Dante Anyone?

 Good morning friends,

 

A friend of mine recently made me aware of a project between six universities on Dante’s Divine Comedy that I want to pass on to you. While the list is below, I’ll point out that they include Baylor (a Baptist school) and Gonzaga (a Roman Catholic school) – yes, they both have good basketball teams but more importantly, if you can believe it, they also have great professors.

 

Three times a week the project sends a link to a short video by a professor, usually less than ten minutes, that leads participants through the Divine Comedy (they also provide the text from the Divine Comedy for each presentation). Previous videos can be watched anytime. These men and women know their material and they are great to watch – they are more excited about Dante than Gonzaga’s basketball fans are about their team (well…maybe that was hyperbole).

 

There is a reason Dante is considered one of the greatest poets of all time; and there is a reason he is considered an amazing Christian thinker. It is said that he was C.S. Lewis’s favorite poet, this means that Lewis not only appreciated how Dante wrote, but what Dante wrote.

 

I hear a lot about “worldview,” and yet our worldview seems to change with the newspaper headlines, and what we value today we are fully prepared to discard tomorrow if it suits our agendas. Dante presents a Biblical worldview that is focused on the glory of God and the transformative glory of Jesus Christ. He not only calls sin “sin,” but he unpacks how sin corrupts mankind. Thankfully, he also shows us the way of transformation into the image of Christ and portrays the glory of God in a fashion that leaves even him at a loss for words.

 

In a season of history in which our teeth are rotting from cotton candy, I hope you will consider taking this journey through the Divine Comedy; Baylor and the other schools have done an amazing job on this project.

 

Here is a link to the website and below is an excerpt from the website:

 

https://100daysofdante.com/

 

From the Baylor University website:

 

100 DAYS OF DANTE

 

A Presentation of

 

BAYLOR UNIVERSITY HONORS COLLEGE

 

With Support From

 

TORREY HONORS COLLEGE AT BIOLA UNIVERSITY

TEMPLETON HONORS COLLEGE AT EASTERN UNIVERSITY

UNIVERSITY OF DALLAS

WHITWORTH UNIVERSITY

GONZAGA UNIVERSITY/ GONZAGA IN FLORENCE

 

 

At some point, we’ve all been lost, or looked up to see the path ahead dark and unclear. For some of us it’s at the beginning of our spiritual journeys or when we face a hard decision. For others it’s after many years of life, when we wonder what might be coming next.

 

And for one poet, over 700 years ago in Florence, Italy, it was midway through his life’s journey.

 

Welcome to One Hundred Days of Dante.

 

Baylor’s Honors College, with support from five collaborating universities, will lead the world’s largest Dante reading group this fall in honor of the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death. Through a beautifully designed, engaging website, we’ll read Dante’s wondrous poem, the Divine Comedy, and discover how it can change our outlook, love of God, and embrace of neighbor.

 

Through 100 short, accessible videos led by our faculty and others, we will guide readers around the world through the poem. Starting this September, tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to hear from a great teacher who shares their love of Dante with us, and then share your insights with all of us through conversations on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #100daysofdante.

 

100 Days of Dante is for all of us who want to read a great poem accompanied by a guiding light. For us who want to read not just for careful thinking, but for thoughtful living, applying the wisdom of the past to our own lives.

 

Visit the website now to watch a brief video and sign up for updates. This is 100 Days of Dante: let’s read together.

 

https://100daysofdante.com/

Romans 1:1 – 7, A Meditation (10)

 

 

Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, who was declared the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles in behalf of His name, among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ; to all who are beloved of God in Rome, called as saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

 Continuing to ponder what it means to be “the called of Jesus Christ”:

 

What do you see in the following passages?

 

“All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out…This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day…No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.” (John 6:37, 39, 44).

 

“…that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life…I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word…I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me; for they are Yours…I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.” (Excerpts from John 17).

 

There is a sense in which, as we ponder these words of Jesus Christ, that we are invited to take a glimpse into the eternal counsels of the Godhead, the Trinity. I don’t know that this is analogous to walking through the front door, perhaps it is more like standing outside a window that has been lifted up so that we can just hear pieces of conversation and catch a few rays of light. The temptation when we encounter the mysteries of God is to speculate on the things we don’t know rather than meditate on the things that God has graciously revealed to us. When we speculate we miss God’s unveiling of Himself, while if we will humble ourselves before Him and receive what He is revealing we will find ourselves being drawn deeper into the koinonia of the Trinity.

 

When we ponder the above passages, can we see that we do not belong to ourselves? Can we see that the genesis of our relationship with Jesus Christ is in God and not in ourselves? Do we see that Jesus Christ holds us tightly within Himself? While we may not understand it, can we acknowledge that the Father has given us to the Son?

