FLOODING IN METRO MANILA

I watched a movie and fell asleep on the sofa last night and woke up this morning to a flooded living room. About a quarter of an inch deep. Water from the ledge seeped into cracks overnight and all I’ve done all morning is sweep water into my bathroom! I went to the Condo Administration office and was told that half the residents of the 17-storey building have some form of flooding in their apartments.

When I turned the TV on, I was shocked to find others in conditions much worse than mine. I tried calling my dad and his phone was unavailable. He texted an hour later to say that he is safe but his bungalow is in waist-high flood. He was able to cross the street to his cousin Letty’s house which has three floors. His worry is that his appliances will be rendered useless when the flood waters subside. I tried calling others I know and glad all of them are safe.

My friend from church, Tim and his brothers uploaded the following photos of their house in Xavierville. Their parents are out in the island of Palawan for ministry. I tried calling him but his phone cannot be reached.

Below is a home video by some girls living in the Katipunan Avenue area where Xavierville is. This is just one section of the metropolis deep in flood waters.

Tomorrow’s assigned worship leader, band and team have all backed out since most of them are affected by the flooding. I will be the fallback, but that depends on how passable the road to church is. Last I heard from the condo personnel, C5 Road is a giant  tub of water.

Please be in prayer for my family and friends affected by this wild tropical storm.

Below are photos of different areas by different people.

Still
Words and Music by Reuben Morgan

Hide me now
Under your wings
Cover me
within your mighty hand

When the oceans rise and thunders roar
I will soar with you above the storm
Father you are king over the flood
I will be still and know you are God

Find rest my soul
In Christ alone
Know his power
In quietness and trust

LINGERING THOUGHTS

Quite a long day. It’s 1AM and I still have a few thoughts lingering in my head- items to pray about, deal with, think of.

When Someone Wants the Best Seat in the house. I have mentioned in this blogsite once or twice that I read through the Sunday readings from the Revised Common Lectionary each week to enhance my quiet time. Last Sunday’s Gospel reading includes these words uttered by the Lord Jesus himself: “Whoever wants to be first must be last and servant of all” (Mark 9:35).

Reading Jim Somerville’s sermon: When Jesus confirms that he is, in fact, the Messiah all his disciples can think is that he’s going to Jerusalem to claim the throne of his ancestor David, that there’s going to be a triumphal entry of some kind followed by a glorious coronation, and that in the end all of them will be members of his royal court. 

So when he starts talking about going to Jerusalem to be killed Peter rebukes him—that could never happen to the Messiah; and when he says it again the disciples dismiss it and go on talking about which of them will be the greatest in his royal court; and when he says it a third time James and John come to ask if they can sit at his right and left. 

Like us they had lived too long in a world where greatness is measured by how close to the top of the heap you are, and they had come to believe that Jesus was the King of the Hill.  If he was king wouldn’t they share in his glory?  Wouldn’t a little of his greatness rub off on them?  You would expect the disciples of Jesus to be above that kind of pushing and shoving for position, wouldn’t you?  But they are not, and neither are most of the disciples who have followed Jesus since.

There are people who want to be popular, applauded and honored- it’s basic anthropology! As a person tasked to serve in our church’s worship ministry one of the philosophies I imbibed from my predecessors is, recognizing the reality that there are people who truly have the discernible heart to serve through music, and there are those who simply want their skills displayed glorying in seeing their names in the worship folder! And it doesn’t take a genious to guess which of the two I lean towards asking to come and serve with the band/team of the unknown. That’s how it is in the crazy, upside-down House of God where the best seat is the footstool! 

Those who wish to be popular join the American Idol and not the worship team.

When Someone Slanders Another. Last night following the Midweek Service in which I led in singing, I was waiting for a cab outside the church a couple approached me in the rain. It was their first time to attend a GCF service and yet they seemed to have known me. The guy said he almost became my student in Bible college if it were not for something that happened prior to enrolment last semester!

He and his wife started ranting over things eventually pointing the fault finger on a minister they served with who happens to be someone I know, though not quite well. His complaints and rantings were slanderous in nature and they were alarming.

I traced a deep-seated bitterness in their tone and manner of speaking! They needed the bitterness flushed out. He mentioned how he finds every minister not worth the trust people give them. He stopped praying, going to church and even kept his Bible in a box saying, “Hey Bible! This problem has nothing to do with you but I’m keeping out of my sight and not read you until I am ready.” When I heard that he got a rebuke for a response from me.

