Internet Monk Radio Podcast #99
June 7th, 2008 by iMonk
Sabbatical Week 3, Books and poetry, Capon on Jesus inclusion and the church’s exclusion, the sounds of nature.
You all need to buy “The Gospel for Those Broken by the Church” and more Reformation theology gifts from New Reformation Press.
Nice podcast. I especially loved the poems and the cicadas and the bells at the end (a poem without words). Beautiful and evocative! Thanks for that.
It’s a pleasure to hear you read, and quite refreshing to have a dash of poetry injected into the quotidian. Maybe you could consider doing a short poem every now and then as part of your podcast?
Also, you’ve mentioned in a couple of places that you think Capon is wrong about some things. I would really welcome you saying more about that in a post sometime. His writing resonates strongly with me, but not being well versed in theological fine points, I would be interested in knowing where and why you think he is off base.
Many blessings on you as you continue your sabbatical!
Dear Monk,
While I agree the church certainly went wrong from the start in some ways (e.g., excluding Gentiles or making them second class citizens), I do not think the Corinthians were right by including the incestuous man and Paul wrong by telling them to exclude him. Do you?
I didn’t exegete the passage. I said that I don’t buy the notion that everything done by Christians in the NT was necessarily what Jesus would do. Some of what Christians do is probably not what we should do. Based on what little I know, I don’t have an issue with what Paul did, but I do have a lot of questions about what I don’t know. There’s a lot of information not provided.
But I said that even in my view of the church as an “AA” type movement, there are times people have to be removed for the health and continuance of the group.
But I don’t think having sexual sinners around is counter to being the movement Jesus modeled. He included sexual sinners and I don’t know what the prostitutes did after they heard the Gospel. Some may have not repented perfectly on the spot.
I hear Jesus offering the gospel to the Samaritan woman. That’s what I want Christians to do. Capon says we make it a sport to exclude and call that Christianity.
Michael, another book of Brueggemann’s prayers is “Inscribing the Text,” which is actually a collection of both prayers and sermons. I commend it if you haven’t read it.