I had a life changing summer as I learned a new language, embraced a new culture, and made many new friends — both inside and outside of the church.  I knew little about the countries I was headed to before I left.  However, one friend told me that I HAD to make it to Lake Atitlán (Lago de Atitlán) while in Guatemala.  This advice was confirmed when I found Lake Atitlan listed in the book “1000 Places to See Before You Die” while I was packing my bags.

My friends and I made it to Lake Atitlán. We were not disappointed.  The crystal blue water of the lake fills the cone of a collapsed volcano, leading it to be the deepest lake in Central America.  The lake is surrounded by three volcanoes and over a dozen villages in which Mayan culture still holds strong.  Aldous Huxley once wrote of Atitlán, “Lake Como, it seems to me, touches on the limit of permissibly picturesque, but Atitlán is Como with additional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It really is too much of a good thing.”

While the city of Panajachel is the hot-spot for most tourists in the area, we stayed in the village of Santa Cruz at La Iguana Perdida.  Santa Cruz is only accessible by boat, and our hotel offered us spectacular views in a fun Euro-Hostel setting.  Throughout our time on the lake, we traveled by boat to many of the villages, relaxed, and enjoyed perfect weather.  My friends were also kind enough to spend sunrise and sunset alongside of me and my tripod.

I’ve included some of my favorite photos from Lake Atitlán below.

But before you look at them I’d love for you to know a little more about why I love photography. Lately, I’ve felt the need to more fully integrate my photography with the theological content of my blog.  Perhaps one day I’ll write a post detailing how my photography fits into my work as a Christian and future pastor.  For now, I’ll let this quote from John Calvin explain why I love taking photos, particularly ones of nature:

Wherever you cast your eyes, there is no spot in the universe wherein you cannot discern at least some sparks of his [God's] glory. You cannot in one glance survey this most vast and beautiful system of the universe, in its wide expanse, without being completely overwhelmed by the boundless force of its brightness. The reason why the author of The Letter to the Hebrews elegantly calls the universe the appearance of things invisible (Heb. 11:3) is that this skillful ordering of the universe is for us a sort of mirror in which we can contemplate God, who is otherwise invisible. (Institutes, I.V.1)

If you’re a Methodist, you may have heard the phrase “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” thrown around.  It probably wasn’t dropped in the middle of a dinner conversation.  But perhaps your pastor has used it in the pulpit or a teacher mentioned to you that the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” was a method you could use “to do theology”—aka reflection on things pertaining to God.

If you’re not a Methodist, you probably have not heard the phrase “Wesleyan Quadrilateral.”  But you probably have used this method to handle theological questions.

The “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” is best described by a line from the United Methodist Church’s (UMC) Book of Discipline where it states, “Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in Scripture, illumined by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason.”

Think about how you may have used this method.  Take the theological question, “As a Christian, is it okay to hurt someone I don’t like?”

To answer this, many Christians would first look to what the Bible says on the issue, for it is primary in any reflection relating to God.

They would then seek to understand what Christians throughout history have said.  Here, they would be looking at tradition.

Next, they would use reason to interpret the Bible, understand tradition, and infer implications where these things may be silent.

Finally, they would think of the question in terms of theirs and others experiences involving violence against people in their community.

This method has its flaws (see the sources section below the interview), but I believe it can be helpful as a basic framework.

However, this four-fold method is not John Wesley’s.  He never used the term “quadrilateral” or made a clear argument for the use of these four criteria.  Rather, the quadrilateral is a modern attempt to understand how Wesley went about doing his theology that many believe is a good model for the church.

These reasons lead me to think that perhaps we should stop attaching Wesley’s name to it.  Labeling it the UMC quadrilateral or the Albert Outler quadrilateral (after the scholar who formulated it) would be more accurate.

Another problem with attaching Wesley’s name to the quadrilateral is that it lends authority to a theological method that is often misused and misconstrued.  These misrepresentations ultimately  lead to a misrepresentation of Wesley and his beliefs.  Since its formulation, the quadrilateral has taken on a life of its own.  Its most egregious misuse occurs when people treat all four sources as being of equal authority, thus belittling scripture.

One day in my Methodism class a student mentioned the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” to Wesley scholar Dr. Richard Heitzenrater.  He promptly responded, “Do you mean the Outler quadrilateral?  The quadrilateral is not John Wesley’s.”

Many people in the class sat stunned as a myth about Wesley that they believed all their life was busted by the man who first cracked the code of Wesley’s diaries.

