Author Archives: Maxie Dunnam

Distinctive Style of Methodists: Heartfelt Religion by Maxie Dunnam

Distinctive Style of Methodists: Heartfelt Religion by Maxie Dunnam

Followers of Jesus have throughout history exhibited a distinctive style.  In my first article I shared about Wesley’s peculiar flair. The second article highlighted a Methodist’s catholic spirit. Here, we will look to the heart of the Wesleyan movement.

 

 

The Methodist movement was born in England and soon began to burn with a fire of love across the land, in large part, because of two big problems in the Established Church. One was spiritual apathy. Deism had flavored the intellectual and religious climate. God had become a benevolent ruler of the universe, removed from personal experience. In the arrogant rationalism that pervaded the day, everything had to be utterly reasonable.

The second thing that had happened was that the nature of the church as an organization had become remote, removed from life, not touching the people where they were. One cleric, for instance, had been made a bishop and given a lifetime stipend, but never set foot in the diocese over which he presumably had spiritual and temporal oversight. It was obviously all temporal and nothing spiritual.

Into that setting with those two characteristics – spiritual apathy and a remote church structure -came the Methodist revival with an answer to these two glaring, devastating failures of the church. The answer? Heartfelt religion.

For spiritual apathy, there was the experience of the warm heart. People wanted desperately not only to hear the gospel, but also to experience it. So John Wesley’s Aldersgate experience became the model: “I felt my heart strangely warmed, I felt I did trust Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” That experience was repeated over and over.

Furthermore, for people who experienced a church that had become lifelessly formal at best, and coldly remote at worst, the Methodists came with ministries of care and warm concern. The class meetings and bands of the Methodist societies became the settings for these expressions of compassion. People cared for and looked after each other’s souls. Loving hearts set other hearts on fire.

In a lecture at Emory University, Dr. Theodore Runyon introduced what to me was a whole new way of thinking about the “heart strangely warmed” and structures of care as means for our growth in Christ and our life in the world. It is a new way of thinking about a Methodist style. He used three terms to make an important distinction: orthodoxy, orthopraxis, and orthopathy. The first two terms were familiar; not the third. Orthodoxy is right doctrine, right opinion, right belief. But Methodists have never believed that orthodoxy was enough. God demands right action, right practice, right behavior – that is orthopraxis.

Even with that kind of plea for orthopraxis, working faith, Wesley always insisted that as faith without works is dead, works without faith profiteth nothing; that “all morality, all justice, mercy and truth – without faith – is of no value in the sight of God.”

Neither orthodoxy nor orthopraxis alone is sufficient. And what Runyon adds is that even together, they are not enough. There must be orthopathy. This means right passions, senses, tempers, dispositions; and in the larger sense, right experience. This, says Runyon, is the challenge to a theology of conversion – 

To recognize the crying need of humankind to be encountered and transformed by Christian faith in all aspects of their being, including the emotions, feelings, and experiences. Nothing less is a sign of the kingdom and its power in the midst of the present age. And nothing less than this kind of theology and experience ought to undergird our preaching, our Christian education, our evangelism and mission, and our witness and action for peace and justice.

Runyon then gave three hallmarks for such an orthopathic theology. First, Wesley’s “bookends” of creation and kingdom, the fundamental conviction that all creation is to be redeemed by Christ. The world and everything in it is to be brought under the Lordship of Christ not destroyed, but redeemed.

The second hallmark of orthopathy is realism about the present order of things. “We are a part of a world that has corrupted God’s good creation and become insensitive and deaf to God’s will and way.” The gospel forces us to see the alienation and estrangement of the present order and present the gospel necessity of being reborn into a new order.

Thus, the final hallmark of orthopathic theology is the familiar word of John 3:7: “You must be born from above.”

Runyon’s insight helps us think clearly about how we provide the opportunities for the “heart strangely warmed” and the structures of care that will be settings for the transformation of our whole life and total experience. When Wesley insisted that “true Christianity cannot exist without the inward experience and the outward practice of justice, mercy, and truth,” he brought orthodoxy, orthopraxis, and orthopathy together and gave us our marching orders.

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Distinctive Style of Methodist: Catholic Spirit by Maxie Dunnam

Distinctive Style of Methodist: Catholic Spirit by Maxie Dunnam

In my last article I made the claim that Methodists have a distinct style. As Christians, our style defines us as much, maybe more, than anything else.

