by Steve | Jul 20, 2016 | In the News, Uncategorized
Rev. Jeff Greenway
As a pastor in The United Methodist Church, I write to share some happenings in our connectional family that merit a word. One of the great gifts of my life is being the Lead Pastor at Reynoldsburg United Methodist Church. I love our congregation, and it is out of love that I write today. Whether you agree or disagree with what follows, I love you and I hope we can remain friends.
Every four years, regional bodies of representative elected clergy and laity from gather in what is called Jurisdictional Conferences. The primary purpose of the Jurisdictional Conference is for the election and assignment of Bishops in that region. We are a part of the West Ohio Conference which is a part of the North Central Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church. I just returned from Peoria, Illinois, and the holy task of electing and consecrating four new Bishops for our region. Similar conferences were held at the same time in the North East, South East, South Central and Western U.S. A total of 15 new Bishops have been elected and consecrated this week.
The Western Jurisdiction — which has been increasingly strident in its rebellion against our United Methodist Book of Discipline in matters related to human sexuality — elected and consecrated the Rev. Karen Oliveto as a Bishop of the United Methodist Church. This election was made with intent and forethought, and was done in defiance of our Book of Discipline. She is an openly gay woman who is married to her partner which by church law should disqualify her from serving as a pastor in The United Methodist Church. By her own admission, she has performed more than 50 ceremonies celebrating homosexual unions — once again a violation of our Book of Discipline. She did not make a secret of this when she stood for election, and was elected by a regional body as an act of defiance against our polity.
United Methodists believe sexual relations are a gift from God — and our sexuality is best expressed in the covenant of monogamous, heterosexual marriage. Any other expression — sex before marriage, adultery, polygamy, etc. — is less than God’s best and created design. The teaching of the church has not changed — even though it may be seen as some to be countercultural in 21st Century America — like it was in 1st Century Corinth. It remains biblically and theologically rooted. Our pastors are not permitted to conduct and our buildings are not permitted to be used for same-sex weddings.
Some might welcome this act of defiance. They see this as a justice issue that once “solved” will help make the church more “relevant” for our day and time. I do not. I wept this morning as my phone blew up with messages from across the United Methodist Church. I was surprised by my tears. The election did not come as a surprise to me, but my heart-brokenness did. I wept for what I see as a blatant disregard for the authority of Scripture and the law of the church. I wept for the pain this act will cause. I wept for the spiritual harm that is being done. I wept for the loss of what once was — the church that I was born and raised in appears to be headed for schism — a divorce over irreconcilable differences. I wept for the persons with sexual brokenness in our congregation who might be further delayed in finding wholeness in Jesus because of the confusion this might cause. I wept.
This decision is about so much more than human sexuality. It is about the nature of salvation — what we are saved from and what we are saved to. It is about the relevance of Jesus in every generation. It is about the role, nature and authority of Scripture. It is about the promises we make and keep when we are ordained, and whether there comes a time when they are to be set aside for another calling. It is about the core of the Gospel message in our Wesleyan, Evangelical, orthodox tradition. It is about balancing grace and truth.
The Rev. Oliveto’s election has been appealed to The United Methodist Church’s Judicial Council (our Supreme Court) who will decide whether it is legal according to our church law, but in the meantime, the whole of the church must wait. I am not a prophet — nor am I the son of a prophet — and I still hope against hope that we might find a faithful way to be united — but the action of the Western Jurisdiction is the latest sign that we are either in or inevitably headed for schism. Which means the church I was baptized, confirmed and ordained in will look dramatically different in the future.
We must pray for what the next right steps are. Our Church Board has been discussing these types of possibilities for the last year or more. I am so impressed by their deep faith and servant leadership. We will continue our conversation and exploration of next right steps for us — as we strive to be faithful Jesus and our congregation while leading though this time. They have given me permission to serve on the design team for the Wesleyan Covenant Association as we explore what the future holds for all of us (www.wesleyancovenant.org).
