Love Your Neighbor

One of my classes this semester has explored in-depth some of the issues the metropolitan area of Denver is facing and how some ministries are reaching out to help solve those problems. A couple weekends ago, we met with a pastor in Arvada, a suburb just to the northwest of downtown Denver. Our topic of conversation that afternoon was the suburbanization of poverty. Poverty is being pushed out of the downtown area because of large contingents of wealthy people moving into lofts and older houses near the downtown. This man had been a pastor in Arvada for about 10 years. When he first joined the staff of the church, weekly attendance was around 2000 people and it was one of those suburban churches with lots of flash and cash and everybody and their dog would attend. However, the neighborhood began to change and poverty was soon pushed into the first ring of the suburbs. The pastor realized that something needed to change and that change was to reach out to these people stricken by poverty. However, not everybody thought this was a good decision in the church. Over half to be exact. He said there are about 800 people who attend the church now while all the others have left after the church shifted its focus from entertainment-driven worship services on Sundays to helping people in need. They have sold some of their facilities and are getting ready to get rid of some more. From the realm of mega churches and numbers, this church may seem like a failure when it is anything but that.

This pastor, along with some other area pastors, meets with leaders in the Arvada area to see how they can best serve the needs of the community. They were at a meeting with the mayor and he was talking about the issues that Arvada was facing. But his last comment stuck with the pastor who in turn shared it with my class. The mayor said, “All these problems would take care of themselves if we could just be good neighbors.” The pastor said the comment rang loudly in his head for weeks. As pastors, we try to lead our church to love their neighbors but somehow we have reduced that command to loving a hypothetical neighbor rather than the tangible neighbors we are geographically located near. We have turned the command to love our neighbor into loving those that love us or those in the church or those that are like us and we have completely neglected our physical neighbors.

What does it mean for us to be good neighbors? We should start by getting to know our neighbors and chatting with them on the sidewalk or on their front porch. Maybe we can get involved with the neighborhood association and learn about the issues our particular neighborhoods face. Maybe we should try to take tangible steps to loving tangible neighbors rather than hypothetical steps to loving hypothetical neighbors.

Old and New Covenants

Is there a discontinuity between the old and new covenants? Is there a break, a separation between the two or is it simply a transition from one to another? Essentially, I’ve been wondering a lot about the doctrine of election. In the old covenant, it is quite clear that elect, the chosen, are the Israelites and all of their pagan neighboring nations are not included in this covenant. However, the new covenant seems so radical. Paul writes about how are all made one in Christ and that the distinctions that separated people groups, those walls are now broken down. Paul also speaks of the ministry of reconciliation that the church participates in.

When I referred to the discontinuity between the two above, I’m wondering if the Event of Jesus Christ was so radical, so revolutionary that is wasn’t simply a new covenant covered in the veneer of Jesus Christ, but actually something ridiculously new . . . a covenant that all would be a part of, that wouldn’t discriminate between races and nations and skin colors. The break then in the two covenants is that the new covenant is not just a covenant between Christians and God (which would only be an adaptation from Israelite-God relationship in the old covenant) but rather that this new covenant was radical enough to include all people. That God’s love and grace and mercy was no longer limited to those with the mark of circumcision, but was now extended to all those with the mark of God, with all those who were created in the image of God. If this is the case, as I am suggesting, there must be some sort of discontinuity between the two covenants . . . they no longer function in the same realm because the new covenant does not follow the same rules as the old.

The Contours of the Gospel

Living in Denver, I’ve had the opportunity to do my fair share of hiking over the summer. Recently, I was doing a hike outside of Manitou Springs on Barr Trail (which actually takes you to Pike’s Peak if you go the whole way). At the trail head, there was a sign giving some brief information concerning the history of the trail. Fred Barr was responsible to the creation and making of the trail. Somewhere in all this information, it said something in regards to Mr. Barr listening to the mountain when constructing the path. Mr. Barr let the mountain guide and define his work, not the other way around. I would think this type of listening would be similar to a stone carver or wood worker allowing teh contours of their medium dictate what shape it will take and what the end result will be.

I began to think that this might be helpful to think about in regards to the church. What if we would allow the gospel to shape the church? What if we would allow the contours of the gospel narrative to have more influence than the latest church growth book or the latest leadership model from church gurus? What if we were insistent on remaining faithful to the gospel instead of simply trying to add more and more parishioners?

Herein lie the difficulty. We don’t have just one gospel. Not only that, but we see different faith communities responding to the gospel in different ways. And then we also have the Old Testament to deal with. Listening to the contours of the gospel sounds wonderful in theory; practice, however, tells a different story. Each of the gospel writers are trying to express their own theological convictions in their writings and thus we are often faced with dichotomies of choosing to remain more faithful to one gospel over another. But there’s probably a reason that we do have four gospels and other literature within the Bible that varies and may even seem to contradict itself. We see many pastors clinging to certain passages or certain themes with a death-grip. Yes, indeed, these topics and passages are part of the gospel. But they are only a part of the gospel, not the whole gospel. If we wish to remain true to all the contours of the gospel, we must never hold one aspect of the gospel too closely especially if it allows us to nullify or reject other parts of it.