Book Review: "This is My Body: Ekklesia As God Intended" by Keith Giles

I struggle with the organized church.

I'm not sure where it all began, but somewhere after pastoring a traditional church myself, then being involved in a so-called parachurch ministry, I began to get quite a bit jaded about the organized systematic religious church in the US.

My friend Keith went through some similar experiences, I think. Today I read his new book "This is My Body: Ekklesia as God Intended." And I highly recommend it, not just because he's my long-time friend, but because the book raises some great questions about the religious Christendom that I struggle with so much.

And I think we're not alone.

Keith too has been a senior pastor of a traditional church. In fact, our pastorates were just minutes from each other in El Paso. One time there was even talk of merging our two churches together (postponing the inevitable death of two churches struggling to maintain their very "southern anglo" culture in the midst of a nearly 100% Hispanic part of El Paso, but that's another story for another time). Keith takes you through the Old Testament processes of worship, then shows well how there are both similarities and distinct differences in the New Testament church. Most importantly, Keith hits the nail on the head about Jesus being the fulfillment of the OT shadows, and how that affects the methods of organization of Jesus' new "body", the fellowship of believers.

Keith digs into some of the core doctrines of New Testament faith. Probably my favorite discussion is on the priesthood of individual believers, something that shatters the current focus on the professional clergy of our modern churches. And his call for churches that spend millions and cumulatively billions on salaries and buildings and many other unnecessary accoutrements of "worship" instead of caring for the poor, the widows, the orphans, etc of the world, is a call that needs to be heard indeed.

Ultimately, every believer has to make the call--can I find real community, can I be the NT body of Christ with other believers, within the organized church of the US. Not that long ago I was ready to give up trying. But the truth is Jesus died for the church, in all it's goofiness. Keith challenges us well to consider how the church needs to be in our culture, and I for one hope that many hear the Voice of the One who is speaking through Keith, and follows not into an organization, but into the very body of the One who made the universe. Great read on not throwing away the church just because it's been warped in our culture.

Pledging Allegiance to the Kingdom of God

Once again my friend Keith has written something great. He so often writes what I think but don't take the time to write near as well, and I have to share his latest newsletter with you. Please go to www.keithgiles.com and check out all his stuff.

I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE KINGDOM OF GOD by Keith Giles

"Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men. Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God. Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king." - 1 Peter 2:13-17

More and more I find that there is a blurred line in American Christianity between "The American Way" and "The Kingdom of God". The Kingdom of God and the American Dream are not the same thing, and in fact, they are two opposing viewpoints which are in conflict on many levels. The American Dream is founded on the concept of every person's right to the pursuit of happiness. Whatever you can imagine would make you happy you are free to pursue it with all your heart. That's your right. The Kingdom of God is founded on the concept of laying down your life, your idea of what will make you happy, in favor of receiving what Jesus knows will really make you happy. Following Jesus involves laying down your life and giving up your rights. It means full and complete submission to God because you recognize that His perfect will for your life is a million times better than anything you could ever dream up, or pursue, on your own. Jesus didn't ever instruct any of his disciples to fight for their God-given, "Inalienable Rights", and neither did Paul the Apostle. In fact, they both encouraged their disciples to live humble lives, serving others and not demanding more because they deserved more. Paul even specifically told those followers of Christ who were slaves to remain slaves, even if they were being mistreated. Historically, the early Christians didn't fight for their rights as citizens, they took it on the chin, and in the Lion's den, and in the arena. They literally would rather die than to take another person's life. Simply put, they followed their Lord and Savior, Jesus and they followed His example of non-violence and submissive service to those who hated and mistreated them. Does that sound like the American Dream to you?

STAY FOCUSED We cannot afford to become distracted by nationalism or led astray by politics. As followers of Jesus, He must be our one and only priority and influence. This is what it means to make Jesus our Lord. As Christian pastor and activist Jim Wallis has said, "God is not a Republican or a Democrat. God is not partisan. God is not ideologically committed to our Left or Right. God's politics challenges all of our politics. It includes the people our politics regularly leave out; the poor and the vulnerable. That's God's politics."

OUR WITNESS It would have been virtually impossible for an unbeliever living in those first three hundred years of Church History to ever reject Christianity on the grounds that it lacked compassionate people or failed to teach loving kindness. In fact, we have testimony from many of the most hostile pagans who lived during the first three hundred years of Christianity who were put to shame because of the overwhelming generosity of the Church. Julian, the Apostate wrote of this frustrating situation when he said, "..The godless Galileans feed not only their poor, but ours also." Christian philosopher Aristides (125 AD) wrote about the radical charity of the early Church also, recording the fact that, "…if there is among them a man that is poor and needy and they have not an abundance of necessities, they fast for three days that they may supply the needy with their necessary food." For a Christian, killing our enemies is not acceptable. If being a good American citizen means you need to cheer on a war that kills innocent people then you must lay aside your Christianity. If being a faithful member of a political party trumps over 2,000 verses in the word of God about caring for the poor, then you need to make a choice. A few years ago I had an opportunity to speak to Jim Wallis on this very subject and his response has stayed with me ever since. He said, "The Church today is more American than Christian. The Kingdom of God is not the same as the American Empire. When we are more American than Christian we confuse the meaning of the Body of Christ with any nation state. This notion of the Church as a counter-cultural movement is Biblically obvious. There's no doubt about that. We're in the world to transform the world for the sake of this new order that has come in Jesus Christ. If Jesus' vision of the Kingdom was so threatening, why is our vision of the Kingdom so safe?" The Gospel of the Kingdom is not the American Dream. It saddens me to see Christians more passionate about their political party than they are about the Kingdom of God.

