Monday is mission day

Long day today. Our group is staying at an awesome church in the neighborhood of Broadmoor in New Orleans, and you can check out the way they work in their community at their website: http://www.annunciationbroadmoor.org/ To me these people represent the best of Christian political involvement (particularly check out the way they are aiding Midwesterners who have been flooded and their Broadmoor Improvement Associastion). This church has responded to adversity, tragedy, and huge amounts of sorrow by reimagining what it means to be a church at all. Our lessons for this week are focussed on the end of Acts 2, and tonight we asked the big question, "How do you become part of this people?" By looking back at Peter's sermon, particularly, the conclusion, we realized that one of the key pieces of being the Church is recognizing who Jesus is. Asking and answering the question of what it means for Jesus to be the Lord and the Christ. The immediate response is to repent of our misunderstandings of Jesus. This, it seems to me, is exactly what has happend here in New Orleans. The Free Church of the Annunciation, has repented of false ways of viewing Jesus, particularly ways that allowed them to be oblivious and seperate from their neighborhood. In what can only be described as providential irony, here is the stained glass from their previously flooded altar:

Jesus pulling Peter from the surging water while the rest of the disciples look on, realizing that Jesus is the Christ, Lord of this sea. When Peter turns back to Jesus, he represents exactly the repentance he will commend to those on Pentecost. Beautiful really. Our God does move in mysterious ways.