We are increasingly faced with a choice , I believe, not between kindness and hostility, but between kindness and

nonexistence. (p. 12)

Us.

Them.

Us.

Them.

Neighbor?

Enemy?

Us.

Them.

Neighbor?

Hostility? Hospitality?Different? Same?

Enemy?

Can there be peace among passionately faithful people?

From the place where we are rightFlowers will never growIn the spring.

The place where we are rightIs hard and trampledLike a yard.

But doubts and lovesDig up the worldLike a mole, a plow.

And a whisper will be heard in the placeWhere the ruinedHouse once stood. Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai

"Historically, the amity, or goodwill, within the group has often depended on enmity, or hatred, between groups. But when you get to the global level, that won't work... That cannot be the dynamic that holds the planet together... But what would be unprecedented is to have this kind of solidarity and moral cohesion at a global level that did not depend on the hatred of other groups of people."

(Robert Wright, Nonzero: The Logic Of Human Destiny, quoted in Evolutionaries: Unlocking The

Spiritual And Cultural Potential In Science's Greatest Idea, by Carter Phipps)

Can Christians today build a new kind of identity ... based on hospitality and solidarity, not hostility, to the other?

strong-benevolent

But how?

Four Challenges

1. Historical

3. Liturgical

4. Missional

Four Challenges

1. Historical

2. Doctrinal

3. Liturgical

4. Missional

Must doctrinal differences always divide us?

Doctrine can mean “loyalty test”

- our tribal paint, tattoos, feathers, and

accent that distinguish “safe us”

from “dangerous them.”

But doctrine can have another meaning ... another purpose:

Doctrine can mean

“a healing teaching.”

What might happen if we took a second look at our core doctrines -

not as hostile identity markers, but

ashealing teachings?

healing teachingsintended to bind

together what has been torn and broken

(re-ligion)?

Our stealth doctrine:

the shape of the biblical narrative(pre-critical)

Hell

Salvation

History/

The world

Fall

HeavenEden

Hades

Atonement, purification

Aristotelian

Real

Fall

Into Aristotelian

Real

Platonic IdealPlatonic Ideal

Destruction, defeat

Civilization, development,

colonialism

assimilationBarbarian/ pagan world

Rebellion

into barbarism

Pax RomanaPax Romana

Is there an alternative understanding?

sdrawkcab gnidaerRick Warren, Billy Graham, Charles Finney, John Wesley (or Calvin), Luther, Aquinas, Augustine, Paul, Jesus

reading forwardsAdam, Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, John the Baptist, Jesus

Exodus: Liberation & Formation

Exodus: Liberation & Formation

Genesis: Creation and Reconciliation

Exodus: Liberation & Formation

Genesis: Creation and Reconciliation

Isaiah: Peaceable Kingdom - Justice and Mercy

Exodus: Liberation & Formation

Genes

i

s

Isaiah: Peaceable Kingdom - Justice and Mercy

The Healing Teaching of Creation

We are all connected in God’s creation.

The Healing Teaching of Original Sin

Tree of Life (good) - life as creatures

Tree of Knowledge (good and evil) -

life as gods

The Healing Teaching of Election (or chosen-ness)

uniquely blessedto be a blessing:us for all of us

The Healing Teaching of Incarnation

God joined with human flesh ...

all humanity taken up into God insolidarity

The Healing Teaching of the Deity of

Christ

Not “Jesus is like God”

but“God is like Jesus”

The Healing Teaching of the Holy Spirit

Pentecost Sermon (Paul Nuechterlein)For me, another clear sign of hope comes through the irony of God raising up a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ who was a Hindu and remained a Hindu. I'm talking about Mahatma Gandhi, who said this, among many other things, about Jesus:Jesus expressed, as no other could, the spirit and will of God. It is in this sense that I see him and recognize him as the Son of God. And because the life of Jesus has the significance and the transcendency to which I have alluded, I believe that he belongs not solely to Christianity, but to the entire world, to all races and people...

