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Romans 8

July 21, 2008 By Andy James

So, over the past two Sundays, I’ve been preaching on Romans 8. It’s been fun to approach these things as a series. This Sunday, the Lectionary takes us to Romans 8:26-39 to finish the chapter. Trygve David Johnson has a nice look at this text at Theolog’s Blogging toward Sunday.

The end of Romans 8 is definitely in my top three favorite biblical texts. It’s just incredible stuff. Now normally I don’t turn to commentaries, especially this early in the week, but today I figured I might as well use that investment known as the New Interpreter’s Bible that sits on my bookshelf. I’m glad I did. This is quite possibly the longest commentary on fourteen verses in the whole twelve-volume set — in sum, this section covers about twenty pages.

As I read, though, I found the text illuminated in such an incredible way. There’s nothing quite like this — so many passages to fill so many sermons, so many inspiring words that illuminate a text that was already inspiring to begin with. Still, the end almost had me in tears.

We paraphrase, in conclusion, the final two verses of the section. Paul has spoken, and we must speak, of the love of the one true God. This love of God calls across the dark intervals of meaning, reaches into the depths of human despair, embraces those who live in the shadow of death or the overbright light of present life, challenges the rulers of the world and shows them up as a sham, looks at the present with clear faith and and the future with sure hope, overpowers all powers that might get in the way, fills the outer dimensions of the cosmos, and declares to the world that God is God, that Jesus the Messiah is the world’s true Lord, and that in him love has won the victory. This powerful, overmastering love grasps Paul, and sustains him in his praying, his preaching, his journeying, his writing, his pastoring, and his suffering, with the strong sense of the presence of the God who had loved him from the beginning and had put that love into action in Jesus. This is the love because of which there is no condemnation. This is the love because of which those justified are surely glorified. And this is the love, seen surpremely in the death of the Messiah, which reaches out to the whole world with the exodus message, the freedom message, the word of joy and justice, the word of the gospel of Jesus.

— N.T. Wright, “Romans,” The New Interpreter’s Bible

With that said, I’m not sure that there’s much more to be said. But anything you’d like to offer would still be appreciated!

Wall-E: close to home?

July 4, 2008 By Andy James

I finally ventured out last night with a couple friends to see Wall-E. As usual, Pixar brings us a great movie, and I suspect I’ll be back to see it again in the theater. It was that good. And I’m not at all a movie person!

There are so many possibilities for thinking about allegory with Wall-E: the concern of global warming, the need for personal connection, even how the world pushes off the sacred. However, there’s something striking me about Wall-E’s commitment that bears some reflection.

Wall-E is, at his core, a faithful robot. He keeps doing what he was programmed to do (and no surprise, since he seems to be running some variant of Mac OS!) Even when all the other Wall-Es on Earth stop functioning properly, he keeps going. He scavenges parts off of other broken-down robots to keep himself running, and his ingenuity is something surely beyond his original design.

But Wall-E is something more than a faithful automaton, working beyond his scheduled useful life span. He recognizes that there is more to his world than just compacting the leftover trash of Earth. He is unafraid to collect things that strike him as interesting. You might say that Wall-E has a heart (as only Pixar can give). In the end, this ability to think outside the box leads him to incredible discoveries of love and life.

I have to wonder: Is Wall-E a good model for the life of a disciple? Is Wall-E’s faithfulness to his task while recognizing the things of beauty around him something we can learn from? Does Wall-E give us a little bit of the path toward a new creation that we so desperately long for?

There are surely countless other discussions that could emerge from watching Wall-E, but this is what struck me close to home.

technology and the PCUSA General Assembly

July 1, 2008 By Andy James

Like many Presbyterians, I won’t ever forget my first General Assembly. The year was 1998. I had just finished my freshman year of college, and somehow I managed to be invited to attend GA as a volunteer with the Office of Communications. I flew to Charlotte a few days before the assembly began, checked into my hotel, and ventured over to the convention center, where I met people in person I had only spoken with online.

I was immediately put to work on the project of the day: helping to set up an Internet “cafe” for those attending the assembly. Although much of the convention center was brand new, we didn’t have a high speed connection (probably because of a high cost to set it up). We set up a local network of ten or so computers, then connected it to a couple special boxes that shared four dialup connections across the network. Even the newsroom and the web editing stations were set up in this way! Most news was posted first on PresbyNet before it made the PCUSA web site. Mountains of paper information never made it on the web, at least not during the assembly.

