What the Lord Requires: Formation for Global Discipleship Loving Mercy

I Peter 2: 9-10: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, * in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Loving Mercy I Peter 2: 11-12: Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul. Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge.

Loving Mercy Christine Pohl, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality As a Christian Tradition (Eerdmans, 1999) Literally “making room” But also a spiritual disposition

Loving Mercy New “Hospitality” Challenges 1. New evangelical social status. From cognitive minority: This world is not my home I'm just passing through my treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue the angels beckon me from Heaven's open door and I can't feel at home in this world anymore to: Shine Jesus shine Fill this land with the Father's glory Need to identify typical evangelical “false choice”

Loving Mercy Nurturing a spirituality for “the time of God’s patience” Jeremiah 29: 4-7 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Loving Mercy New” Hospitality” Challenges 2. New Global realities --shift from northern to southern hemisphere --broad educational task --specific role of spiritual formation: nurturing “identity”—Revelation 5: 9-10: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain and by your blood you ransomed men and women for God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation; and you have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign on earth.”

Loving Mercy Epistle to Diognetus:“Every foreign country is their homeland, and every homeland is a foreign country.”

Loving Mercy Henri Nouwen: “(P)rayer is the only real way to clean my heart and to create new space. I am discovering how important that inner space is. When it is there it seems that I can receive many concerns of others… I can pray for many others and feel a very intimate relationship with them. There even seems to be room for the thousands of suffering people in prisons and in the deserts of North Africa. Sometimes I feel as if my heart expands from my parents traveling in Indonesia to my friends in Los Angeles and from the Chilean prisons to the parishes in Brooklyn. Now I know that it is not I who pray but the Spirit of God who prays in me… He himself prays in me and touches the whole world with his love right here and now. At those moments all questions about “the social relevance of prayer, etc.” seem dull and very unintelligent…”

Loving Mercy New “Hospitality” Challenges 3. New Interreligious realities formation for witness, learning and cooperation personal testimony: Jesus as Savior, Lord, King-- and bearer of the mysteries

Loving Mercy New “Hospitality” Challenges 4. New Cultural Realities Campus standards shift Social media Cultivating empathy: Gaudiam et Spes: The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts.

Loving Mercy Frederick Buechner: Finding your vocation at “the place where your deepest joy meets the world's deepest need” our deepest joy addressing the world’d deepest joy

Loving Mercy Cultivating “the second naivete” Oliver Wendall Holmes: “I would not give a fig for the simplicty this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the other side of complexity.”