Brian Drinkwine :: Kingdom Over Empire

• The release date for Kingdom Over Empire is Tuesday 30 June. If this overview entices you to get the book, it would be best if you wait until the morning of June 30th.

• Kingdom Over Empire: Recovering the Gospel from Political Captivity by Brian Drinkwine on Amazon

• Brian's Website

Page numbers are from the ARC PDF and are not the same in the print copy.


Poetic, pastoral, and probing, Kingdom Over Empire provides scripture and history to help you sort out your allegiances. Pastor Brian Drinkwine doesn't advise is. He trusts us. I need this book! Whether you live in a Western-style democracy or elsewhere, you need this book!

Kingdom Over Empire. Particularly in politically blue circles in the USA, one major reaction to goings-on in the current presidential administration has been an active, vocal No Kings movement. The general idea is American colonials broke away from royal rule and chose elected leadership rather than hereditary monarchies, and we continue on that path.

Related to not having kings, in protestant mainline churches, especially some individuals in so-called professional leadership in local churches or judicatories have come close to conflating deep blue politics and progressive Christianity. Though I've hovered on the edge, I haven't quite gone there. Brian's book shows us what a Yes Kings affirmation is when the King is Lord of the Universe, Lord of Life Jesus Christ.

I plan to take seriously assessing how outside forces and influences have affected our (my) perspectives and our (my) fears. That's called formation as in the shape, the traits, instincts, love, convictions, assumptions that intrinsically are part of us—that motivate us, too.

And what we are willing to excuse! Brian offers us "companionship from nearby" because according to one of his blockquotes, You do not need a movement. You need companions.

Two critical definitions:

page 33: "Patriotism is love of place without allegiance to place." It's "grateful stewardship of the land, people, and institutions where God has planted us … At its best, it seeks the welfare of the city."

page 34: "Nationalism happens when love of country becomes something it was never meant to be. Nationalism is what happens when patriotism crosses the line from stewardship to identity."

In the church we casually talk about belief, which too many equate with intellectual assent. But first century pistis belief is allegiance, loyalty, trust; it's a whole body-essence of your being posture. [page 44]

Although it's political, social, and economic, in its essence empire is a way of organizing power over time. You likely can list biblical empires such as Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Rome; you can add in more recent Spanish, British and others. But educational, ecclesiastical, consumer, and other entities also operate in an imperial manner because Babylon/empire is pattern rather than place. It is out there. It is in here. Think about it!

Brian provides a short list of lifestyles and religions you could call Christian Pretenders because they're not the good news Mark, the earliest gospel announces to open his proclamation. They aren't Theology of the Cross; many are theology of glory that humans find appealing and humanly doable.

For the Apostle Paul, the gospel is death and resurrection. In Kingdom Over Empire, the author traces the subversive power of the cross and God's faithful actions that paradoxically create new life out of death.

Brian beautifully reminds us Jesus came announcing, "Not a kingdom built on dominance, but on restoration. Not a kingdom advanced by force, but by faithfulness. Not a kingdom that secures itself through control, but one that grows through surrender."

"In this kingdom, blessing begins with the honest recognition of need. The poor are lifted up. The imprisoned are set free. Those far from God are not threats to be managed but treasures hidden in a field. …This kingdom promises not control, but resurrection." [page 84]

"Writing to a church confused about what faithfulness meant, Paul does not appeal to their influence or their success. He appeals to the resurrection."

“But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20).

"Firstfruits. The first sign of a harvest that is coming, proof that more is on the way. If Jesus has been raised, then death does not have the final word. And if death does not have the final word, then neither does empire. Neither does failure. Neither does obscurity." [page 162]

Short summary:

"The call is not to disengage from society but to disentangle from idolatry. You can vote without making the vote your hope. You can advocate without making advocacy your salvation. You can be present in the public square without giving the public square the allegiance that belongs to Christ.

"The call is an echo of the Exodus. It is a summons to live as exiles—in the empire but not of it.

"This does not mean we abandon society. It means we refuse to be seduced by its idols. We resist its economy, its nationalism, its violence, its counterfeit hopes.

"We live as if Jesus is King, because he is. And we hold loosely to everything Babylon promises, knowing that it will not last." [page 178]

Kingdom Over Empire is a workbook. It's devotional. It's heavy-duty theology. It offers a direction for us to travel together in order to restore life and hope to a world dominated by empires. Throughout the book, Pastor Brian offers his own testimony. Will your life testify of a King who reigns from a cross?