Recently, I sat down with Dr. Heitzenrater for an interview about Wesleyan myths.  Below is the part of the interview regarding this moment in class:

In our class, one time you corrected somebody when they used the phrase, “Wesleyan Quadrilateral.”  Could you tell us a little about that?

Well, that’s one of those things where outside of class, you’re hesitant to correct people.  But as I may have said then, back in the ‘80s when I was the writing chair for the doctrinal statement, I used to teach a lot of Sunday school classes where we would deal with doctrine—Wesleyan doctrine.  And I would start the class by just asking what you think [members of the class] would be the main things that Methodists believe?  And you would be surprised how many people would say, “We believe in the quadrilateral.”  That makes us distinctive.

There are two things that are problematic there.  One, obviously, we don’t believe in the quadrilateral.  That’s a term that specifies a certain theological methodology.  Secondly, that doesn’t make us distinctive because everybody uses scripture—well, all Christians use scripture, tradition, experience, and reason in different combinations in different understandings.

Wesley used those in a certain way and in different places does specify that he, like Luther, says, “Here I stand, I can do no other unless convinced by Scripture and reason.”  Well there’s two of them.  He also relied on tradition in a certain sense, the early church.  And experience, I mean you can look at Baptists, you can look at Presbyterians, you can look at creationists, you can look at evolutionists. Everybody uses those things in some combination.

And poor old Albert who came up with the term—he came up with the Methodist’s usage of it sort of borrowing it from the Anglican Chicago Lambeth Quadrilateral—later wished that he never used it because it’s been so misinterpreted.

“The term ‘quadrilateral’ does not occur in the Wesley corpus—and more than once I have regretted having coined it for contemporary use since it has been so widely misconstrued.” – Albert Outler

When I taught several times, the deacons back in the ‘80s, there was a diaconal course and their literature had the quadrilateral as a square.  You can start on whatever base you want.  It’s all the same.

Then there was Timothy Smith who had a three-legged stool with the three legs holding up the Scripture.  And I have a friend in Rio de Janeiro—José Carlos DeSouza—who uses a five-fold structure, he adds creation in there, which is sort of part of what the deists were trying to say.  You can see creation as one authority through which God speaks.  And they said Wesley also agrees with that.

But, again, it’s one of those things where outside of the classroom, it’s not so useful to correct people but to ask them what they mean by that and how they would use that themselves.  This is because part of being in the Wesleyan tradition is not about just doing stuff like Wesley did but how you would take the basic Wesleyan principles and understanding of Christian thought and Christian theology and how you go about understanding what is doctrine and what is Christian in the 21^st century.

How would you illustrate the quadrilateral if you had to draw it?

I don’t try anymore because I think that all the schematics fail.  It’s one of those things that it’s better just to talk about.

How do you try to understand what is—I was going to say true, but it might be better as Schubert Ogden says, “what’s understandable and appropriate” for Christians in the 21^st century in terms of Scripture. Because you have to have an approach to Scripture— there’s so many different emphases, so many different details, some contradictions—you have to understand how to use it and how to apply it.

And Wesley himself wouldn’t use tradition as a term.  He hated tradition.  He thought that was a Roman Catholic idea and he didn’t like basic Roman Catholic approaches to things because he was English.  He liked Roman Catholic spirituality, which he used and appropriated and applied. But how does the early church—Scott Jones uses five things because he doesn’t use tradition—he divides it into early church and Anglican tradition.  So that’s tradition—it is how the early Christians did it and how the Church of England did it.  This is talking about the Wesleyan approach.

And then experience—there’s a modern understanding of that, and there’s a Wesleyan understanding of that.  For Wesley, it was God speaking to you through the Holy Spirit, letting you know what is true and what’s appropriate.  So in that sense, it’s sort of revelation divine, divine communication rather than experience.  “Oh, we’ve always done it this way,” or, “In my own experience of being a pastor, I know that having basketball teams with young girls is difficult, but if you can get it to work, it works. It brings folks to church”–that’s not experience in the Wesleyan sense.  But those may be ways that you can broaden out what’s appropriate, what’s true even.

So all of this breaks up this sort of image of four straight lines.  You have so many variations and different ways it can be applied that the image gets lost in the vines.

And in “Our Theological Task” in the Book of Discipline—as you wrote it and as the church has affirmed—scripture is always primary.  Is that the phrase you used?

Well, that’s Outler.  Outler uses supreme.  We never use that.  In his final 1972 draft, I don’t think they used supreme, I think they used primary.  But there’s no problem there for Christians.

