Denver Community Church

November 29, 2009: Worse Than a Bastard – Michael Hidalgo

When we look at the Nativity Scene, it seems so perfect. Mary looks great. Joseph looks like a proud Papa. Jesus, although presumably only a few hours old, even seems to have a little smile on his pudgy baby face (he also may and may not include) a halo. It is the perfect story. Mom, Dad, and a baby – why not make this beautiful?

 

What we forget is that they were in a place for animals, and Jesus was in a place where those animals ate and probably slobbered. And the reason Joseph and Mary were alone? Because it seems that their extended family did not even want them around … they did not even want them to stay in the guest room in their own home. So they, as a new family, are relegated to animals. And this makes sense … Mary is pregnant, and no one knows who the father is. Jesus, was a mamzer, a child who was worse than a bastard … for he was represented what was a threat to God’s people.

 

This is something that followed Jesus the rest of his life (John 8). Suspicion, doubt, and even name calling directed toward him. Jesus birth was a time of joy, but also a time of pain and probably doubt. For his mother, was a woman who was to have her soul pierced as she knew her son, would continually have to endure a reputation that was simply untrue. But in this, we find something beautiful … a God who became something worse than a bastard. To help us, bastards ourselves. 

November 22, 2009: Heaping Coals – Michael Hidalgo

Kindness is a term sometimes reserved for little things like a smile, a card, a flower picked for a special someone, or helping someone out. All of these things move toward a proper understanding of kindness, however there is more there than just friendliness. Chrestotes (Gk. Kindness) was an inscription that was used for as a title for honor among rulers and important public figures. 

 

It is interesting to note that when Jesus called people to follow him he invited them to take his yoke upon them. The yoke that he described as chrestotes; if this is the yoke we are called to take onto ourselves. Which may be why when Jesus calls us to love others in Luke 6 he appeals to this by describing God as one who is “kind (chrestotes) to the ungrateful and the wicked.” In our kindness we never know what effect we have on someone else. We may heap burning coals on their head – which does not mean to get even with them – for coals were symbols of purification. It means that through our kindness they may meet the source of our kindness.

November 15, 2009: The Mother God – Michael Hidalgo

Each time the word compassion is used in the Gospels it is always accompanied by action … and really it has to be. The Greek word for compassion speaks of the deepest place of the emotions. Compassion is when that “seat” of the emotions is disturbed. If it is disturbed, something has to be done. 

What is fascinating about the Greek word splanchna and the Hebrew word for compassion rechum is that they both were also used to speak of the womb. The picture of the deepest place of the emotions, and the deep seeded feelings of a person connect to the womb of a mother. 

When we are moved inside of us on behalf of someone else, we become like a mother. A mother who when she sees her child in pain or in suffering only wants to comfort her child because the child is a part of her. When we see suffering and are filled with compassion and moved to act it is because we see the other as someone who is like us. When we are moved inside the comfort others we are like a mother … and also like God herself.

November 8, 2009: Image Bearing – Dave Neuhausel

If we are freed from the violence of our culture, and if we are able to live in the Truth of who God has called us to be, then we as a people are then able to live true lives. We do not need to lie anymore … about who we are or about who we believe our brothers and sisters to be. We are able to be open with who we are for we are all continuing to become more like our Creator. 

 

In this new community of Christ our identity is found fully in him. Therefore there is no longer Democrat of Republican, American or Iranian, rich or poor … we are left only with a picture of Christ who is all and is in all. If Christ is in everything, then we must radically rethink “all” or everything that we come into contact with. This means that what Paul is speaking of cannot be merely personal, but has effect throughout the entire world for all people. This means that the Church is a part of the new humanity that God is preparing for a new Creation. 

November 1, 2009: Language and Violence – Michael Hidalgo

We have reduced human beings to statistics, commodities, objects removing the truest identity of any person, and that is Image Bearers. This is not a call to be polite, to be passive, or to be the kind of people who simply choose the easiest way. This is a call to remove ourselves from the violence that our culture does to us everyday. 

