Pete Rollins – For Those With Ears to Hear – #ppp09

New readers -please note there is a context here, especially with Pete. He uses a lot of  paradox, irony, and hyperbole.  But he also uses humor, hence the segue entrance.

After he successfully dismounted, he gave these words prior to the real introduction of  his message: “My job is to get you to disagree with me.  I don’t even agree with meYou need to push back against what I am saying.  To cause a rupture ….”

Peter Rollins – For Those With Ears to Hear: Parables and the Lost Art of Provocation – an exploration of that theological dis-course that holds the power to send us hurtling off course and onto a new one

We need Substantial Change

Christianity is fundamentally violent – People like St. Theresa ruptured the system (Ghandi, MLK)

The question isn’t whether Christianity is true but what does Christianity claim when it claims to be true?

The desire to know the name of God -Moses – systematic theology – gives us insight to who we are now

People’s dogs looks like their owners – people’s gods also look like them

– in baptism, we are brought into the name of God

Revelation is –
epistemological incomprehension
experimental bedazzlement – experience you can’t experience
transformation – no longer the same again

God is apocalyptic – the incoming of something you cannot predict

He reveals and conceals at the same time.

It is darkness and light – hidden/revealed – mystery/revelation
we are changed/renewed
You are my strength (my maranatha) but I am weak.
I fired it up, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah
I curse the day when I saw the light, when you found me.
I find my home in Babylon, where I am exiled.

Why don’t worship songs express our darkness, only love and hope?

So our preaching should be a discourse.
a course that take you off-course

Theo-poetry
something to disturb, alter, change
disruptive, subversive & grounded

Sermons are always about the here and now.
always on the practical

I deny the Resurrection every time when I fail the poor, when I do not serve the helpless

I affirm the Resurrection every time I stand up for those that cannot stand for themselves.

This is substantial change.

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