I have the privilege of observing that more than most. My wife and I live in a life cafe. We have lived here for seven years, and plan to make this our “earthly home.” Though not formally defined and labeled as a “Christian Community,” we are. We have Christian worship on Sunday and a vesper service on Thursday.

We have many denominations represented here and at least two Jewish couples. Baptists and Church of Christ are the largest defined denominational groups. Though a minority, there are Methodists and our group is growing.

Other than the local churches I have served, different expressions of my ministry career have given me opportunity to live and test the popular expression of how Christians should relate: In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and, in all things, charity. Wesley described his approach to differences in belief in one big question, “Is thine heart right, as my heart is with thy heart…If it is, give me thine hand.”

I don’t know who first suggested it, but I confirm that sadly the church and too many Christians are plagued with xenophobia. Formally defined, xenophobia is “hatred or distrust of foreigners or strangers.” It is not new to the church. The apostles feared Paul and his work among the Gentiles. They were suspicious because they did not understand. That spirit within the church has often hindered the ministry of Christ. We fear opinions, positions, attitudes, and beliefs that do not match our own.

Over against xenophobia I want to put those celebrated words of John Wesley. “Is thine heart right, as my heart is with thy heart … If it is, give me thine hand.” Those words are actually from 2 Kings 10:15. Wesley used them as the text for one of the noblest sermons he ever preached, his sermon on the “Catholic Spirit.” It was one of the few instances in Wesley’s preaching when the scriptural setting of the text had nothing to do with the sermon. Unlike most of us preachers, Wesley didn’t take a text and depart from it; he stayed with it. Not so in this instance.

Wesley took the words completely out of their grisly context in 2 Kings 10 and asked, not what they meant there, but what a follower of Christ should find in them. And from that exploration, he gave us a great word to guide us as we claim and cultivate one of the most important marks of our distinctive style as Methodists: a catholic spirit.

Unfortunately there has been destructive misunderstanding and a misapplication of Wesley’s concept of the catholic spirit. We interpret that to mean “theological pluralism,” and such a pluralism has been projected as both acceptable and desirable of what it means to be a Christian within the Methodist tradition. Taken to an extreme, there is a fallacy in this concept. The way it is projected suggests that such a believer can believe almost anything about God, Jesus Christ, and the essential doctrines that relate to salvation. But this is a perversion of Wesley’s idea of the catholic spirit.

Such an uncritical, undemanding, unexamined emphasis on so-called pluralism was the furthest thing from Wesley’s thinking. He was unreserved in his condemnation of what he called “speculative latitudinarianism,” which would be his word for the way many interpret pluralism today. Wesley was rather adamant:

A catholic spirit is not speculative latitudinarianism. It is not an indifference to all opinions: this is the spawn of hell, not the offspring of heaven. This unsettledness of thought, this being “driven to and fro and tossed about with every wind of doctrine'” is a great curse, not a blessing, an irreconcilable  enemy, not a friend, to true Catholicism. A man of a truly catholic spirit has not now his religion to seek. He is fixed as the sun in his judgment concerning the main branches of Christian doctrine. It is true, he is always ready to hear and weigh whatsoever can be offered against his principles; but as this does not show any wavering in his own mind, so neither does it occasion any. He does not halt between two opinions, nor vainly endeavor to blend them into one. Observe this, you who know not what spirit ye are of: who call yourselves men of the catholic spirit, only because you are of a muddy understanding; because your mind is all in a mist; because you have no settled, consistent principles, but are for jumbling all opinions together. Be convinced, that you have quite missed your way; you know not where you are. You think you are got into the very spirit of Christ when, in truth, you are nearer the spirit of Antichrist. Go, first, and learn the first elements of the gospel of Christ, and then shall you learn to be of a truly catholic spirit (Fifty-Three Sermons, “Catholic Spirit,” p. 502).

With that perspective, it is easy to see that nothing is more needed in the church today, certainly in the United States, than a Catholic Spirit.

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Distinctive Style of Methodist: Knowing Who We Are by Maxie Dunnam

Distinctive Style of Methodist: Knowing Who We Are by Maxie Dunnam

Circumstances sometimes call us to do strange things – things we would not otherwise do. Circumstances also cause us to do things we should have done but never got around to before.

