St. Patrick's Adventerous Prayer -- Bruce Epperly

It is St. Patrick's Day, and since an eighth of me is Irish, I should be ready to celebrate!  St. Patrick may be the patron saint of Ireland, but he is also the inspiration for Celtic spirituality.  With that in mind, Bruce Epperly has provided a brief essay that shares with us some of St. Patrick's own Prayer.   May your St. Patrick's Day not only be green, but blessed as well.

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St. Patrick’s Adventurous Prayer

Bruce Epperly

Life is adventurous and filled with surprises, whether or not we seek them out. According to legend, Celtic missionaries set off on voyages, without a rudder for steering, in order to find their place of resurrection, the place where they would experience God’s calling for their lives. They trusted God’s movements in the winds and waves.

St. Patrick shared that same adventurous spirit as he spread the good news of Jesus as Healer and Savior. Like Columba, he used the language of druid religion. Celtic Christians often described Christ as their “druid,” teacher, guide, and healer.

As legend has it, Patrick was being pursued by a local chieftain, who was planning to capture and kill him. Just as the chieftain’s troops were bearing down on him, Patrick disappeared. All they saw was a deer bounding across the pathway. God was at work, Patrick believed, in providing him shelter along with insight for the journey.

In the spirit of Patrick, Celtic Christians often rotate in a clockwise direction, drawing a circle around themselves whenever they left on a journey, whether across the neighborhood or into unknown lands. They recognized the adventure of each day, and their need for God’s guidance and protection. I use the prayer of St. Patrick, along with the Celtic caim, or encircling prayer, whenever I feel anxious or at risk. If you are in a public place or hospitalized, you may say this prayer in your imagination.

Here are some of the words of Patrick’s “Breastplate” or “Lorica.” Take them as a companion on today’s adventures.

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,

Through the belief in the threeness,

Through confession of the oneness

Of the Creator of Creation.

I arise today

Through the strength of heaven:

Light of sun,

Radiance of moon,

Splendor of fire,

Speed of lightning,

Swiftness of wind,

Depth of sea,

Stability of earth,

Firmness of rock.

I arise today

Through God's strength to pilot me:

God's might to uphold me,

God's wisdom to guide me,

God's eye to look before me,

God's ear to hear me,

God's word to speak for me,

God's hand to guard me,

God's way to lie before me,

God's shield to protect me,

God's host to save me.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,

Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ on my right, Christ on my left,

Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,

Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,

Christ in every eye that sees me,

Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,

Through belief in the threeness,

Through confession of the oneness,

Of the Creator of Creation.

On this St. Patrick’s season, embrace God’s circle of care and inspiration. You are always in the dynamic circle of divine adventure. Your life is a holy adventure in companionship with an adventurous God.

Bruce Epperly is a theologian, spiritual guide, healing companion, retreat leader and lecturer, and author of nineteen books, including Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living; God’s Touch: Faith, Wholeness, and the Healing Miracles of Jesus; and Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry. He has taught at Georgetown University, Wesley Theological Seminary, Claremont School of Theology, and Lancaster Theological Seminary. He is currently theologian in residence at St. Peter’s United Church of Christ in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He can be reached for lectures, seminars, retreats, or comments at bruceepperly@gmail.com

Acts 29: A Never Ending Gospel (Bruce Epperly)

In last week's posting Bruce Epperly brought to an end our journey through Luke's Acts of the Apostles, a journey that reminds us that the Christian faith is an adventure.  It's not something to be taken lightly.  But, the Book of Acts ends with Paul in prison, but with the hope of release, perhaps to continue his planned journey to Spain.  In this final posting of this series, Bruce points us forward through history to our own day, where we continue writing the 29th chapter of Acts.  This may be the final contribution for a while, but it has been a blessing to have Bruce be a regular contributor to Ponderings on a Faith Journey.

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Acts 29: A Never Ending Gospel

Bruce G. Epperly

The final words of Acts of the Apostles describe the Apostle Paul teaching and preaching from prison "without hindrance." The message of Acts from start to finish is that God's good news is unfinished and unhindered; it breaks down the barriers of alienation, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. The good news of God’s presence in the world breaks down the separation of mind, body, and spirit; of contemplation and action; of mysticism and mission; and of reason and ecstasy.