Scripture has always had a place of primacy or first order.

But the question I started raising, if you look at that statement carefully under the quadrilateral, it does have two sections under each, scripture and tradition.

First, is how Wesley understood it and second is how we use it today.  And that really became important when the American Indian representative or the Asian American representative from the Philippines, or others said tradition, “Why don’t we put that out and not just talk about the Christian tradition, because in a way, the Buddhist tradition is important to us.  There’s a lot of truth in Buddhism when you look at it.”  This sounds like I’m talking with my son who always says that Buddhism is where it’s at because it talks about love, it talks about life, it talks about what’s important.

And some of them are sitting there and saying, okay, but we’re talking here about a Christian theological methodology.  How does one ascertain what is a basic Christian truth or way of looking at things?

It is illogical to say that this Buddhist idea is a standard for Christian understanding.  It may be found in Christianity, something may agree with Buddhism.  But you don’t use Buddhism as the criterion.  It’s a source—you’ll notice throughout that statement also, there’s a distinction in between source and criteria.  And the quadrilateral is usually thought of in terms of, “These are the criteria for understanding Christian truth.”  But then when you start talking about it, you begin raising all these—women’s experience, etc.—all these things are sources.  But you can’t take an individual woman’s experience of the Christian life and say that that is a criterion for what is Christian.

You would say, instead, that things like one women’s experience is a source?

That’s a source for her understanding of how these things apply.  I look at it in the context of other people’s experiences and you see them all together, and that helps.  But you try to understand from the long history of Christianity, from the basic scriptural texts—the sacred texts of Christianity—put it all together and rationally deduce or induce from all this what you think is appropriate and true and understandable.

And this is a theological methodology. This is the way we approach our individual interpretation. The church does not have a theology.  This is for individuals. The church has doctrine.  Now doctrine is stated in the twenty-five Articles and the Confession of Faith. If the church wants to change that they can, but it has to be an official action of the church.  Theology is individual.  Your theology is different from mine.  We’re both sort of Wesleyan and we both sort of agree on a lot of stuff because of that and we’re more or less in agreement with the Articles of Faith and the Confession of Faith.  But we can challenge some things individually, we can decide to become Baptists if we want.

Further reading:

UMC Book of Discipline – ¶ 104

Andrew C. Thompson – “Outler’s Quadrilateral, Moral Psychology, and Theological Reflection in the Wesleyan Tradition.”

Thomas A. Langford – Doctrine and Theology in the UMC (various essays)

Billy Abraham – Waking from Doctrinal Amnesia

Have you ever used the “quadrilateral,” even if you didn’t know it by that name?  Do you find it helpful or harmful?  Have you seen it used well, or poorly?

Sometimes these myths show up on the swag handed out. Tote bags and t-shirts that include Wesley mis-quotes like “Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn” have been around for decades.

Other times these myths show up in theological dialogue. Many United Methodist Churches defend the practice of inviting anyone, including people of other religions and those who are un-baptized, to the communion table by arguing that Wesley taught and practiced this same exact thing.

And still at other times Wesleyan myths are the basis for the whole conference, such as in 1996 when the theme was the quote by Wesley that has never been found in his works, “In Essentials Unity, In Non-Essentials, Liberty, In All Things Charity.”

As I’ve studied Methodism throughout seminary, I’ve found myself drawn to Wesley’s biography and writings. Reading primary and secondary sources surrounding this great man of the faith has proven edifying for my ministry and me.

Yet, in my studies of Wesley, I’ve noticed an unpleasant truth. It’s one that commonly surrounds historical figures—including the likes of Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jesus.

People love to re-create historical figures for their own purposes.

Re-creating figures in this way is very tempting. After all, what better way to justify or promote one’s own theological, political, or social agenda than to appeal to a historical figure that is beloved by all?

If the beloved historical figure is actually in agreement with what you’re advocating, then appealing to them is a strong strategy.

But if you’re stretching historical evidence, projecting modern questions and ideas into historical contexts, or simply parroting what others have told you about a great figure, then I think there are better ways to make your case.

I like to appeal to Wesley when working out my theology, so I’m often in danger of re-creating him in my theological likeness.

Re-creation can occur willfully or unknowingly. It may be done willfully by proof-texting random quotes from his writings that agree with me or by emphasizing aspects of his early theology I like even though I know he changed his beliefs on the issue later in life. It may be done unknowingly by simply perpetuating claims or quotes that other people have said about him.

Sometimes the perpetuation of Wesleyan myths is inconsequential. If it is in basic agreement with his theology and doctrine, does it really matter if Wesley didn’t actually say, “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can”?

