This blog provides a meditation on the Episcopal daily readings along with a headline from world news:
ARISTIDE ELIGIBLE TO STAND IN HAITIAN ELECTION
When Arisitide was a priest of the people
Hebrews 3:1-11
3Therefore, brothers and sisters, holy partners in a heavenly calling, consider that Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, 2was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses also ‘was faithful in all God’s house.’ 3Yet Jesus is worthy of more glory than Moses, just as the builder of a house has more honour than the house itself. 4(For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.) 5Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that would be spoken later. 6Christ, however, was faithful over God’s house as a son, and we are his house if we hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to hope.
The argument of Hebrews is an extended comparison of Jewish faith with faith in Christ. Moses was faithful as a servant in God’s house, but Jesus was faithful as the son of the house builder. He shares in the creation and management of God’s household. I have written elsewhere in these blogs of what I call “oikos” theology. This is the Greek word for “house” and is used of temple, shrine, creation, Israel, monarchy, Jesus, church and individual believer as dwelling places of God and of God as the ultimate dwelling place of his people. This metaphor assists us to explore our relationship with God. A simple meditation on the phrase “we are his house (hold)” yields insight into the life we share with God. What are the economics (oikonomos=household management) of this the shared life? What is its ecology (oikologos=study of the earth as home for life)? What is the ecumenism (oikumeme=the inhabited world of all peoples) it encourages? These are fundamental aspects of living as God’s household and can contribute to good politics anywhere.. I hope that Jean-Bertrand Aristide is still committed to Christian faith and may bring some good politics to the often-betrayed people of Haiti.
House of God: Salvation Army Hostel, Tanzania
John 2:13-22
13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. 15Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. 16He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ 17His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ 18The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ 19Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ 20The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ 21But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
Here Jesus speaks of his father’s house, firstly referring to the Temple in Jerusalem, but then pointing to his own bodily life which will be destroyed and raised up in three days. The temple of God is his body which is the life he shares with all humanity. In him, in his crucified and risen body, those who trust in him become the holy dwelling of God. This radical theology undermines any justification for sacred buildings or places: in the shared life of Jesus, people are being made holy by God’s presence. This is a profound and even mystical truth but it is not airy-fairy.
The temple of his body
The place of God’s presence is the shared life of Jesus Christ and although it’s true that “Christ plays in then thousand places / lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not his/ to the Father through the features of men’s faces. (Hopkins), it is the one-and-the-same Christ whose life is shared. The presence of God in Christ becomes evident to those who abide in him, that is, to his disciples. Some Christian theologians have backed away from asserting that salvation means following Jesus. It seems ungenerous, somehow, to those who sincerely follow another way. Those other ways and how Christ may make himself known to those who follow them are not any business of Christians. The saving presence of God to Christian believers is in Jesus Christ; and they are asked to announce that as gospel.
Emmock's Blog 
Please clarify what you are saying in your last half-paragraph Mike. As it stands, the implication seems to be that Christ might allow a Hindu to follow Him as an incarnation of Krishna, and if so, then that is really none of our business.
To whom, then, shall we bother to share the gospel? And why would we bother?
By the way, I should say also, I like what you have to say about God’s household here and elsewhere. I do think it is a very useful way of understanding our relatyionship with Him and one another.
Thanks, Jeff, I’ll try. I’m saying, as others have done, that if Jesus is the eternal logos, the creative Word of God, then it’s possible that He finds ways for adherents of other religions to glimpse him. But that’s HIS business, not ours. I may presume that if He does this he does it in such a way as not to empty his great commission to “teach all nations” of its purpose. But as I say, it’s not my business. My business is to believe, live and communicate the good news of God’s love in Jesus Christ to everyone who’s prepared to listen.
And if Christ were to save someone outside the mission of the church, what’s not to like? “Are you jealous because I am generous?” the Lord of the vineyard asks.
I remember arguing with my missionary grandfather about this. He believed that the urgency of mission was the millions of people going to hell if they didn’t receive the gospel. I dared to say to him that he’d have done it all anyways just for the pleasure of announcing the love of God to the Chinese. He agreed he would have done so, but it gave him even greater pleasure to save them from hell! I don’t think his veiws on hell added anything to his gospel.