Today, we are writing our own Acts of the Apostles in the ongoing journey of Christian faith and mission. In partnership with God, we are the creators of an unfinished gospel that lives on in our lives and witness. For the author of Acts and for us, divine inspiration does not end with the closing of the canon. God is still speaking, still revealing, still inspiring, and still healing, and we are part of the never ending story of God's movements in our lives and in the world. Like those first Christians, we are making it up as we go along, creating our faith traditions in concert with divine inspiration and our personal, cultural, and planetary context. Like them, we – that is, progressive, moderate, and open-spirited evangelical Christians - are at the margins; our voices are seldom heard on network television or cable news, muted by our own reluctance as well as the strident voices of those who claim to represent Jesus today. But, our story goes on: in fact, the margins may in fact be the frontiers that call us to adventure.

Today, we are creating Christian faith as we go along - a new vision of faith, open to diversity, embracing pluralism, discovering the promise of post-modernism in small stories and life-changing experiences that evolve into a life-transforming faith. Our faith stories honor and nurture experience, but also balance experience with agile and innovative theological reflection in dialogue with the novelties of our time. Acts 29, the unwritten chapter of Acts, is our chapter. Just as God calls every generation to be faithful in its time, God calls us to be faithful "for just such a time as this." This is our time of possibility, adventure, risk, and vocation. This is our time to create, in the dynamic divine-human call and response, a lively spirited-centered, pluralistic, evolving and emerging faith. Our faith is not based on labels that confine, but stature that includes and our emerging and evolving faith embraces Pentecostal ecstasy, evangelical intimacy, moderate rationality, and progressive open-endedness. We are spirit-centered in our openness to following the Spirit's guidance and then creating along with the Spirit new circles of healing and transformation.

This morning, I heard Rev. Harry Knox of the, Director of the Religion and Faith Program of the Human Rights Commission speak of a "fourth great awakening" as the emergence of the gifts of LGBT people for the church. I agree with Rev. Knox’s affirmation, for this awakening of the gifts of LGBT people is emerging alongside a new integration of mysticism and mission, spiritual healing and medical accessibility, tradition and experimentation, theological reflection and emotional ecstasy; all elements of an ever-widening circle of love. These movements reflect a holistic vision of embodied, emerging, evolving, and liberating faith.

Yes, the story of Acts 29 is still being written. It is your story and mine - it is the story of all those who awaken to God's unhindered Spirit and claim our role as partners in the never ending divine-human journey that lies ahead.

Bruce Epperly is Professor of Practical Theology and Director of Continuing Education at Lancaster Theological Seminary. He is the author of 17 books, including Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living and Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry.

 

Adventurous Theology #10: A Never Ending Story (Bruce Epperly)

The journey through Acts is nearing its end -- that is, the exploration of the adventurous spirit that pervades Luke's description of the early church's journey comes to an end in this posting.  Bruce Epperly has taken us from Ascension to Paul's prison cell, noting here in the end that "God is still speaking."  There is one last post to consider -- next week -- that reflects on Acts 29, our continued writing of the story of this faith journey.  I invite you to consider with Bruce what the Spirit is doing in the world and in the church as, to quote (as Bruce does) Doug Pagitt, we live out a "Christianity Worth Believing."

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Adventurous Theology #10:

A Never Ending Story

Acts, Chapters 21-28

Bruce G. Epperly

Acts of the Apostles comes to an end with a travelogue descriptive of Paul’s journey to Rome. But, the final words, describing Paul’s preaching from prison in terms of “boldness and without hindrance,” suggest that Acts is but the beginning of a spiritual adventure that shapes us today. What’s to hinder us from embracing God’s world of wonders, unity with strangers, mystical experiences, and unexpected power and energy in our time? Open to God’s spirit, we have everything we need to be God’s ambassadors and healers in our time.

Paul’s future, even in prison, and our own is open and undecided. We are making it up as we go along, beneficiaries of Paul’s innovative ministry to the non-Jewish world. Signs and wonders abound when we commit ourselves to going deeper in our experience of God and God’s mission in the world. God is alive, doing a new thing, and inviting us to be creative as well.

The final chapters of Acts could be described as “ponderings on a faith journey.” Paul travels from place to place, sharing the good news of the new beginnings, inspired and energized by the living presence of the Risen One. Christ’s resurrection is not only a past event to Paul, but the source of confidence and spiritual power in the present moment. Christ has brought a new energy and new possibilities into the world, spiritually, metaphysically, and physically. While we cannot fully assess the power of the resurrection, its impact on Jesus’ first followers was holistic; it created a new vision of reality that encompassed every aspect of life. Just as the enlightenment of Buddha injected new spiritual possibilities, the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus changed the course of history and God’s relationship to the world. God’s attitude toward the world did not change – as John 3:16 notes, the coming of Christ is the manifestation of God’s love, not its cause or inspiration. Rather, Jesus’ life opens the door for new divine possibilities in our world.