Conversatio Morem! (Death to the status quo/Constant Conversion)

-kg

The subversive Jesus

My friend Keith has done it again. Written some challenging and maybe provocative things, but some things that imho are spot-on. We have domesticated Jesus and made him into the Jesus of Bible stories for 4 year olds (come to think of it we've done that for the whole Bible, but I'm repeating myself.

The article is so good I asked Keith if I could reprint the whole thing here, and he agreed, as long as I linked back to the original and said nice things about him. Of course, when I think of Keith I can't get too far into it without remembering how he and I parodied a ventriloquist one night at a park revival, where I pretended Keith was the dummy. The wooden kind. And he was hysterically funny.

But I digress. Here's the article, and click on Keith's link to the left to see some other great thoughts from him. And don't forget to answer his question for reflection at the end.

[Subversive Underground] "My Subversive Jesus" by Keith Giles

This Sunday morning I was very challenged to read about how Jesus very directly and intentionally confronted the empty traditions of the Pharisees by what He said and did.

HEALING WITH MUD AND SPITTLE In John chapter 9, Jesus sees a man born blind. His disciples ask if this blindness is due to sin from his parents or his own sin. Jesus responds by saying that it is not because of anyone's sin but so that God's power may be displayed in his life. What Jesus does next is very subversive. He spits on the ground, makes a cake of mud and smears it on the man's eyes and tells him to wash his face in the pool of Siloam. When he does the man is healed. If you're like me you've probably always wondered why Jesus healed this man in such an unusual way. We know he could have simply spoken to him and restored his blindness, yet for some strange reason he performs this miracle in a very weird and, frankly, disgusting way. Want to know why? The answer reveals some of the intentionally subversive methods of Jesus. In the Mishnah, the first major work of Rabbinic Judaism, it says "To heal a blind man on the Sabbath it is prohibited to make mud with spittle and smear it on his eyes." (Shabbat 108:20) When Jesus decided to heal this man, on the Sabbath, using this exact same method prohibited by the Mishnah, he was publicly opposing this section of the Rabbinic Law and making a statement about the foolishness of a rule which prohibits healing someone from blindness. His actions are a deliberate attack on the established religious system of the day. If you read the entire passage in John 9 you'll see that this healing prompted an investigative tribunal by the Pharisees to determine how this person was healed, by whom and why. "They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man's eyes was a Sabbath. Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. "He put mud on my eyes," the man replied, "and I washed, and now I see." Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath." - John 9:13-16 Clearly the Pharisees were upset over this and did all they could to undermine the miracle and to condemn Jesus for his actions.

NEGLECTING TO WASH HANDS In Luke chapter 11 we read of another direct encounter with the Pharisees where Jesus publicly opposed their teachings by his acts of subversion. "When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and reclined at the table. But the Pharisee, noticing that Jesus did not first wash before the meal, was surprised. Then the Lord said to him, "Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But give what is inside the dish to the poor, and everything will be clean for you." - Luke 11:37-41 Again, the Mishnah clearly says, "One should be willing to walk four miles to water in order to wash your hands rather than to eat with unwashed hands" (Sotah, 4b) and "He who neglects hand washing is as he who is a murderer" (Challan, J, 58:3). Jesus knew he was breaking this rabbinical law when he and his disciples ate without washing their hands. He didn't forget to wash his hands, he intentionally walked past the line of people who were engaged in the religious hand washing ceremony and went over to the table and started to eat. Jesus pointed out how foolish it is to go through an outward ceremony of cleanliness when inside our hearts we are filthy. Jesus urged the Pharisees to give what they had to the poor rather than engage in outward displays of holiness.

WHY SO SUBVERSIVE? Jesus could easily have healed on another day of the week, and he could have easily healed without the spittle and mud cakes, and he probably should have washed his hands before he ate, but these were opportunities to demonstrate how foolish these laws were and how much more God cares for people than he does for rules and laws.

MY TURN NOW It made me wonder, what are the modern traditions that I need to oppose by my actions? How can I follow Jesus by standing against the ways of man and, at the same time, declare my allegiance to the things of the Kingdom? Quite honestly I haven't yet worked this all out, but I do feel that there may be a short list of things that I could do and say in my every day life that could condemn the empty religious rules of men in favor of the values of the Kingdom of God. Can you think of anything? -kg

** NOTE: Many thanks to Frank Viola for enlightening me on the Mishnah teachings in his excellent book, "Pagan Christianity".

** GREAT CONVERSATIONS Over at my main blog there are some pretty cool conversations going on. You should take a peek HERE