Two out-of-town visitors were walking along a street in New York City late one night. One of the pair, wary of the reputation of city streets at night, kept glancing over his shoulder, nervously eyeing every alley and shadowed doorway. Sure enough, his anticipation was rewarded. As the two rounded the next corner, two muggers appeared out of the darkness and closed in. The nervous fellow knew what was going to happen. He reached for his wallet, pulled out of a $50 bill and handed it to his friend: “Joe, here’s that $50 I’ve been owing you for six months.”

According to some critics, John Wesley never had an original idea in his life. He just borrowed from others. But the point is, even if it’s true that Wesley only borrowed from others, that would hardly solve the riddle of this man and the spiritual dynamic of the Methodist movement. Wesley’s genius and originality lay precisely in his borrowing, adapting, and combining diverse elements into a synthesis more dynamic than the sum of its parts.

Wesley also had the genius of putting an expansive, explosive truth in a single, sometimes simple sentence or a pithy phrase. He encapsulated his vision of mission and ministry in the sentence that has been on the lips of Methodists ever since: “The world is my parish.” He borrowed from Paul to summarize his theology succinctly: “Faith working through love.” He gave a challenging and rather complete principle of stewardship in the crisp triplet: “Gain all you can, save all you can, and give all you can.”

He put controversy into perspective, and challenged our motives, “Fervour for opinions is not Christian zeal.” He found unique ways to call people back to the essentials of Scriptural Christianity, “Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? Can anything but love beget love?” He described his whole approach to differences in belief and church order in the one question: “Is thine heart right, as my heart is with thy heart?… If it be, give me thine hand.”   

Together, these references suggest there is a distinctive Methodist style. I want to confirm and commend that. My wife, Jerry, and I live in a life care community. Even casual conversation and the way persons relate in our community reveal something of what they believe. We Methodists are a minority in the community, Church of Christ and Baptists are majorities. Even if I were not deliberately observant, I believe I would sense “something different.”  I think that has to do with style.

Diana Vreeland was an undisputed leader in fashion. She wrote her autobiography with the simple but stylish title, DV. It recorded her lifetime of living with inimitable style. She made a big point about the importance of style by referring to Japan. “God was fair to the Japanese,” she said. “He gave them no oil, no coal, no diamonds, no gold, no material resources-nothing! Nothing comes from the island that you can sustain a civilization on. All God gave the Japanese was a sense of style” (House and Garden, April 1984, p. 36, excerpts from DV). It was the ultimate compliment to the Japanese from this fashion style setter.

Methodists have a style that, to a marked degree, defines our uniqueness. I’m going to reflect on this distinctive style in the weeks ahead, and post here on Wesleyan Accent.

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The Human Race On Trial by Maxie Dunnam

The Human Race On Trial by Maxie Dunnam

My files are flowing over with magazine and newspaper articles, cartoons, and photos. Unfortunately, I have not found a good “keeping” and “retrieval” system that is not too time costly for the reflections I prize.

Yet, I saw it and I can’t forget it…a cartoon that depicted an older couple, obviously rich and retired, sitting in their posh living room. The lady was reading, her husband looking out the window with a smile on his face. One gathers that he has just shared with her his latest dream for retirement activity. Frowning, she looks up from her book and says: “With strikes, campus unrest, the communist take-over, air pollution on the rise, hippie protest, and immorality rampant, it doesn’t strike me as the time to start a butterfly collection!” 

As we move into this twenty-first century we need to reflect on this wise claim that has been made: the twentieth century has put the human race on trial for its life. 

It is difficult not to believe that. The institutions upon which we have become dependent, around which our lives have been ordered–education, business, medical services, the penal system, organized religion, government–have each in some way been gradually revealed as inadequate, a few of them perhaps beyond renewal and repair. In any case, they have not been equal to their promise; they cannot fill the longing in us. 

We are dissatisfied with things as they are. And while dissatisfaction is as old as the human race, and every period of history is unique in its own fashion, I believe we have reached a crucial moment in human civilization. Atomic bombs are not just more powerful weaponry. Electronic computers are not just more complex adding machines. Neil Armstrong was more than a latter-day Columbus setting foot on the moon. 

Dare I even think it? Maxie Dunnam is not just another old man becoming 90, seeking to make a redemptive difference in a needy world. What can I do? What must I do? What will I do?

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Count It All Joy by Maxie Dunnam

Count It All Joy by Maxie Dunnam

What? Count it all joy?