This is not always punching somebody in the face, but it is speaking of them as something other than who they really are (slander is to characterize people as something they are not … and slander is language that grows out of anger, rage, and malice). Many would wonder where the idea of violence is in our culture … maybe it is all around us, and maybe we are in it. 

We do not recognize that we often are so saturated in our culture that we no longer hear or see the violence that is all around us. But it is here. We are an angry culture precisely because we have submitted ourselves to the social-political-corporate mentality of bigger, stronger, faster, more productive … we have begun to align ourselves in the most subtle ways within this world. As such we have learned to cover over who we really are. 

We need to understand who we are called to become we need to look beyond the anxiety that our culture creates in us. When we do we will find fear, beneath that we will find hurt and beneath the hurt will be guilt. This guilt produces rage and hatred which comes out of our own frustrated desire to be who we were created to be, and that is people who are dearly loved. In every feeling, look deeply. Explore without ceasing. At the bottom there is love, which is who God is, and we are made in his image.

October 25, 2009: God and Violence – Michael Hidalgo

Exploring the wrath of God. Let’s be honest, the wrath, anger, and fury of God is just not popular anymore. But why? It is clearly a part of who God is, but how can a God who is “love” do such things to his kids? 

If God did not get angry, I think we would have to wonder how passionate his love was in the first place. After all what is the right response to reversing and perverting the beautiful creation that he has put forth? God’s wrath can be seen in the brokenness, dehumanization and barrenness that idolatry and sexuality produces. 

For those who have been brutalized, exploited, and oppressed who do they have to go to? Who will hear their cries? When we consider God’s wrath in light of the injustice that we see all around us it suddenly makes sense. 

October 18, 2009: Sex and Violence – Michael Hidalgo

Why are sex, greed, and idolatry all in the same list?

Sexuality is something today that has given way to our culture of violence. We live in a culture that has industrialized sexuality in such a way that we have begun to exploit the most sacred of unions. Wendell Berry writes, “Like any other industrial enterprise, industrial sexuality seeks to conquer nature by exploiting it and ignoring the consequences.”

Sex is the ultimate physical expression of love given to us by God to participate in the ongoing process of creation. By design it is about giving oneself to the other. Our culture has reversed this into “getting some” thereby turning sex into something we are getting … when taken further sex is something we are taking from someone else for our own pleasure. When we speak of conquering, getting, or taking we are using a violent language rooted in greed. 

All of this comes from the worship of a false God. (See Hosea’s metaphor of sex, economic injustice, and idolatry). If we turn away from the God who created us we will turn to something else, which is an idol. In the words of John Kavanaugh, “Remade in the image and likeness of our own handiwork, we are revealed as commodities. Idolatry exacts its full price from us. We are robbed of our very humanity.” Which sounds quite violent doesn’t it?

October 11, 2009: Up There and Down Here – Michael Hidalgo

We need to be clear, setting our minds on things above does not mean “being so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good.” It means committing ourselves to the ministry of Jesus who is in heaven. As we live our lives here we need to do so in anticipation of our future. We need to live recognizing what our lives and the world will be like and working toward that now.

October 4, 2009: What is the Church – Jon Gettings

September 27, 2009: The Medium is the Message – Dave Neuhausel

“Mission” is one of those words that we most often associate with a “trip” or some sort of assignment to an overseas post in a remote village.  This stereotype is centered around understanding mission as something that is done by a certain type of person, in a certain unique location.  The striking reality in scripture is that God is a “missional God”, and has been since the beginning of time.  

 

Mission is not therefore a human project, but a divine one…  The arch of scripture unfolds as a story in which God has been redeeming the whole of creation and he has chosen us to be his message.  The scandalous reality of the gospel message is that he uses losers to reach the lost.   In fact, God not only invites, but commands that we “embody” this mission ourselves.  Like it or not as Christ followers we are “on mission”…  There is no such thing as a static existence.  Life is made up of the countless moments, relationships and opportunities in which we either embrace this mission as God’s people or we allow life to simply happen to us.  In whatever case, the world is watching…