Now is not the time for rash action. This is not the time to stop attending, stop giving or withdrawn your membership from Reynoldsburg UMC. We are still the same congregation we were yesterday. Our Mission and Vision are still the same. We will hold to our high view of the Bible and to our commitment to introduce people to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. We will still welcome all kinds of folks, and diligently try to show and share Jesus while teaching what it looks like to live God’s best in our lives and community. We will do everything we can do to not become an issue centered congregation while sharing the fullness of the Gospel’s power to forgive sin and transform lives to anyone and everyone who is a part of our community.
I am honored to be your pastor and friend,
Pastor Jeff Greenway
by Steve | Jul 15, 2016 | In the News, Uncategorized
The Rev. Karen Oliveto accepts her election by the Western Jurisdiction as a UM bishop. Her wife, the Rev. Robin Ridenour, stands behind her. UMNS photo.
The Rev. Dr. Karen Oliveto, senior minister of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco, has been elected as a bishop by the Western Jurisdiction of The United Methodist Church. She is the first openly married lesbian to be elected bishop within the denomination. After two other candidates withdrew concluding the 16th ballot, Oliveto’s name was the lone candidate choice on the screen before the delegates.
She was one of three openly gay candidates running for bishop within The United Methodist Church. Gathering in Phoenix, the Western Jurisdiction delegates sent a provocative message to the worldwide 12-million member United Methodist Church – a denomination with over 5 million members in Africa and the Philippines.
Oliveto was a prominent signer of an open letter written by 111 “local pastors, deacons, elders, and candidates for ministry” with the intent to publicly come out to General Conference delegates on the day before the policy-making event took place in Portland. She has been the chair of the board of Reconciling Ministries Network and recently served as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Pacific School of Religion where she continues as adjunct professor of United Methodist Studies.
“There is a lot of dissatisfaction on all sides of the theology divide about the state of the church,” Oliveto told CBS News in San Francisco in May. “While the ‘issue’ is human sexuality, it goes much deeper theologically into how we interpret scripture. It is time the UMC finally has an honest conversation about this.”
The Council of Bishops was charged by the 2016 General Conference to create a special commission to explore the possibility of how the denomination can move forward with seemingly irreconciable theological differences over interpretation of scripture, marriage, and sexuality. Half a dozen annual conferences in the United States preemptively voted to pass variations on a resolution of non-conformity to the provisions of the Book of Discipline on issues of human sexuality.
The election of an openly gay bishop is not the kind of conversation that moderate and conservative lay and clergy leaders had in mind as the bishops prepare, later this year, to appoint the commission to study the church’s sexual ethics and preserve denominational unity.
“It is deplorable that the Western Jurisdiction, along with many annual conferences, has ignored the Council of Bishop’s proposal, ratified by the General Conference, for a ‘pause for prayer – to step back from attempts at legislative solutions and to intentionally seek God’s will for the future,’” said the Rev. Rob Renfroe, president of Good News, in response to the Western Jurisdiction election.
“Instead, these conferences have moved ahead with legislative enactments pledging non-conformity with the Book of Discipline, culminating in the election of a practicing homosexual as bishop,” said Renfroe. “If the Western Jurisdiction wanted to push the church to the brink of schism, they could not have found a more certain way of doing so.”
In celebrating the candidacies of openly gay individuals, Matt Berryman, executive director of the Reconciling Ministries Network, said, “It’s time for The United Methodist Church to move boldly forward into the future and elect its first openly gay bishops to the glory of God and for the unfolding of a new future together.”
According to a 2012 New York Times article, Oliveto has performed more than 50 “holy unions” for same-sex couples. “My bishop has been very supportive of me and my wife,” Oliveto told CBS.
The Northeastern Jurisdiction passed a resolution of non-conformity regarding the church’s prohibitions against same-sex weddings and the ordination of openly gay clergy. The jurisdiction also called on annual conference financial officers to state that there are no funds available to investigate complaints or conduct trials for clergy who violate the church’s teachings.
