Christian Agnostics?
Kent Hayden, M.Div (Princeton) on The Case for Christian Agnosticism:
There is no poetry in the accumulation of answers. Poetry, and truth along with it, comes from an encounter with those corners of life which have not yet been filled with language. It comes from entering into our ignorance with the honest courage to question. It comes from a willingness to shake up the mental sediment in which we have hidden our secrets.
On the cross, Jesus was an agnostic. He was willing to face death with a why on his lips. Sometimes, in the comfort of a sunny afternoon, when much less is at stake, I have found the strength to entertain such questions myself. And when my belief is stirred by the gusts of doubt, and my knowledge is silhouetted against the beauty of mystery, I feel the uneasy presence of something beyond my capacity to speak, and I am grateful for all I don’t know.
People are often surprised to learn that Mother Theresa secretly harbored significant doubt. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising. The most difficult questions we ask of God are those that arise out of suffering and in the face of evil - precisely the intersection in which Mother Theresa lived and worked and prayed. It was in the face of unimaginable suffering, personal and intimate and real, that Jesus asked, “My God, my God - why have you forsaken me?”
I don’t think we can ever know God in the same way that we can ‘know’ a formula, a definition, a specification or measurement. We can, however, experience God. This is a very different way of ‘knowing’. The first way - the way of measurement and observation - suggests God exists wholly outside of ourselves. The second - the way of personal experience - suggests he exists within us. Jesus’ words in Luke 17 are ambiguous; various translations state that the kingdom of God is ‘within’ and ‘among’ you. ‘Within’ indicates a personal and individual experience of the Kingdom of God while ‘among’ can refer only to an experience shared in community. In either case, Jesus’ reply to the Pharisees is unequivocal: it can’t be identified through a rational process. The Kingdom of God can only be experienced and part of that experience might include doubt, questioning and uncertainty.
Press in to God. Do not give up, do not despair, do not walk away. Press in. P.U.S.H - Pray Until Something Happens. This requires considerable effort. It means clearing the decks of all that is irrelevant, time wasting, distracting to our search. No, you probably can’t quit your job, but you can not watch television for two or three hours a day, you can take time from other activities, you can open time in your schedule. You can pray for three or four hours a day - you just have to figure out how. Get up in God’s grill. Hang on. Do not let go. Holler, bellow and wail, plead, beg and cajole. But press in, and keep pressing in, until you hear from God.
To live in the mystery of God is one thing. To reconcile yourself to the questions that cannot be answered is another, and Dr. Hayden suggests he has found a way of living with both. To live in abject doubt, though, is to aimlessly wander the corridors of a peculiar kind of living hell. Trust me on this, it’s awful. I hate it.
Press in. P.U.S.H. My experience has been that I’ve never received the answer I was looking for. Almost inevitably God bypasses the question altogether. But I have always gotten the answer I needed.
P.U.S.H.
Questions
From Relevant Magazine - Cameron Conant on Why We Need Unanswered Questions:
And so as I sleep in a queen-sized bed by myself tonight—the same bed my wife and I once shared—simply knowing that God is there is enough for me, too. It has to be. Of course, I still have questions for God, but I’ve become comfortable with the tension of not knowing, the tension that comes from embracing a faith that cannot be fully deciphered, parsed, chopped up and dissected. Some things are mysterious—especially God. Yes, He can be known, but how can an infinite being who has no beginning and no end ever fully be known by us: clumsy humans who stumble along in the dark, groping for meaning and truth and answers?
I have questions, too. The older I get - and the more I search for answers - the more questions I have. But I’m not comfortable with ‘the tension of not knowing’. In fact, my faith journey over the last five to ten years has been characterized by a slowly increasing discomfort. Very few Christians can comprehend the possibility that God has led me into doubt, into questioning, into this wilderness. For most people, it simply does not compute. But I believe God has done just that. Sometimes I hate where I’m at. Sometimes I get tired of waking up every morning and searching for belief. Mostly, though, I can’t imagine living any other way. It’s the most honest, truthful way of life I know. But it’s incredibly difficult and soul-tiring.