Other times the perpetuation of Wesleyan myths has great consequences. If the UMC is using Wesley as a main source of argument for certain theological beliefs and practices that he would be in disagreement with, the record should be set straight. Employing false church tradition in our thinking process is not helpful. Clearing the air of misinformation such as this enables the church to decide more faithfully what to think and do in today’s context.

In an upcoming blog series, I will explore some of the common myths surrounding Wesley. You may read some of the debunked myths and find them inconsequential. You may read some of the others and find them of great consequence. My goal in this series is not to crush sacred stories with a sledge hammer for academic fun. My goal is that as you learn more about Wesley you would cultivate a desire to study more about him for yourself.

This series will largely be based on a recent interview I did with Dr. Richard Heitzenrater. Dr. Heitzenrater is known for “breaking the code” of Wesley’s diaries that were written in shorthand. He is also regarded for giving these transcoded diaries as a gift to the church, serving as the General Editor of the Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley, authoring 16+ books, and chairing the Committee on Our Theological Task that wrote the present doctrinal statement in Part II of The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church.

I had the opportunity to study “The Life and Times of the Wesleys” under Dr. Heitzenrater last fall at Duke Divinity School. Throughout the class, I loved recording his anecdotes. Two of my favorites are “Anything since the 18th century is just current events” and “Almost every internet source is suspect.” The second quote should lead you to take even my words with a grain of salt.

Up first in this series is the myth held tightly and taught widely…. the myth of the “Wesleyan” quadrilateral.

Post 1: The Myth of the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral”

What things about Wesley have you heard that you later found to be untrue? What things about Wesley are you still wondering about?

The theme for the contest came from the book “Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating” by Norman Wirzba.

The exhibit was created to help relay two major ideas from Wirzba’s book.  First, we must acknowledge the fact that our culture often manufactures food in such a way that much of it is wasted, the environment is degraded, and inhumane processes abound.  Second, we must also acknowledge that our faith is sustained by food, particularly the bread and wine of the Eucharist, and that we are called to be stewards of God’s creation.

My three entries were from my trip to Central America this summer.  I featured the bottom two photographs previously in the post Cooking in Guatemala.  The first entry is one that I hadn’t shared until the contest and it ended up winning second place.

The photo features Ángel, the pastor of La Iglesia Evangelica Metodista La Providencia.  It was taken at his house late in July when he had the interns from Duke over for a last supper of sorts.  We were all sharing homemade lasagna and Coca-Cola when a torrential rain storm moved in.  Suddenly, the power went out.  At this point in the trip this wasn’t too rare, so we all kept talking, eating, and enjoying Ángel’s huge smile in the candlelight.  I pulled my camera out because I love to photograph in low-light settings.  I took numerous frames, but when I took this one I knew it was special.  Ángel doesn’t regularly smile for posed photos.

“Pastor Ángel” – Ahuachapán, El Salvador

“Macadamia” – Communiad Nueva Alianza, Coffee Finca

“Tortilleria: Los Comalitos” – Xela, Guatemala

For the first time in my life, I realized that on the day I was born — March 25th, nine months before December 25th — Jesus entered this world as prophet, priest, and king.  Some churches celebrate this day as the Feast of the Annunciation.

These excerpts are from an article that transcribes a talk that was given by Frederica Mathewes-Green at an Orthodox Christian Pro-Life Event.  On the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, she narrated with great clarity and sensitivity the universal church’s position throughout history regarding abortion and why we should be hopeful for the future of the pro-life movement.

Our faith’s affirmation of life from the moment of conception is evident in the passage in the Gospel of Luke, in which Mary goes to visit Elizabeth, and Elizabeth says that her unborn son leaped for joy at the sound of Mary’s voice. She says, “Why do I deserve such honor, that the mother of my Lord would come to me? For when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy.” (Luke 1:39-45) The unborn John the Forerunner recognized the presence of Christ and his mother, and Elizabeth, with prophetic insight, realized what was happening.

Our Lord Jesus Christ did not become a human being on Christmas Day, but 9 months earlier, on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation, when the angel appeared to the Virgin Mary and told her that she would conceive a child. The Forerunner did not become a human being on the day he was born; he was already a prophet and a servant of the Most High, even in his mother’s womb.  Click here to read the rest of The Pro-Life Cause, Orthodoxy, and Hope.