“In light of the Western and Northeastern Jurisdiction’s actions effectively renouncing their connection to the rest of global United Methodism, evangelicals and traditionalists within the church will be conferring in the next few days to agree upon responses that will acknowledge this grave breach of unity,” said the Rev. Thomas Lambrecht, vice president of Good News. “If our covenant is no longer in force, we will be forced to live into a new reality in our denomination.”
– Good News Media
by Steve | Jul 8, 2016 | In the News, Uncategorized
As we mourn this week’s tragic events in Louisiana, Minnesota, and now Dallas, it is evident that we need God now more than ever. My prayer on this day of shock and heartbreak:
God, our heavenly Father, our minds go back to the day when Jesus knelt beside his beloved city and wept, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace — but now it is hidden from your eyes” (Luke 19:42).
We sense so deeply the same reality. We weep for our cities even as we bury our dead. The sound of gunfire is the grim sound of what has already shattered our relationships. We are witnesses of distrust, revenge, and anger. We see no one to lead us and guide us. To whom shall we go?
Our differences seem to lead us even farther apart. Oh, Lord of miracles, do what only you can do to save us from ourselves. Give us men and women who will lead us to reconciliation. Give us leaders who will bind us up to heal our wounds, not those who will only incite more hate.
Give us voices that will bring hope and not despair. Please comfort the bereaved and give humility to the ones who are resistant to your ways. Give us pause so that we might sit back for just a few moments to look to you before we look at our impulsive solutions.
We shed another’s blood when we are without answers. You shed your own blood as our only answer. We kill, buried in despair. You rise, giving us hope.
You told Peter to put back his sword and you restored the one wounded. That’s what we long for. A reprimand to the one who would injure and a healing within the one injured. God of miracles, please do it again. We need you. Our nation needs you. Our leaders need you. Many a home today will not have a loved one returning. Without you we have no hope. With you all things are possible—even for beauty to come out of ashes. We pray for the day of unarmed truth and unconditional love. Please answer our prayer.
In the name of Jesus your Son, our only Savior, we ask this.
Amen.
Ravi Zacharias is a Christian apologist, speaker, and author. You can read this prayer on his website HERE.
by Steve | Jul 1, 2016 | In the News, Uncategorized
An Open Letter to the People of The United Methodist Church:
As clergy and lay leaders of healthy, vibrant orthodox United Methodist congregations, and as teachers preparing the future clergy leaders of our denomination, we welcome the creation of the Wesleyan Covenant Association. In these times of great uncertainty about the future of The United Methodist Church, we believe it is important for orthodox congregations, clergy, and laity to work together, to support one another, and to encourage each other. We long for a church committed to sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the last, the least and the lost.
Committed to the Wesleyan expression of orthodox Christianity, we believe the church can and must do better. We are alarmed by the growing loss in average worship attendance in many of our annual conferences. We regret the now numerous instances where colleagues in ministry have broken covenant with the rest of the church and sowed the seeds of schism. We are grieved by the actions of annual conferences that have decided not to conform to our Discipline. And we are disappointed in leaders who have failed to maintain the good order of the church. Consequently, the work of faithful pastors and laity has been undermined, healthy congregations have left the denomination, and thousands of United Methodists have gone in search of other places to worship and serve.
We believe the Wesleyan Covenant Association will give orthodox United Methodists hope for the future and serve as a source of encouragement as the church works through a critical period of discernment. We want to serve in close partnership with our brothers and sisters in Africa, Europe and the Philippines. And we want to be prepared to act as one in light of the important work and recommendations of the Bishops’ Commission on the Future of the Church. We encourage all orthodox clergy and laity to remain steadfast and faithful in these uncertain times. We believe the Wesleyan Covenant Association will bind us together and make us a strong, united witness for Scriptural Christianity.
We believe that God is “doing a new thing.” We believe a new and better day is coming for the people called Methodist who are committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the authority of the Scriptures, and the church’s being a missional force determined to reach a lost culture. We yearn to step into this new future together with others of like minds and hearts.