The final chapters of Acts join action and testimony. Paul’s theology is holistic: the author of Acts records Paul’s narrative of his encounter with the living Christ in these final eight chapters. Paul’s theology encompasses his whole being: it creatively synthesizes the Jewish tradition, his mystical encounter with the living Christ, and the emerging Christian understanding of the meaning of Jesus in light of God’s revelation in Judaism and in the wider world. Paul’s own synthetic faith encompasses body, mind, spirit, and relationships. It is far from being purely cerebral or intellectual, but integrates his Damascus Road experience with the ongoing movements of the Spirit in his life. This is the way good theology should be – the isolated academic discipline of theology would have been an anomaly to Paul and the Parents of Christian theology. For them, theology was rooted in and connected to vital Christian experience. Theology, indeed, gave meaning and context to experience, shaped experience, and was shaped by experience – personal and communal.

Today’s emerging Christianity is seeking to replicate this same theological-experiential dynamic in its quest to join “ancient” and “future” in an evolving “now.” Like the first Christians, many emergents are seeking to create a theology that gives meaning and provides an evolving context for their current faith experiences. Such a theology must include reflections on “a Christianity worth believing” (Pagitt) in light of the end of the American empire, the internet and beyond, and global spiritualities. This is theology in the making – highly experiential, yet in need of enough tradition and enough imagination to provide an evolving spiritual home for seekers within and beyond the church.

At times, Paul must have been astounded by his own journey – inspired at every step by a living Spirit, pushing the boundaries of past belief systems, and learning to adapt to the Gentile world. Paul brilliantly joined order and novelty in the creation a good enough theology for the Gentile world. Belief in the living Christ along with a handful of foundational Jewish behaviors was “good enough” to insure the well-being of new Christians and their communities. While he may not have intended it, Paul laid the groundwork for theological, liturgical, ecclesiastical, and experiential diversity by his innovative synthesis of tradition and novelty. Christianity no longer could be identified with a few sacred spaces and holy lands, now all lands could be holy and all spaces sacred. Accordingly, indigenous faiths of all kinds could emerge and have emerged throughout Christian history. Hardly a fundamentalist, Paul laid the foundations for the evolution of Christianity, emerging in time and place and embracing the Living Christ, the God of Christ, and the victory over death in dialogue with culture and community.

The final words of this “unhindered” gospel remind us that we are part of this story. As the United Church of Christ proclaims, “God is still speaking.” When we understand the word “speaking” holistically, we see God’s voice as more than a matter of word and doctrine, but an energy and vibration, creatively and intentionally moving through all things, personal and global, touching each thing in light of its responsibility to the whole. Many voices compose the chorus of revelation. But, the many are inspired by a personal voice that honors uniqueness yet pushes us toward community.

As we conclude our journey through the Acts of the Apostles, it is clear that God’s call is global as well as intimate. Paul goes out into the world; and faithfulness challenges us to be world-oriented as well. Just as Paul did not fully know where he was going, we must look in a mirror dimly as we consider the future of Christianity. We know that the future of our faith must be global, for the earth and humankind are in jeopardy. Salvation must heed the cries of creation (Romans 8) as well as our own inner urgings. Honoring one another, we must find our pathways into the world – pathways that join personal experience, encounters with the holy, agile theological reflection, and commitment to strangers, neighbors, and the good earth – as we seek to share life-transforming words of God in our time and place. We are God’s partners in a never-ending journey.

Bruce Epperly is Professor of Practical Theology and Director of Continuing Education at Lancaster Theological Seminary. He is the author of 17 books, including Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living and Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry.

Adventurous Theology #7: Good News for Everyone (Bruce Epperly)

In today's meditation Bruce Epperly takes into the powerful story of Peter's vision of God that transformed his understanding of God's mission and his role in it.  As a result a way was opened up for those who stood outside the covenant circle to enter in.  What was once considered unclean is now, by God's revelation, to be considered clean.  As Bruce notes, after this section of Acts, Peter gives way to Paul, and with Paul the mission to the Gentile world takes center stage.  So, the question of the day concerns God's desire to embrace all creation in God's realm.  I invite you to read and share in the conversation.