Without doubt faith cannot grow. There is no other way - we must go through doubt, fear and uncertainty in order to experience the faithfulness of God. We cannot learn to trust until we have first learned to doubt. Sometimes this is doubt is purely an intellectual and emotional state, arising out of meditation on God’s word, on God, life, the universe and everything. Sometimes, as in Conan’s case, it is the result of an external crisis that is thrust upon us. The end result is the same - all our sheltering beliefs are broken, pulled down and hauled away. Sometimes all we’re left with is God - and sometimes, in the midst of an almost unbearable crisis, God is absent, silent, distant.
I feel so privileged to be able to open the bible and guide this faith community deeper into its truths each Sunday morning. But I also believe that one of the reasons why Third Space matters is because this is the one place where Christians can say - where I can say - ‘I don’t know, I don’t understand, I don’t have that figured out yet…’ There are times when it takes a great deal of courage to be able to say that. But - take it from me - those words are like life itself when someone is struggling with doubt, fear, uncertainty and deep, painful questions. Most people in the midst of such struggles aren’t looking for answers. They’re looking for someone who hears the cry of their hearts.
Community
when we moved here i had big ideas about neighbours and community. i had pictures in my head of the kind of neighbour i wanted to be. the kind of neighbourhood I wanted to be a part of creating. i wanted to be in a neighbourhood where we knew each others names. i wanted to borrow sugar and lend butter. i wanted to share plants from our gardens, and our harvests in the fall. i wanted to feel like i was a part of something good.
at first i felt hopeful. i made more conversations. i put more effort in. we invited people over. we stopped and said hi.
after a couple of years, however, i started to give up.
A must read - Don’t miss it.
Jesus Says Fraud is Okay by Him…
Or so it seems. Ah yes, the parable of the ’shrewd’ manager. The enigmatic parable of the shrewd manager. The one in which Jesus praises a guy for taking advantage of his boss.
Take a few minutes and read the story. Think about. What’s really going on here? Jesus ends up praising the man for trashing his boss’ business - to benefit himself? How does that work?
We’re going to be talking about it on Sunday. We’re going to break into groups, ask some simple questions, try to get a handle on what’s really going on here. I suspect there will be more than one take on this. And you know, that’s part of what makes Third Space unique - we’re willing to hash this stuff out together, knowing that we might not all land on the same square, understanding that it’s okay.
Messy, but beautiful. I love it.
Caesar, Moses, Jesus and Wet
The Apenine Mountains run like a high, ridged seam down the center of Italy’s boot. The Rubicon river, flowing down out of the mountains to the eastern coast, neatly divides the map into northern and southern regions. In the ancient world it was illegal for a Roman general to cross the river with his troops - the punishment was death. But in 49 BCE Julius Caesar did exactly that, marching his troops across the the Rubicon and initiating a civil war that would eventually see him in control of the Republic and, indeed, preside over the expanding Roman empire. As a result, the phrase “crossing the Rubicon” has entered our vocabulary, representing a decision that takes us to a point of ‘no-return’.
When the waters of the Red Sea closed behind Moses and the Israelites - and drowned the Egyptian army - they also reached a point of ‘no-return’. They were fully committed to the way ahead and, though they might not have fully grasped the significance of it - their die was cast into God’s lap. I suppose it’s indicative of how pervasive the influence of Greek and Roman culture is for us Christians (as oppossed to the Hebraic culture of the biblical world) that the phrase in our language is ‘crossing the Rubicon’ and not, ‘crossing the Red Sea’.
In the New Testament a pretty clear connection is made between the Israelites crossing the Red Sea and Christians being baptized into Christ. The narrative arc of God’s story of redemption, reconciliation and ‘Shalom’ is arcing outward through our lives to the generations yet to come. In the midst of following the Exodus story we’re going to stop for a moment and look at this weird Christian practice called ‘Baptism’. How did we get it? What does it mean? Why do we do it?