Disclaimer: As a member of the launch team I received an Advance Reader Copy with no expectation or obligation to write a positive review. As always, my opinions are my own (and you know I wouldn't have it any other way).

Five Minute Friday :: Part

• Five Minute Friday :: Part Linkup

When we (you, me, anyone) uses a word that has multiple meanings, it's important to place it unambiguously in context.

There's part the noun; part the verb; partly the adverb.

Knowing in part, partly finished, part of a laundry or moving load (as in the picture Kate provided); parting a barrier such as the red sea or a midwestern storm to help you get through; parting or separating from a person and leaving them behind; ending a commitment and parting from a job or a relationship. Parting the good part of a fruit or veggie from the part you can't use.

Our host Kate concluded her testimony about God parting the waters for her by asking:

Where have you seen God's goodness and provision this week?


Five Minute Friday :: Part

• God is good. All the time.
• All the time. God is good.

⁹ For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
¹⁰ But when that which is perfect is come,
then that which is in part shall be done away.
¹² For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face:
now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
1 Corinthians 13

Where have I seen God's goodness and provision this past week?

"Help me, Jesus. I'm shaking like a leaf.
You've been my king of glory;
won't you be my prince of peace?"

Rich Mullins, Hold Me, Jesus


Last Sunday I had another guest preaching gig. Typically I have some anticipatory excitement beforehand— just enough positive anxiety to make my presentation sing and ring. Last weekend was different. It was the type of anxious that interferes with breathing, thinking, and walking. Some of it was my feeling I hadn't been able to figure out a smooth transition between the scripture text and a possible application.

But as soon as I stood up and looked out at the assembly, I knew it would be fine because God is good, all the time. My high anxiety had simmered down to excitement. And I had prepared! From the feedback I got, I know everything went well, after all. All the time; God is good!

Related to your last Sunday morning or to mine, to the days ahead, to the road each of us will walk, knowing we can't see everything and have little clue – let alone solid knowledge – about where all the moving parts of our life and world are headed is a big comfort. In his famous letter to the church at Corinth, the apostle Paul was both philosophical and practical in his observations about our finite perspective.

The God who parts the waters, the Savior who stills storms with a word wants to quiet our anxieties! Whether you're driving through bad weather, wondering about the job interview or school application or everyday finances and logistics; concerned about your littles, teens, or grands; getting ready to teach or preach God's Word with the responsibility that entails, Jesus wants to be your Prince of Peace. Let him be. God is good—not part of the time. God is good all the time!! Amen? Amen!

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Lent 5 Sermon

Typing up a sermon afterwards always feels so last Sunday, March 22nd, but I had a couple of requests for a copy and I need blog content (or fodder, maybe), so here it is, more or less. By the way, it preached better than it reads.

• Ezekiel 37:1-14


I really liked my opening prayer:

From all the ends of the earth, come to us, breath of God.
Breathing life of the Divine, embrace your people and your land.
Let us live again.
In the name of the One Spirit-sent for the life of the world.
Amen.


Two days ago on Friday we celebrated the Spring equinox, a verdant greening time as days get longer. And now we celebrate the Persian New Year with our friends—thirteen festive days of rejoicing in creation!

We're two-thirds through Lent, as Jesus and his followers draw closer to the holy city Jerusalem. They draw closer to Jesus' trial, conviction, crucifixion, death, and burial. Nearer to the day of resurrection, Easter Sunday.

Throughout scripture, hints and types and realities of resurrection foreshadow Jesus' resurrection. New life out of ashes, ruins, destruction, devastation. New life out of the death of the old.

Less than two weeks from the Friday called Good, the lectionary that gives us our scripture readings pairs Ezekiel's provocative and pictorial dialogue with God as Ezekiel raises dry bones from death to life, with the seventh and last of Jesus' "I Am" statements from John's gospel. After Jesus' raises Lazarus back to life from death (he really was dead, already buried in the tomb), Jesus declares "I Am the Resurrection and the life." John 11:25

* * *
Ezekiel was a priest in the holiness tradition of the Jerusalem Temple. About 600 years before Jesus, during the last years of Jerusalem and the Temple before the exile to Babylon, Ezekiel ministered with words from God and words of God. Deep into the long book that bears his name, chapter 37 happens when Ezekiel's proclamation moved from discouragement and lament to hope and a vision of the future.