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Adventurous Theology #7:

Good News for Everyone

Acts 9:32-12:25

Bruce Epperly

Peter is at center stage in these three chapters and then exits for the remainder of Acts. This section, true to form of Acts, begins with signs and wonders (Acts 9:32-43), reminiscent of the healings of Jesus, in particular the healing of the man at the pool (John 5:1-9) and the awakening of Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5:35-43). The healing ministry of Jesus is alive and well in the early church; the “greater things” Jesus promised (John 14:12) are embodied in the lives of Jesus’ followers. Jesus’ non-competitive gospel inspires abundant life for everyone in everyplace, not just insiders but the whole earth. Jesus wants us to surpass him by continuing and transforming his ministry of healing, wholeness, justice-seeking, and hospitality.

Once again mysticism leads to mission. In the synchronicity of divine providence – the divine call and creative human response – God speaks to and through Cornelius, a Gentile, and Peter, a leader of the emerging church. Like the prior encounter of Paul and Ananias, revelation involves God’s movements in many persons; God is speaking through us to respond to others. We may by our faithfulness be an answer to someone else’s deepest need or prayer. Relationships are not merely a matter of convenience, but also, at some primordial level, vocation. We are called to share good news to one another in the interdependence of interpersonal relationships. Our salvation or wholeness is profoundly relational: we need others to find our way and our destinies are interwoven in unique ways with certain people.

Peter’s vision is highly unsettling to him and to us. God is asking Peter to disobey the rules of his faith, presumably enacted by God in ancient times. These rules shaped the Jewish tradition and Peter’s own understanding of God. While not denying their value and role in nation-shaping and personal spiritual formation, God asks Peter - as Jesus asked him on the seashore - to launch out into deeper spiritual waters. In Acts, Peter comes back with another great catch – this time surf and turf, shrimp, lobster, crab, and pork. “Rejoice and enjoy the unclean foods,” the vision commands. Naturally, Peter resists, but eventually relents as God continues to call him to a new understanding of his faith. “Call nothing unclean. All foods and, more importantly, all peoples are welcome at my table.” Ethnicity makes no difference in revelation and mission. No one is excluded: God embraces Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, and also Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

So Peter goes with Cornelius’ servants, finds welcome in Cornelius’ home and, no doubt, to his surprise, experiences the Holy Spirit falling upon these faithful Gentiles, inspiring them to speak in the language of holiness. All people are holy, all creation is welcome, and all can share God’s revealing wisdom. There is nothing to hinder universal revelation, baptism, or salvation.

We are here as Christians in North America because of the boldness of Peter and Cornelius. Their willingness to go beyond their spiritual comfort zones, to be themselves, makes it possible for us to be ourselves as persons of faith. There is no “don’t ask, don’t tell” among Christians; we are welcomed at God’s banquet in our amazing diversity, uniqueness, and beauty.

What’s to hinder the Spirit from calling us today – what new horizons of spirituality beckon us forward as God’s partners in healing the earth?

Bruce Epperly is Professor of Practical Theology and Director of Continuing Education at Lancaster Theological Seminary. He is the author of 17 books, including Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living and  Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry.

Adventurous Theology: Transforming Paul (Bruce Epperly)

The Book of Acts is one of the more fascinating parts of the New Testament.  It tells the story of an expanding mission of God, wherein the gospel goes forth into the world.  At first it is a mission to Jews, but quickly expands to embrace other groups, including Samaritans and Gentiles.  It is a mission that is rooted in the Jewish witness, but as the story of Acts suggests, the mission that goes forth in the name of Jesus, modifies the terms of conversion so that circumcision is removed as the marker of entrance into the community.  The key preacher of this new understanding of salvation in the name of Jesus is Paul, whom we meet in Acts 9 as Saul of Tarsus, a zealous protector of orthodoxy, whose visionary encounter with Jesus transforms his life and witness.  Bruce Epperly continues his exploration of the adventurous theology of Acts by focusing on the transformation of Saul into Paul. 

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Adventurous Theology:

Transforming Paul (Acts 9:1-31)

By Bruce Epperly

Our holy adventure in Acts takes on a new dimension with the introduction of Saul of Tarsus. The transformation of Saul into Paul cannot be understood purely as a conversion experience, but as an opening to deeper dimensions of the faith he affirmed. Although the later Paul counts his earlier orthodoxy as worthless, the fact of the matter is that Saul was a faithful Jew, whose persecution of the Way of Jesus was motivated by his belief in the God of Jesus, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is not that Saul had gone astray; he simply had not strayed far enough into God’s new frontiers of spiritual adventure. His orthodoxy had limited his ability to experience God in new and creative ways. Even after his mystical experience, as a leader of the fledgling church, Paul still affirmed God’s covenant with the children of Israel.