What we consume spiritually is what we shall become spiritually. It stands to reason that feeding on spiritual junk food will lead to a certain sort of outcome. Whereas, drinking from deep spiritual wellsprings is exactly what we need to sate our most profound thirst. That’s what Isaiah invites when he says, “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters!”

Who thirsts? Well, I would tell you everyone does. Who hungers? Everyone hungers for real food that will satisfy their deepest needs. That’s right, isn’t it?

The healthiest Christian and church will be the those that lay bare the universal hunger and thirst inherent in the human condition. To not flinch from it, but to expose it, see it for what it is, and then to drink from the life-giving wellsprings and eat from the life-giving table of God word and presence.

A LOVE AFFAIR

Afternoon weather in the last several days can be described as predictable.

One goes out in the morning with sunglasses on. The sunny weather would last til around 3 when the sky begins darken and deep gray clouds would hover over the city. The wind begins to blow much harder, eye-catching flashes of lightning and rolls of mighty thunder overpower every other noise! Then begins a heavy downpour. Today is not an exception.

At lunchtime, in my sweatpants and a comfortable blue shirt I went out to grab a bite. The sun was delightfully shining over the metropolis.With my computer set before me to do some random emailing and accomplish some minor work on a holiday I nibbled on my chicken pesto sandwich. Today being Eid’l Fitr, a national holiday in the Philippines, I leisurely ate my sandwich with occasional sips of lemon iced tea. I never thought that eating a sandwich could actually be that long and enjoyable.

Just as I was about ready to pack up and head back to my condo, I heard thunder. I looked out the window and saw a massive dark cloud looming over Eastwood City. I hurriedly shut down the computer but the weather has a different definition of quick. In short, it poured even before I was able to shut my laptop down.

Streak of lightning filled the sky, bursts of thunder occasionally interrupted the soft piped in music in the coffee shop. Thinking it would take a while before the rain goes away, I turned on my computer and decided to watch a movie! LOVE AFFAIR starring Annette Benning and Warren Beatty. How it ended up in my laptop bag I have no idea. I’ve had the CD for about two years but each time I tried watching it, I’d doze off 15 minutes into the movie. I had all afternoon to watch.

I went to order mint tea when I noticed a girl- my neighbor, whom I know is a Christian- stand by my table obviously trying to watch “my” movie! Returning to my table she asked if  she could join me. I shared my headphone with her. The movie ended with the characters kissing with the song, “I Will” playing on the background.

As I was shutting the computer down, she took out an umbrella from her gym bag and handed it to me. She reached into her bag and got another one. I jokingly commented, “So one umbrella just wouldn’t do, huh?” She smiled and said, “Well, you can never tell when it might come in handy! I may have a neighbor at Starbucks who could use one on a rainy day.” We were laughing it out when she said, “I call that tangible wisdom.”

We reached our condo building dry enough. I was giving the umbrella back when she said, “You can keep that if you want. Or maybe you can give it to someone who might need it.” I smiled.

Call it tangible wisdom, but I think it’s more of tangible love. It was quiet, sincere, secret and produced no personal benefit. There she was serving another person the simplest way she can without asking for anything in return. It involved a loss on her part.

 I couldn’t help but be reminded of the kindness and love Jesus presents. Intent upon really loving other, with the will to extend himself for others.

This sort of love has no tangible reality unless it is acted out in the world. When Tertullian, a Christian convert who became a prominent theologian of the second century declared, “See how the Christians love one another!” he was not referring to expressions of warm desires and feelings between them – as though they frequently exchanged lovely Hallmark cards. He was referring to how they acted – what they did – what the content of their lives revealed. They put themselves, their possessions, their commitments, their lives, on the line for one another.

“SILENCE MY SOUL”

I am an exclusivist! By that I mean, I believe there is no other way to a proper relationship with God except through Jesus Christ alone.

What provoked my thinking? What made me state this?

Yesterday in chapel, I sat in a creative liturgy where we spoke and sang in the vernacular and used indigeneous musical instruments. I was excited about it and even helped the team translate ”You Are Good” (Houghton) into Filipino. I was asked to do a creative reading of Psalm 150. As a worship pastor, I like using indigenous instruments and elements for evangelical Christian worship- the kulintang, the agong, the tongatong, etc, dances and tribal beats and melodies. It not only gives flavor to a worship celebration but it helps people appreciate different cultural expressions of worship within the kingdom of God.