This is pivotal because it came about when news of the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple reached the exiles.

"These people" somehow had developed bad theology that located God in a special way in the heart of the temple, accessible only once a year, only to the high priest under certain circumstances.

Had they forgotten the God who liberated them from slavery in Egypt? The God of the Exodus who journeyed alongside them and ahead of them throughout those forty years in the wilderness? God who provided gifts like water from the rock and manna from the sky? The Ten Words or Commandments of the Sinai Covenant that showed them how to honor God by living together faithfully honoring their neighbors?

Since the temple was gone, did that mean God was dead? They were away from the land of promise that yielded such agricultural bounty. Did that mean all of God's promises were null and void?

* * *
We don't know if Ezekiel's conversation in the Spirit with God was a physical event, a sleeping dream, or a waking vision. We do know his experience of God's initiative and the subsequent call and response as Ezekiel spoke words in the Spirit from God and words of God convinced him there was a future.

Although the human Ezekiel spoke words from God and words of God and raised dead bones to new life, we often consider new life and resurrection primarily God's thing.

But wait! In the second reading for today (that we didn't hear), the apostle Paul tells us:

If [since, because] the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, God who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through the same Spirit that dwells in you. Romans 8:11

Earlier on, in his first letter to the church at Corinth, we hear from Paul regarding us as the gathered body of Christ – the church, the assembly of the faithful – and us as individuals:

Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? 1 Corinthian 3:16

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? ! Corinthians 6:19

So we've moved from bad theology of God being contained (God in a box?) in the Jerusalem Temple, to biblical theology of God indwelling us, making a home with us. We are temples of God, filled with the Holy Spirit, moving, walking, and talking alongside the people.

* * *
Ezekiel's words from God in the Spirit revitalized people who had been reduced to bones.

What dry bones of loss, death, disappointment is God calling you to resurrect with Words in the Spirit? Words from God? Words of God?

* * *
Today Jesus again invites us to the table of grace, the feast of new beginnings.

In the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist, we reenact and remember the history of the world's salvation that also belongs to us.

God remembers that we forget.

Jesus welcome everyone. You are welcome. I am welcome. We are welcome!

To God alone be glory.

Amen!

Pentecost 4B Creation Care

Sometimes people want to hear what they already know.

Scriptures

• Ezekiel 47:9

Wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish once these waters reach there. It will become fresh, and everything will live where the river goes.

• Ezekiel 47:12

On the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing.

• 2 Corinthians 5:17

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, everything has become new!

• Mark 4:26-34

²⁶ Jesus also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground ²⁷ and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. ²⁸ The earth produces of itself first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. ²⁹ But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle because the harvest has come."

³⁰ He also said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? ³¹ It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, ³² yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."

³³ With many such parables Jesus spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it; ³⁴ he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

Creation Care Outline

Where are we now in the church's year of grace? One month ago we celebrated the Day of Pentecost, the fiftieth day of Easter. We recollected when a large group of Jesus' first followers gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish Pentecost. They remembered and affirmed God giving the Ten Words or Commandments through Moses, that way of obedience you could call the Working Papers for our lives together. And they celebrated the wheat harvest, God's gift from the ground that sustains our bodies every day.

Here in the church we recently started the six month long green and growing season of Pentecost; during this stretch of time we emphasize all creation as God's planting,. You know the story of God and God's people and the land from Genesis through Revelation.

Today's scriptures offer agricultural images. We hear from the prophet Ezekiel, and we hear two parables from Mark's gospel: scattered seeds and the famous mustard seed! The gospels of Luke and Matthew also include the mustard seed parable, so that may mean it's especially important.

A month ago we celebrated the Christian Day of Pentecost, or the fiftieth day of Easter. Christians have been celebrating Easter for two thousand years! Our formal theology tells us Jesus Christ's death and resurrection ended endless cycles of death, violence, and everything contrary to God's intention, but we look around and still see war, climate chaos, sorrow, sickness, death—none of that is over and done with yet.

Even though Jesus Christ has died, is risen from the grave, and ascended to reign from the right hand of God, even though we identify as Easter people… what's going on?

Jesus' original followers wondered, too.

After Jesus' resurrection and before his Ascension, in Luke's book of the Acts of the Apostles, his friends and followers asked if now he finally would "restore the kingdom" to the world. Jesus informed them the question was wrong. He told them to stay and wait right there in Jerusalem. and they would be his witnesses, they would testify to new life. In the power of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost, they would be Jesus' presence in the world.