After a brief greeting, James begins his Epistle, “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations.” (James 1:2 KJV)

There is no hesitation, no fumbling to get to the point. It’s really a shout, COUNT IT ALL JOY! He continues, “when you meet various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4 RSV) 

Ponder verse 3 slowly… “For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.” Pay careful attention to the completion of his thought in verse 4: “For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

You see, suffering may produce steadfastness and faith, and we still will be incomplete. We still may lack joy. Pain by itself is evil, and alone, it doesn’t teach us anything. It may discipline us to be strong and not complain. Or, it may turn us into cynics. We may be tough and steadfast in our suffering, always keeping a stiff upper lip, but that’s a long way from what James is talking about– “Count it all joy … that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

Philip Yancey, in his book, Disappointment with God, gives us a clue for allowing our steadfast faith in suffering to work its full effect in our life. He tells us about Douglas, who “seemed righteous, in the sense of Job,” and who, like Job, suffered terrible afflictions he did not deserve.

Douglas had given up a lucrative career to start an urban ministry. His wife developed breast cancer, had a breast removed, and was struggling with the debilitating side effects of chemotherapy. In the midst of this crisis, a drunken driver hit their car and Douglas sustained a severe brain injury. He suffered terrible headaches and double vision. He could no longer work full-time to support his wife and daughter. He had loved to read, but now struggled to get through a page or two. If anyone had a right to be angry with God, Douglas did.

Yancey expected Douglas to express disappointment with God, but instead, Douglas said that he had learned “not to confuse God with life”:

I feel free to curse the unfairness of life and to vent all my grief and anger. But I believe God feels the same way about that accident—grieved and angry. I don’t blame him for what happened….I have learned to see beyond the physical reality of this world to the spiritual reality. We tend to think, “Life should be fair because God is fair.” But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life -by expecting constant good health, for example- then I set myself up for a crashing disappointment… We can learn to trust God despite all the unfairness of life. Isn’t that really the main point of Job? (pp. 183-84)

Douglas challenged Yancey to “go home and read again the story of Jesus. Was life fair to him? For me, the Cross demolished for all time the basic assumption that life will be fair.”

Do you see the difference? It’s very clear. We can waste our suffering, or we can allow it to produce trust in God, steadfastness in faith. And we can allow that steadfastness in faith to perfect and complete us–leaving us “lacking in nothing.” 

So the shout of James is real. “Count it all joy!” And we can do that–if we know that growth is not easy –if we will realize that when we are suffering, it doesn’t help us to compare ourselves to others. And, if we will not waste our suffering but allow it to produce steadfastness in faith, that is what will bring us to completion, lacking in nothing.

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Forever A Wonder by Maxie Dunnam

Forever A Wonder by Maxie Dunnam

How could I even consider just briefly nodding my mind at the incarnation with the one article I  trust you received, The Scandal of the Incarnation. So, here is more since this is Christianity’s unique and central claim: the Incarnation, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1:14)

Our nearest English equivalent to the Greek term that John used at the beginning of his Gospel may not express fully what John had in mind. It was a term coined by Greek philosophers to suggest the creative, outgoing, self-revealing activity of God. And that’s what John was trying to say.  I like the way The New International Version renders it: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. God, in the beginning of all creation came, and now, in Christ, has come among us as God’s self-revelation in human form. From these clear and intentionally vivid beginnings, Christians through the ages have always given praise to the Son as well as to the Father, and they have eschewed any concept or idea of a God that stands in contradiction to this.

At the same time, the Christian claim is not only that Jesus reveals who God is and what God is like, but also that he reveals who we are as human beings and what it means to become fully human. John says not only that “the Word was God” but also that “all things came into being through him” and that he was “the light of all people” (John 1:3-4). For Christian faith, Jesus is the key to human life in the world – the key to the life of God in the soul of human beings.

Why did Jesus come?

In The Parable of the Birds, Louis Cassels tells a modern parable about the Incarnation that helps us to grasp its meaning.

The story begins by describing a man who doesn’t believe in the Incarnation and consequently thinks Christmas is “a lot of humbug.” He is a nice man; he just doesn’t understand the claim that God became man. One Christmas Eve his wife and children go to the midnight service, but he chooses to stay at home. Soon after they leave, it begins to snow, and he settles into a chair by the fire to read.