Sooner or later, in all our lives, comes a Red Sea decision. Caesar crossed the Rubicon in an act of naked aggression and hostility, initiating a civil war that would see him seize power over the Roman Republic and expand its empire. Moses took God’s people across the Red Sea so that they could find freedom from oppression and enter into the promised land of God. Both men were fully committed to their path, but these were very different paths, taken for very different reasons. On Sunday I want to ask you a very simple question: What journey are you fully committed to? This ritual we call baptism - that has its origins in a story thousands of years old - is a public declaration of who you are and what your life is about. When you make this very public declaration of baptism you’ve crossed your own point of ‘no-return’. It’s an act that places us in the middle of a story - and a family - that spans thousands of generations, and it can’t be undone.
Yes, you believe in Jesus Christ. You’re following him the best you can. But this is something different. Baptism is a transformative moment in the life of a Christ follower - it’s a moment where you publicly declare what your life is about in front of your friends, your family and your community. No, you don’t need to baptized so that your friends and family know you’re a Christian.
You need to be baptized so that you know you’re a Christian.
Change vs. Transformation
Poker players look for a ‘tell’ on the faces around the table - a twitch, a gesture, a mannerism - that hints at what the player is hiding in their hand. in the Exodus story Moses tries to bargain with Pharaoh to secure the release of the Jews and the result is disastrous. As a result, he offers us a fascinating little ‘tell’ that shows what he’s really thinking. That tell is obvious when you realize Moses lied to the Pharaoh.
At the burning bush God told him to display miracles in front of Pharaoh. Instead, he tries to strike a bargain. Let us go to the desert to worship, he says, if you don’t God will kill us. In other words, lose us for a few days, or lose us for ever. God, of course, never said any such thing. God gave Moses the tools he needed - the miraculous staff, the healed hand - but Moses simply didn’t believe they would work. Moses was more afraid of Pharaoh than he was of God so he cooks up a story to move things along. At the end of the 5th chapter of Exodus, however, Moses is a completely different cat. Now he’s up in God’s face, angry, frustrated, making some pretty strong accusations about God sitting on the sidelines. There’s no doubt now about what Moses believes. Now he’s fully in. Now he’s demanding that God act.
Change happens everywhere, all the time, to everyone. There’s no escaping it. Every change process has, I believe, a transformational moment. It’s like diving off a bridge - you reach a point at which there’s no going back. You’re posture changes from standing to diving and your body from dry to wet. Your emotional state changes from apprehensive to afraid and then exhilarated. But, as a result of that one dive into the river, your inner self might be transformed from being timid and shy to being courageous and outgoing. In Moses’ case, it was his failure that resulted in a profound change in his understanding of his situation and a subsequent transformation of his inner character to become fully committed to God. Contrast this with Pharaoh, who changes his mind a dozen times but never experiences a transformation.
The plagues that God brings next precipitate a change in Egyptian history. But I really think they were necessary not just to make the Pharaoh change his mind but to make the Jewish people want to leave, also. It would take a long time in the wilderness - an entire generation would have to die - before the Israelites were ready to fight their war to take the land. They’re situation changed, but it would take more than forty years and a speech by Joshua before they were transformed from cowed, subservient slaves to confidently freed men and women.
I think we’re in the middle of a ‘transformational’ time at Third Space. We’ve been through a lot of changes in the last couple of years and I, for one, am ready to stop trying to negotiate with change. Like Moses before Pharaoh, I don’t think we can simply tweak the way things are anymore. I don’t think we can make a deal with the powers that are holding us back. We need to be transformed. We’re going to talk about this on Sunday. It’s not a Sunday morning that’s going to fill in a lot of blanks or answer a lot of questions. It will be food for thought instead, manna for the mind. It’s time.
Church, get ready. God’s about to do a new thing.
Broken and Beautiful
Last Sunday morning we smashed old plates and tiles with a hammer. Then we took the pieces and made this table. I think it’s a pretty vivid illustration of how God can take something broken or imperfect - like us - and make something beautiful. And it reminds me of how all of us, like the individual pieces of pottery and china, are broken and yet, together, form something beautiful and vibrant and resilient and useful: community.
