The problem with the idea of servant leadership as usually defined is that it assumes there are other types of leadership, that “servant leadership” is just one type among many. This is critically false. All true leadership is service, full stop.Read more
Author Archives: Rob Harrison
Consider the Source
(Psalm 1)
This morning we’re starting a sermon series from the Psalms. I say from the Psalms rather than on the Psalms because there are 150 of them and we don’t want to spend three years on this; but that very fact that there are 150 makes it a challenge to figure out where to look. When starting anything, I tend to defer to the King of Hearts in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, who instructed the White Rabbit, “Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” But does that really matter here? Stories have beginnings, and essays—like the ones our middle-school English teachers have to pound their students through—but the book of Psalms?
Thing is, though it doesn’t have the same sort of throughline as a story or an essay, the book of Psalms does have an introduction and a conclusion. In fact, it has a two-part introduction—that’s why some ancient manuscripts of the Psalter combined the first two psalms into one. Psalm 1 operates at the level of the individual, and then Psalm 2 speaks of the community of faith among the godless nations. Both areas of focus are important throughout the book; but you can’t really do both in one sermon, so we’re just doing the first part this morning.Read more
In my end is my beginning
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
—T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, “East Coker,” V.
If people know anything about 2 Corinthians, it’s probably the “thorn in the flesh” passage, 12:7-10. On the one hand, there are all sorts of ideas as to what the thorn in the flesh was, and those sorts of speculative disagreements always generate interest. On the other, this is where we get the oft-quoted idea that God’s power is perfected in weakness. Unfortunately, however, I think the standard interpretation of this passage misses what’s actually going on.Read more
Belated, but still appreciated
This week beat me; there’s no two ways about it. I won’t say I didn’t get anything done, but I had specific plans to write, and those didn’t get done; a blog post I started last Friday is still sitting as a draft, just to name one thing.
I also didn’t get my weekly hope*writers post up before this. I thought about doing two weeks’ worth in one post, but decided against it—it seemed to me that doing so would de-emphasize the writers to whom I’m linking, and I don’t want to do that.
I love the way Katie Scott put this: “God is predictable in His character and unexpected in His actions.” It always delights me when someone captures something I’ve been trying to say better than I’ve managed to say it.
Yolanda Lichty grapples with a terrible story which is little-known outside of Canada (I’m familiar with it from my time at Regent) in her post “215 Is too Many: Confessions and Questions of a White Canadian Mennonite”—the story of the residential schools to which indigenous peoples were forced to send their children and the abuses that happened in those schools. I commend Katie Scott’s post to you because it’s encouraging; I commend Yolanda Lichty’s to you as a point of entry into a hard story that needs to be heard.
A little light for the journey
It’s that time again—no, not for the Wheel of Morality, but to pass along the work of a few of my fellow hope*writers.
Jenn Whitmer argues that we need to ask better questions; in my friend Kent Denlinger’s terms, she’s making a good case for moving from condemnation to curiosity.
Jennifer Riales makes the point that if we are disciples of Jesus, we are missionaries wherever we go, and I love the way she describes it: “Changing the World One Front Yard at a Time”.
Putting away the hose
(This is another excerpt from my manuscript on the Sermon on the Mount. This is the whole first chapter, so it’s a longer post—about 2700 words.)
For all that I might ever say about the Sermon on the Mount, the most important single point, and the nub of all the rest, is this: The Sermon is gospel, not law. It is the proclamation of the good news that Jesus came that we might have abundant life—which is not just more of the same life the world has to offer. The life Jesus gives is wholly new because it comes from a source outside this world: it’s the life of the kingdom of God. It is life which both flows out of and creates a change of allegiance and citizenship. To be a disciple of Jesus is to be a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, giving our allegiance to the Lord of the universe above any earthly flag and any human government or authority. The Sermon on the Mount shows us what it means to live as citizens of heaven among the nations of this world.[1]Read more
Erasing the comfort zone
(This is the third excerpt from chapter 17 of my manuscript on the Sermon on the Mount; the first two excerpts are here and here.)
It’s not easy to accept Jesus’ declaration that the pure in heart are blessed, but it’s possible to assent intellectually without letting it interfere with our daily lives. It’s far harder to heed John Owen’s dictum, “Be killing sin or it will be killing you,”[1] and declare war on our sin out of a desire to be pure in heart; but though that’s a major spiritual commitment, it’s still one we usually make with unconscious caveats. We assume there are limits to how far we can be expected to go in order to put sin to death in our lives. We assume God is reasonable—on our terms, by our definition—in his expectations.
Jesus shatters those assumptions, because his demands aren’t reasonable at all. In fact, they’re barbarically unreasonable. He commands us to do whatever we have to do to overcome sin in our lives, no matter how much we expect it to hurt or how much we have to give up. If we try to tell him he’s asking too much of us, he looks us right in the eyes and says, “No, I’m not.” There are no exceptions, no loopholes, no limits, and no statute of limitations to his command.Read more
On honesty and lament
This is one of my favorite worship songs. I say that advisedly, knowing the reaction that statement will get from a lot of people: “That’s not a worship song! It doesn’t end with praise!” In fact, according to an interview the men of Tenth Avenue North gave a few years ago, a lot of Christian-music stations refused to play this song for just that reason: it doesn’t end with everything resolved and God having made everything good again.
But this is a worship song. If you don’t believe me, just ask the Psalmist.
I’m thinking about this tonight because of a remarkable, powerful post: When Lament Doesn’t Quickly Resolve into Trust, by a woman named Desiree Brown.Read more
Kierkegaard on love of enemy
When Christianity requires us to love our enemies, one might say in a certain sense that it had good reason to require this, for God would be loved, and (speaking merely in a human way) God is man’s most redoubtable enemy, your mortal enemy; He would that you should die, die unto the world, He hates precisely that in which you naturally have your life, to which you cling with all your joy in living.
The men who have entered into no relation with God enjoy now—frightful irony!—the privilege that God does not torment them in this life. No, it is only the men whom He loves, who have entered into relation with God, whose mortal enemy (speaking merely in a human way) God may be said to be—but for all that out of love.
But He is your mortal enemy. He Who is love would be loved by you. This signifies that you must die, die unto the world, for otherwise you cannot love Him. . . .
How dreadful (speaking merely in a human way) is God in His love, so dreadful it is (speaking merely in a human way) to be loved of God and to love God. In the declaration that God is love, the subordinate clause is, He is your mortal enemy.
———and here we are playing the game that we are all Christians, that all love God, whereas by God being love and by loving God we nowadays understand nothing else but the nauseating syrupy sweets in which falsehood’s witnesses to the truth are wont to deal.
(from Attack upon Christendom, 1854-55; trans. Walter Lowrie, 1944, 1968, alt.)
Photo © 2009 Arne List. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.
Sharing a little wisdom
I recently joined hope*writers (hence the badge at the top of the sidebar); it has been a delight for a number of reasons, one of which is discovering some of the other writers on the site and their work. The logical thing to do, then, is to pass some of that on.
Rachel Rains on unexpected seasons: as our own unexpected season continues, I’m grateful for these words of encouragement.
Jun Shu, “For the Weary Hearts in Waiting”: this piece of comfort fits well with the post above. Apparently God really wants to drive this point home for me today.
Sarah Treanor, “Field of Dreams”: I’m also grateful for Sarah’s reminder that we need support—and for the encouragement to seek that support. (I also encourage you to check out her portfolio. Be aware that the first collection, “still, life,” was part of her way of processing the death of her fiancé; the images are appropriately powerful, cathartic, and unsettling.)