Christ Jesus the Lord is Savior and King!

Grant, we pray, almighty God,
that as we believe your only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ
to have ascended into the heavens,
so we in heart and mind may also ascend
and with him continually dwell;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

May Christ, who has opened the kingdom of heaven,
bring us to reign with him in glory.

When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
~ Colossians 3:3

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
~ Ephesians 2:4-10

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
~ Phillipians 2:9-11

Oh and if you want to see the study I prepared, click here, and here for the passages in a print-out. Sadly, the formatting got a little screwy when I put it on googledocs, but oh well.

Support the ONE Campaign!

JMR on Scriptorium Daily the other day posted an open letter to his daughter, Jane, responding to her first blog. While I often enjoy his posts on homeschooling his children, this post was rather dismaying to me. JMR uses the ONE campaign in comparison to a church collection for the poor as an example of how one should not confuse like-sounding ideas (‘let’s feed the poor as a church’ and ‘let’s feed the poor as a nation’). Apparently there is some rumbling going on at Biola about supporting the campaign, which it appears by his comments on the post that JMR is not keen to do.

After listening to Jeffrey Sachs' BBC Reith Lectures on development (and reading the Jubilee Manifesto, and going to the Acton Institute several years ago...) I wanted to pick him up on a few things about the ONE Campaign that he mentioned, but I ended up writing a 6-page open letter! It was a bit out of proportion to his original post, but I got excited...and, well...it just happened. If you're interested in reading my arguments in favor of lending vocal support to the campaign, click through and have a read - they cover (briefly) such things as certainty and moral action, subsidiarity, corruption, international promises, Christian thought on international development, the different claims of the local and the global, etc., with loads of links to follow up on. I'll post my rousing conclusion as a teaser:

Yes, more and better aid, and let’s be optimistic about alleviating some forms of suffering, but let’s not fool ourselves that better material conditions alone can somehow create human flourishing.

At the end of the day, the ONE Campaign is not a cure-all for extreme poverty nor should it be an encouragement to ‘leave it to the government/UN’. We can support the campaign in a way that emphasizes that public sector solutions on their own are also inadequate and that the only way to reach goals such as the Millennium Development Goals is with a combination of and a conversation between public and private, local and global. The Acton Institute’s blog offers a riposte to Sachs and shouts out, “don’t wait for the government!”—a sentiment I whole-heartedly affirm. The ONE Campaign isn’t the only way to act, and it is not an excuse to do nothing else as individuals, as churches, as universities, as members of World Vision, Tearfund, Compassion International, and so forth. Let’s not wait for the government to uphold its promises and its responsibilities as a government, let’s do more starting now!

But at the same time, we can support the ONE Campaign as a way to keep extreme poverty not just on the political agenda, but on the agenda of public discourse as a whole, providing impetus not just for concerted political action, but for inspired personal action by ourselves, our businessmen, our students, our retirees, our empty-nesters, anyone with time and resources to give in love. This is the vision that I urge you to consider and to write in response to.

Any comments or rebuttals, go ahead and post to here :) As you may have noticed, I'd definitely be interested in them...

C.S Lewis, Ascension, and a New Nature

From Miracles, by C.S. Lewis

"The records represent Christ as passing after death (as no man had ever passed before) neither into a purely, that is negatively, 'spiritual' mode of existence nor into a 'natural' life such as we now know, but into a life which has its own new Nature. It represents Him as withdrawing six weeks later, into some different mode of existence. It says - He says - that He goes 'to prepare a place for us.' This presumably means that He is about to create that whole new Nature which will provide the environment or conditions for His glorified humanity and, in Him, for ours. The picture is not what we expected - though whether it is less or more probable and philosophical on that account is another question. It is not the picture of an escape from any and every kind of Nature into some unconditioned and utterly transcendent life. It is the picture of a new human nature, and a new Nature in general, being brought into existence. We must, indeed, believe the risen body to be extremely different from the mortal body: but the existence, in the new state, of anything that could in any sense be described as 'body' at all, involves some sort of spatial relations and in the long run a whole new universe. That is the picture - not of unmaking but of remaking. The old field of space, time, matter and the sense is to be weeded, dug and sown for a new crop. We may be tired of that old field: God is not."

