A Taste of the Faithful Life

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James Hopwood James Hopwood

‘End times’ madness

War in the Mideast has ignited a new wave of speculation about the “end times.”

Almost all of this is worthless and destructive garbage – worthless because there is no biblical base for it, destructive because it distracts us from our real mission.

Our mission, you know, is not to sit around idly speculating about the return of Jesus. Our mission is to follow Jesus’ commission to live holy lives and introduce others to the new way of being human that he offers us.

In fact, these are the “end times” – and they have been since the birth of Jesus. His coming signals the end of the old age and the dawning of the new age, the end of the old order and the dawning of the new.

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War in the Mideast has ignited a new wave of speculation about the “end times.”

Almost all of this is worthless and destructive garbage – worthless because there is no biblical base for it, destructive because it distracts us from our real mission.

Our mission, you know, is not to sit around idly speculating about the return of Jesus. Our mission is to follow Jesus’ commission to live holy lives and introduce others to the new way of being human that he offers us.

Instead, the usual suspects are stirring the pot of pernicious conspiracy theories – “Double, double, toil and trouble: Fire burn, and cauldron bubble” – all the while (not coincidentally) raking in the bucks in weekly offerings and potential book sales.

These are, in fact, the “end times” – and they have been since the birth of Jesus. His coming signals the end of the old age and the dawning of the new age, the end of the old order and the dawning of the new.

But are these the final days before “the end of the world”? Most likely not.

First of all, you should not find that phrase in your Bible. You may find it, though, in some mistranslations of Matthew 13:49 and 24:3, where it actually means “end of the age.” This is the age that the coming of Jesus brought to a close.

 Jesus talked a lot about the new world order that he was inaugurating to replace the old world order. He called this new order the Reign of God, or the Kingdom of God. This new world order is the order of living in right relationship – loving God first and your neighbor as yourself.

 This new way of living totally upends all other forms of social interaction, especially those based on hierarchy and domination of the many by the few.

 Whereas, if you peek below the surface of “end times” prattle, you’ll see the old order unchanged, even unthreatened, by the coming of Jesus.

 What about the book of Revelation? What about it? It’s not a timetable for anything, especially the Second Coming. It’s an appeal for Christians to reject the old age – called Babylon – and fully embrace the new age – called New Jerusalem.

 In our time between the times, old age and new age overlap. Babylon and New Jerusalem exist side by side. You have a choice which way you live, which order of life you follow. Speculation about when Jesus will return is a distraction, and an evil one. You ought to live now in the new age, in the Reign of God.

 That’s partly what the season of Advent is all about. It’s about preparing us to live in the new age. And to that extent, it is indeed a sign of the end times – the end of the old age and the dawning of the new, shown to us in the birth of a child in Bethlehem.

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James Hopwood James Hopwood

Are we ready yet?

Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent. You’ll often hear Advent described as a season of preparation for the coming of Christ at Christmas.

It is, but that’s only part of the story. The word Advent comes from the Latin adventus, meaning “coming.”

Advent is a season of preparation for the coming of Christ. But not just at Christmas. Advent is a three-dimensional season.

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 Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent.

 You’ll often hear Advent described as a season of preparation for the coming of Christ at Christmas.

 It is, but that’s only part of the story.

 The word Advent comes from the Latin adventus, meaning “coming.” Advent is a season of preparation for the coming of Christ.

 But not just at Christmas. Advent is a three-dimensional season.

 Remember how it goes in the Charles Dickens story A Christmas Carol? Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by three ghosts: the ghost of Christmas past, the ghost of Christmas present and the ghost of Christmas future.

 Those are the three dimensions of Advent: Christ’s coming in the past, in the present, and in the future.

 The first dimension the easiest to grasp. During Advent we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus more than 2,000 years ago. We prepare by considering the familiar stories leading up to Jesus’ birth, the scriptures and the prayers that can open our hearts for the coming of Christ anew in our lives.

 The second dimension is the celebration of Christ present at Christmas. We celebrate by decorating our homes, getting together with family and friends, exchanging gifts, worshipping with others and continuing to celebrate in some way during those fabled Twelve Days of Christmas.

 If we celebrate well enough, we can feel the presence of Christ renewed in us. It’s as if Jesus were being reborn in us every year. It’s a wonderful feeling, the most magical of all the joys of Christmas.

The third dimension of Advent may be hardest to understand. This is preparation for the return of Christ in the future – the Second Coming, as it were. Despite the ravings of those who claim to know when this will happen, in truth we do not know. All we know is that Christ will return, and he said we ought to be ready.

We ready ourselves by living in obedience to Christ’s direction for how we ought to behave day by day by day. As hard as it is to practice, this is really quite simple. We are  given no timetable for when anything will happen because the point is that it could happen at any moment and we ought to live always in anticipation of that moment.