Please visit the Wesleyan Covenant Association website (www.wesleyancovenant.org) to learn more about it. We also hope you will plan to join us in Chicago on October 7, 2016, for the first gathering of the association.
We are confident you will be hearing more about the association in the weeks and months ahead, and we trust you will join us as we band together for the sake of a vibrant, Wesleyan expression of orthodox Christianity.
In Christ,
Billy Abraham, Perkins School of Theology, Dallas, Texas
Bill Arnold, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky
Ryan Barnett, Kerrville First UMC, Kerrville, Texas
Keith Boyette, Wilderness Community UMC, Spotsylvania, Virginia
Madeline Carrasco-Henners, Luling First UMC, Luling, Texas
Ferrell Coppedge (lay), Mount Bethel UMC, Marietta, Georgia
Bryan Collier, The Orchard UMC, Tupelo, Mississippi
Jennifer Cowart, Harvest UMC, Byron, Georgia
Jim Cowart, Harvest UMC, Byron, Georgia
Dan Dalton (lay), Dalton & Tomich, Detroit, Michigan
Maxie Dunnam, Christ UMC, Memphis, Tennessee
Walter Fenton, Good News, The Woodlands, Texas
Scott Field, Crystal Lake UMC, Crystal Lake, Illinois
John Gaulke, Altoona UMC, Altoona, Iowa
John Gerlach, Trinity UMC, Windsor, Connecticut
Jeff Greenway, Reynoldsburg UMC, Reynoldsburg, Ohio
Joy Griffin (lay), International Leaders Institute, Carollton, Georgia
Wes Griffin, International Leaders Institute, Carollton, Georgia
Jeff Harper, Evangelical UMC, Greenville, Ohio
Jeff Jernigan (lay), Powder Springs, Georgia
Rick Just, Asbury UMC, Wichita, Kansas
Charles Kyker, Christ UMC, Hickory, North Carolina
Jessica LaGrone, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky
Thomas Lambrecht, Good News, The Woodlands, Texas
Jim Leggett, Grace Fellowship UMC, Katy, Texas
Kenneth Levingston, Jones Memorial UMC, Houston, Texas
Pat Miller, The Confessing Movement, Indianapolis, Indiana
Carolyn Moore, Mosaic UMC, Evans, Georgia
Mike Morgan, Marion First UMC, Marion, Iowa
Norman Neel (lay), San Augustine, Texas
Martin Nicholas, Sugarland UMC, Sugarland, Texas
Craig Peters, Shueyville UMC, Shueyville, Iowa
Rob Renfroe, The Woodlands UMC, The Woodlands, Texas
Chuck Savage, Sardis UMC, Atlanta, Georgia
Branson Sheets, Covenant UMC, Winterville, North Carolina
Stephens Sparks, Indianola UMC, Indianola, Mississippi
Greg Stover (retired elder), West Ohio Annual Conference, Lake Waynoka, Ohio
Andrew Thompson, Springdale First UMC, Springdale, Arkansas
Richard Thompson, First UMC, Bakersfield, California
David Watson, United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio
Max Wilkins, The Mission Society, Norcross, Georgia
###
* Church names provided only for identificational purposes.
by Steve | Apr 23, 2015 | Uncategorized
Remembering Ira Gallaway
By James V. Heidinger II
2015
Dr. Ira L. Gallaway, one of United Methodism’s most influential evangelical leaders over the past four decades, died March 16, 2015, at the age of 91. A memorial service celebrating his life was held Sunday, March 22 in Estes Chapel on the campus of Asbury Theological Seminary (ATS) in Wilmore, Kentucky. The setting was especially appropriate as Ira had served on the ATS board of trustees for more than 40 years, with several of those years as board chairman. Dr. Timothy Tennent, current ATS president, led the service, and Dr. Maxie Dunnam, a former president of the seminary, gave the memorial message for his long-time friend and colleague in ministry. Dr. Steve Martyn, a professor at the seminary and long-time friend of the Gallaway family, also participated in the service, as did I.