In Romans 8:19-21 the Apostle Paul tells us all creation waits, hopes, and longs to discover us as God's authentic offspring, as people who embody, reflect, and act in God's image to help redeem all creation. Like Jesus!

The agricultural parables in the Good News of Jesus Christ, Son of God, according to Mark, align well with today's song, "God, Whose Farm Is All Creation." All creation. Not only prairie and heartland. But also crowded, overbuilt cities and suburbs. Remote rural wide spots in the road. Deserts. All creation is God's garden. God's land. God's farm.

God whose farm is all Creation,
take the gratitude we give,
take the finest of our harvest,
crops we grow that all may live.

Take our ploughing, seeding, reaping,
hopes and fears of sun and rain,
all our thinking, planning, waiting,
ripening into fruit and grain.

All our labor, all our watching,
all our calendar of care,
in these crops of your creation,
take, O God; they are our prayer.

Author: John Arlott

Romans reminds us creation hopes to discover that we'll treat oceans, wetlands, savannas, and cities in ways that help them heal. Creation watches us and waits for us to become good caretakers of waterways, trees, animals, insects. Of our own backyards and window boxes!

The new creation began 2000 years ago. That eighth day of the week, was the first day of a new reality. The new creation is not finished. The old creation still waits and hopes for us to be green people.

What's a biblical creation care model? We need to learn about plants, about seeds and soils, climates and seasons. It's also a great idea to act locally!

In the bible's promised land we see:

Crops watered by cascades down mountains into valleys and not by water shipped thousands of miles Gardens warmed by the great light of the sun and not by plugged in grids

Scripture shows us act locally. You know some of the ways:

• farmers markets
• street vendors
• community gardens
• backyard plots
• kitchen windowsill herb gardens
• composts

School and community gardens can help cancel food deserts
Besides, living local adds savor and flavor
Although we lose some long term keeper food
When that happens?!
Share the extras!
Trust the mystery!

In Ezekiel we hear about rivers flowing from the temple and healing everything the waters touch. Because everything those waters reach becomes healthy and well, the name of the city then becomes The Lord Is Here.

Today Jesus invites us to his table of grace. This eucharistic festival of thanksgiving is a taste, a token, a sign, a promise of creation completely redeemed.

Christ is raised and dies no more.
By water and the word
we share his death
his Eastered life

The new creation comes to life and grows
Everywhere we go!
Alleluia.
Amen!

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

Five Minute Friday :: Capacity

O Lord, I love the house
in which you dwell,
and the place where your glory
abides! Psalm 26:8

• Five Minute Friday :: Capacity Linkup

David wanted to build a house for God, but God replied he always had "moved around in the tent of meeting" and never ever had asked anyone for a cedar house.

It wasn't a brand new theological concern, but the famous meeting of Reformers Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli at Marburg centered on the Lord's Supper as they debated whether the finite (bread, fruit of the vine) had the capacity to contain the infinite. They had that debate even though Jesus had announced, "this is my body!" And even though God's incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth already answered that question! To paraphrase the Heidelberg Catechism, we move from Nativity with the mystery of Spirit in flesh to Ascension, with the mystery of flesh in Spirit.

God eventually got that house of cedar and stone, yet neither the first nor the second Jerusalem Temple had the capacity to contain God. Its mini-model of the universe was a pathetic attempt to mimic the reality of the Creator God whose place of being and acting always had been the entire panorama of creation… but "contain" the free and elusive God?!

Finally, on the fiftieth day of Easter, the day of Pentecost, the Spirit of Life filled the world. Every crack and corner and crevice. Every person.

O Lord, I love the house
in which you dwell,
and the place where your glory
abides! Psalm 26:8

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, which you have received from God? Now you belong to God. You are not your own.
1 Corinthians 6:9

God had moved around, peregrinated, free ranged in the tabernacle. Now we are the house in which Divinity dwells, the place where God's glory abides. God moves around everywhere in the people of God called "Christian." The Christ of God always is incarnate, enfleshed, embodied. And now in us!

What does that say about the capacity of the human heart? The mercy of each life? The welcome we offer strangers and outcasts, the sojourner and the lonely? We are the house where God lives. God's glory fills us. What does that say about God's claim and call on us as individuals? As community?