Everything was alright with me until we were asked to learn a song with text written by Hindu philosopher and polymath, Rabindranath Tagore.

Silence my soul, these trees are prayers.

I asked the tree, “tell me about god”;

then it blossomed.

from the Gitanjali

Rabindranath Tagore

(7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941)

It was the song meant for the silent meditation following the short talk on worship and the arts. As we were taught the song, it even became more obvious to me that the music is meant for a Hindu-style meditation with women singing the melody, men singing low and high “aums” and a high-sounding bell in between measures. It seemed like a Christianized way of meditating Buddhist-and-Hindu style.

I liked the whole service except for the meditation part. I couldn’t help but think of the dangers of syncretism and the monistic idea imbibed by the song. The song somewhat gives an idea that god provides specific revelation using trees more than just

Monism is any philosophical view which holds that there is unity in a given field of inquiry, where this is not to be expected. Thus, some philosophers may hold that the Universe is really just one thing, despite its many appearances and diversities; or theology may support the view that there is one God, with many manifestations in different religions. Or it could also hold that God may known through things within which this God dwells, creation.

I hoped I wasn’t being biased and too “western-bent” so I tried to “inscripturate” the song and understand it in light of creation-themed Psalms but the idea of the Psalms convey a different message than that of Tagore’s hymn. The closest I could think of is Psalm 19, where the Psalmist declares that creation is a reflection of the might of God and that by mere observation of what surrounds us we can conclude that there is a wise and powerful God who created all things. Such however does not reveal God to the human spirit adequately. So the Psalmist does not end in explaining creation but continues in saying that this God can be known by the human spirit through special revelation, His Word.

Along that line of thinking, I was reminded of my seminary classes on the prolegomena (introduction) and theology proper. In a recent conference, I had a refresher course on this where the Rev. Edmund Chan mentioned that observation of creation can give us an idea of a creator being, it merely provides an inadequate view of God which leads to truncated religious theistic expression. The Bible- and Jesus- is God’s way of completing his self-revelation!

While the Apostle Paul in his teachings used pagan literature to introduce to people who the Judaeo-Christian God is, an example is Acts 17:28 where he went to the Areopagus in Athens and took note of the Grecian holy place where he found an altar inscription “To An Unknown God.” Paul says, “God…is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ ” He says this to complete what general revelation taught the ancient Greeks who formulated their religion based on nature. Paul wanted the people to have an adequate understanding of God and used an existing cultural springboard. 

I can’t tell a tree to tell me about God neither will it blossom in response. A tree is a reflection of God’s creative power, but it can only provide an inadequate knowledge of the Creator. If a person wants to know about the God who created trees, there’s no better way but to go to the Bible!

CROSSING BOUNDARIES

His curly arm hair literally brushed up against my arm as we sat in the bus on the way to the conference. My instinctive reaction was to move my arm away from his a bit. And no matter how I appreciate having made a new friend in David, it was uncomfortable. But as I looked at my tan-colored arm at rest on my Bible with his black arm next to mine, I had an overwhelming sense of how I am one with him in Christ! I looked around the bus and saw a microcosm of the church worldwide- people from every tongue, tribe and nation.

In my devotions on John chapter 4 that evening I revisited a hymn written by famed Charles Wesley in the context of a racist world.

Awake from guilty nature’s sleep,

And Christ shall give you light,

Cast all your sins into the deep,

And wash the Æthiop (African) white.

O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing,

Words: Charles Wesley, 1739. Music: Carl Gläser, 1828

“Wash the Ethiop white” – what is wrong with an Ethiop’s skin? Whatever is so great about an Anglo skin who envies my type of skin of perpetual tan?

No mere accident I am sure, that Jesus decided to wait at high noon when the well would normally be deserted and while the disciples are conveniently away buying food. The Gospel of John tells us that he “had” to go to Samaria. Jesus crosses over and meets a woman of a race loathed by his fellow Jews; He goes where she lives and in the reality of her human need.

He does not talk down to her. Nor does he try to convert her. He does not begin a debate about whose religion is right or best. Nor does he impose himself on her. Instead, he invites her into a mutual exchange, a dialogue about a common need. “Give me a drink.” And there the door is opened….