We’re beginning a new series where we look at all the difficult things Jesus asked us to do - like ‘love your enemy’. It’s easy to say and, sometimes, seems simplistic and almost naive, perhaps. But who is the enemy? An ex spouse, fighting for custody of the kids? A competing business whose advertising targets my business? A co-worker with political views at the opposite end of the spectrum from my own? The Taliban? Osama Bin Laden? And what does it mean to love my enemy, exactly? And isn’t this something that we all know we should do but none of actually do?
Michael’s going to help us unpack this - it should be an interesting Sunday morning.
Brunch
If you were part of our first 1st Annual Easter Sunday brunch this morning - thank you! We had a really wonderful time together. The food was terrific, and so were you. I even tried my hand at Kendama, but was more than a little clumsy. Ted rocks at Kendama, and Jordan’s pretty good too. Me? Not so much.
And to those of you who were participating in Lent… you may now return to your cigars and chocolate. You know who you are.
Easter Brunch
Easter is the most important day on the church calendar, marking one of the most profound events in human history. As we celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus during this weekend we, quite naturally, want to make this into a big event, a spectacle, a presentation befitting the events we commemorate this weekend.
We’re taking a different approach this Sunday. No big stage show. No band. No lights, no song and dance. Which is easy for us, because we don’t have any of those things anyway. Instead, we’re having a pot luck brunch. Join us at 10 AM for a wonderful time of just being together as a community. Sitting down, having a meal together. Sharing this one aspect of our lives, together. We’re going to quietly and gently read the Easter story, trusting the scriptures to speak for themselves.
Everyone hungers for food, companionship and God. The dinner table is the only place where all three of those needs can be met at the same time. Or in our case, the brunch table.
Come, have brunch with us. It’s going to be lovely.
Enlarging the Story
It’s a problem that I’ve been seeing more and more of lately. It’s everywhere. I first encountered it when reading a book called “How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth.” The authors divide the bible into the various genres of writing - historical, poetic, apocalyptic, prophetic and so on. Each genre has to be interpreted according to its own unique quality - we can’t read the psalms in the same way we read the book of Acts. Okay, fair enough. But I soon discovered that this way of reading the bible divorced the Psalms from Acts and the connections between the two were lost. If there’s a narrative arc to the bible - if what Paul says in Romans is connected to what Adam did in Eden, and it is, then dividing the book into genres serves to break that arc and, in so doing, the story God is telling is lost. Instead we get, as the authors suggest, a book of rules and regulations, a book that is to “be read, understood and obeyed.” (their phrase).
Dividing the bible into an Old and New Testament, or even chapters and verses might do exactly the same thing. But we also have this incredibly common - some would say essential - part of our church life called a ’sermon’. In a sermon the preacher studies a passage of scripture and then makes a speech, from which the rest of us download information. In this process, however, we isolate a text and, as a result, draw conclusions that often simply aren’t supported by the larger context. I used to read the story of the three servants and their talents as a call to evangelism - we must not hide our faith, we must enlarge the Master’s Kingdom. The parable of the 10 virgins was an eschatological admonition to be ready for the return of Jesus. The story of the servants who worked in the vineyard for a day getting paid the same as those who worked for an hour was about all of us sharing in our heavenly reward equally. But in reading through Matthew this year I’ve come to recognize that these stories are connected to the sheep and the goats judgment of Matthew 25. When seen as a whole, and when connected to the sheep and goats Judgment it becomes immediately apparent that these stories are about economic justice. Why did the virgins not share their oil? Why couldn’t they share one or two lamps and make sure there was enough oil to last the night? Instead, they sent the others, selfishly, away. Why did the two wise, confident servants not help the frightened one with his investments? Why did they not pool their resources? Clearly, this is a case of the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer. And in the story of the vineyard workers it appears that in the Kingdom of God the community is larger than the self, that we understand economic justice as what benefits us while God desires to distribute prosperity equally throughout the community. When we start connecting to the sheep and goats judgment the Sermon on the Mount becomes a document new and alien to our world; the house on the rock and the house on the sand take on a whole new meaning as well. Yes, as we travel through the book of Matthew we see a dozen other things going on as well. That’s pretty much my point.