O enter, Lord, Thy temple,
Be Thou my spirit's Guest,
Who gavest me, the earth-born,
A second birth more blest!
Thou in the Godhead, Lord,
Though here to dwell Thou deignest,
Forever equal reignest,
Art equally adored.

So you can sing all thirteen stanzas just as Paul Gerhardt wrote them (1653) and Catherine Winkworth translated them (1863):

• O Enter, Lord, Thy Temple

Tune: Zeuch ein zu deinen Toren, Johann Crüger, 1653
German text: Paul Gerhardt, 1653
Translation: Catherine Winkworth, 1863, alt.

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Five Minute Friday :: Legacy

• Five Minute Friday :: Legacy Linkup

³ Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.

⁵ For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. Romans 6


²³ For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, ²⁴ and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me."

²⁵ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." ²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. 1 Corinthians 11

The sacraments and the liturgy are our heritage and our legacy as God’s people in Jesus Christ. The liturgy is the privilege of the baptized; the liturgy is the obligation of the baptized! As we reenact and reappropriate the meta-narrative of our deliverance from death into life in the Christ event, the liturgy, the sacraments, and the proclamation reminds me Who God is, Who Jesus is, what the Spirit is doing.

That heritage reminds us we are baptized, called, and accountable, yet we live and flourish under a reign of mercy and grace.

This is our legacy. # # #

Five Minute Friday :: Prove

Family of Breads with legal reuse rights from pxhere

• Five Minute Friday :: Prove Linkup

You need to prove your dough before you put it in the oven to bake it into bread. Yeast ferments a lump of dough – the future loaf! – so it rises and expands in size; we sometimes call that leavening. The rising proofs the dough so it comes out of the oven as lovely appealing bread that actually acts like bread—it tastes great and nourishes us well.

Do you not know that a little yeast leavens all of the dough? Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch of dough, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed for us. Because of this, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of goodness and truth.
1 Corinthians 5:6-8

The Apostle Paul uses an analogy he hopes his listeners and readers will understand when he says malice and evil become a kind of leaven because they tend to spread easily, similar to the way a small amount of yeast will prove an entire loaf. Moving away from Paul's warning, it takes very little yeast to make a whole loaf rise and shine; as we celebrate the festival of resurrection; that's where we're going today as Easter people. The Holy Spirit of Life that raised Jesus from the dead also raises us to new life. We become yeasty leaven for society and for the church. We rise and we shine!

God gives us Broken Bread and Unbroken Word, as a friend in previous city's website proclaims. The loaf has been proven, baked into bread, blessed, broken, and given to us. The Word is part of the proof of God with us, God among us, God for us.

God calls us to live as salt of the earth. Light of the world. Leaven of society. You've probably experienced how a tiny packet of yeast makes its way through the loaf and proves the whole entire thing? Our lives function the same way. And just as you can add more yeast if it looks like your bread isn't rising, why not take along a companion to help increase the leavening?

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Five Minute Friday :: Pursue

As the mountains surround Jerusalem
so the Lord surrounds his people
from this time on and forevermore.
Psalm 125:2

• Five Minute Friday :: Pursue Linkup

Whether it's family, career, comfort, or a longed for yet unknown future, we humans all have our pursuits; at times it feels as if pursuing that goal or dream vacation consumes us. But a full and healthy life mostly is about being with the God who pursues us. The God who chooses us as temples, as a dwelling place, as a place to be at home. And what is homecoming? What is home?

When you love someone you want to be with them. You want to converse with them. You want them to be there for you; you want to be there for them and with them forever. God pursues us now and to the end in order to be with us; so we will be there with God.

In baptism we receive the gift of God's Holy Spirit so that everywhere we go, God is with us, and we will be the presence of Jesus Christ—the presence of God. In 1 Corinthians 3:16 the Apostle Paul reminds us, "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" Later in 1 Corinthians 6:19 he tells us, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?" That's the essence God's presence now assumes: embodied in a human person, in each of us, just as God became embodied, enfleshed, incarnate in Jesus Christ.

What a gift and what a challenge for God to pursue us and trust us during these turbulent times!

In Alfred Fedak's anthem A Song of Paul, John Bell paraphrases 1 Corinthians 13:10 ("when the perfect comes, the incomplete will disappear") "Love expects tomorrow." In Jesus' death and resurrection, God gifts us with all the tomorrows we can imagine. We live in the here and now and in the not yet, but as God keeps pursuing us, our lives will be complete. Endlessly. Forever. Eternally. God at home with us. Our homecoming with God.