 

In Acts Chapter 15, when the elders in Jerusalem met to consider the ramifications of the Gospel being preached beyond Judah and Galilee, James had this to say, “Brethren, listen to me, Simeon has related how God first concerned Himself about taking from among the Gentiles a people for His name” (Acts 15:13 – 14). Do we see what James is saying? God is “taking from among the Gentiles a people.” Just as Jesus called and took fishermen by the shore of the sea of Galilee, just as Jesus called Matthew from his tax business; even so God was calling and taking individuals from among the Gentiles that Peter, Paul, and Barnabas were preaching to – God was taking them to make them “a people,” to make them one with God’s People.

 

We see the deliberateness of God in His “taking from among the Gentiles” in Peter’s vision in Acts 10 and his visit to Cornelius; we see it again in Acts 13 when the Holy Spirit says, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” God is ever the initiator in missions; He calls whom He wills to both engage in mission and to respond to the Gospel in mission. In other words, we cannot go without His grace nor can others respond to the message preached without His grace.

 

If we are indeed “the called of Jesus Christ,” then not only are we not our own, but our work and ministry must not be our own – we must learn to bow our hearts before the eternal counsels of God and submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ, abiding in the Vine – convinced that without Jesus Christ, the Vine, we can do nothing (John 15:5).

 

Is the mark of the ownership of Jesus Christ upon our lives and the lives of our congregations? Do we live as people who belong to Another? A distinguishing feature of Jesus Christ was that He lived under authority, this is what the centurion recognized (Matthew 8:9); do people recognize this about us and our congregations? Are we subject to the authority of Jesus Christ? Are we living according to the will of Another? Is doing the will of our Father and Lord Jesus our source of light, life, and joy – is it the very reason we live?

 

I hope we will also see the orientation of the Biblical Christian life, that it is centered and arranged with the Trinity at its center, as its focus, and as its purpose and completion. Hence Paul writes, “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.” (Rom. 11:36).

 

“But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, ‘Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Cor. 1:30 – 31).

 

Do you think of yourself as being “the called of Jesus Christ”? What does Christ’s calling look like in your life today?

Romans 1:1 – 7, A Meditation (9)

 

Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, who was declared the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles in behalf of His name, among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ; to all who are beloved of God in Rome, called as saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

“…among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ; to all who are beloved of God in Rome, called as saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

 

The recipients of Paul’s letter were those among the nations for whom Paul and others had received grace and apostleship to bring about “the obedience of faith.” These men and women and young people were “the called of Jesus Christ.”

 

What do we think about the idea that we “are the called of Jesus Christ”? Is this the way we think about ourselves and other Christians? Consider the foundational premise that if we are called to something or someone, then we are necessarily called away from other things. In other words, if we are being called to Jesus then we are being called away from ourselves, from sin and death, and from this world system. Another way to think about this is that if we are called to one group or community or city, that we are at the same time being called away from another group or community or city.

 

We find this idea of “calling” in the Greek word for church, ekklesia, which means those called to an assembly; again, if we are called into something we are also called away from something. In the sense of Church, the assembly we are called to includes a transcendent community of saints that spans time and space and reaches into eternity. Therefore, when we gather as God’s People we experience ekklesia on a local level, on a global level, and on a cosmic level at the very same time (let us hope so anyway). We are where we are because God has called us in Jesus Christ, and hopefully we see this locally, globally, and cosmically; or in an immediate, intermediate, and a transcendent sense.

 

Consider Hebrews 12:18 – 24 which includes, “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.” How do we relate to this passage? Is this theoretical to us or is it our experience? Are we living in an awareness that the Church, to which we have been called in Jesus Christ, is a definable and distinctive community both in the world and in the cosmic order?

 

Or, perhaps I should write that the Church ought to be a definable and distinctive community in the world – for where do we see the Biblical Church today?

 

Jesus calls us into the fellowship, the community, the communion, of the “called out.” I am called, you are called, we are called. Jesus calls to me, He calls to you, and He calls to us. Jesus calls to me and to you so that there may be an “us,” a “we,” an ekklesia.

 

There are some exceptional barriers to us understanding and experiencing the communion of saints, for we are more like Judah in Babylonian captivity than any other Biblical motif, we are estranged from our center of worship and community. Our self-focus mirrors that of the returned exiles in Haggai during the Restoration, we are taking care of our own houses, our self-interests, while the House of God lies desolate (Haggai 1:9). The very reason Judah was released from captivity was to rebuild the House of God and the Holy City, yet upon their return the exiles forgot their calling, they forget the purpose for their release from captivity.

 

So it is with us, we have been delivered from sin and death to serve God in righteousness, as the People of Jesus Christ, a dwelling place of God in the Spirit; and yet we twist our lives and preaching and teaching into a message that is centered on us, centered on man, as opposed to being focused on the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ.

 

If we are indeed called, then we belong to the One who calls us. If we are collectively called, then we collectively belong to the One who calls us. In Christ, our lives are no longer our own, they belong to Jesus Christ. Our failure to understand this is an exceptional barrier to us being the People whom God called us to be.

 

Consider the trajectory of 1 Peter 1:1 – 2:12, noting 1:18 – 19 and 2:9 – 10. It is because we have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb that we are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession…”

 

Is this how we are living today?