Acts 9 is shrouded in visionary experiences. On his way to persecute Jesus’ followers in Damascus, Saul sees a light and hears the voice of Jesus. He is blinded and then transformed by this theophany, this moment of divine revelation in which Jesus appears to him as the Risen One, God’s beloved revealer of a new age and new way of life. Saul receives a new vocation, and eventually a new name. He receives new sight and what John Biersdorf calls “the healing of purpose.”

Saul’s visionary experience is part of a larger ecology of revelation. Ananias also has a vision in which he receives divine guidance to welcome Saul into the community of faith, despite his previous history. Vision leads to vocation, both for an encounter and for a lifetime.

Acts 9, like the rest of Acts, invites us to a world of wonders in which God is active in each and every moment and each and every life. Yet, the one who is moving through all things addresses each thing – each moment and each person – uniquely and individually. Saul is “chosen” by God for a particular vocation in the early church. God is present in different ways in different situations and with different people. This is not a matter of supernatural intervention, but personal relationship. Healing moments – whether of vocation, body, mind, or spirit – emerge from a lively interplay of call and response, moving through our lives, unconscious mind, personal history, and historical and environmental context. Perhaps, God was gently and persistently moving through Saul’s religious quest to bring him to a moment of transformation. Despite the theophany, Saul still had to respond in order to experience the fullness of revelation and claim his new vocation. Likewise, Ananias also needed to be open to a new way of experiencing God’s presence in his life and in the emerging Christian community. Ananias had to experience God moving within Saul’s life: this was an act of courageous faith – opening to the proclaimer waiting to emerge from within the persecutor!

Acts 9 reminds us that burning bushes and theophanies can be found around every corner. God is constantly giving us guidance and inspiration. When we open to this inspiration, new possibilities emerge. Even when we appear to be going in the wrong direction, God is still working in our lives, inviting us to greater sight and insight in our vocation as God’s beloved children, sharing good news of healing and transformation.

Bruce Epperly is professor of practical theology and director of continuing education at Lancaster Theological Seminary. He is the author of 17 books, including Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living and Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry.

Adventurous Theology: A World of Wonders (Bruce Epperly)

We continue our journey through the Book of Acts with Bruce Epperly as our guide.  In today's posting, Bruce invites us to consider the mystical and the awe-inspiring nature of the life of faith.  Chapters five through eight takes us from the story of Ananias and Sapphira, a story that makes for difficult preaching, to the encounter with Simon the Magician and Philip's restorative encounter with the Eunuch.  The life of faith, the work of theology, isn't for the skittish!  Or so, Bruce would have us think.

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Adventurous Theology: A World of Wonders (Acts 5:1-8:40)

Bruce Epperly

Acts of the Apostles invites us into a world of signs and wonders in which nothing is fully predictable or settled. God is the source of surprise, adventure, and creativity in the life of the earliest Christians. Opening to God awakens life-changing energies; closing to divine possibility may lead to blocking the abundance God envisions for us.

Chapter 5 begins with the curious story of Ananias and Sapphira, falling down dead as a result of their duplicity. Power can create and destroy, cure and kill; but divine power, as I understand it, does not seek death but abundant life. Still, we are responsible, to some extent, for our health and well-being. Medical research as well as lived experience tells us that health and illness are associated with our attitudes; that hope and depression alike can have an impact on our immune, cardiovascular, and digestive systems. While I don’t believe that God desired the death of Ananias or Sapphira, could it be that being caught in their duplicity led to their deaths? Could it be that their death was psychosomatic, reflecting the impact of their emotional lives on their physical well-being? At the very least, this strange passage challenges us to consider the impact of our thoughts, attitudes, emotional life, and behavior on our health. While there is no linear one-to-one correspondence between our attitudes and our health and prosperity as some new agers (for example, Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret) or prosperity gospel (“name it and claim it”) Christians suggest, our thoughts and attitudes can be a tipping point between life and death and health and illness.

Awe came upon everyone in the wake of these unexpected deaths. Many people sought healing and expected that Peter’s shadow had a curative power. Once again, the role of faith in health and well-being is lifted up. While our faith is not omnipotent and works through natural causes in the interplay of divine and human call and response, surely our faith makes a difference in our overall health and may open the door to dramatic naturalistic releases of divine healing energy.