Finally, the greatest sign of hope to me is how Gandhi helped deepen our understanding of the Spirit of Truth, the Advocate. He had his own name for it in Sanskrit: Satyagraha, he called it, which translates as Truth Force. Satyagraha moved him and many millions of people over the last century to learn Jesus' way to peace through loving, nonviolent resistance to evil. Like Jesus on the cross, in this way to peace we risk taking that old way of sin, righteousness, and judgment on ourselves in order to reveal its futility, its wrongness, and offering instead God's way of grace and forgiveness. Pentecost is Satyagraha poured out on us so that we may bring peace to our lives as family members, co-workers, neighbors, citizens, and, yes, as both Jesus and Gandhi compelled us to do, as children of God -- all of humanity, children of God. Amen

Rev. Paul J. NuechterleinDelivered at Prince of Peace Lutheran, Portage, MI, May 27, 2012

The Healing Teaching of the Trinity

diversity without domination

plurality without subordination

Fatherness that honors son-ness in equality (& ends patriarchy)

Son-ness that honors fatherness without rivalry (& ends patricide)

Fatherness and son-ness that uphold Spiritness without homogeneity (ending absolutism)

A God who generates the next generation of God!

The Healing Teaching of Inspiration of

Scripture

“Manifold witness”The plurality of truth

Unity around key questions - arguments

over best answers

a fresh vision of encountering

Godin the other

(genesis 26 ff)

Jacob and Esau ...

or

25:21Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord granted his prayer, and his wife Rebekah conceived. 22The children struggled together within her; and she said, ‘If it is to be this way, why do I live?’*

So she went to inquire of the Lord. 23And the Lord said to her,‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided;one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.’

[If the story stopped here ...]

24When her time to give birth was at hand, there were twins in her womb. 25The first came out red, all his body like a hairy mantle; so they named him Esau. 26Afterwards his brother came out, with his hand gripping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob.* Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them.

27 When the boys grew up, Esau was a skilful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents. 28Isaac loved Esau, because he was fond of game; but Rebekah loved Jacob.

Note:

God upsetting the normal order

God for the younger

God for the woman

God for the “tent boy”

God for the liar, cheat, coward!

Note:

God upsetting the normal order

God for the younger

God for the woman

God for the “tent boy”

God for the liar, cheat, coward!

But does God show favoritism?

The stolen birthright - The stolen blessing ...

27:18 So he went in to his father, and said, ‘My father’; and he said, ‘Here I am; who are you, my son?’ 19Jacob said to his father, ‘I am Esau your firstborn. I have done as you told me; now sit up and eat of my game, so that you may bless me.’ 20But Isaac said to his son, ‘How is it that you have found it so quickly, my son?’ He answered, ‘Because the Lord your God granted me success.’ 21Then Isaac said to Jacob, ‘Come near, that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son Esau or not.’ 22So Jacob went up to his father Isaac, who felt him and said, ‘The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.’ 23He did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau’s hands; so he blessed him. 24He said, ‘Are you really my son Esau?’ He answered, ‘I am.’ 25Then he said, ‘Bring it to me, that I may eat of my son’s game and bless you.’ So he brought it to him, and he ate; and he brought him wine, and he drank. 26Then his father Isaac said to him, ‘Come near and kiss me, my son.’ 27So he came near and kissed him; and he smelled the smell of his garments, and blessed him, and said,

‘Ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed. 28 May God give you of the dew of heaven, and of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine. 29 Let peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you.Be lord over your brothers, and may your mother’s sons bow down to you.Cursed be everyone who curses you, and blessed be everyone who blesses you!’

NOTE:

The blessing ...

Is God like a genii, under the control of a powerful man?

Recalling Genesis 12:

I will bless you ... I will make you a great nation ...

All nations will be blessed through you.

Not exclusive blessing, but instrumental blessing.

