Tuesday Tome - Simply Jesus

I thoroughly enjoyed my three days last week at the N. T. Wright conference at Elmbrook Church in Milwaukee. Wright is a gracious man, a brilliant scholar, and a master teacher. Even though I already had his book, Simply Jesus, I bought another copy just so I could have him sign it.

And now, as I think about it, Simply Jesus will be a splendid reading selection for the approaching Advent and Christmas seasons. Let me know if you'd like to read it with me. Think about it. Doesn't N. T. Wright and Handel's Messiah sound like a pretty great combination?

Here is an excerpt from the book:
Christian worship declares that Jesus is Lord and that therefore, by strong implication, nobody else is. What's more, it doesn't just declare it as something to be believed, like the fact that the sun is hot or the sea wet. It commits the worshipper to allegiance, to following this Jesus, to being shaped and directed by him. Worshipping the God we see in Jesus orients our whole being, our imagination, our will, our hopes, and our fears away from the world where Mars, Mammon, and Aphrodite (violence, money, and sex) make absolute demands and punish anyone who resists. It orients us instead to a world in which love is stronger than death, the poor are promised the kingdom, and chastity (whether married or single) reflects the holiness and faithfulness of God himself. Acclaiming Jesus as Lord plants a flag that supersedes the flags of the nations, however so "free" or "democratic" they may be. It challenges both the tyrants who think they are, in effect, divine and the "secular democracies" that have effectively become, if not divine, at least ecclesial: that is, communities that are trying to do and be what the church was supposed to do and be, but without recourse to the one who sustains the church's life. Worship creates—or should create, if it is allowed to be truly itself—a community that marches to a different beat, that keeps in step with a different Lord.