Gathering on May 21

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air. "Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder. "I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up." The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation. "Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves." So punctuation really does matter, even if it is only occasionally a matter of life and death. (This story is from Lynne Truss' book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.)

The wrong turn of a phrase may seem like nothing to get upset over. Yet, with theology it can be a matter of life or death. Especially, when we are talking about our understanding of Jesus. The Nicene Creed (THE Early Church's expression of belief) states this about Jesus, "We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man." Two things jump out. One, Jesus is fully God. Two, Jesus is fully human. How can this be? I don't know. However, remember that theology is our embracing a mystery! Why all this concern that we get it straight in our heads that Jesus was fully human and fully God? To think otherwise would be a heresy, and most of the Church's heresies are connected to a misunderstanding of Christ's nature.

If Jesus is not begotten meaning he was made or created then there was a time when Jesus was not. He cannot be God because God is without beginning or ending. If he is not God then he cannot save us! Even if we lived without sin, that would be us only doing our duty to God. What could we do to repay the offense of sinning in the first place? Only God could go beyond the call of duty. However, God didn't owe the debt, humanity did...so humanity had to repay it! Ah-ha, what we need is a God-Man! Jesus. If he was not human he could not save us! (The Church didn't just invent this God-Man notion, it is in the Scriptures.) For an even more detailed explanation, click here.

Thoughts for Sunday May 14

Shame on you if you're reading this and thinking, "oh man, thats this Sunday!" Well...it is...this Sunday is Mother's day. It is Tuesday...you've got four shopping days left! Get to it or otherwise you'll hear, "and to think I was in labor with you for [insert ridiculous number of hours here]!" OK with reminders given it is time to turn our attention to Sunday's Gathering and Discussion. Last Sunday we got wonderfully off-topic. (It is amazing how, to loosely quote Robert Burns, "the best laid plans of mice and men often [get scuttled by the Holy Spirit].) We discussed in detail debunking the Da Vinci Code. (You'll see a blog entry with a few links you can hit and draw your own conclusions.) This week, start by looking at the entry for May 7. We are discussing "...and in Jesus Christ." For this week's reading, click HERE.

Thoughts/Questions for Discussion:

• Though Jesus never wrote a word (that we are aware of) you could fill a library with books about him. Why is he so controversial? Why is he one of the most discussed and debated figures in human history?
• Why could it be said that Jesus is the "scandal of scripture?" Well, it is because we say that we believe that he was both completely "human" and "divine." Why can't Jesus just be one or the other? Why can't he be half and half? By the way, most all heresies are over this issue of Jesus being both man and God. (Here is a hint for approaching this question.)
• OK, if you looked at last week's blog entry, why didn't God just send "Super Jesus?"