Flash forward to 2008. I’m on vacation, not at the assembly, but that didn’t matter. From a quiet village on the coast of Maine, I was able to watch live streaming video of the plenary sessions, read along with the committee reports, and chat live with other Presbyterians from around the country. I might as well have been there, if all that mattered was the business done! The chat room Presbyterians even started proposing a new group of “Web Advisory Delegates” to be polled before each vote! Bloggers from among the commissioners, advisory delegates, and observers took time to post often, and some old stalwart publications even brought in people to blog the assembly.

The technology behind GA this year, at least from a distance, was the best I’ve seen it. Everything just worked, almost well enough for me to wonder if we need to spend the time and money to get 1,000 people together to have these kinds of conversations that we could have at home.

But having been there before myself reminds me that there’s something about General Assembly that can’t be recreated on a computer screen. The people we encounter in person show us the breadth of the church that goes far beyond one congregation, and the worship services point us toward a new song of praise that seems beyond belief. Amidst all my memories of five assemblies, the one I can’t put out of my mind was opening worship in Charlotte – 13,000 Presbyterians gathered around the Word and the Table to worship.

The GA Junkie made an interesting point in his reflections on the assembly today:

We polity wonks and GA Junkies have an insight into how God, through the Holy Spirit, works in our covenant communities through these governing body meetings and our connectionalism. We need to recognize that the roughly 2000 people here at the General Assembly represent about 0.1% of the PC(USA).

Will technology help the church to understand this work of the Holy Spirit better? Only time will tell.

back to blogging, again

June 29, 2008 By Andy James

So after a three-year hiatus, I’m back to blogging. Why?

As the three-year mark nears in Whitestone, I’m feeling a tug to engage a little more of why I do what I do while I’m doing it.
I’m trying to convince myself that my life isn’t boring. Other people might actually want to hear a little more of what I’m thinking!
I’m a little jealous of the attention other bloggers are getting these days. The Presbyterian Church (USA) just elected a blogger as its moderator. Other friends are blogging more and more. Pastors are engaging issues of importance online and not just in the pulpit.
I’m always interested in trying out new toys. I’ve done a couple blogs before on Blogger, so WordPress here I come!

Look to hear a little more in the coming days about what’s been going on with me.

Freedom Summer 2005

June 21, 2005 By Andy James

Forty-one years ago today, three young men were killed as they sought to help others exercise their rights as Americans to vote and as humans to live free of fear. They came to Mississippi as part of a massive influx of people to register voters in a state known as a “closed society” that ensured that only a few kept their power. They came to Mississippi as young men but never left alive.

Today, one man was convicted of helping to orchestrate the murder of these three young men. He lived a life in Mississippi that sought to limit the rights of others to be human and American. In a previous trial, one juror kept the others from conviction because she could not believe that a preacher could do such a thing. Now feeble and infirm, continuing to deny any connection to the crime or to the organized hate that facilitated it, he faces up to sixty years in prison, never to walk free in Mississippi again.

Summer began today, and I think Mississippi can call it another Freedom Summer. People from around the world have come to Mississippi to cover the trial, and we have seen glimpses of a new Mississippi. This new Mississippi is like the new creation that Paul talks about in his epistles: it hasn’t come yet, and we don’t know what it will look like. We may even miss it when it comes our way, and it probably won’t be finished in time for us to see what it looks like. Nonetheless, it is coming.

Today was one glimpse of that new creation, a new world where justice and peace reign, where those who wrong others are forced to face their sin and begin the process of repentance.

Tomorrow, another glimpse of that new creation is set to begin just around the corner from the courthouse where justice was finally served today. At the Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner Living Memorial Civil Rights Education Summit and UNESCO’s Breaking the Silence Project, teachers and others will gather to talk about how to teach about these events in schools. When I was growing up, the most I ever learned about the Civil Rights Movement came from news coverage of the release of Mississippi Burning. It is certainly a sign of the new creation that people are trying to teach these things to the children of this place that remains so torn by the violence that has marked its history for so many centuries.

Pray that the new creation may come quickly into our midst in Mississippi.