Every devotional, every bible study, every commentary I’ve ever read does exactly the same thing - subdivides the bible and thus, necessarily, fails us. But here’s the thing: every sermon we’ve ever heard, and every sermon I’ve ever preached, has done exactly the same thing. The limitations of the form require it. And there’s an awful, terrible, frightening truth in that. Maybe we’ve been going at this all wrong - and some of us have dedicated our entire lives to this pursuit.
We need a new way to teach the bible. A way that allows for a long, long time to be spent dwelling in the text. Years, decades. A way that allows for long discussions and digressions. A way that places it within the hands of the community instead of a priestly caste of pastors and theologians so that the Holy Spirit may speak among us, and through us, without the filter that is one person at the front of the room. And my fear is that none of this can be done within the frame of church as we know it. In fact, this single belief - that the scripture must dwell within the community, and the community within the scripture - challenges everything we know and understand about the role of a pastor, the nature and organization of church, our way of being the body of Christ together. The fear this engenders is enormous. And this new way has not yet come to be in our evangelical tradition. It may never come to be. But I think somewhere, somehow, someone should at least try, someone should begin.
A Jazz Shaped Faith
On Sunday we were talking Jazz. Well, Ian was talking Jazz. Specifically, about the intersection of Jazz and faith. How is it possible that jazz and faith intersect? Ian shared with us Finding the Groove: Composing a Jazz-Shaped Faith
In the video above there’s a drum solo that begins at about the 5:00 minute mark and lasts about 2 and half minutes. It’s really quite elegant. The drummer goes someplace all his own but never loses the feel of the song and, when the time is right, Dave Brubeck turns around, puts his fingers on the keyboard, and the band comes together again beautifully.
For years I tried to like jazz but just couldn’t understand it. There didn’t seem to be any melody, no tune to follow along with. One day I heard that the secret to listening to jazz is to hear each individual instrument but hear them all, together, at the same time. The moment I was able to do this it suddenly just opened up for me. That seems like a perfect description of community, also - a place where each individual voice is heard but where all our voices, together, create something really beautiful.
Be Still My Love…
Pentecost is derived from the ancient Greek for ‘fifty’ and the festival of Pentecost got that name because, on the ancient Jewish calendar, it came on the fiftieth day after Passover. In Jewish religious life the festival commemorated Moses receiving the Ten Commandments from God and the establishment of his covenant relationship with his people. It was on the very day of this particular festival that the Holy Spirit fell on the believers in Jerusalem and the whole world was turned upside down. The timing of the Holy Spirit arriving in power on Pentecost is stunning: God was initiating a new covenant with his people.
So… why bring it up now? Well… what I find fascinating about these events is the disciples. After Jesus was crucified they met in secret, afraid for their lives. Now, after having walked and talked with the resurrected Christ on a number of occasions - and having witnessed his ascension - they are no longer afraid. Cautious, perhaps, but yet they appear to be living openly as Christ followers in Jerusalem. They are doing exactly what Jesus asked them to do - they are waiting. It’s taken me many, many years of hearing, reading and thinking about this story before I grasped the significance of the obvious fact - for them, following Jesus meant waiting, waiting until the time was right, waiting for God to move, waiting for the Holy Spirit to come, waiting for whatever - and they certainly could not have known what ‘whatever’ was - came next. They were caught in an eddy in time, no longer a part of the world they once knew yet unable to enter into the world that was to come. So they waited. We know they prayed and ate together, and that they elected Matthias to replace the traitor Judas but, other than those scant few activities, we see no forward motion on the part of the disciples. None, that is, until the Holy Spirit falls and Peter steps boldly in to what God is doing and preaches the gospel on the streets of Jerusalem.
