re:group Session 1: Living in the Rhythm of Love
Posted in Jesus Creed, North Point, Scot McKnight, love, missional, morality, re:group, table fellowship on November 11th, 2008 by Steve Bradley – 4 Comments
This past Saturday, I took part in something called re:group, which was essentially a day of learning and sharing for those involved in the community groups ministry at North Point Community Church.
I have more notes, insights, and takeaways than I can share in one post, so I’m planning to break this into several posts over the next few days…
One huge plus was the opportunity to hear Scot McKnight, author of The Jesus Creed, who led two separate sessions on what it means to live a missional life.
In the first session, Dr. McKnight spoke of the need for us to recapture the sacred spiritual rhythm of Jews in Jesus’ day, who began and ended their day with a recitation of the Shema from Deuteronomy 6. More specifically, McKnight calls upon Christians to recite The Jesus Creed, aka Jesus’s own unique formulation (combining the Shema and the call from Leviticus 19:18 to love your neighbor as yourself), which is found in Mark 12:29-31:
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.
Seems simple enough. Loving God and loving others. But reciting it and actually living it are two very different things…
For as McKnight notes, loving God and others is not simply a duty to perform, it’s a life to live. And living this way can prove to be dangerous for your moral life, as it presents a challenge in every relationship you have.
Take Jesus for example. Although he himself was morally perfect, he often hung out with folks whose moral standing was questionable at best. And while sharing table fellowship alone with such folks would have been scandalous enough, he went beyond this to go into the homes of “sinners,” literally gracing them with his presence.
So while the moral person says, “If you’re clean, eat with us,” Jesus says, “Eat with me and I’ll make you clean.”
Pretty powerful contrast, don’t you think?
More posts to follow. But for now I’ll end with a couple of questions:
Which do you value more — living in a loving way, or living in a morally pure way? How do you stay in rhythm with God?
