“When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times." + Jesus (Matthew 16:2-3)
This quote from Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew helps provide the background for the title of my favorite book of essays from 2022, Red Skies: 10 Essential Conversations Exploring Our Future as the Church featuring missiologists, entrepreneurs, theologians, and more. The intention of the book as a whole is to be "prophetic," not so much in future-telling, but in revealing, as the late Hans Urs Von Balthasar elaborates:
Prophecy, of course, does not mean foretelling the future but knowing what God's righteousness demands in any particular instant; knowing how, from the standpoint of God, to assign to things and to human beings, to events and their configurations, their place in the overall pattern. The tangled threads of time are unravelled, and "the system" is laid bare. But one cannot wish to play the role of the conscience of the age without being oneself involved centrally in it.
This City Notes (CN) post is the 1st of 3 featuring excerpts from Red Skies that help parse out Balthasar's quote above in relation to patterns found in our society at personal, communal, and global levels. This 1st post includes a few quotes from Alan Hirsch's Foreword and L. Rowland Smith's Introduction. Enjoy, and if you want to engage any of what you read, feel free to reach out.
Red Skies: Apocalypse is Not All Chaos and Evil w/ Alan Hirsch
Red Skies – as the name itself implies – is more about reading the signs of the times.
+ What is God saying to his people?
+ How can we even recognize his authentic voice amid the babel of voices in social and mainstream media?
+ How do we discern good in the tumult of evil?
+ How can we respond in faith and obedience?
In acknowledging the increasing problems we face, we can also look to the apostolic possibilities that can be taken advantage of if we are open to the challenges inherent in the apocalypse we are experiencing. It's a wet cement moment if ever there was one!
Apocalypse is not all chaos and evil. The adversary does not have the last word. In and beyond all the apparent chaos of human history as it unfolds, the sovereign God is always at work, his purposes weaving their way throughout. The macrocosm (human society) is transformed through changes in the microcosm (the prefigurative society that is the church). The seeds of God's future are being sown in and through the church – which, as Newbigin and others have rightly pointed out, is the sign, the foretaste and instrument of his kingdom. Judgment begins with the people of God, and so the church, as well as broader society, is being aligned with God's purposes. This too is not something that should be novel or strange to us.
The Logos, the eternal Word of God, is always speaking; it is just that in times of apocalypse, God uses events to jolt us out of our slumber and gives us a glimpse of what we have not been seeing, because we were all too invested in the not-seeing. Now we get to see behind the curtain ... a cosmic peekaboo! What was so very familiar and normal is now exposed as illusory and, in fact, problematic in terms of our relationship with God. This, like all of God's revelation, is a grace; an invitation to a different way of being human in the world. And because the church is the chosen instrument of God's kingdom, God has deeply vested interests in getting the message out through us. He continues to address us, shape us, expose the flaws and unfaithfulness in the system, call us to greater integrity in relation to his purposes, and to deeper relationship – to the recovery of our first and defining love.
And so, we can see that apocalyptic events involving God's people are never neutral. In fact, they are experienced as a kairos moment; an irruption of vertical time into horizontal time, an event that precipitates a krisis (literally a "turning point" or "decision") that calls us to existential responsibility before God. Another Greek word, metanoiete ("repent!" or "change your ways/thinking!") was the word given to the seven churches of the Apocalypse, and it is the word likewise given to all who experience genuinely revelatory events. Because we are dealing with the ever-greater God, we are always called to reframation; to paradigm shift, to radical reorientation, and to un/learning.
The truth is that the church has found itself somewhat unprepared even though we are called to an unrelenting and scrupulous watchfulness, to the discernment of spirits, and to an understanding of the signs of the times. We need to be able to discern God's voice and direction in the cacophony of voices calling for our attention and allegiance.
Red Skies: Jesus Is The Great Disrupter w/ L. Rowland Smith
Yes, Jesus is our Lord, our Savior, and our Prince of Peace. But more often than not, our first encounter with him is as our Disrupter. He is the One who often challenges our expectations, conventions, and status quo. For example, we usually only truly discover Jesus the Prince of Peace when our earthly idols are disrupted, when our reliance on them is painfully revealed. Peace follows chaos. Remember that Jesus launched his ministry with a disruptive phrase, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near" (Matthew 4:17) ... Jesus wanted more than structural habits and frames of belief; he wanted their minds and hearts to turn toward God and the good news of a new kingdom. Jesus was disrupting what they assumed God wanted from them.
Often, just when we think we have God figured out, Jesus will show us something we didn't readily see: the flip side of the story, the truth we least expected, the disruption of our preconceptions. Following Jesus will, at points, go against every desire in our bones, because our humanness will always yearn for simple formulas and defined structures where every question has an answer. But when we study the Scriptures, it becomes clear that Jesus is not necessarily prone to providing answers. In fact, he will often raise frustrating questions that cause us to keep moving forward, seeking him and his kingdom ... It was true with the religious leaders in Matthew 16 (see "red sky" quote from Jesus at the top), and it's still true today. Jesus was upending their expectations and quizzing them on reading the "signs of the times." But they resisted the new thing he wanted to do because it required repentance, a "change of mind," a disruption of their religious understanding. They rejected his invitation to relationship, and as a result, to the mission he had planned.
What exactly is good news to our future world? The church faces a much bigger problem than declining attendance. The more important issue is our inability to live and speak the gospel (good news) into the cultural storms of our day. We have lost our voice of shalom. "Shalom is one of the key words and images for salvation in the Bible ... Shalom experienced is multidimensional, complete well-being – physical, psychological, social, and spiritual; it flows from all of one's relationships being put right – with God, with(in) oneself, and with others." Shalom therefore speaks to a greater wholeness, a completeness, where a person is at rest – yes, at peace – but from a position of fullness and blessing. Based on this definition, is our current culture a place of shalom? If not, then how can the church display and bring shalom into the contexts that feel so very chaotic?
Change can be scary, because it is unknown. However, sometimes change is the only choice we have if we wish to not only survive, but to thrive. The church may be speaking – and loudly – but no one is listening. What is clear, if we read the signs correctly, is that something must change if we wish to carry the good news of the kingdom into our future. So consider these questions:
+ How will we start shaping the voice of the church to carry good news to a culture that is quickly shifting and changing before our very eyes?
+ How will we as kingdom people engage in these societal shifts in such a way that we carry the healing presence of the kingdom into cultural tensions, providing hope and a new and different way of life?
+ Can we sound a different voice, one that echoes the original announcement from Jesus, declaring the presence of his kingdom?
+ Can we actually lead with an informed and sensitive spirit, where we understand the challenges ahead but seek the greatest change agent we have: love?
The adventure of following Jesus will take you into unknown territory, but isn't that the very nature of adventure? Isn't following him what you've given your life to? Without some amount of dreaming, risk, and adrenaline, it's no adventure at all; it's status quo. And that is exactly what Jesus showed up to disrupt. So, you're invited ... to follow Jesus into new weather, and into red skies.
Christ is all,
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