So Advent is a time of anticipation and celebration and deeper anticipation. We look forward to celebrating the first coming of Christ and the renewal of Christ’s life in us, and we look forward to receiving Christ when he returns at the consummation of history to renew the promises of God for all creation.

Scrooge feared what the ghost of Christmas future might bring. If Christ lives in us, we need not fear the third dimension of Advent. It’s another thing to celebrate this time of year.

One of my favorite sayings of advent comes from Gertude Muller Nelson, author of To Dance With God. She says: "It is Advent, and we the people of God are pregnant.” We are pregnant three ways: pregnant with anticipation of the celebration of Christmas, pregnant with the renewal of Christ within us and pregnant with our hope for the future.

Have a blessed Advent!

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James Hopwood James Hopwood

Here’s the buzz

My blog has gone silent for too long, but I have several excellent excuses.

 1. The name’s the same but just about everything else about it has changed. It has a new look and some new content. And we’re just beginning. More about that later.

 2. I have finished reviewing the page proofs of my new book. The title is Change of Heart: A Wesleyan Spirituality. The publisher is Wipf and Stock. It should be out around the end of the year, though not likely before Christmas. (And that was such an easy gift idea for all your friends and relatives!)

 3. Linda and I recently spent more than a week on an Aegean Sea cruise following two of the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul. We had a wonderful time, and my view of Paul has shifted substantially because of it. I’m still processing it all, but you can expect to hear more about it than you probably want to know.

 4. As part of the new website, you’ll be receiving notices of my blog differently than before. This is the first post under the new regime, so we’ll see how well it works.

 Blog topics in the near future:

 *  Advent has three dimensions, not just one.

 *  Fighting in the Mideast produces the usual end-times twaddle.

 * Whining all the way, George Santos is expelled from the House – and the national press is there to magnify every wail. These are troubled times indeed.

 * On our cruise, we learned about several major holidays we’d never heard of before, including “It’s national let’s all visit the Parthenon day!”

 More soon. Feels good to be back!

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Anna Spencer Anna Spencer

NEWS!

NEWS! NEWS!

Bulletin #1: I have signed a contract for a new book. It’s about Methodism and Wesleyan theology.

It’s still in early stages of publication – proofreading of manuscript and typesetting – so I don’t know about a release date. Details when I learn them.

Bulletin #2: This primitive blogsite will soon be transformed into a full-fledged website with features I have long wanted to add here but didn’t know how. No release date on this either.

I offer both these items as a partial explanation for why I’ve posted here so infrequently of late. I’ll be offline for a couple more weeks as I work through some other projects.

I never envisioned retirement to be so busy, but I’m not complaining. The last couple of weeks have been a lot of fun.

I hope to post much more regularly when the new website is up and running.

I also have tentative plans to publish another book on the website, one chapter every week. (Publishers don’t want it, so I’ll offer it free.)

We’ll see how these things pan out. Meantime, grace and peace from the God who works marvels in all our lives, even when we least expect them.

NEWS! NEWS!

Bulletin #1: I have signed a contract for a new book. It’s about Methodism and Wesleyan theology.

It’s still in early stages of publication – proofreading of manuscript and typesetting – so I don’t know about a release date. Details when I learn them.

Bulletin #2: This primitive blogsite will soon be transformed into a full-fledged website with features I have long wanted to add here but didn’t know how. No release date on this either.

I offer both these items as a partial explanation for why I’ve posted here so infrequently of late. I’ll be offline for a couple more weeks as I work through some other projects.

I never envisioned retirement to be so busy, but I’m not complaining. The last couple of weeks have been a lot of fun.

I hope to post much more regularly when the new website is up and running.

I also have tentative plans to publish another book on the website, one chapter every week. (Publishers don’t want it, so I’ll offer it free.)

We’ll see how these things pan out. Meantime, grace and peace from the God who works marvels in all our lives, even when we least expect them.

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Anna Spencer Anna Spencer

No Grace Here

United Methodist Bishop Minerva G. Carcaño has been acquitted of all charges after a four-day trial and the unanimous vote of 13-person panel.

She was the first bishop in church history to face such a trial, the first bishop to be suspended from active service while facing a complaint, and – oh yes – the first Latina to be elected bishop in the church.

For a year and a half, while she awaited trial, she was banned from United Methodist churches and therefore banned from receiving Holy Communion in her own church.

She also was forbidden to speak publicly about the charges, which were never publicly revealed, allegedly to protect confidentiality in the case. She was never allowed to meet her accusers until the trial.

When the charges were finally revealed in church court, it was clear that she was not guilty of inappropriate conduct but at most was guilty of failing to communicate her intentions and her actions to people who appeared all too eager to think the worst of her and respond accordingly.

