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Join us for the 12 Day YMCA Devotion Series – LIVING STONES: LEAD, CARE AND SERVE LIKE JESUS
How can we be ‘like Living Stones’ used by God to strengthen the presence of Christ where we lead?
Recently, 24 YMCA leaders with the OnPrinciple program visited 12 places throughout the Holy Land where Jesus taught about how to live and lead in God’s kingdom.
From this experience comes 12 spiritual leadership principles – or Living Stones – (inspired by 1Peter 2:4-5) that Christ-followers can embody as we are being built up to lead, care and serve everyone, like Jesus.
by Tim Hallman, Christian Emphasis Director with the YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne
“It’s so dark and loud, I can’t believe how intense and crowded it is up here” I whispered to myself as a few of my friends squeezed through the dense throng with me in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher at the end of the Via Dolorosa.
We were in the Old City of Jerusalem trying to see the eleventh and twelfth stations of the cross, where Christ is depicted as being nailed to the cross and then dying on it.
Standing there in the dim candlelight and swirling incense, I wondered what it would have been like for the Lord’s beloved disciples and family as they tried to see him on the cross.
Bewildered? Terrified? Heart-broken? Wondering: “How could this happen?” “Why did this happen?”
We’ve all had our own moments of dark grief, loud confusion, and intense fear; there is no escaping suffering in this world, it is all around us in spirit, mind, and body.
Kierkegaard comments that when we suffer patiently this is not specifically Christian, freely choosing to suffer, though, is.
Jesus willing and freely chose to suffer and die on the cross – it is both our salvation from sin and an example to us on how to sacrificially lead and love.
Especially as Christian leaders, we imitate Christ Jesus when we follow his example of practical compassion to those who are suffering and thirsty for loving help – organizing and inspiring from start to finish.
The work that God gave Jesus to do was triumphantly completed on the cross, and our Lord was faithful to the finish, which included suffering at the hands of those he loved and was sent to save.
When Christians lead with sacrificial love, when we choose to suffer from others, we are allowed to share in word and deed the Good News of Christ Jesus and what he finished on the cross.
What is the sacrificial work God has given you to finish in your community, with your friends and family, in your congregation or workplace?
What has Christ been calling you to finish, to complete, to bring to an end for those in your midst who need a drink of hope and forgiveness?
May the suffering and compassionate Jesus be an example to you in spirit, mind, and body to finish what you started, sustaining you as living stones sacrificially leading, loving, and serving where he has sent you.
“Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.”
A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips.
When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.”
With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”
This YMCA devotion series brought to you by onPrinciple – click here to learn more about it – a new leadership development program to strengthen the presence of Christ in the YMCA
Click here for the entire devotion series as a downloadable PDF booklet.
Click here to access entire devotion series on YouVersion
With all the shopping and wrapping, hurry and stress of the season, along with the many crises of 2020, it is almost impossible to sense the presence of Christ. What can we do to remember and live as if Jesus is King of our Christmas?
Advent is that season of the church which precedes Christmas.
It’s a time to remember when Christ was nowhere.
We are the Christmas people though, believing and giving witness to the world that Christ is now here.
But there was a time in the world when Christ was not.
And that is how it still feels for too many people.
It can feel that way in the church too.
Often it feels like Christ is nowhere, but we choose to remember and believe that Christ is now here.
There is a word that describes this Advent experience.
Prolepsis.
Prolepsis is not a word used much around my house. Never, actually.
For those in speech or debate class, you may be familiar with prolepsis. It’s the anticipation and answering of a possible objection to a point you are making in your presentation.
For those that are story-tellers, we use phrases that tap into prolepsis.
When we use a phrase like: “he was a dead man walking” – he’s not really a dead man yet, but he will be, and he is seen as a dead man now, though he is not yet.
A few years ago I was in jail, thinking about prolepsis.
Following my sermon study, I made a visit to the county jail. While waiting for the inmate to be brought out for our visit, I stood leaning against the cement wall pondering how to explain prolepsis.
I got to thinking of all the inmates I have visited in jail.
There are some inmates who are truly imprisoned.
For them, the past, present, and future are wrapped up in being imprisoned now. They feel trapped, they don’t know how to avoid being jailed, and though they don’t want to stay in prison, they don’t know what to do different to stay out of prison once they get out.
But there are the prisoners I visit with who are already free.
They may be on the other side of the glass, but they are with me in spirit. When we talk, we talk about what will be different, and what is already different. They are ready to do the work now that will both lead to freedom and keep them free.
They are not just living in the future, they are doing now what they will need to do in the future to be and stay free.
Though they are not as free as they want to be, they are as free as they can be. They are so certain of becoming an staying future, that they live and act now as if they are free.
That is prolepsis. The future present now, but not yet. The present that is yet to be. The future unfolding in the now.
Prolepsis in Scripture is scripted by promises.
Prolepsis helps us see the Christmas story anew, because Christmas is about promises made and promises kept.
Christmas is about the present that is yet to be, about a future that is unfolding in the now.
Christmas is about Jesus as king now, but not yet.
You can see this so clearly in Mary the mother of Jesus, as written down in the Gospel according to Luke.
The messenger of God proclaims good news to Mary:
you shall bear a son who will save his people from their sins; You will name him Jesus, and he will lead his people out of exile; Jesus will become king of Israel, he will sit upon the throne of his ancestor King David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; His kingdom shall come and it will never end.
What does Mary do? A few things.
First she wonders why the angel is even there.
Then she wonders how all this will happen.
But then, in wonder and delight, she responds with faith and faithfulness:
“May it be to me as you have promised.”
Mary, Theotokos – mother of God
Soon after she hurries off to hang out with her cousin Elizabeth, who had a similar encounter with a messenger of God.