I’m bringing all this up because our community here at Third Space seems to be in much the same position. Something has changed, and is changing, and we’re negotiating a transition once more. Like the disciples in the opening pages of Acts, we can no longer be who we once were, and it’s not yet clear what God has in store for us next. So, like the disciples, we wait. Like the disciples, we pray, we take communion together, we worship the Lord together. And in those prayers we seek out our purpose. We, as a community of believers here, in Peterborough in 2010, are searching for a word from the Lord, asking for the Holy Spirit to fall, looking for the signs of what God is doing so that we can step into the power and the presence of God in our life as a community.
Today was communion here at Third Space. There wasn’t much in the way of a sermon - nothing more than what you’ve read here. But prior to communion set aside a time of silent prayer as we waited on the Lord and listened for his voice. There will soon - very soon be a time for us to move decisively, to speak boldly and to hold the truth like a torch. That time is ’soon’ but not ‘yet’. Right now we must be still and listen. Right now we must wait and pray.
Come, Holy Spirit… come.
Imagine what could happen if…
“Dance your bones” may be the best advice I get all year. Your best advice of the year is probably in this post from Rae at Blackbird Studio as well.
The Same Mighty Power…
I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms.
This is from Paul’s prayer for the Ephesian church, which I read as a benediction at the close of our Sunday mornings at Third Space. It takes my breath away every time I read it. “This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead…” Sometimes - okay, maybe most times - we miss the significance of what is happening in our community. We faithfully keep coming out, participating, meeting here with God and with our friends and, for the most part, we love it. Oh yes, it has it moments when things are not as we wished - everything in life does - but we’re here. We could be a million other places, but we’re here. After a while this seems perfectly normal - perfectly ordinary. As a result of all this ‘ordinariness’, though, we sometimes miss the fact that something extraordinary is happening.
Do we have any idea what this really means? I think a great deal of what happens in our community appears underwhelming. This morning we sat for a few minutes of silent prayer before beginning our discussion. To a casual observer this might seem odd, or perhaps it seems like nothing is happening. But in our frenzied, stress-filled world the opportunity to sit in silence is a rare and precious thing. If you were with us this morning you may have been uncomfortable with the long, still silence. Of course, the ‘long’ silence was just under four minutes. At the end of that prayer time there was an incredible spirit of peace and stillness in our room. And yes, I know God is always with us, but this morning, as I prepared to break the silence by reading Psalm 100, I could feel God’s presence. I treasure those moments.
We then talked a great deal about what Third Space means to us; about what our experience here has been like. As various people were sharing their thoughts I thought, “this is it - this is what real community looks like”. As the discussion went on I began to hear stories of God at work in people’s hearts, drawing us to himself in the midst of this community. It was so beautiful.
“This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead…” We have no idea what God can do, and can scarcely imagine what he will do in our community this year. We live in the ordinariness of knowing God, not fully realizing the astounding, awesome, mind-boggling power that God possesses. You see, it’s not just the power to speak the universe into existence, to shape reality, to stop time, to walk on water. It’s the power to speak into our hearts, to touch our deepest inner self with his incomparable love. The power to create planets? One day science may do just that. The power to whisper love into the depths of my deepest pain, to calm, with his gentle but powerful presence my greatest fears, the ability to change the very nature of who I am by nothing more than his presence? We have no idea the power that the Holy Spirit possesses, no idea what God can do. Sometimes I don’t know how we’re going to do this or that; sometimes I wonder where Third Space goes from here. In the end, maybe it’s not a lack of faith that makes me think that way. Maybe it’s taking this beautiful thing - God in the midst of our Third Space community - for granted.