It would be difficult to overstate the impact Ira had on The United Methodist Church. He answered the call to ministry in 1956 and went to Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. After serving at Highland Park (Dallas), Hutchins, Kirkwood (Irving), and Walnut Hill (Dallas) churches, he became district superintendent of the Fort Worth East district. In 1971, he went to Nashville, Tennessee, to serve as General Secretary of the United Methodist Board of Evangelism. While there, he was influential in bringing future leaders to Nashville, including Maxie Dunnam to the Upper Room and Joe Hale, Eddie Fox, and George Morris to the Board of Evangelism.
In late 1972, Ira began a 17-year appointment as senior pastor at First United Methodist Church in Peoria, Illinois, one of the largest UM churches in the North Central Jurisdiction. Biblical preaching and regular Bible study were at the heart of his ministry there. Ira hosted the Upper Room’s first Cursillo spiritual retreat at Peoria First, which would soon become the very successful Walk to Emmaus program. A few years later, Ira joined laity from Peoria First to go to Hong Kong, to lead a Walk to Emmaus, which has grown and moved on into mainland China. One of those Peoria lay persons, Mrs. Joan Krupa, recently completed a three-year term as the first female chairperson of the Asbury Seminary board of trustees.
Ira, helped always by his lovely and gifted wife Sally, was a major leader in the cause of Scriptural Christianity and renewal within the denomination. He was a charter board member of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, founded in 1981 by Dr. Ed Robb and others. Then, he and the late L.D. Thomas were key leaders in the founding of the Mission Society for United Methodists in 1984. Ira had shared with me his sense of God’s providence at work as he contacted his friend H.T. Maclin regarding who might give leadership to a new mission-sending agency. To Ira’s surprise, H.T. had just resigned from his jurisdictional staff position with the General Board of Global Ministries, and he said, “Ira, how about me?” And so it was. Ira served for many years on the Mission Society board, and chaired it for several years.
Ira also played a key role in enlisting six prominent United Methodist leaders to serve on an invitation committee to invite other pastors from the denomination’s largest churches to come to Houston as an expression of concern about the church’s drift from its traditional doctrine. Some 48 leading pastors from 42 churches in 18 states gathered in Houston and signed what became known as “The Houston Declaration.”
Ira was also on the Coordinating Committee for the gathering of United Methodists in January, 1992, hosted by Maxie Dunnam, then senior minister at Christ United Methodist Church in Memphis. That conference resulted in “The Memphis Declaration,” a statement affirming the church’s traditional stance on human sexuality and calling the church to a new emphasis on mission and world-wide evangelism. More than 200,000 United Methodists signed the Declaration.
When the Confessing Movement within the United Methodist Church was launched in April of 1994, Ira helped the new movement on a part-time staff basis as it established its headquarters in Indianapolis.
Ira was much involved in helping the Methodist Church in Costa Rica, traveling there often to speak and teach. And in retirement, he and Sally were involved with the Four Corners Ministry with the Navajo Indians.
All of these ministries speaks much about Ira’s heart and his leadership in renewal efforts within the denomination. Ira was unquestionably a natural leader. He was fearless, and courageous, and a man of deep conviction, and he lived by those convictions. God used Ira to touch countless lives across the years. This was evidenced by the number of families from First Church Peoria who came all the way to Wilmore, Kentucky for his service.
In the final years of his life, Ira lived at the Wesley Village Retirement Community in Wilmore. While there, he continued to serve as a consultant and emeritus member of Asbury’s Board. He was preceded in death by his wife, Sally, his two sons, Jerry and Timothy, and two grandsons, John and Zachary. He is survived by a daughter, Cynthia, and son, Craig (wife Deb), thirteen grandchildren, and five great grandchildren. The theme for his service of celebration was the theme to be inscribed on his grave stone in Glen Cove Cemetery near Coleman, Texas. It is simply: “Thank You, Lord!”
For this good friend, colleague, and bold leader within the United Methodist Church, we also say a heartfelt “Thank You, Lord!”