The psalmist sings:

Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.
From everlasting to everlasting, you are God.
Psalm 90:1-2
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Five Minute Friday :: Satisfied

• Five Minute Friday :: Satisfied Linkup

Intro

Satisfaction happens after a meal so abundant and delicious it fills your body and your senses. A person becomes satisfied after discussing a problem or conflict in enough detail and clarity to resolve it and move foreword in the situation or relationship. A well-crafted durable item is satisfactory for the use we hoped it would fit.

This is the second week of a new year and the first Five Minute Friday of 2025. Readers of this blog probably know I'm a theology geek and a church geek. With a worldwide plethora of church styles, traditions, denominations, etc., with the confusion of how to interpret scriptural passages about polity, organization, and structure – even with different perspectives on the authority of scripture – how can we interact with churches other than our own, or does scripture allow us to do so?

Magisterial Reformers Martin Luther (especially via Philip Melanchthon) and John Calvin had simple criteria for the presence of the church in any place, in any time.

• "The Church is the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered. And to the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments. Nor is it necessary that human traditions, that is, rites or ceremonies, instituted by men, should be everywhere alike. As Paul says: One faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, etc. Ephesians 4, 5. 6." Philipp Melanchthon, Augsburg Confession, Article 7.

• "Wherever we see the Word of God sincerely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to the institution of Christ, there, it is not to be doubted, a church of God exists." John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 4, chapter 1, section 9.

2025 :: Satisfaction

Augsburg Confession, Article 7, Satis est "It is enough; it is sufficient, it satisfies."

Cool church stuff. But at this start of another new year that will take us 25% of the way through what once was an exciting new century we loved to call Y2K, what satisfies me? What suffices for me? What amounts to a full life, not a simple broken existence? Or can I ever be satisfied?

In his struggles, the Apostle Paul heard the Savior's assurance, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." [2 Corinthians 9:12] But how is "grace sufficient" or satisfactory for Paul, for any of us?

Yesterday I wrote to my star word for this year, Possibility. We can go on and on about spirituality, about feelings and thoughts, but we live in bodies that contain and express spiritual, gracious, thoughtful, and emotional realities. Without those are bodies are incomplete, but without a body they don't have a home, a place to reside. This material reality of substance is so central, the biblical story of creation [Genesis 1 and 2] opens with veggies, plants, trees (sun and water) to nurture bodies of animal and human critters. Agriculture becomes the material foundation of everything! At the end of the bible we read about the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth [Revelation 21:2] and the river of life, trees of life with healing fruit [Revelation 22:1-2].

In the creeds we "believe in the resurrection of the body."

I need, I seek, I want, I long for a bodily and physically abundant life. A life with people, buildings, places, activities, and pets. An embodied reality that welcomes feelings and thoughts and ideas.

News of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When Barnabas came and saw the grace of God, he rejoiced, and he encouraged them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast devotion. Acts 11:22-23

With his senses Barnabas saw the grace of God. He didn't hear a disembodied heavenly choir. It wasn't an imaginary apparition. It wasn't even a properly performed liturgy. He saw a caring community of people acting in Jesus' name to provide shelter, food, and other physical necessities. Practicing the forgiveness that generates new life.

Barnabas saw grace at Antioch.

When and where do you see, hear, taste, touch, and smell grace?

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Stewardship :: Sow Bountifully

Sow Bountifully :: Reap Bountifully
2 Corinthians 9:6

Stewardship :: Servants and Stewards

Servants and Stewards
1 Corinthians 4:1

911 23 Years

One World Trade Center – 1 WTC – with reuse rights by Ken Lund on Flickr.
The photographer included some history from wikipedia.

Where were you then? Where are you now?

I couldn't say anything any better than I did for WTC year twenty-two in 2023.

Municipal and liturgical observances have dwindled, but I was heartened to see 911 hashtags trending on Twitter as well as some tweets outside of Critter Twitter that's my main reason for being there.

Where were you then? Where are you now? How are you now?


We are afflicted in every way but not crushed,
perplexed but not driven to despair,
persecuted but not forsaken,
struck down but not destroyed,
always carrying around in the body the death of Jesus,
so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.

2 Corinthians 4:8-10

World Trade Center Transportation Hub by Ken Lund on Flickr

Five Minute Friday :: Same

• Five Minute Friday :: Same Linkup

The word "same" invites comparisons: same old; all the same; same store sales.

