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April 4 – Colossians 3:15-17

From Story to Character
Remember last week?
The whole business of not losing the plot,
of finding ourselves immersed in a new story,
the story of Jesus?
Well, this week Paul moves from story to life.
From finding the plot anew, to living it.
Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre once wrote,
I can only answer the question “What am I to do?”
if I can answer the prior question 
“Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?”
Our deepest stories provide us with a narrative
out of which we live our lives,
together with the character traits that
will move this narrative forward.
If the story is one in which progress is identified
with unceasing economic growth
resulting in the good life of consumer choice
and the accumulation of economic goods,
then it wouldn’t be surprising that such a story
produces people who are self-centred,
acquisitive, greedy, autonomous, and insatiable.
That insatiability would be permeate all of life;
from stock portfolios to real estate to sexual conquest.
But what if the story was,
Christ has died
Christ is risen,
Christ will come again.
If that is the story of our life,
then how does that shape our daily living,
and more deeply,
how does that form our character?
What kind of people are we called to be
if this is the story that grounds and directs our life?
Well, says Paul, such a story
would rule out certain kinds of things
(most of which look surprising like
the consumptive lifestyle I just mentioned),
and engender another sort of character,
a character that manifests things like:
compassion,
kindness,
humility,
meekness,
patience,
forgiveness,
love,
peace,
gratitude,
wisdom.
These virtues would permeate our lives so that
“whatever you do, in word or deed,
do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,
giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Col. 3.17)
I know, it all sounds great.
But there is nothing easy about any of this.
While some of us are blessed with some of these virtues,
as something that comes somehow ‘naturally’,
none of us is blessed with them all,
and none of us can grow into such virtues without work.
And if these are virtues shaped by the story of Jesus,
then dwelling deeply in his story,
allowing “the Word of Christ to dwell in you richly,” (Col. 3.16)
is surely indispensable.
That’s why we gather on Tuesday mornings.
To dwell in the story of Jesus
and be nurtured in the virtues that carry that story forward.
This week we engage in the ministry of gratitude
through our once a semester offering.
Andrew F will be preaching and presiding.
Joyce M will be serving us at the table.
Mark N is crafting our prayers.
Beth CM has curated the service.
Deb and the bandhood go folk-rock with some Blue Rodeo and “Gospel Bob” Dylan.
Wine Before Breakfast (Colossians 3.5-17)
Offering Tuesday
Tuesday, April 4 @ 7.22am
Wycliffe College Chapel.
Looking forward to seeing you this week.
Brian
Campus Pastor
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March 28 – Colossians 2:16-3:4

On “losing the plot”

“He’s totally lost the plot.”

That would be the way that my British friends would describe someone who has lost touch with reality, gone a tad irrational, or perhaps (more seriously) is suffering a significant mental health breakdown.

And it’s an incredibly apt way to put it.

When you “lose the plot,” you find yourself disoriented, confused, and undoubtedly anxious, because you can’t quite put it all together. The story of your life has lost its sense of meaning, direction and hope.

It is no wonder, then, that much of what we do in personal psychotherapy is deep plot restoration. Something is amiss. The story isn’t making sense. You’ve hit a dead end. Your story has reached an impasse, a plot conflict, and you can’t find a way to resolution.

Or maybe the story has a plot that no longer rings true. Maybe there were past moments of plot tension, betrayal, trauma and perhaps abuse that make it impossible to find a new plot, a new narrative meaning to your life.

Well, that’s when we are on the precipice of “losing the plot.”

When Paul was writing to the young Christian community in Colossae, he was worried that they might lose the plot.

And well might he have worried. They were so young in their Christian faith that they didn’t yet have very deep roots in the story of Jesus. This was a plot under constant threat.

So the apostle writes to encourage their faith and to warn them.

With a sense of parental affection and protection he wants to secure them against stories, worldviews and ideologies that would strip them of their identity in Christ, rob them of their freedom in Christ, and take them captive to visions that look good, but are a sham.

In a phrase, he doesn’t want them “to lose the plot.”

And the best way not “to lose the plot” is by finding your life ever more deeply embedded in the plot-structure of the story of Jesus.

That’s why, in Colossians 2 and the beginning of chapter 3, with the repetition of the phrase “in him,” Paul persistently identifies the story of Jesus as the story of these Colossian Christians.

In him you have died.
In him you have been buried.
In him you have been raised.
So set your minds on the one who sits at the right hand of God in heaven.
For when he is revealed, so also will you be revealed.

There it is.

The basic plot line of the life of Jesus:
crucified,
buried,
risen,
ascended,
coming again.

