Tuesday, May 25, 2010

The "Lord's Prayer" does NOT say "daily bread"..yada..This is NEWS?

Any pastor who has done
their homework knows the huge "secret" outed in Diarmaid MacCulloch's magisterial book,

"Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years."

So why don't we preach this stuff?

Other than commentaries (and books by George Eldon Ladd) why does it only leak out in books like this by gay Anglicans (!!) that most of our flock will never read? And in reviews (by moderate Anglicans) of that book in a publication like The New York Times Book Review, that most of our flock will never read, but should?

Love the wry "not in Kansas" last line of the reviewer below, as he ponders these same questions, and maybe answers them. Time for us to kickstart out of Kansas and modernity and into an Oz-fest. Maybe the Anglicans (Phyllis Tickle, anyone?) are leading the way:
..in a wonderfully revealing insight of MacCulloch’s, that the “daily bread” for which countless Christians ask in the Lord’s Prayer is not what most people think it is, a humble plea for sustenance. “Daily” is the common translation of the Greek word epiousios, which in fact means “of extra substance” or “for the morrow.” As MacCulloch explains, epiousios “may point to the new time of the coming kingdom: there must be a new provision when God’s people are hungry in this new time — yet the provision for the morrow must come now, because the kingdom is about to arrive.”

We are a long way from bedtime prayers here.
-link


Maybe we are just afraid of what will happen if the flock find out they have been fleeced about what anyone who has studied the Bible (Matt. 4:17...) knows is THE central message of Jesus:

"..the Gospel is not that Jesus died on the cross for your sins so you can go to heaven when you die, but that the Gospel that Jesus preached was the Gospel of the Kingdom.

When you say this to people they look at you like you’re insane.

‘Of course the Gospel is that you can go to heaven when you die’, they say.

But the Gospel isn’t a one-time event, it’s a daily participation with Christ in the Kingdom life.”
Interview with Dallas Willard in RELEVANT Magazine
(read it all here)


Guess not many churches are quoting Dallas Willard either..
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MacCulloch describes himself as a "candid friend" of Christianity."I have a strong appreciation of the importance of it all," he says. "I've struggled with statements of belief. I think it's hugely important. It's still very important to me. I play the organ and sing in a church choir and I can't imagine life without Christianity. But I cannot sign up to doctrinal statements."
-link

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