She will now serve out another year or so as bishop in the Western Jurisdiction and retire at the mandatory age of 70.

I did briefly once know one of the complainants, but otherwise I know nothing of the personalities involved. I also know little about the cultural and political forces that contributed to this fiasco. But I deeply deplore the whole thing. Placing a person in purgatory for 18 months is beyond conscience. We Methodists supposedly believe in grace, but no grace was shown here.

Speaking of disgusting…

Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall had this to say about the possibility of a government shutdown sponsored by right-wing Republicans in the U.S. House.

“I think when you take a job with the federal government, you realize that there’s pros and cons and this is one of the cons of it, that every five or 10 years, there’s a government shutdown. They have incredible pay, they have easy hours, only a fourth of them are actually back working in the office right now. So we all have to, you know, sacrifice.”

Hey, Roger, where’s your sacrifice? You would still get paid during a shutdown, wouldn’t you?

Look at it this way, doc, there are pros and cons of being a physician, and a senator as well. You have incredible pay and benefits, easy hours, and every 5 or 10 years you get sued for malpractice. So we all have to, you know, sacrifice.

He voted against the bill that finally kept the government open. He claims it’s all about the federal deficit. Interesting how Republicans only care about the deficit when there’s a Democrat in the White House. Interesting how Republicans keep voting to give rich people more money while ignoring the fiscal consequences, and how they … oh never mind. You know the hypocrisy here. And yet dummies like Roger keep getting elected.

It may be true that we get the government we deserve – or lack of it.

United Methodist Bishop Minerva G. Carcaño has been acquitted of all charges after a four-day trial and the unanimous vote of 13-person panel.

She was the first bishop in church history to face such a trial, the first bishop to be suspended from active service while facing a complaint, and – oh yes – the first Latina to be elected bishop in the church.

For a year and a half, while she awaited trial, she was banned from United Methodist churches and therefore banned from receiving Holy Communion in her own church.

She also was forbidden to speak publicly about the charges, which were never publicly revealed, allegedly to protect confidentiality in the case. She was never allowed to meet her accusers until the trial.

When the charges were finally revealed in church court, it was clear that she was not guilty of inappropriate conduct but at most was guilty of failing to communicate her intentions and her actions to people who appeared all too eager to think the worst of her and respond accordingly.

She will now serve out another year or so as bishop in the Western Jurisdiction and retire at the mandatory age of 70.

I did briefly once know one of the complainants, but otherwise I know nothing of the personalities involved. I also know little about the cultural and political forces that contributed to this fiasco. But I deeply deplore the whole thing. Placing a person in purgatory for 18 months is beyond conscience. We Methodists supposedly believe in grace, but no grace was shown here.

 
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It’s already been rejected by Abingdon Press, the United Methodist publishing house. It says it has other similar works already in process. I’ve always given Abingdon the right of first refusal on all my book proposals, and I’ve always been rejected. I think it’s time to put some other publisher at the top of my query list.

* * * * *

Three KU profs are under fire for allegedly faking their Native American ancestry. Kansas City Star columnist Yvette Walker confesses that her family also had unconfirmed stories about a Blackfoot ancestor.

“For as long as I can remember, I believed I had Native ethnicity,” she writes. “I even thought I knew which tribe I supposedly belonged to because it was a part of my family’s oral history.” To test the family memory, she took a Family DNA test. Turns out family oral history was wrong.

My family also has an oral tradition that a woman several generations back was Native American. Not exactly the classic “Cherokee princess” story, but close enough.

I’m about all who’s left to carry on family oral tradition, and my searches on Ancestry.com have found nothing to corroborate this story. I once assumed that it was because racists in my family conveniently “forgot” about the Indian ancestor until it became more socially acceptable to claim her, but by then all details were lost in time. Maybe it was a myth all along.

I did have an uncle who was Native. He married into the family. Sadly, he died relatively young as an alcoholic.

Whether I have any “Indian blood” in me matters less than how I view and treat Native Americans. Since childhood I have been fascinated by various Indian cultures. The more I learn about the genocide campaign against Native tribes, the more I am appalled by the tragedy of racism.

If you’re interested in learning more, I suggest reading The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk. Actually, I wasn’t capable of reading all of it. I had to skim parts. It’s well written, but many parts will simply break your heart.

* * * * *

Back to school time nears already. Where did the summer go? Weren’t summers longer back in the “good old days”? Granted, summer child care can be a chore for busy parents. Maybe advancing age fools me on the passage of time, but I wonder if today’s kids suspect they’re being cheated of days in the sun.

Linda and I just bought school supplies for a Spring Hill 9th grader. We deliberately did not keep track of how much it cost. I can’t imagine the expense of having two kids in high school right now, let alone one. Tell me: Why does any high schooler need five two-inch three-ring binders?