Risen Lord Jesus, We come today seeking to know You and Your communion with Your Heavenly Father and with Your Spirit. You understand us better than we understand ourselves. You walked among people and saw into our hearts and ways. We want to walk with You through our lives, our decisions, our work.
Our spirits want to Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
Worship You with gladness; And come before you with joyful songs. We Know that You are the Lord our God. You made us, and we are Yours, we are Your people, the sheep of Your pasture.|
We enter Your gates with thanksgiving and Your courts with praise; We give thanks to you and praise Your name. For You are good and Your love endures forever; Your faithfulness continues through all generations.
We lift up to You the people of Kashmir and ask for Your protection and Your joy. As Hong Kong protests have turned violent and the political tensions have come to UBC campus, we ask for wisdom, truth, and righteousness. We pray for the Canadian elections; may you open us up to discuss and search for policies that foster life and godliness; may we elect people who are pursuing justice.
Lord, make us a people who delight in Your creation and join You in the good works you’ve prepared in advance for us to do.
In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Please join me in praying the Lord’s prayer.
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one; for yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
In your mercy and grace you have brought us into your communion— the communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Your majesty is on display in Creation and your wisdom in your Church. Your faithfulness and love reaches even to the most frustrated corners of our globe.
A collective shout has come up from children giving voice to the groans of Creation. This world groans under the weight of failed stewardship. And we say with them, Come Lord Jesus!
You are bringing all things under the administration of Jesus Christ our Lord. Yet, we can hardly claim to walk in perfect union with Him. Help us Lord. Have mercy on us Lord. Forgive us for taking your name in vain. Under the banner of your name some have cloaked themselves in deceit and have ushered themselves and others into destruction.
Grant us the humility and the prophetic unction required to join you in the healing of the nations. Grant us your healing too Oh Lord.
Heavenly Father, may your Spirit bring healing in downtown Vancouver. Bind up the wounds of trauma and release people from fear by establishing circles of friendship and healing through the presence of Jesus.
May your Spirit fortify your church in Iran with love and courage. May you uphold your servants who have been imprisoned in China. May you embolden your people to keep loving their neighbours in Indonesia. May you sustain your labourers upholding the Living in the Bahamas.
Free us Oh Lord from our captivity to the urgent. It’s become so normal to us that we hardly hear your voice during the day and even the night. Call us into your communion even as we lay down our worries with you.
(Please join me in the Lord’s prayer)
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one; for yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
Stranger Friendly Campus: Theological Pressure Points for Christians
Recently I hosted a discussion with the University Multifaith Chaplains Association at UBC. This lively group of people meet twice a month forming a learning and leadership community.
We live in an age that has never had such easy access and opportunity to appreciate and value the differences and commonalities in the world’s ethnē. Yet we also live in an age in which it remains just as easy to demonize the stranger as it has always been. Openness to the stranger is something I believe we want in the commons. Creating a stranger friendly campus is not easy and it will surely be challenged further in the days to come.
As nationalism raises its voice as an expression of xenophobia I have been searching for theological pressure points within the Christian conversation that lead might lead a person toward becoming a raging xenophile.
I chose only six pressure points for our discussion. Each pressure point is accompanied by Scripture. I am not providing the theological work but hopefully you as readers can make the associations. The first pressure point may be the most important one for creating movement and a willingness to encounter a stranger. It requires me to humbly manage the tendency to promote my opinions and quick judgements as truth. This questioning of my own assumptions creates generosity, invites trust, and leaves room for God to show up. The Emmaus Road (Luke 24:13-35) encounter is the account of Jesus, the Resurrected Lord, showing up and being received as a stranger by two disciples on their journey. I believe we will have to train ourselves for this pressure point in an age of manipulated feeds and censured news. This first pressure point is the required posture for every picture and byline we read on the Internet. Pressure point #1 is the growth mindset applied to relationships.
Pressure Point #1. My assumptions about the stranger are probably wrong.
“Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.” Hebrews 13:1-3, NIV
Pressure Point #2. I am part of a minority story… too. “Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.” Exodus 23:9, NIV
Pressure Point #3. Perceived weakness is not all about a lack of personal responsibility. “Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah. In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.”
Acts 5:42-Acts 6:1, NIV
Pressure Point #4. The academy is a transactional relationship yet has potential for genuine friendship.
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down on’e life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other.” John 15:9-17, NIV
Pressure Point #5. The stranger may be the one from whom I receive and share in God’s blessings.
“So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, or all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Galatians 3:26-29 NIV
Pressure Point #6. Being “sent” requires becoming the stranger who is received.
“Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.” Matthew 10:40-42, NIV
Extra Thoughts and Music
Unfortunately, some places develop a hostile and pervading ethos of suspicion toward the stranger. These places seem to know and perhaps relish in their stranger-unfriendliness. I grew up with two phrases that treated being the stranger as a common experience and as a spiritual experience. These phrases have been memorialized in songs. “Rank Stranger” tells of leaving a community, coming back and then experiencing “home” and its people as strange, even objectionable. A second song is confessional too. “I’m just a Wayfaring Stranger,” I’m just passing through. These confessions do not guarantee empathy for the stranger or outsider but they do tap into pressure points within my theological stream.
Not to us, LORD, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness.
We praise you O God, in the glory of your communion — the communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Fill us and cause your name to be known among the peoples. For your sake raise up your servants in the forgotten corners of this campus and this city.
How forgetful and sleepy our spiritual life becomes when work for the disintegrating prize of our own fame, seeking to turn our names into a brand. Forgive us Lord. We want you to be the source of our comfort, our joy, and our zeal.
Free us from the idols we have raised for our own glory. Redeem the good work of your creation in our lives and establish the work of our hands. Unless you build the house we labour in vain, we stay up late, and we get up early for nothing.
So Lord, not to us. Not to us, but to your name be the glory. Let your love and faithfulness be the beauty of your people.
We lift up Zeidan and Dahlia and our friends at the Athens Ministry Centre in Greece. Encourage them Lord and grant them wisdom to serve people on the journey for refuge and to make your kindness known. Fortify them with your love; let them rejoice in your lavish love and may the great truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ be an anchor for their souls even as turmoil washes over them and through their community.
We lift up uVillage Church and ask that you would bless Peter and Michaela, and Ian and Sophie, as they follow you and pour their lives into the next generation on campus and in Burquitlam. Make the freedom and power of your Spirit evident in their congregation and encourage your people today.
We lift up our campus Lord and thank you for the enthusiasm and energy with which many students and faculty lean into your Creation — exploring and learning, sharing concern for what people have done with it, and generating urgency about our common situation. Let your justice roll like a mighty river and revive us because of your love and faithfulness.
We seek you — for your glory. We seek your Kingdom and righteousness — for your glory. So we pray as Jesus taught us:
(Please join me in praying the Lord’s Prayer)
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one; for yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
The little exercise I run through sometimes creates more disequilibrium than I intended. I start with the space I can see. Then I recall that I live in Vancouver, in Canada, in North America, on planet Earth, in this solar system, in this galaxy, and then… Well you can work it out too. The ever expanding universe. I’m in it. I’m in it with you.
Does God really have plans and purposes in which we can reside and understand ourselves in this cosmos and in our community? Do these plans even in spaces of enormous injustice and struggle include joy in this life? The Gospel of Jesus says, “Yes!” Hebrews 12:1-2 suggests that Jesus lived with joy as a reality He knew He could enter.
The Gospel pulls my head out of the clouds. The Gospel of Jesus offers a grounded view of the meeting of heaven and earth and reveals our participation in a great cosmic struggle in which the glory of God will prevail. We are all living some form of life. But it may not be the real life that God intended for us. Jesus extends an invitation to real life now — knowing God and following Him. Fatalism is a joy-killer. Fatalism robs of us agency. Suggests that we cannot change. Fatalism says, “You are stuck and hopeless.” It sets us in this generation without meaning beyond the desires of our bodies. Fatalism tells we have no choice. Who would want that? Yet, fatalism can be very persuasive.
How can fatalism can be set aside? Such meaninglessness and its despair must give way to the glory of being loved by the Creator of it all who is revealing Himself in it all, just as the night gives way to the morning.
As we read the life and relationships of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we must take note of the many times Jesus comes to intersections in which His “steps,” His “way,” His “participation” in the Father’s work and life is tested, challenged, and flat out opposed. These challenges did not end with the “temptations” we famously attend to in Matthew 4 and Luke 4.
Jesus’s temptations were legion! Through it all Jesus did not depart from His Father’s work and way. He confesses (John 5:16-23, 30 NIV):
16So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. 17In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.”18For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.19Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.20For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed.21For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it.22Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son,23that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him… 30By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.
Jesus’ joy in relationship motivated Him and centred Him even as He parked Himself just inside the gates of Hell. The relationship to the Father and Jesus’ union with the Father is the source of His joy. And Jesus invites us into His life of joy (John 15:9-13, NIV):
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.10If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.11I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.13Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
So here’s why this matters to me so much. When I need a way to get my foggy head out of the clouds and the disequilibrium of the cosmos it comes down to this: Because I have been befriended and loved by Jesus, I now have neighbours and Jesus who are I am to treat as friends. I am to love them. Through the power of the crucified One raised from the dead, through the power of His Holy Spirit, I am to love.
The race marked out for me is in this space, with these people, and in the communion of God. The race marked out for me and for you, though they are different in so many is ways are similar in this way: it is meant to be full of love and punctuated with joy.
To be loved by Jesus is to enter into His new creation. To pray is to love and to enter into His communion. To love even in a struggle of life and death is to enter into the promise of His joy. And His joy is real.