After several minutes pass, he is startled from his reading by a thud at the window. There quickly follows another thud, then another. Thinking someone must be throwing snowballs at the window, he goes outside to investigate. What he sees is a flock of birds huddled in the snow. In an attempt to find shelter from the storm, they had tried to fly through his window.

He wonders how he can help the birds, and then he remembers the barn. It would make a good shelter. So, he bundles up and heads to the barn. First, he turns on a light, but the birds don’t budge. Then he sprinkles a path of breadcrumbs leading into the barn, but the birds do not notice. Finally, he tries shooing them into the barn, but they scatter in every direction except the barn.

Cassels continues the story:

“They find me a strange and terrifying creature,” he said to himself, “and I can’t seem to think of any way to let them know they can trust me.

“If only I could be a bird myself for a few minutes, perhaps I could lead them to safety.”

Just at that moment, the church bells began to ring. 

He stood silently for a while, listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas.

Then he sank to his knees in the snow.

“Now I do understand,” he whispered. “Now I see why You had to do it.”

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The Congregation As Evangelist by Maxie Dunnam

The Congregation As Evangelist by Maxie Dunnam

It’s interesting to note that Jesus’ final commandment to evangelize never mentioned ministering to the hungry and sick. Before his crucifixion he had pictured the last judgment as a time when his true disciples would be separated from the unfaithful. He made one distinction between the faithful and the unfaithful. The true disciples would be those who have carried out his great commission to care for the distressed (Mathew 25: 31-46): “Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Yet his test of true discipleship never referred to evangelizing. Did Jesus not know his own mind? George Sweazy insists there is no contradiction here. “There is just one commandment by which all will be tested – the commandment to care for those in need. There is no great commission without the great commandment.” Looking out over the city in all its misery, it was physical suffering that Jesus mentioned. At his departure into the heavenly glory, it was spiritual needs of which He spoke. Each implies the other. Those are the twin aspects of the Gospel. 

“Our talking so much about a polarization between personal evangelism and the social gospel is absurd. The church was born out of concern for the whole person, the whole world, the whole gospel. We are not allowed to choose whether to be an evangelistic or a social gospel Christian. The world can never have enough of either.” (The Church as Evangelist, San Francisco: Harper and Row; 1978. p. 21)

Throughout my ministry I have reminded my congregations and the students at Asbury Seminary that Methodism at its best has always held these two aspects of the gospel together. John Wesley said, “The Gospel of Christ knows of no religion but social; no holiness but social holiness.” There was no holiness apart from the community. It doesn’t hurt us to be redundant and keep telling the folks that well-known historians believed that England escaped a revolution like that in France only because of the Wesleyan combination of evangelism and social action. The English trade union movement started in Methodist meeting houses. The Wesleyan revival roused concern for public health, hospital care, prison reform, public education, and the abolition of slavery.

So, again, maybe the local church needs to be evangelized to evangelize. We need to be deliberate in our churches in “making disciples” who will in turn “make disciples.” We must nurture and cherish the bond between word and deed, ideas and consequences, beliefs and actions. And the primary place where this kind of evangelizing can and must take place is the local congregation.

I think of the last congregation I served. A young man, Don, was converted, made his profession public and was baptized. During the Christmas season, soon after his profession he played his guitar and sang,”Gentle Mary Laid Her Child.” What a witness! On the following Sunday, he was singing, “There’s one who is greater, there’s one who is waiting, just let Jesus take your hand”- singing about the Messiah. 

When he sang for us in that worship service, I thought about how he came to be in our church. It wasn’t this preacher who won him to Christ. It was Martha and Don, a young lay couple who had had a transforming conversion experience in our church. They were this young man’s neighbors. Their lives were so transformed by Christ that they captured Don’s attention; their performance and their profession spoke to this young Jewish person, and their witness is really what won him.

Martha and Don embodied the personal kind of evangelism as a crucial part of what we have talked about: the congregation as evangelist, with persons witnessing in word and deed, centered in Christ, waiting on the power and timing of the Holy Spirit, growing in the grace of full discipleship, sharing in the congregation as evangelist.

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The Scandal of Incarnation by Maxie Dunnam

The Scandal of Incarnation by Maxie Dunnam

How could Jesus be truly human and truly divine? That’s a question commonly asked. Theology calls it INCARNATION. In fact there is often talk of the Scandal of the Incarnation. After a little reflection, we may best put the question, not how but why did Jesus become both human and divine?