• Same days.
• Same dreams.
• Same disappointments.


One of these things is not like the others so the others must be the same. Right?

Is it legitimate to compare? Sometimes it isn't, but at times it is. Sometimes it's necessary. It can be reassuring or disheartening. It can measure progress. It can decide if something matches or not. In many cases, that difference just is, with no particular value assigned. This flower is brighter than that flower, but it's the same kind of flower—not better, not worse, though you may prefer one to the other.


I immediately wondered are you still the same if you have the gospel in your life?

•…the gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God unto salvation.
Romans 1:16

• If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; behold! Everything has become new!
2 Corinthians 5:17

• Since you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is. I love how the KJV says, "If ye then be risen with Christ." For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. KJV again: "Ye are dead."
Colossians 3:1, 3

For the apostle Paul, the Good News, the Gospel, is death and resurrection.

Are you still the same when you have the gospel in your life?

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Five Minute Friday :: Waste

Hey look, we're getting Boston Clean!
trash receptacle from Y2K (or whenever)

• Five Minute Friday :: Waste Linkup

Even at our most insecure, most humans have learned some things must go into the wastebasket and into the landfill. Sometimes they're worn out and we need space for new necessities, other times because that "stuff" literally is detritus, trash, garbage, and not remotely useful any more. In fact, some of that "stuff" maybe never had real purpose or usefulness.

I love to remind myself that God never wastes anything. Not a single smidgen of our experiences, including mistakes, missteps, wrong way streets. Including disappointments, devastations, and disasters. Both ours and everyone else's! (Talk about reassuring.)

God eventually reclaims every fragment of what even in retrospect still look like blank years. They still feel like zeros to me because … I have't yet gotten a reassuring "aha!" moment that those were productive times with incubating ideas and ripening resolves getting ready to express themselves and help change the world. The theological reality is those months and years simply looked blank, and now I'll be filling them in with content that otherwise never could have been. Or is it?

Partly yes. Partly not yet.

God's death-resurrection dynamic promises days and years of endless kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold. Those golden veins form a new, more subtle, surprisingly beautiful creation the original couldn't have imagined.

• But the Lord said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." 2 Corinthians 12:9

• Ye shall have a song, as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept; and gladness of heart, as when one goeth with a flute to come into the mountain of the Lord, to the mighty One of Israel. Isaiah 30:29

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My grace is sufficient for you
for my power is made perfect in weakness.
2 Corinthians 12:9

Five Minute Friday :: Break

• Five Minute Friday :: Break Linkup

I first wrote this on my City Paradise – Urban Wilderness blog; it will show up here after I update the IP address.

News break. Breaking day. Day break. Water main break. Lunch break. Break dancing. A break in the routine. Break a bone. Relationship breakup. Break bread. Don't break your promises. God doesn't! I want to write about all of those!

Our host Kate begged for a break in school shootings (others, too) that have become routine.

What's my focus this time?

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body that is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me."

In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me."

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. 1 Corinthians 11:23-26

As Jesus breaks bread and blesses wine, he tells us "do this—in remembrance of me."

Bless and break bread, pour out wine? "Do this" blood of the new covenant announcement?

Re-membering means re-collecting pieces and putting them back together to restore a broken whole that weaves together past and present.

When the church obeys Jesus by breaking bread and pouring out wine in his memory, part of the liturgical action includes retelling the story of God's people from creation through redemption in order to make it part of our own history. This remembering becomes about all of us throughout the history of the cosmos. We recollect how God has led us, how even those hard days didn't last forever… we again trust God whose final answer always is resurrection from death that breaks lives, shatters dreams, looks as if it annuls promises.

Do we need bread and wine to remember Jesus? Well, throughout the records of Jesus' life we find Jesus feeding strangers and feasting with friends; Jesus tells us people will come to the banquet from the east and the west, the north and the south … and about giving his broken body for the life of the world. The Welcome Table, the Calvary Cross, and the Reign of Heaven are tightly bound together.

When Jesus breaks bread and blesses wine, he tells us to do what he does—"in remembrance." Do we need bread and wine to remember Jesus?

We are breakout people! Wherever we go we become a living and a life-giving memory of Jesus. In us, Jesus again becomes alive in the world and we become a living connection to the heaven of God's reign on earth. Will people recognize us as the body of Jesus Christ when we break open our lives and hearts, share our substance and pour out our lives? I hope so!

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