The death of Stephen also points to a world of wonders: as he was about to be martyred for the faith, Stephen has a vision of the glory of God. Mysticism led to compassion, as Stephen like Jesus forgave his tormentors in his final hour. Mystical experiences involve a widening of consciousness in which our self expands in its sense of identity and interest. Alfred North Whitehead once described religion, at its best, as world loyalty; this world loyalty is connected with the experience of Peace in which the self is not lost – identity does not disappear –but grows in stature to embrace the contrasting elements of life and welcome friend and enemy, human and non-human alike. Such experiences reflect the interdependence of life – there is no “other,” rather we are all deeply connected, shaping and being shaped by one another and the divine energy and wisdom flowing through all things.

The strange passage about Simon the Magician reflects the contrast between the self-centeredness that contracts and the self-centeredness that expands the flow of divine healing energy. If God is omnipresent, then everyplace is a center of divine care; but no one center has exclusive right to God’s care. As one mystic noted, God is the circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. Simon attempts to claim an energy that cannot be fettered. God’s energy pushes us beyond self-aggrandizement to care for all creation. Mysticism leads to mission, not individual self-interest. Our encounters with God challenge us to world loyalty and to following the spirit to unexpected places.

The story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch is an amazing tale of mysticism and surprise. You can imagine Philip’s amazement when he discovers the faith of an outsider, one who would be considered unclean and outcast according to Jewish law. More than that, the Ethiopian eunuch is inspired, and thus evangelizes Philip when he asks Philip to baptize him. The words “What’s to prevent me from being baptized?” capture the spirit of Acts of the Apostles – God’s Spirit is unfettered; it freely blows where it wills and calls us beyond our comfort zones. When we open to it, surprises happen and adventures lure us forward. Just as soon as Philip baptizes the Ethiopian, he is whisked away by the Spirit. While such an event stretches the imagination, it points to the fact that the moment we consciously commit ourselves to God’s holy adventure, our lives are transformed – we live in a world of wonders, with surprises around every corner. With C.S. Lewis, we discover that Aslan is not a “tame” lion and that those who follow God must be prepared for adventure. Strap on your seat belt, put on your helmet, be prepared for an adventure of the spirit.

Bruce Epperly is a seminary professor and administrator at Lancaster Theological Seminary, pastor, theologian, and spiritual companion. He is the author of seventeen books, including Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living, a response to Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life. His Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry, written with Katherine Gould Epperly, was selected 2009 Book of the Year by the Academy of Parish Clergy.His most recent book is From a Mustard Seed: Enlivening Worship and Music in the Small Church, written with Daryl Hollinger.

Transforming Acts: Adventurous Theology for the Twenty-first Century (Bruce Epperly)

For Disciples, the Book of Acts, has been a central text.  Early Disciple leaders like Alexander Campbell looked to it for a model of church life and expansion.  Acts has also become a key text for the missional movement, and I have looked to it as a guide for our congregation's expansion of ministry in the community.  So, I was pleased when Bruce Epperly suggested writing a series of columns on this most important text.  With this post, we begin a journey through Acts!

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Transforming Acts:

Adventurous Theology for the Twenty-first Century

Bruce G. Epperly

Annie Dillard advised people attending church to put on crash helmets and wear seats belt in the pews because what we invoke in church is life-changing and life-shaking. God, like Aslan the Christ-figure described in C.S. Lewis’Chronicles of Narnia, is not tame, but transforming, lively, and awesome. When God shows up in the confluence of divine call and human response, surprises abound. The fourteen billion year and one hundred billion galaxy adventure of our universe should fill us with awe and wonder, not only at the grandeur of the universe but the Creative Wisdom that brought forth – still brings forth - majestic galaxies and the intricacy of our own bodies, minds, and spirits.

Over the next several weeks, I will be reflecting on Acts of the Apostles as a primer for today’s adventurous Christians. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel proclaimed that one of the primary religious virtues is “radical amazement” and this sense of amazement is what we find throughout Acts of the Apostles. Some suggest that Acts of the Apostles is an idealized account of what the church can be when it is truly spirit-centered; others see Acts as a description of the honeymoon period of the church, when the church was unfettered, free, and open to divine surprises at every turn. Still, Acts of the Apostles is an important text for Christians today. It is an invitation to a holy adventure in which we expect great things from God and great things from ourselves. It is an open door to experiencing beauty, wonder, and miracle in our own lives. Our universe is far from domesticated and leaps of quantum energy enliven our own lives and the world around us. Today’s churches need to be surprised and set free to find God in the most expected places, including within the church itself.

The author of Psalm 8 captured the wonder of the universe long before the first moon landing or photographs from the Hubble telescope.