Let’s think about it.

Few men in the twentieth century seemed as immortal as Mao Tse-tung. Chairman Mao became the incarnation of a movement, a system of thought, and a revolution that affected 900,000 people. He lived to be eighty-three and was China’s leader for over three decades. It was difficult for even the most astute observer to imagine a China without Chairman Mao. Yet he died. An admirer wrote, shortly after Mao’s death: “He conceived of the Chinese Revolution, and then helped cause it to happen, and in the process, the thought of Chairman Mao became the primary thought of almost every Chinese. The word almost literally became flesh.” 

Note the conditional word: almost; “the word almost literally became flesh.” The apostle John, writing of Jesus, said, “The Word became flesh.” No reservation, no conditional definition. And Paul wrote, “The light of the knowledge of the glory of God [shines] in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

I was in China two years after Mao’s death. His likeness in pictures and statues was everywhere. The little red book of his quotations was still in all the bookstores. Chairman Mao will take his place in history with great shapers of national life, but the limitation is still there. When I was in China, the magnificent mausoleum they had built for Chairman Mao was closed. The official word was that it was closed for repair, but the informal word passed on among the guides was that it was a deliberate effort to diminish Mao’s presence in the minds and hearts of people; and that diminishing work goes even today.

In Mao, powerful man that he was, the word of Chinese commitment and dogma almost became flesh. But with Jesus, the Word of God’s creating and redeeming love became flesh and dwelt among us. We beheld his glory, “the glory as of the begotten of the Father… full of grace and truth” (John 1:14 KJV). This is the scandal of the Incarnation. It is a scandal because it proclaims that in Jesus–the baby born in a barn, this poor preacher and carpenter who Christians praise and affirm as the ultimate revelation of God is the key to the universe and all meaning.

Don’t get stuck! We misrepresent the Church’s understanding of Christ if we oversimplify and define the Incarnation solely in terms of either Christ’s divinity or his humanity. The Incarnation actually means that Jesus of Nazareth was a man, known by his disciples as being fully human, a person who shared the limitations and temptations of common, ordinary human existence-yet was also the deliberate and unique self-expression of God. P.T. Forsythe, a preacher-theologian, put it in a gripping way: “Our real and destined eternity goes round by Nazareth to reach us.”

The first line in the Old Testament of the Bible is this: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The first line in John’s Gospel of the New Testament is this: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In the sentence from Genesis, the Source from which all comes is named. In the Gospel, John is making a decisive affirmation about who Jesus is. He is the expression of God’s own true self. Consider Jesus’ response to the question of Philip: “Lord, show us the Father.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father”(John 14:9).

Jesus, incarnate God and baby in a manger, the incarnate word, our King – Hallelujah!

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Jesus: What’s In A Name? by Maxie Dunnam

Jesus: What’s In A Name? by Maxie Dunnam

We are in the midst of the Advent season. It’s Christmas time. Let’s stay with the story…at least reflect seriously a bit. 

A central figure is Joseph. He is perplexed, deeply perplexed. The woman to whom he is engaged is pregnant and he knows the baby is not his. He is wrestling with what to do. Will he expose her, making her a public example? He can’t do that; he loves her too much. He takes the only course acceptable to his conscience. He decides to divorce her quietly, privately, hoping to cause as little a ripple in the community as possible.

That decision, though it came out of the love and justice of his heart, didn’t set well. In the midnight watches and wakefulness of his wrenching heart, an angel appeared with the astounding news:

“Do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for He will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:20—23 RSV)

Jesus will be his name. It had been declared by the prophet, Isaiah, centuries before. The angel had announced it to Mary at the time of her Annunciation: “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High…and of his kingdom there will be no end.” (Luke 1:31-32, 33 RSV) So, the question, what’s in a name? 

You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” That’s it and that is Good News!  Good News that is good for all time, and yet becomes good for me…you...anew when we accept this reality.

Accepting it begins with our accepting and admitting the bad news about ourselves. The bad news is that we are sinners.  We have bent, entangled ourselves against his unending kingdom. So let’s be very specific, name our common bondage and claim our deliverance:

Do you feel burdened down by  guilt? 

Have you started to realize that the guilt may be from unconfessed sins?

Do you feel pain in your heart because there is a severed relationship that needs reconciliation?