Eating all by my lonesome

My beloved husband is still in California for the next few days after we flew out all of a sudden for a family funeral. Work constraints have me back in the UK, and I'm faced with the prospect of eating alone for the next few evenings. Now I could in theory invite myself over for dinner with friends (which I may yet do tomorrow), but much as I seriously and actively dislike being without my dear Drumstick, I am rather looking forward to cooking just for myself. Hector, Drumstick's digestive alter ego, seems to require meat in large quantities in order to feel satisfied, whereas I can be happy noshing on bits of this and that. Case in point: when we were apart a couple weeks ago for the same reason, I moved away from spaghetti with meat sauce and starting eating spinach salads with pancetta cubes, chicken liver pate spread on french baguettes, yoghurt, and apples for my meals. Prospective menus (ones which leave Hector still a little rumbly) for this evening include:

• sauted filet of some white fish with pancetta and white wine sauce, served over a bed of spinach with wild rice on the side
• seared tuna, dressed with soy, ginger and honey and served with noodles and bok choy

Leon Kass in The Hungry Soul talks about taking time to dine, to relish a meal, even when eating alone. This means, at a minimum, eating for over more than 15 minutes, not watching tv while eating, and just generally observing the same proprieties one would in company. Part of the point is that one tends towards a particularly human sort of virtue when one takes the time to eat in a way that goes beyond necessity, beyond mere re-fueling and feeding and towards dining. This, I confess, is difficult for me when alone; dining for me typically reaches beyond necessity because it is also time with my husband to discuss things, chat over the day, and generally just talk and talk away until it gets so late that the dishes get left 'for tomorrow'. When by myself, I often turn the radio on or put on a dvd to keep myself company instead of missing Drumstick, paltry as the substitution is. I find reading while dining to be generally awkward, even with a bookstand, and I can't remember if that's even allowable by Kass' high standards. I suppose, though, at the end of the day as with all virtues it's not about a certain list of rules to apply, but about being a certain sort of person. Perhaps the care I take in shopping and preparing for the meal evinces the same sort of human virtue as leaving the dvd on the shelf for the moment, so I shouldn't worry too much about the temptation of watching the first episode of Firefly during dinner tonight.

Update: Menu turned out to be sesame-encrusted tuna, seared to medium-rare and served with a stir-fry of egg noodles, chestnut mushrooms, carrot, green onion, and chinese leaf cabbage (no bok choy at Sainsburys last night) dressed simply with soy and ginger. Drumstick called me right when I was tucking in, so I had a leisurely meal by default :)

Celebrating the Ascension

There is nothing about being Protestant that precludes celebrating more than Christmas and Easter during the Church year. And yet, with the exception of Pentecost for the more charismatic among us and Palm Sunday for those of us who like waving palm crosses into our old age, we let pass by a great number of incredibly important days of remembrance and celebration, including the one coming up: Ascension Day.

As far as I currently understand it, Ascension Day is the celebration of Christ's ascension to the Father after his resurrection and the affirmation that he has sat down at the right hand of the Father, not only as Savior but now as enthroned, triumphant, and glorified Lord and King. I can understand a Protestant reticence about celebrating the Dormition of the Virgin, but why pass over a holy day celebrating an event that forms part of the Apostles Creed accepted by all of Western Christendom, and, as it seems to me after a little bit of thought and nosing around, is a key moment and reality to:

Jesus (e.g. looking forward to his glorification in John 18; Revelation 1, 5),
Peter (e.g. 1 Pet. 3.15-22; Acts 2.32-26, 3.12-26, 5.29-32),
Paul (Eph. 1.18-23, 2.4-10, 4.7-16, Phil. 2.5-11, 3.20-21, Col. 2.6-12, 3.1-5ff),
Luke (who tells it twice, Luke 24 and Acts 1),
the author of Hebrews (1-2; 4.14-16; 8.1-2ff; 9.23-28; 10.11-14, 19-25; 12.1-3),
Stephen (who sees to the reality of the Ascension and the glory of Christ in Acts 7.54-6),
etc.

(Let me know if you can add any more or wish to subtract some of these.)

A conversation with a friend after Good Friday services ultimately produced a plan to prepare ourselves for Ascension Day: read 1 chapter a day from Matthew and then from Revelation and get thinking about the Kingdom. So that’s what I’ll be up to until the Thursday about 33 days from now, with Psalm 46 thrown in here and there for good measure. And then what, I’m not sure – any suggestions?

(Aside: in a stroke of brilliance while walking to the University Library the other day, I realized the perfect Ascension Day celebratory dessert, known for its lofty appearance and soft, pillowy clouds of batter - Angel Food Cake!)