O Lord, Our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You set your glory above the heavens….

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

The moon and the stars you have established;

What are human beings that you are mindful of them,

Mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God,

And crowned them with glory and honor.

In the immensity of the universe, in which our solar system is but a dot, God is working in our lives, giving us the gifts of creativity, artistry, technology, and spirituality. A great God, beyond imagination, is moving in our little world, is calling us to be partners in the creative process. Despite its cosmic insignificance, our little world is the portal to the divinity who makes holy all planets and galaxies.

I believe that Acts of the Apostles is a guidepost for adventurous living and a challenge to Christians to open their imaginations and hearts to God’s presence, moving in the cosmos, our congregations, our lives, and the planet. Acts presents us with a Spirit-filled world and invites us to embrace a Spirit-centered life of prayer, healing, hospitality, adventure, diversity, and justice-seeking.

I see Acts of the Apostles as a post-modern gospel, describing a church at the margins, making it up as it goes along, open to astonishment and new ways of seeing God’s presence in the world. The margins for these first people of the Way of Jesus were also the frontiers of faith. Just as the Spirit is unfettered, so too is the Way of Jesus that takes us into all the world and embraces creation in all its diversity of race, culture, religious practice, and life style. Our parents in the faith balanced fidelity to the God of Jesus Christ with an awareness of religious and cultural pluralism. They knew they had to break through their own parochial understandings of God to be faithful to God. They knew that they had to relativize – and challenge – the Laws of God given to Moses to follow in God’s new pathways of the Spirit. In the spirit of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, they did not reject God’s covenant with the Jewish people, but saw that evolving covenant as unfettered and all-embracing, welcoming and declaring “clean” all the nations of the earth. That is our calling, too – to embrace the past as we awaken to new dimensions of fidelity for our time.

So, be ready for a spiritual adventure! Strap on your safety belt as you open yourself to God’s vision for our time, reflected in the transforming words of Acts of the Apostles. God is still moving in our world; God is still speaking in our lives; God’s faithfulness is everlasting and God’s mercies are new every morning. We need not be afraid of pluralism, for God is our companion as we faithfully and creatively respond to wondrous diversity of human culture and spirituality. We can become the people of the Way – the everyday mystics, healers, and visionaries – as we venture forth into the frontiers of the twenty-first century.

Bruce Epperly is a seminary professor and administrator at Lancaster Theological Seminary, pastor, theologian, and spiritual companion. He is the author of seventeen books, including Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living, a response to Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life. His  Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry, written with Katherine Gould Epperly, was selected 2009 Book of the Year by the Academy of Parish Clergy.    His most recent book is From a Mustard Seed: Enlivening Worship and Music in the Small Church, written with Daryl Hollinger.

An Alternative to Warren's "Purpose Driven Life"

Ethics Daily has posted an edited version of Bruce Epperly's post from last week concerning Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life.    Bruce offers a vision of a holy adventure, in which we participate with God in co-creating our future.  It's not quite as cut and dry and maybe not as "safe," but is this not a better way to experience life?

Challenging Rick Warren's "Purpose Driven Life" is like David going up against Goliath, especially if you're the pastor of a small congregation who also teaches at a small seminary.

When the call came, I had to respond. You see, for a few years I had seen signs announcing "Forty Days of Purpose" and had heard from pastors and church growth consultants that "if you really want folks to come to a church program, you should offer the 'Purpose Driven Life.' Nothing succeeds like success, after all." And, folks came to Purpose Driven Life studies, often in record numbers.

But, I heard other messages, ones that pastors and congregants whispered to me and one another in private. Many didn't want to contradict the new congregational orthodoxy being promoted in the "Forty Days" studies. In private conversations, I heard pastors and congregants admit:  (to continue reading at Ethics Daily, click here).

Why I Challenged Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life

This is the second in a series of guest posts written by Dr. Bruce Epperly, a Disciples/UCC minister and professor at Lancaster Theological Seminary.  His first post spoke of a "passionate progressive Christian revival."  In this posting, he takes us a step further, outlining a spirituality that contrasts with Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life.