In disbelief, the woman said to him, “How is it that you, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria? For Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.”

Jesus answered: “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink’, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” The woman said, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?” Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

What I am most clear about, clearer than anything else I know or understand is God’s unwavering determination to embrace all of humanity, and to do so without any conditions at all. God just loves us all. God loves the stranger and outcast. God loves the ones on the other side. Our own sense of “somethingness” is tied to them in extraordinary ways.

Jesus was breaking down all the barriers and ushering in a new way of being that transcends ethnicity, geography, gender, tradition, history, or any other human condition. How easy it is to build walls and set up boundaries.

Crossing boundaries presumes that there is openness to deep encounter and connection with the other. Anytime we are willing to cross whatever boundaries are necessary; whatever inhibits us from loving the other and intentionally engage one another laying aside those things that prohibit honest engagement life happens for them and also for us. (jlas/cgilliard)

The next day during morning tea break, I took out my camera and captured a Kodak moment– four men from four continents having Chinese food together under the cross!

Glen (AUS), Khayril (RUS), David (Liberia) and me

 

 

LOVE IN THE CITY, LOVE IN THE CHURCH

In one of his finest hours, the Apostle Paul wrote a masterpiece. It is beautiful and poetic. Its elegance is such that we can almost gloss right over the deep meaning of it. I think it safe to say that most Christians are familiar with 1 Corinthians 13. It ranks with the likes of the 23rd Psalm in terms of favorite scriptural readings, for it hits at the core of our life’s work, of who we are and are striving to be. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard it read on weddings.

Walking around Singapore prompted to think of some things realizing I was a man in a city robust, energized and filled with all sorts of goings-on. A principal city in Asia and a major center for trade. Many a traveler passed through there. In addition to trade and commerce, it was a city rich with diversity, opinion and thought. In one day I came across an atheist cab driver who loathes his country’s modern socialist family-run government, a Malay-race man who upholds his country’s ideals, a Hindu university student who welcomes all opinions, and a Buddhist girl who says she was a cat in her former life!

Just like Singapore, New York City or Manila, inside the church there are varying opinions about almost everything and because there is such cross-section of background and circumstance relationships can be severed and divisions happen. Questions arose about marriage and divorce, idolatry, the Lord’s Suppers and spiritual gifts. In Chapter 12, Paul addresses the church in Corinth the issue of spiritual gifts: which gifts are of greater importance? Speaking in tongues? Interpreting what was spoken? Exercising great faith? Healing? Prophesying?

And so Paul writes this letter to help them understand something better.

Love is the center our lives together as believers of Christ and it keeps on calling us to matters of faith, integrity and truth. It sounds good but we also know the challenges of living it out day by day up close and personal – not out there somewhere in the abstract. But when we begin to do the real work of loving others it causes us to reach way down in the deep places of our very being.

And so Paul writes this masterpiece for all time about how we might have life together. It’s about how to exist and tend to one another. He reminds us of the good thing that is possible for us humans. How we can be led beyond the orbit of our own self and celebrate the value and humanity of the other. Paul says that love is the supreme attribute. Better than anything and everything else. Love is the way. And not some sentimental overly romanticized something that comes and goes but a way that leads to life for the giver and the receiver and for all those who come near.

I think it bears repeating:

“Strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but not have love, I am nothing..”

Love is patient; love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things; believes all things; hopes all things; endures all things

Examine it. See how you are living into it or not. What are the challenges that come up for you? What is at stake?

For example take the line: love does not insist on its own way. What is really at stake for me if I do not insist on getting my way? What are the risks? How will others perceive me – as weak? A push-over? And so what if they do? How can I establish and maintain my presence without being rendered invisible if I fail to insist on my own way? But most importantly, what is God’s word of love for me in order that my way might also respond to the way of the other so that we both are heard and valued?

And where are those places where I arrogant or rude? And with whom? Those I claim to love most because I know for certain that others will not tolerate that sort of behavior?

Or what about the line, “when I was a child; I spoke like a child; I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; but when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” Where in my life and I being childish? In what areas do I need to grow up and become a mature adult and take responsibility for my own actions and reactions? Stop throwing tantrums?

You can see how this passage can be transformative can’t you?

“Love never ends,” Paul writes. “But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease, as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (jlas/cgilliard)

Worship at the International Disciplemaking Church Conference, Singapore

August 27-29, 2009, Covenant EFC Woodlands