Or as we so often say together in the Eucharist,
Christ has died,
Christ has risen,
Christ will come again.

And Paul is saying that the story of Jesus, is the story of his followers.
What happened to Jesus, happens to us.

Paul writes a letter to this community so they will understand the plot, and not lose it.

That’s really why we gather on Tuesday mornings as well.

Most of us have felt, at one time or another, like we are losing the plot.
We’ve had these painful experiences of our story coming apart.

And often enough, it has been a story about Jesus, or at least a particular telling of that story, a particular way in which that story has been taken up in destructive ways, that has so deeply bruised us.

So we gather at a table of remembrance. We tell the story anew, listening for a plot that sets us free, rather than holds us captive. We sing that story as a liberation song. We are invited into the story of Jesus as a healing story, a story of deep forgiveness, a story that has a plot that goes beyond death to resurrection.

We come together, dear friends, so that we don’t lose the plot.
We come together, beloved siblings, as if our life depends on this story.

And it does.

This week at Wine Before Breakfast: Colossians 2.16-3.4:

Beth CM will be preaching. She knows something about finding ourselves in the story of Jesus.
Luke will set the table and Andrew A will serve the meal of remembrance.
Kiegan has crafted our prayers.
Amanda has curated our worship.
And Deb and the bandhood are mixing up some Laura Marling, Curtis Mayfield, a little gospel and some classic hymns to help us find the plot anew, in case we were losing it.

And remember, friends, WBB is called to be a community of hospitality. So if you’ve got some friends looking for a plot to make sense out of their lives, invite them to our story-telling gathering on an early Tuesday morning.

In Christ,

Brian
Campus Pastor

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March 21 – Colossians

Discipleship and Mixed Metaphors
In his iconic song, “Forever Young,”
Bob Dylan weaves together a lovely mixed metaphor:
May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
Busy hands and swift feet,
yet a strong foundation,
something immovable in the face of changing winds.
Curiously enough, St. Paul mixes metaphors
in a very similar way.
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord,
so walk in Him,
rooted and built up in Him
and established in the faith,
as you have been taught,
abounding in with thanksgiving. (Col. 2.6-7, NKJV)
Since you have received Christ,
that is, since you have embraced
the word of truth that is revealed in Jesus,
walk in him (with swift feet perhaps),
keep moving, don’t stand still.
And yet, this is a dynamism
that is rooted like a tree,
built up like a secure building,
established like something that isn’t going anywhere.
Then he returns to a dynamic metaphor at the end,
abounding, or overflowing, bubbling over, in thanksgiving.
There is something to these mixed metaphors, friends.
Something worth meditating on during our Lenten journey.
Indeed, these mixed metaphors get at the heart of Christian discipleship.
Christian life is both dynamic, changing, growing and on the move,
and secure, rooted, and established.
If all you have is dynamism and change,
then you end up with a faith without discernment,
a faith without grounding.
If all you have is securely established faith with immovable foundations,
then you end up with a faith without life,
a faith stuck in a dead orthodoxy.
At Wine Before Breakfast
we are looking for a faith that is dynamic,
rooted in Jesus, the Truth of God.
We are looking for a faith that is secure,
dynamically led by Jesus, who is the Way.
That’s the kind of faith that Paul commends
in his letter to the Colossians,
and still commends to us all these years later.
This week at WBB …
Jacqueline preaches and presides.
Megan sets the table.
Amanda is crafting our prayers.
While Deb and the bandhood mixes it up with Sarah Slean, Bruce Springsteen, a little gospel and some classic hymnody.
Wine Before Breakfast
Tuesday, March 21 @ 7.22am
Wycliffe Chapel
Hope to see you there.
Brian Walsh
Campus Pastor
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Pernicious Nonsense or Seditious Threat?

“If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell.”

So said Martin Luther King Jr. two weeks before his assassination.

America will go to hell.
A society without economic justice,
a society in which wealth is concentrated in a very few,
leaving very many in abject poverty,
is a society on the way to hell.

Of course, that kind of rhetoric could be dismissed
as pernicious nonsense of an envious underclass,
or as a seditious threat that should be annihilated.

America answered that question within two weeks.

Jesus once said, “be on guard against all kinds of greed;
for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possession.”

Pernicious nonsense or seditious threat?

Well, they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.

But here’s the thing,
the overwhelming weight of biblical witness,
the compellingly consistent economic vision of the bible,
stands with Martin and Jesus
in its pernicious nonsense and seditious threat.

The accumulation of wealth,
the hoarding of possessions,
the expropriation of land,
the opulence of affluence,
the fetish with prosperity,
is all, from a biblical perspective,
idolatrous,
unjust,
impious,
and unfaithful.