While there, Mary bursts into song, and it’s full of prolepsis.
Mary’s song envisions a world where what God has promised has already come to pass.
Mary’s Song of Protest, Gospel via Luke, chapter 2
All the angel did was announce the birth of a king, and Mary is singing about the downfall of the proud.
Mary believes a savior will be born, and now she is lauding the Lord for having lifted up the poor and humiliated.
She’s not even pregnant yet, and Mary acts as if the promises to Abraham and David have already been fulfilled.
That is prolepsis.
Believing a promise so strongly you behave as if it is fully true now.
King David had a promise-making moment with the Lord, one that is very relevant to Mary’s song and our proleptic examples.
He finally had rest from warring against his enemies. David sat firm and secure on his throne. But as he looked out from his palace, he realized that God dwelled in a tent. Whereas David sat in royal splendor, God’s house was a stitched together of animal skins.
Maybe David felt guilty? Maybe David felt bad for God? Whatever the reason, God wasn’t impressed. He didn’t need a new house, didn’t want a new house, and didn’t ask David to build anything for him.
Actually God put David in his place: who are you to decide what kind of house is good enough for God?
But then God followed up with a string of promises to David: God will build a house for David that lasts forever. The God of Israel who established David’s kingdom will cause it to never end.
It’s an extraordinary promise to David, who is completely humbled by this turn of events.
David breaks into song and prayer, praising the Lord for making this promise to his house, to Israel. But David sings as if the promise is already fulfilled, he prays as if the kingdom is an eternal one already.
It’s like when a bride and groom pledge to uphold their vows to one another, promising fidelity forever.
In that moment, they are caught up in savoring an eternal promise. Right there and then they experience the feeling of a promise of forever fidelity.
For sports fans out there, everyone knows that elite athletes practice prolepsis. The basketball shooter at the free throw line can see himself putting the ball through the hoop before he actually does it. The future point is already present in the now, but not yet.
The quarterback can already see his wide receiver making the catch in the end zone before the throw has been made. The sprinter has already crossed the finish line in first place before he is out of the starting blocks.
In their minds they are victors before the contest has begun. They practice in prolepsis, seeing themselves holding the trophy while they prepare for it as if it had already come to pass, but not yet.
This is what the church does when we share in Eucharist together.
The bread and the cup of communion is a present experience of a future reality, the Great Banquet with the King. We eat and drink now as if the Great Banquet has already started.
We believe we are having a communion with the Lord now as if he had already set the table.
Or take baptism: we go under the water and are brought up from it as if we were dying and being resurrected from the dead.
Baptism is death and resurrection now, but not yet. It is believing the promise so strongly, we live now as if we have already died and been raised bodily from the grave.
Prolepsis is powerful and transformative; it is the name we give to the experience of believing the promises made to us, and living in the light of them.
Advent is a proleptic event: it reminds the church that we are a proleptic people.
If you:
have been baptized, you are living in prolepsis
partake of Eucharist, you are doing prolepsis
believe the promises God made to Israel were fulfilled in Jesus and are given now to you,
then you are doing prolepsis.
Christmas is prolepsis; the First Christmas being prolepsis of the Last Christmas.
Jesus coming to Israel as their king was a now AND a not-yet reality.
He is God reigning over the world in Jesus of Nazareth, king of Israel and lord of all nations, but not yet.
The crucified, resurrected, ascended Lord Jesus Christ was, is, and shall rule in truth and grace forever; he does so now through the church, but not yet fulfilled.
He has promised to rescue us from sin and death, we experience it now, but not-yet.
We are so confident in Jesus keeping his promise to save us, that we act as if it has already happened; the future present now.
Our trust in the Lord is so strong that we live now as if our forgiveness on Judgment Day has already occurred; the present that is yet to be.
The faith we have in God is so vibrant, we believe that his reign has already begun on the earth; Christmas is about promises made and promises kept.
Christmas is about prolepsis. Will you believe it?
For those with searching eyes and yearning hearts, it too often feels like Christ is nowhere.
That’s what it felt like to the inmate I visited in jail, as she poured her heart out to me. How does God feel so far away? Why doesn’t he feel close?
But to those who have heard the promise and believe it, Christ is now here.
Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil, cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. [NIV]
-St. Paul of Tarsus, Letter to the Romans, 12:9-10
Every generation has challenges to face. The daily news keeps reminding us of that. Global and local events also remind us that there is always darkness, there is always evil, there is always sorrow, there will always be hate. The questions is though: when you face challenging situations in your heart, in your home, in your community, in our nation, will you have enough light, enough good, enough joy, enough love to overcome?
Probably not on your own. We need friends to help us make it through. I believe that we especially need the Lord, who faced the darkest hate in our world – and he overcome it with light and love. He can send us friends, he can send us wisdom and strength, he can be with us as we strive together to overcome our hatred.
In our world we aspire to love others, but often succumb to hating others. As we seek to serve and lead in our homes and communities, may we be empowered by the Spirit of the Lord to let go of hating others. May we love from the center of who we are in Christ, to hate what is evil and cling to what is good, to love our enemies and bless those who curse us.
May these quotes on love and hate inspire you to honest reflection, candid confession, and a lighter tomorrow:
Hatred paralyses life; love releases it.
Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it.
Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
-Anne Lamott
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
-Jonathan Swift
In time we hate that which we often fear.
-William Shakespeare
Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated.
-George Bernard Shaw
It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love.
This is how the whole scheme of things works.
All good things are difficult to achieve;
and bad things are very easy to get.
-Rene Descartes
Hate is too great a burden to bear.
It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.
-Coretta Scott King
If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself.
What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.
-Herman Hesse
Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.
-Henry Emerson Fosdick
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
-James Baldwin
When we don’t know who to hate, we hate ourselves.
-Chuck Palahniuk
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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