03-28-23

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
​March 28, 2023
Yesterday, I posted a quote from the New Testament scholar, NT Wright. It said:

“Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That after all is what the Lord’s Prayer is about.”

It appears to have struck a chord with a handful of people. Wright has an amazing capacity to clearly articulate a feeling, a spiritual hunch people have been carrying around for a while. As I think about the violence yesterday in Nashville, but also in my friend Kelly’s town of Macomb, Illinois, where one person was shot and 10 were injured, I cannot prayerfully reflect on these two acts of violence without acknowledging that there have been another 131 mass shootings in the United States just this year.

What do followers of Jesus (I can only speak from my faith perspective) need to be doing right now? If we are brutally honest with ourselves, then we need to say out loud: This looks nothing like the ideals of heaven being made real on earth.

Holy God, each Sunday we pray with humility and hope, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." Do we mean it? Do we simply expect you to do it? Since Jesus was heaven being enfleshed on earth, then we as the Body of Christ ought to be giving flesh to your marvelous vision for creation. Give us another nudge. Amen.