Panem largely occupies what was formally North America.  Its residents live in “The Capitol” and thirteen other geographically distinct districts.  The elite and wealthy of the nation live in the Capitol alongside the leaders of Panem’s dictatorial government.  The districts are governed by this regime and face constant oppression as they fulfill what the Capitol sees as their sole purpose for the nation — the production of goods and services for the people of the Capitol.  In most of the districts the people are poor, dependent on welfare from the government, and live in fear of what may happen if they step out of line.

The Hunger Games are an annual event that the Capitol established for the purposes of keeping the districts in line and providing the citizens of the Capitol entertainment.  The Hunger Games Wiki (yes, the trilogy has its own dedicated wiki community) sums up the games well when it states that the games are an event “in which twenty-four children between the ages of twelve and eighteen, one boy and one girl from each district, are chosen from a lottery and entered into a gladitorial competition where they must fight each other to the death until only one remains standing.”

The games are brutal and savage.  They put on display the gross manifestations of the sin and desire for survival that lies deep within the contestants.  The games also display ways the oppressive government sins against the contestants and the districts.  And if all of this weren’t bad enough, the people in the Capitol love watching every minute of the games, capitalizing on the contestants who become celebrities, and talking about them wherever they go.

This background material helps one understand why the author, Suzanne Collins, named the nation Panem.  According to The Hunger Games Wiki, the name “derives from the Latin phrase panem et circenses, which literally translates into ‘bread and circuses’.  The phrase itself is ‘used to describe entertainment used to distract public attention from more important matters.’”

The idea of distraction and the nation of Panem fit well together.  The Hunger Games distract the people of the Capitol from realizing the ways that they oppress the people of the districts.  The Hunger Games distract the people of the districts from realizing that they have great power even in the midst of the oppressive system that they are under.  And everyone in the nation is distracted from asking big questions about the government or why their world is organized the way it is.

The questions that the series raises about oppressive governments, love beyond boundaries, the effects of war, self-sacrifice, the brutality that people can inflict upon others, dedication, and hopelessness are all relevant for us today.

Yet, readers may notice that in the midst of these “ultimate questions” there is no form of religion or concept of God among the people of Panem.

This fact is what led the professor of one of my preaching classes, Dr. Joy Moore, to assign our class the first book of the trilogy.  Dr. Moore pointed out to us that a “post-God” and “post-Christian” world is one that we as preachers may soon inhabit.  As religious concepts and the story of God’s redemption of the world in Jesus Christ fade in importance throughout society, the preacher will have to be ready to tell the story in new ways.

In order to help us begin practicing living and preaching in such a world, Dr. Moore assigned us the task of preaching a sermon to the people who reside in the Capitol city of Panem based on the first book in the trilogy, The Hunger Games.  Dr. Moore asked us to look for echoes of the Christian story and glimpses of ways God might be working in the post-America and post-God world of Panem that is narrated in the book.  We were then asked to faithfully preach the Christian story, the Gospel, to this “congregation” who has no conception of God.

Below are three sermons from my class.  We each took a different creative approach.

I envisioned preaching my sermon, which is audio only, to a group of Capitol citizens I encountered on the Capitol’s busy streets. Here is the audio:

Pete Brazier, a visiting student from the Methodist Church in Britain, produced a short sermon that he envisioned would be given to small groups of Capitol citizens and perhaps also be broadcasted over the airwaves.

Andrew Ruth’s sermon assumed that any challenge to the Capitol’s reign would warrant immediate death.  He produced a 5 minute video to quickly convey his message.

Andrew aptly introduced his video by stating:

I don’t think that my single sermon can include neither all the nuances of Christian faith nor the particularities of every Bible story. These will require conversations and community to gain intelligibility (cf. Kallenberg).

Thus, I am pretending that there exists an underground Christian community. I assume that I am a product of this community, and their faithful, though clandestine witness to the Triune God. This underground movement retains copies of the Bible in languages they comprehend. As I imagine myself in this community, I assume that at one point I was a full participant in the culture and life of the Capital City. I altered my appearance and filled my existence with entertainment. The physical alterations I made to my body via cosmetic tattoos still remain, while I have slowly relinquished other practices I once held.

We as a community have decided after much prayer and fasting that the Lord is calling us to announce our existence, even if it means inviting persecution. To do so, I will hack into the national television feed during the middle of the Hunger Games, and as quickly as possible share the content of the Christian faith. We pray that the Holy Spirit falls, like at Pentecost, and that through this sermon and the subsequent conversations instigated by the Underground. Pray with us.

Best of all, it pushed us to see anew that God’s redeeming activity pops up in our everyday lives.  We asked: Can we recognize it?  Can we communicate it?

