Prayers of the Saints...

go stand at the crossroads and look around. ask for directions to the old road, the tried and true road. then take it. discover the right route for your souls.

jeremiah 6:16

then he added, “every teacher of religious law who becomes a disciple in the Kingdom of Heaven is like a homeowner who brings from his storeroom new gems of truth as well as old."

matthew 13:52

Prayers of the Saints is one of the CDs I am listening to these days. Thanks to Matt and Margo who had my name at Christmas. I was aware of this project at their church (Trinity Vineyard) and was happy to receive it.

Hmmm. What is God doing in our day? Across the Church I see signs of things new and emergent as well as things old, tried and true. The ancient faith, ever new. The riches of the Church through time and space.

Christianity is about an organic whole, cosmic truth, the big picture or nothing at all. To borrow language from Brian McLaren, it's "the story we find ourselves in." So in Vineyard and Mennonite Churches, we reach back into the storeroom and find new gems of truth as well as old.

Part of the unique vantage point of this historical moment is that there is much fragmentation of worldview. So people access the Christian story from very diverse philosophical starting points. The burning question is--how do we unpack the analogy of the homeowner who goes into the "storeroom" that Jesus uses in this passage? Where do we go to find the gems of truth old as well as new?

How do we access a Story which has cosmic dimensions and speak of this Truth in a philosophical milieu that has deconstructed all God-centered Narratives? A teacher is one who opens his mouth or guides a community of learning to interact with some construct of Truth. The Christian storehouse is accessed through faith and trust. The role of Cartesian doubt in the modern quest for truth was foundational. This is followed by a general skepticism toward objective truth in postmodernity.

But Jesus says that to be a teacher in the Kingdom goes hand and hand with being a disciple, a follower, a student. So the locus of authority and voice is one that integrates objective study and subjective, transparent experiences as one who is attempting to follow the historical, Biblical Christ.

Peace