James V. Heidinger II, editor emeritus of Good News.
by Steve | Jan 1, 2015 | Uncategorized
By Kenneth Tanner
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14 ESV)
“Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17 ESV)
On a wall in the chapel of the Saint Catherine’s Monastery, a remote wilderness abbey at the base of Mount Sinai in Egypt, hangs an icon.
It’s not a poster of Brad Pitt or a reproduction of the Apple or Microsoft logo. This is a religious icon, perhaps the oldest in the world – a special painting the first Christians called a window into heaven.
This figure of Christ Pantocrator, or Christ the Ruler of All, is no ordinary icon. No surviving icon of its era looks anything like it. It seems fresh, as if painted yesterday.
Believed to have been given to the desert monastery in the mid-sixth century by the Byzantine emperor Justinian, it survived a period when icons were destroyed in many urban churches, was preserved against deterioration in the arid climate, and was secured from invaders by an order of protection the prophet Muhammad himself granted after the monks of Saint Catherine’s gave him shelter and hospitality.
The icon shares sixty-three points of precise alignment with the image of Jesus “burned” into the Shroud of Turin, five times the number of alignments needed to match fingerprints.
For many, this is the closest thing we have to a photograph of God.
Note the difference between the left side of the face (in which some see evidence of Christ’s torture and passion) and the right side (in which some discern his transfigured, resurrected radiance).
The icon tells the story of Good Friday and Easter.
The eyes stand out. Something about them is not quite right. For some, they have an unsettling quality. One of my childhood friends had a lazy eye. He was wonderfully unconscious of his difference, but I often was distracted by it. More frequently than I’d like to admit, I caught myself staring.
The more time I spent in prayer looking at this unique image of Jesus – the Pantocrator – the more the asymmetry of the eyes troubled me. I pondered why the artist would paint Jesus with a physical “imperfection.”
Eventually I realized this was not a problem with the artist or the image but rather a limitation of my imagination, a failure to see everything there is to see in Christ. After all, the word became flesh in Jesus (John 1:4) and was made like us in every respect (Hebrews 2:17).
Jesus took on everything it means to be human. One early Christian pastor taught that “what has not been assumed has not been redeemed.” Jesus grew tired, donned a cloak against the piercing cold and burning sun, could catch a virus or suffer a wasting disease, and if all that is true, he might also have borne some physical “defects.” Isaiah’s prophecy of the suffering servant warned us that Jesus had “nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him” (53:2b NLT).
Still, I discovered it wasn’t just a matter of accepting that Jesus might have had physical imperfections. I had never absorbed into my heart the reality that the divine became one with matter in Jesus. Real flesh, real bones, real heart.
My encounter with the Sinai Pantocrator helped end my inherited mental image of Jesus as a stick figure in a Bible story – a Sunday school flannelgraph character – and experience the full-blooded actuality of how things are in Jesus Christ; even the possibility that the sinless one’s participation in our nature involved bearing physical infirmities, just as daily he grew thirsty, hungry, and weary.
Icons of Christ help us consider that Jesus is no abstraction – no mere thought, no matter how beautiful; no protagonist in a children’s story told to make us feel better – but the express image of the unseen all-holy God made vulnerable (Colossians 1:15), made like us “in every way.”
We see in Jesus the sacred reality of our humanity as God intended it from the beginning; his was the first human life to fulfill that intention. The Sinai icon helps us comprehend that we become most truly human when we embrace the humanity of God in Jesus Christ.
Embracing the humanity of God, icons help us visualize such an incredible possibility; that we might, by grace, become transfigured partakers of the divine nature in clay (2 Peter 1:4).
I have a sort of odd pastoral practice. I keep small wood-mounted reproductions of this Sinai icon in my backpack to give to strangers and friends. I started this about ten years ago on Chicago’s trains, subways, and buses. My commute was four hours round trip. Eventually folks figured out I was an undercover man of the cloth, commuting and working just as they did every day – someone imperfect enough that they eventually came to share with me their questions about God.
