Ok, so I've slacked in posting the last few weeks; but I'll say here how much I've enjoyed this brief series looking at anchors of our identity as a spiritual community. I got the image that shaped the series from Leonard Sweet, an image of how the anchors of our past don't just hold us down or hold us back, but can actually propel us forward. Here's how Sweet himself puts it: "The biblical image is clearly one of casting an anchor ahead, not behind, and then pulling oneself forward.... In the legend of the Welsh Prince Madoc and his discovery of America, his ship got stuck in the Chesapeake Bay. After trying every way concievable to get the vessel unstranded, the crew came to Prince Madoc and asked if there were anything he could think for them to do. He responded, 'Kedge on our anchor.' So they rowed out with an anchor, dropped it as far into the sea as they could, and then winched their way toward it. The ancient saling practice of 'kedging' is what I mean by the AncientFuture methodology of moving into the future." (Ancient Future Faith, 118-19).
I can't tell you how much I appreciate this image. For our Christian hertigage as a whole, I see wounderful resources in the stories, language and classic practices of our faith that will enable us to weather the uncertain journey ahead. For the congregation in which I serve, I see all that God has already done among us as beacons urging us forward to serve God as courageously in the future as he has allowed us to do in the past. And I see the possibilities of this image helping us as individuals redeem even the dark moments in our own lives, seeing even these experiences as directional markers for the journey God still has to take us on.
I guess that's yet one more reason I find the Christian story so compelling. It honors where we as humans have been--history matters, it's not just about great ideas. And yet, this faith does not honor complacent satisfaction with the status quo. Our God always has us asking, "in light of all of the places and ways that Jesus has shown up in the past, what fresh new places and ways will he reveal himself to us in the times to come?" So thank you Father God, for telling us a classic story with a cosmic twist.
Have a great week!
Dean
4 comments:
Love it. I think it should be said that this kind of living requires not only courage but also imagination. We should have the spirit of storytellers, who thrill one another not only with "tales of identity" as we sit around the campfire or village square and remember the brave acts that defined who we are today... but also our "stories of aspiration" as we imagine and dream about what we are being called to next. I recall that Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey" has three acts: THE CALL, in which we are pulled from our everyday worlds; THE TRIAL in which we are tested and perhaps even exprience despair over whether we are equipped for the journey; and THE RETURN in which we come back to our everyday world with "the elixir" or the new perspective or truth that makes our previous surroundings look totally different. Man, those are the stories I want to tell about my life and I would love to be a church that is on that kind of journey. Campbell's point is that we are constantly in that cycle. So where is WHCOC today? Depends upon your point of view. Let's tell some stories!
I really, really like this post. Just haven't commented on it yet. I would like to read that book. Love Len Sweet!
I was challenged by the sermon. I think you have really started to show more of your passion lately.
David, I love the way you put that this life requires imagination. That fits my thinking recently so well. I was part of a planning meeting for a sermon seminar on Exodus that Lipscomb U is going to host next hear and the entire point of the conference is to "recapture the imagination" by calling God's people back to the defining stories of our faith. I completely agree and think that the next wave of spiritual movements we will see in the world will be ones that realize that we are in a battle for the imagination. Instead of discarding artistic creativity as the church has done since the Enlightenment, we need to recover the early church's fascination with DEPICTING the story of God (in life and in art) and not just telling it or defending it.
Well said my friend!
-D
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