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Challenging Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life (PDL) is just like David going up against Goliath, especially if you’re the pastor of a small congregation who also teaches at small seminary. But, when the call came, I had to respond. You see, for a few years I had seen signs announcing “Forty Days of Purpose” and had heard from pastors and church growth consultants that “if you really want folks to come to a church program, you should offer the Purpose Driven Life. Nothing succeeds like success, after all.” And, folks came to PDL studies, often in record numbers. But, I heard other messages, ones that pastors and congregants whispered to me and one another in private. Many didn’t want to contradict the new congregational orthodoxy being promoted in the “Forty Days” studies. In private conversations, I heard pastors and congregants admit:

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  “Folks are coming and they are buying PDL hook, line, and sinker. This isn’t the theology that I’ve been preaching all these years.” 
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  “I want to challenge some of the theology, but it would stir a theological hornet’s nest in my congregation.”
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   “PDL confirms peoples’ prejudices – only Christians are saved; the rest are eternally lost.”
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   “This book has caused a lot of pain in my congregation. When people who’ve been traumatized hear that God’ planned their abuse, they don’t know if they can trust God to be on their side.”
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   “If we step out of line, God is going to get us. This book should be called ‘the puppet driven life’!”
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  “I’m worried about the implicit politics behind the text, especially in regards to equal rights of gay and lesbian people and the role of women in the church.”

While I believe that there is much to gain from certain aspects of PDL, I felt called to respond. My response is part of my commitment to the progressive Christian “revival” that I see emerging. If progressives don’t present creative alternatives to the conservative Christian message conveyed in the media, then seekers and spiritual orphans will assume that Rick Warren and Joel Osteen speak for all of us.

I believe that God likes theological diversity and spiritual contrast, and I believe just as Rick Warren felt called to write PDL, I was called to respond with a progressive/moderate theological and spiritual vision, Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living (Upper Room). Although I take responsibility for Holy Adventure (after all, I typed the words and formulated the chapters), I am sure that Holy Adventure emerged from the ongoing call and response that characterizes God’s movements in our lives. While I aim to present an affirmative theological and spiritual vision in Holy Adventure, I also sought to respond to some of the concerns I heard among pastors and congregants, who struggled with Warren’s belief that:

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  God plans all the important events of our lives without our input.
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   Every experience, including traumatic events, is “father filtered,” or planned by God for our growth.
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  In every event God is testing our fidelity.
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   God “smiles” when we follow directions and do as “he” says.
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   God wants us to “color inside the lines.” Coloring “outside the lines” leads to meaninglessness in this life and alienation from God (hell) in the next.
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   God prefers obedience to love.

None of these statements reflect my understanding of God and the human adventure. So, as I pondered Warren’s text, I was challenged to present an alternative vision of reality that sees our lives as a “holy adventure” in partnership with God in which God wants us to be imaginative, creative, and innovative in shaping the world. God is the great adventure who likes surprises and who is not hemmed in by God’s own previous decisions (for example, knowing and determining everything in advance), but likes to do new things and enjoys being surprised by what we do.

In Holy Adventure, I sought to teach creative theology by integrating 1) a vision of the universe and God, 2) a promise that we can experience God as a lively adventurer who calls us to adventure, and 3) practices (affirmations, prayers, imaginative prayers or visualizations, and actions) that enable us to experience God’s holy adventure in daily life.

At the heart of the Holy Adventure are a number of theo-spiritual affirmations:

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  God is adventurous and wants us to be adventurous as well.
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   The future is open for God and us.
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   In partnership with God, we create the future. God doesn’t decide the future, but creates the future along with us.
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   God is constantly inspiring us in every situation.
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   God loves surprises, creativity, and experimentation.
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   God wants us to “color outside the lines.”
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  God doesn’t determine the events of our lives, but moves within them as the source of inspiration, creativity, and healing.
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   God inspires and delights in diversity of spiritual pathways, ethnicities, sexual identities, cultures, and personal gifts.
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   Our prayers and actions really matter and enable God to do new and creative things.
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   There is no predetermined outcome to human or planetary history, but many possible outcomes depending on the ongoing call and response of God and the world.
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   God’s vision is to “save” everyone – Christians, Hindus, indigenous peoples, agnostics, and atheists….There is no one outside God’s love, now and forever more.

I believe that creative progressive/moderate theo-spirituality can transform persons’ lives. We are truly on an adventure in which what we do really makes a difference in the future of this planet. Today, we need to color outside the lines, to do surprising things, to bring healing to the earth in partnership with God. We don’t need to be “driven” in order to share in God’s holy adventure. We are part of it right now!

Bruce Epperly is a seminary professor and administrator, pastor, theologian, and spiritual companion. He is the author of seventeen books, including Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living, a response to Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life. His Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry, written with Katherine Gould Epperly, was selected Book of the Year by the Academy of Parish Clergy. (http://www.bruceepperly.com/)

Next week:  Bruce will share his thoughts on a "Spirit-Centered Progressive Christianity."