“Woe to you,” wrote ancient Isaiah,
“who join house to house,
who add field to field,
until there is room for no one but you ….”

In other words,
woe to you who engage in straight up,
everyday, normal, and acceptable
economics.

Or more pointedly,
woe to you who are successful at prosperity,
woe to you who achieve such wealth,
and woe to you who gain power by means of such wealth.

Or perhaps more offensively,
to hell with you!

Do I need to spell it out?
Not likely.
But let it be said that to have this week begin
with Martin Luther King Jr. Day
and end with the inauguration of Donald J. Trump
is a sadly tragic irony.

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WBB, Remembering and Re-storying

Worship is all about remembering and re-storying.

Remembering.
That which is disparate and often discordant is brought together.
That which is dismembered is re-membered anew.
Broken and painful memories that paralyze
are offered an alternative memory that liberates.

Re-storying.
A re-narrating of our lives when we’ve lost the plot.
Going deeper into an old story that maybe has lost its freshness.
Entering into a story anew, indwelling that story,
to get our bearings, a reorientation to discern that path forward.

That’s what Wine Before Breakfast is all about.
And that is what we’ve been doing this year with
some explicit intentionality.

Last semester we began to tell the story:
of a good creation gone wrong,
of a creature made in the image of God,
of a covenant to restore all things,
of a God who liberates and is always in the fray,
of a path of life rooted in justice,
of the dynamics of empire and power,
of a servant who does not break bruised reeds.

And this semester we continue to the story:
of the path towards exile,
of a radical hope beyond exile,
of dramatic plot resolution in Jesus,
of an imperial crucifixion that turns everything on its head,
of the bursting of life out of death,
of the reconciliation of all things,
of being clothed in Christ.

The story continues.
Your story.
My story.
The story of the world.
God’s story.

Maybe you’re not sure that this is your story.
Maybe you know that this is your story, but you are confused.
Maybe you know that this is your story, and you love to go deeper.

Wherever you are in the story, come.
Unsure, confused, or longing for depth, come.

There can’t be much re-membering without the members.
There can’t be much re-storying without all of our stories.

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A Pastoral Letter for Holy Week 2013

The story was going a certain way.
Sure, there were some detours along the way
and things didn’t always go totally as expected,
but the overall plot remained clear.

It was all about home.
It was all about being in exile from home
and longing for a return home.

Truth is, everything is about home.
Really, when it comes right down to it, what else is there?

And if it is about home, then it is, of necessity about story.
Stories that tell us the memories of home.
Stories that shape the contours of home.
Stories that will lead us home.

But sometimes these stories meet a dead end.
Literally.

Read more A Pastoral Letter for Holy Week 2013

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Wine Before Breakfast – Therefore … party!

In what is undoubtedly his most oft-quoted statement, Alasdair MacIntyre once said,
“I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do’ if I can answer the prior question, ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’”

Paul has just spent eleven chapters addressing the prior question of what story or stories his Roman hearers find themselves in.

And it really is a matter of plural stories.

They find themselves a part of a Roman story rooted in imperial myths.
This is a story of conquest and the gods;
of imperial justice and the Pax Romana;
of Caesar and the pater familias.

And they find themselves grafted in to a Jewish story of a crucified Messiah.
This is a story of covenant and the God of Israel;
of righteousness and shalom,
of Jesus and a Father who keeps his promises.

Read more Wine Before Breakfast – Therefore … party!

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Wine Before Breakfast – Coming Home

“Many of us are still suffering PTSD from the language of salvation.”

So I was told last week after our WBB service.
Post-traumatic stress disorder from the language of salvation.

I get that, even though it is not my experience.
I get it that the language of salvation has been a tool of manipulation,

rooted in an abusive spirituality of guilt,
and constructed for social control.
I get that.

But rather than abandoning the language of salvation
(and I appreciate that some folks just have to do that,
at least for a time),
I’d like to reclaim it.

Read more Wine Before Breakfast – Coming Home

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Wine Before Breakfast – Advent Ache, Advent Hope

My daughters think that I hate shopping. They are mostly right.

Not all shopping, but certainly the kind of shopping that might take me into a mall. Indeed, my overwhelming bodily experience in a mall is an overheated irritation that gives birth to a grumpy exhaustion. My body literally starts to ache if I’m in the shopping mode too long. And too long is something like five minutes.

Actually, I can start to feel that overheated irritation and soreness just looking at a store these days.

That is one kind of bodily soreness.

But there are other kinds.

Read more Wine Before Breakfast – Advent Ache, Advent Hope