27:41 Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself, ‘The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob.’ 42But the words of her elder son Esau were told to Rebekah; so she sent and called her younger son Jacob and said to him, ‘Your brother Esau is consoling himself by planning to kill you. 43Now therefore, my son, obey my voice; flee at once to my brother Laban in Haran, 44and stay with him for a while, until your brother’s fury turns away— 45until your brother’s anger against you turns away, and he forgets what you have done to him; then I will send, and bring you back from there. Why should I lose both of you in one day?’

Jacob’s journey ... departure and return

Rachel and Leah (cheater gets cheated, proper order restored)

Jacob and Laban (No mother around to pull strings....)

Jacob ready to return home (a man now, facing final challenge)

32:6 The messengers returned to Jacob, saying, ‘We came to your brother Esau, and he is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him.’ 7Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed; and he divided the people that were with him, and the flocks and herds and camels, into two companies, 8thinking, ‘If Esau comes to one company and destroys it, then the company that is left will escape.’

9 And Jacob said, ‘O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, “Return to your country and to your kindred, and I will do you good”, 10I am not worthy of the least of all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan; and now I have become two companies. 11Deliver me, please, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him; he may come and kill us all, the mothers with the children. 12Yet you have said, “I will surely do you good, and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted because of their number.” ’

13 So he spent that night there, and from what he had with him he took a present for his brother Esau, 14two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams, 15thirty milch camels and their colts, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys. 16These he delivered into the hand of his servants, each drove by itself, and said to his servants, ‘Pass on ahead of me, and put a space between drove and drove.’ 17He instructed the foremost, ‘When Esau my brother meets you, and asks you, “To whom do you belong? Where are you going? And whose are these ahead of you?” 18then you shall say, “They belong to your servant Jacob; they are a present sent to my lord Esau; and moreover he is behind us.” ’ 19He likewise instructed the second and the third and all who followed the droves, ‘You shall say the same thing to Esau when you meet him, 20and you shall say, “Moreover your servant Jacob is behind us.” ’ For he thought, ‘I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me, and afterwards I shall see his face; perhaps he will accept me.’ 21So the present passed on ahead of him; and he himself spent that night in the camp.

What’s most important to Jacob now?

32:22 The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. 24Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ 27So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ 28Then the man* said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel,* for you have striven with God and with humans,* and have prevailed.’ 29Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ And there he blessed him. 30So Jacob called the place Peniel,* saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’ 31The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. 32Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the thigh muscle that is on the hip socket, because he struck Jacob on the hip socket at the thigh muscle.

33Now Jacob looked up and saw Esau coming, and four hundred men with him. So he divided the children among Leah and Rachel and the two maids. 2He put the maids with their children in front, then Leah with her children, and Rachel and Joseph last of all. 3He himself went on ahead of them, bowing himself to the ground seven times, until he came near his brother.

4 But Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept. 5When Esau looked up and saw the women and children, he said, ‘Who are these with you?’ Jacob said, ‘The children whom God has graciously given your servant.’ 6Then the maids drew near, they and their children, and bowed down; 7Leah likewise and her children drew near and bowed down; and finally Joseph and Rachel drew near, and they bowed down. 8Esau said, ‘What do you mean by all this company that I met?’ Jacob answered, ‘To find favour with my lord.’ 9But Esau said, ‘I have enough, my brother; keep what you have for yourself.’ 10Jacob said,

‘No, please; if I find favour with you, then accept my present from my hand; for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God—since you have received me with such favour. 11Please accept my gift that is brought to you, because God has dealt graciously with me, and because I have everything I want.’ So he urged him, and he took it.

Where do you find God revealed in this story?

Only where God is overtly named?

Where do you find God revealed in this story?

Only where God is overtly named?

Or in the human development

and the human encounter?

7 Basic Plots (Christopher Booker)

1. Overcoming the monster2. Rags to riches3. Quest4. Voyage and Return5. Comedy6. Tragedy7. Rebirth

Expanding the Dialogue

Differences within and among

IncommensurabilityComplementarity

Point-CounterpointScholars & Mystics

Four Challenges

1. Historical

2. Doctrinal

3. Liturgical

4. Missional