Can you?

Have you read The Hunger Games? If so, what were your thoughts on the book and how it could connect to Christianity?

“Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable garland, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.”

While this theme wasn’t fully explored in the sermon, never forget that God invites us to start the race, the Holy Spirit is our strength throughout the race, and a life fully conformed to the image of Christ is the finish line of the race.

As you can imagine, preaching in front of a crowd of preachers and professors is a little intimidating.  Most people there will have strong thoughts about preaching styles and in-depth knowledge of the scripture passage I’m preaching (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).  There is no doubt that some will say to themselves, as I have before, “I would’ve preached that passage a little differently.”

Yet, I am confident that God has prepared me for this day, Jesus Christ will be preached, and the Holy Spirit will use the Word of God to transform lives.

I was powerfully reminded of the truth above when I came across the following prayer in the book “Conversations with God: Two Centuries of Prayers by African Americans.”  The only thing known about the author, Orrin Stone, is that he was a minister in South Carolina in the late 19th century.

This week I’m reading the prayer as if it were prayed about me, and I’m praying it for my friends in ministry as if it were written about them.

A Prayer for Power (1889) – Orrin Stone

O Lawd, gib dy sarvint, dis Sunday mawnin’, de eye of an eagle dat he may see sin f’om afar.  Put his han’s to de gospel pulpit; glue his ears to the gospel telefoam an’ conneck him wid de Glory in de skies.  ’Luminate his brow wid a holy light dat will make de fiahs of hell look like a tallah candle.  Bow his head down in humility, in dat lonesome valley wheah de pearl of truth is much needed to be said.  Grease his lips wid possum ‘ile to make it easy fo’ love to slip outen his mouth…

Turpentine his ‘magination; ‘lectrify his brain wid de powah of the Word.  Put ‘petual motion in his arms.  Fill him full of de dynamite of Dy awful powah; ‘noint him all ovah wid de kerosene of Dy salvation, an’ den, O Lawd, sot him on fiah wid de sperrit of de Holy Ghos’.

]]> http://www.jonathanandersen.com/a-prayer-for-power/feed/ 0 http://www.jonathanandersen.com/a-prayer-for-power/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TravelingBoots/~3/ZJNL6GMQqmg/ http://www.jonathanandersen.com/reflecting-on-the-past-year/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 23:19:24 +0000 Jonathan http://www.jonathanandersen.com/?p=911 Last year one of my friends passed along this list of statements to complete which helped me reflect on the past year and prepare for the new year.  I pulled them out again today and found them to be a valuable resource.  I hope they serve you well.

2011 was…

I experienced Jesus through…

I was surprised by…

The Holy Spirit taught me about…

Two blessings from this year that I am very thankful for are…

If I had a chance to do 2011 over again, I would…

In 2012, I hope to see God…

Next year I want to show the love of Christ through…

In pursuit of Jesus, I hope to cast aside…

In 2012, I want to work on myself in these ways…

I want to serve those around me through….

The three things I hope to pursue next year are…

Sunrise at Black Balsam Knob – January 2, 2012

This is an Advent devotional I wrote for Orange UMC’s Advent season e-devotionals.  The devotional is based upon Matthew 25:31-46

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?  When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?  When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

Jesus’ words in this passage from Matthew assure us of a future judgment.

None of us likes to think about this idea much.  We regularly proclaim in the Apostles’ Creed that, “He will come again to judge the living and the dead.”  We regularly read parables that include judgment scenes at the end.  Yet, we often choose to ignore or not wrestle with this truth.

In our culture judgment almost always negative connotations.  But have you ever thought about why judgment may be necessary and good?

It is good because it assures us that there is something beyond death – the possibility of eternal life with God.

It is good because it assures us that Christ will one day judge and handle all of the injustices caused by sin that we see in this world.

It is good because upon the cross Christ received the judgment for all of the times we’ve ignored the hungry, thirsty, homeless, cold, sick, and imprisoned.

It is good because the scriptures assure us that if we have faith that is made active in love then we will pass through judgment and live in community forever with our heavenly Father.

Question:  How is your faith being made active in love towards the hungry on Hwy 15-501, the homeless on Franklin Street, those whose houses are without heat, and those who will not be let out of their cells to see any family members this Christmas day?

Prayer:  Heavenly Father, we ask for your forgiveness for all of the times we’ve ignored the least of these in society.  Give us faith infused with boldness so that we may be your hands and feet of active love in the world.  Through your Son, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.