I want to make you a promise, Third Space: I’m going to dream big dreams from now on. Go ahead, dream big dreams, too. Bring your dreams, bring your hopes, bring your talents and your gifts and your desires. Open your hearts and your lips and your voices and share in the wonder and the beauty that is God’s love in this community and in this city. If we do this, and even if we do only this, I’ll promise you one more thing: Heaven will break out on earth. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead…”
God, Incognito
Our worship time on Sunday morning was a written response to a specific question. We all sat down with a piece of paper on which had been written only, “Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.” And then, neatly lettered below was one word: therefore…
This single word, ‘therefore, is where our worship - our response to what God has done - begins. But sitting down with a piece of paper and writing doesn’t look like worship to everyone. That someone might not see this as worship is difficult to grasp for those of us who are familiar with Third Space. In another conversation on Sunday morning I said that we begin our ’service’ at 11:30 and was immediately reminded of something I knew but had simply forgotten - we begin at 11 AM, but we begin in community. People start arriving at 11 or shortly after and, before you know it, there’s a hub-bub of conversation in the room. It’s a great chance to catch up with our friends and it’s a real pleasure to introduce visitors and invite them into a conversation around the coffee pot. At 11:30 we continue through the rest of our Sunday morning. Standing in a circle with coffee in hand may not look like worship either, but I really think it is. The very fact that we’re in church on Sunday morning, and feel some kinship to those we meet with, is also a response to what God has done in our lives.
And our Sunday morning, amidst all the business and stress of the Christmas season, was a quiet, calm, reflective time. We decorated our Christmas tree together, we sang a few Christmas carols a cappella. We worshiped, gently, but powerfully, through our writing exercise, with some lovely music playing softly in the background. The scripture was read. We talked about what we had written. We prayed together. It doesn’t get any better than that - it really doesn’t. It doesn’t look like any big thing. What we do is underwhelming. It takes time to see the beauty of Third Space. It takes time to get past all of our ‘churchey’ expectations to see what is really going on here on a typical Sunday morning. (It took me the better part of a year). Everything about us goes against the norm of a typical evangelical church experience. Our small size allows us to do some really interesting things but there are challenges to being a small church as well - not the least of which is financial.
Why am I talking about all this? Well… this afternoon I was reading the Christmas story in Matthew. I began to wonder what it was like for the shepherds, when they found the stable with Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus. What did they see as they entered the scene? My guess is that they saw a weary young mother, an anxious father, a baby that looked like any other baby. But this wasn’t just any baby - this was the Christ Child, this was the incarnation. But here’s the question.. at that moment, do you think the Baby Jesus met or exceeded their expectations? An angelic choir announcing that the Son of God is born - that’s a lot of hype. Did they walk away from the stable that night, scratching their heads, wondering what all that commotion was about? Maybe that’s something like us. Maybe there isn’t anything immediately and obviously ’special’ about us here at Third Space. Maybe the extraordinary work of God is unfolding here in a way that is simply understated, gentle, quiet and unassuming, that frustrates our expectations of what church should be. And yet, though it may be difficult to recognize him, here Christ is, among us once again.
I’m not trying to suggest that we’re better than anyone else. What I’m trying to say is just this - I love being a part of this community. In the beginning I was like one of those shepherds. I encountered Third Space and said, “hey, let’s go see what this is about.” Now? There’s nowhere else I’d rather be. Third Space is Peterborough’s best-kept secret. I’d like to see that change. I’d like to share this experience with a lot more people. In the incarnation we see Jesus born as a fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies, and in reading Matthew’s genealogy this morning I really got a sense that the birth of Christ is a continuation of something God has been doing for a very long time. But there’s also a sense that God is doing something new with the birth of Christ. I hope that in the months ahead we see God creating something new in Third Space. But I hope that the story God’s been telling here doesn’t change either. And my heart’s desire, as I look beyond Christmas into the New Year, is that everything here will change… and everything will remain the same.
And I don’t think that’s too tall an order for God. After all, he’s done it before.
New Beginnings
Welcome to our new home on the world wide web.
It’s a blog. Okay, you knew that… but let me explain. There are some really good church websites out there. Some awesome ones, even. Some are from churches right here in our home town. We think that’s great. But a website is like an advertisement - it’s designed to convey the information you need in an attractive way. A blog is more like a conversation.
We like that.
Here at the Third Space we may not have it all figured out. We may not have it all together. We may not even know what ‘it’ is. But this is a safe place to explore Christianity. It’s a safe place to get to know Jesus. It’s a safe place to come at things from the side, to figure out things as you go along. And the beauty of it is in the way we’re trying to do this together. Well, sometimes it’s beautiful. Other times? Not so much. But it’s always real. And we like that too.
Welcome, friend.