Do you feel helpless because you are held in the tenacious grip of a debilitating habit? Alcohol? Drugs? Gambling? 

Is your energy being drained because you live too close to the line of moral compromise —cheating in business? Preoccupied with sexual lusts?

Does your pride often put you in the position of thinking more highly of yourself than you ought to think, of looking down your nose at others?

Our ways are not His ways.  His goodness shines into lives lived apart from it and reveals this truth every day. We could go on and on, but you’ll have to do that personally.

Painful though the process of confession and repentance may be, the joy that comes as a result is “unspeakable and full of glory.” For the one whose birthday we are celebrating these days is JESUS. He will save us from our sins. If only we call upon his name…and what a name it is!

Life can be hard, like Joseph’s, but there remains a gift for us all to receive in the name of Jesus.

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What’s In A Name? by Maxie Dunnam

What’s In A Name? by Maxie Dunnam

I’m Maxie. She’s Jerry, my wife.

The setting is almost always the same. Someone introducing us to strangers will say, ‘These are our friends, Jerry and Maxie Dunnam.’ Far more times than not, the person to whom we are being introduced assumes Jerry is the husband and Maxie is the wife. I can’t begin to come close to telling you how many times I’ve had to say, smiling but in a corrective way, ‘I’m Maxie. She’s Jerry, my wife.’

We get more mail addressed “Mr. Jerry Dunnam” than any other intended receiver.

A little reflection confirms names are important. “What’s in a name?” is often critical.

We are in the midst of Advent, a four week season the Christian community has set aside, climaxing with Christmas Day. Christ Followers are called to reflect and pray, centering our attention on the coming of Christ. I can’t think of any question that will serve our reflections more richly than Jesus…what’s in a name? 

What a story! “That which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for He will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:20—23 RSV)

No reservation about his name. It had been declared by the prophet, Isaiah, centuries before. The angel had also announced it to Mary at the time of her Annunciation: “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High…and of his kingdom there will be no end.” (Luke 1:31-32, 33 RSV) So, the question, what’s in a name?

The late Erma Bombeck, one of America’s best-loved columnists, wrote a funny but penetrating piece. And I quote her as clearly as I can:

Most of us have never seen anyone smile in the Post Office. The Post Office instead is like a clinic for lower back pain. Well, I was in line yesterday, when the door opened and in walked a lady with a big smile on her face weighted down with boxes for mailing. She held the door open for her three little girls who filed in, each carrying a package. It was quite obvious that they had never seen the inside of a Post Office.

“She bounded over to a man standing over a counter pasting stamps and asked, ‘Are you a carrier?’

“Of what?” he snapped.

“Another one in line growled, “To the back of the line, lady!”

Her eyes fairly danced with excitement as she announced to no one in particular, ‘It certainly is a nice day, and just think, girls, Christmas is only one week away.”

“Will granddad get his presents?” asked one child.

“Of course, he will,” said her mother “We’ve got it all timed just about right. On Christmas Eve he’ll be sitting around the fire, the door bell will ring and a postman will knock and say, with a big smile, “Merry Christmas from your family in Arizona.”

Every eye in the Post Office turned to stare at this cross between Mary Poppins and Tiny Tim.

“Look girls, doesn’t the Post Office look like Santa is on his way?”

We all looked around. With the exception of Santa pointing his finger at us from a poster and warning, “Mail early” the place had the spirit of a Recovery Room.

Finally she got to the head of the line. “When will dad get these packages?” she asked.

The postal clerk shrugged, “Depends. Maybe by New Year’s or we could get ‘em there in one day.”

“One day would be fine!” she exclaimed.

“It’ll cost you,” he said, scribbling down some figures. “$45.83.”

The woman hesitated, then picked out one box and said, “This one must get there by Christmas Day. It’s my father’s birthday.”

The clerk shook his head and said, “Boy, that guy’s a loser. Imagine having a birthday on Christmas. One present fits all. Thank God I don’t know of anyone born on Christmas Day.”

The man behind me whispered loudly, “Thank God, I do.”

I’ve told that long story by Erma Bombeck to ask: Well, do you? Do you know anyone—do you know the One—who was born on Christmas day?

December is the month of Advent, an expectant season when Christians around the world pay special attention to who this One was and why we want to know more.  We may be a little confused by the people around us, but let us be clear about the One who was proclaimed to come – and did.

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