The icon gave me a way to show them the gospel and allowed me to use fewer words when I did so. Fifteen hundred years after its creation, the icon still hangs in the shadows of the mountain on which God forbade the worship of idols.
The reason this isn’t ironic is that icons are not idols. Idols are objects that we make and worship in place of the living God. In Jesus Christ, God has acted to make a perfect image of himself (Hebrews 1:3).
God has made Jesus the “visible image of the invisible God.” When iconographers depict Christ in the icons they write – in their parlance, icons are “written,” not painted – the writers are not fashioning a god for themselves but rendering an image of what the Father, Son, and Spirit have already done in the incarnation of the one God in Jesus Christ.
It is not idolatry that God became flesh in Jesus, and it is not idolatry to depict what God has done and hang these depictions in our homes and houses of worship just like we hang family photos or images of contemporary leaders. We would never think to tear such images up or deface them, because these pictures represent the people we love. Almost no one worships these depictions. Christians do, however, worship a God who clothed himself in clay, in the same material stuff with which he made our ancestors in his image in the Garden of Eden.
Women and men are made in the image of God, female and male together bearing all that is in God, and so it shouldn’t surprise us when our incarnate Lord looks like us. The Sinai icon reminds us that we are one with him and he is one with us.
Ponder with me for a moment the mystery that we’ve entered when we encounter Christ in the Gospels . . .
When Jesus is on the Sea of Galilee with the disciples, and storm winds and waves frighten even seasoned fishermen, we find the God who made the waves, the wind, and the wood the boat is crafted from – who made everything and holds everything together – tired and asleep in the hold of the ship.
God is asleep on a boat, even though our first thought as readers is that, of course, Jesus, a mere human, is napping (and that is true, too).
When the disciples awaken Jesus and he surveys the situation (and their hearts), he rebukes their fear, and then a mere man stands up on two feet in a vessel sloshing with lake water and speaks: “Peace, be still.”
Someone just like the rest of the disciples – with breathing lungs and a beating heart, sleepy and finding his sea legs – makes the wind stop gusting and turns the waves to glass with his words. As readers, we think Jesus is God and this awe-inspiring ability fits his divinity, but Jesus is also merely human, no more special in his biochemistry than anyone else in that boat on a sea gone wild.
When we read every story about Jesus with the sort of contemplation that icons allow – realizing this protagonist is in every moment God “all‑in” and human “all‑in” – we begin to discern that something has happened forever in God and something has happened forever in us, because the Son who breathed the stars into fiery existence and set their courses in the sky, who made the orchid and the hummingbird, humbled himself and was made like us in every way: weary, thirsty, hungry, aching, longing, striving, rejected, fallen, marvelous clay that we are, that we might be as he is, as God from all eternity. World without end.
The Sinai icon reminds us that in Jesus Christ, God leaves fingerprints, leaves DNA , wherever he goes (Jesus is human without measure); that Jesus breathes the spirit of the Father’s loving-kindness on all things (Jesus is divine without qualification).
His blood, his touch, his stops of breath reconcile the creator and the clay that as female and male alone in all creation bears the image of God.
Jesus walks with us, walks as us now, and we participate by our prayers, by our touch, by our faith and compassion – sometimes even by our blood – in the renewal of all things.
We see the likeness of Jesus in every human. Would that they might behold in our faces the icon of his vulnerability, self-sacrificial love, and resurrection in this wild, wonderful world he became human to restore to life without end.
Kenneth Tanner is pastor of Church of the Holy Redeemer in Rochester Hills, Michigan. His writing has appeared in Books & Culture, The Huffington Post, Sojourners, National Review, and Christianity Today. This essay originally appeared in Disquiet Time: Rants and Reflections on the Good Book by the Skeptical, the Faithful, and a Few Scoundrels (Jericho Books). It is reprinted by permission. This article appeared in the January/February 2015 issue of Good News. Artwork is Christ Pantocrator from Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai.
