is a daily practice in the observation of joy."
-mylittleredgirl [more info]

Do not be afraid, I am with you
I have called you each by name
Come and follow Me
I will bring you home
I love you and you are mine
     -"You Are Mine" (David Haas)

Five good things about today:
1. Lunch with LizL and Rachel.
2. At CWM during Prayers of the People I was sniffling when I had my head down, and Marla reached over and rubbed my back and like mouthed, "Are you okay?"  I mouthed back something like, "Thank you, I'm just sick," and she left her hand on my back for the remainder of the prayer time.  Passing of the Peace was next, and I thanked her.  She said she'd looked over and wondered if I was crying or what, and I said I was just congested but that I really appreciated the thought.
3. Phone call with Ari.
4. L. called me.  I'm not entirely sure this belongs here, because she's had a rough weekend, and lots of what she said reaffirmed my assessment that she's clinically depressed (may just be situational depression, but still), but I'm glad that she felt like she could call me, and I think I was able to help at least a little bit.  [Edit: Oh, and she's deciding on which extension school classes to shop this week, and one class is Wednesday night the later time block, and she said she could do that last semester because I was in the class, but she couldn't count on that happening again this semester.  *warm fuzzies* ]
5. CWM dinner was tons of leftovers from some function at Dan's work and I had mashed potatoes and some rice+beans+veggie dish.

Three things I did well today:
1. I stayed through coffee hour at CHPC.
2. I asked someone to double-count the offertory with me after CWM.  (I've officially taken over Thi's position.)
3. I dug out my remaining receipts from SF so I can submit my expense report tomorrow.

Two things I am looking forward to (doing [better]) tomorrow:
["anything that you're looking forward to, that means you're facing tomorrow with joy, not trepidation," as Ari says]
1. Submitting my SF expense report, so I can get my money back.
2. Catching up on LJ.

Comments

[sk8eeyore.livejournal.com]

I've seen you use the word "kin-dom" more than once, a term I'm familiar with from worship at YDS. There, it always squicked me somewhat, but I thought that rather than cringing over it I ought to ask you how you understand it. I think I understand what it's getting at, but I still have specific theological reasons for my reluctance to affirm it...

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

(Wow, I have owed you a response on this for nearly a year (http://sk8eeyore.livejournal.com/694457.html?thread=1402809#t1402809).)

I don't have a strong personal preference between "kingdom" and "kin-dom," but my understanding of "kin-dom" is that it's emphasizing relationship and community. It's not necessarily negating God's sovereignty, but it's de-emphasizing it. I can see how that would be problematic, but I'm really not personally invested in an emphasis on God's "power over" -- I think we can strive to do God's will without having to structure it in ideas focused on God as Lord and Master (Somerville Community Baptist used "Master" a lot, and I had serious difficulty with that).
It's also used a lot as an emphasis for how we can help to embody and bring about God's kin(g)dom here on earth.

I'm sure I'm not explaining this well, since it's not a concept I've spent a lot of time really engaging with, but I'm happy to respond to any specific concerns or questions.

And actually it occurs to me that CWM has started including an explanation of its use of "kin-dom" in the bulletin recently, so I'll try to remember to look for that when I get home.

[sk8eeyore.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, I'd totally forgotten about that post and thread last year. And looking back at my comment then, I can't think of much to add. Except that in the act of worship, I much prefer Kingdom over kin-dom because I think the latter can put too much emphasis on us and our relationships instead of on glorifying God. If it's used in, say, a sermon illustration, I can see how it can be helpful.

I think that I can sometimes put too little emphasis on helping to embody Kingdom values and relationships in this life--arguably a pitfall of some evangelical theologies. For me, it's usually a reaction to what I saw as an overemphasis on human ability to bring about the kingdom when I was at Yale. I'm still a pre-millennialist at heart.

I think reading CWM's explanation would be helpful, though.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

My theology emphasizes the obligation of we here and now to make this present world as much like God's kin(g)dom as possible. I'm less invested in whether/when there's going to be some sort of radical transformation of this world by God's hand, because that doesn't affect my behavior in this world (except possibly to give me an out and allow me to argue that I don't have to do any good in the world -- which I really don't think is in line with God's will).

I don't see this as a focus on human "ability" so much as as a focus on human "obligation" (though I can certainly see how other people -- both practitioners and critics -- could interpret it with a reversed emphasis).

Am I making any sense? (This reminds me of the conversation I had with the young adult minister at Somerville Community Baptist where we agreed that the right can tend to put too much emphasis on personal salvation at the expense of social justice, and the left can tend to put too much emphasis on social justice at the expense of worshiping a God who exceeds our ability to comprehend.)

From the Jan. 18 CWM bulletin:

Cambridge Welcoming Ministries is committed to inclusive and emancipatory language for God and humanity in our worship services. Through our language we seek to embody the vision of peace and justice of which we read in our faith tradition and as taught by Jesus. For this reason, our liturgy refers to God's kin-dom as a way of referring to the traditional image of the vision of Shalom, God's Reign or God's Commonwealth in non-hierarchical ways that prioritize relationships, mutuality and familial community among all of Creation.

[sk8eeyore.livejournal.com]

I agree that we have an obligation to work for social justice, definitely. That's rooted primarily in the repeated injunctions found throughout Scripture, regardless of what kind of eschatology I have. I also believe in total depravity--which is not to say that I believe we're evil and utterly suffused with sin, because I don't think that's biblical; but it does mean that all aspects of our lives are touched by sin and that we cannot lift ourselves out of it.

So, for one, I think that God's redeeming action in Christ has to be prior to everything else. That's why, in part, preaching the "personal salvation" part of the gospel is important (and also part of what Jesus told us to do--baptizing and making disciples of all nations--in addition to, and in concert with, serving the "least" among us). As we, individually and as the Church, grow to walk more and more in tune with his Holy Spirit, the more we will desire to build up his Kingdom. But, back to that "total depravity" thing, I know that our efforts in this life will often fail and fall short, tainted by our failures to live for one another and for God. By his grace we'll succeed in creating little building-blocks of the Kingdom, too, but I don't believe we'll establish it in any ultimate way. (Here I could get into how I don't exactly believe in "Progress," but I'm not sure how helpful it'd be.) That's actually where a premillennial view can be a comfort. We can't despair or wallow in our sinfulness, because we KNOW God will be victorious over all the powers of sin and death in the end! That doesn't exempt us from living as Kingdom-like as we can in the meantime. Kingdom-living is always a fruit of genuine discipleship.

The Kingship of Christ is a very precious image to me because it does bespeak a world in which all relationships are rightly ordered. I'm not saying that the language CWM uses is without merit, only that I think traditional language often has similar aims. I've seen great examples of critical engagement with traditional language in order to more deeply affirm it, and also been terribly frustrated by instances of throwing the baby out with the bathwater in attempts to be inclusive. I guess that's why I am sometimes knee-jerky about these things. :)

Sorry if I ended up preaching--I'm sort of working out my thoughts as I type.