Saturday's EMO meeting started with Kia Meng taking the platform to lead the worship. I haven't heard him sing and play the guitar since college days - I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that all of us haven't heard him lead worship enough. Period (smile).

Then came our four views of Jesus.

Collin presented his conviction (heavily resonant with Roman Catholic teaching) that an encounter with Jesus begins with the Eucharist / Holy Communion. In this sacrament of grace we partake of and be joined in remembrance with Jesus the bread of life, Jesus the bread for the poor, Jesus the bread for others, Jesus the wine of His saving blood. The Eucharist is a constant celebration and a proclamation of the gospel, a sending forth in service and love to the outcasts and marginalised.

It was quite extraordinary to witness the abundance and richness of practical other-centered theology flowing out from the meal our Lord gave us. How we need to listen more carefully to what Jesus' Roman Catholic disciples can teach us.

David's address was a welcomed reminder of the key tenets of evangelicalism and its portrait of Jesus, also my own tradition ever since I can remember. His ten minutes or so could've passed as a summary of just about every sermon I've heard (and/or paid attention to!) in the past 15 years. Jesus is worshipped as a grace-giving Lord and Saviour, He is either Lord of all or not at all, an understanding not only in continuity with history but also generative of deep intimacy with Christ. The Jesus of our faith encompasses both the sacred and secular and resists/transcends our attempts at compartmentalisation.

I laughed at David's take on the popular evangelically-inspired "hierarchy" of professions (from the most respectable to the least), beginning with Missionary, then Pastor, following by Full-Time Worker all the way down to Lawyer and Jazz Musician! We were also told that among evangelicalism's ugliest sides was the use of social action (and even personal friendships, I might add) as a means of evangelism, in addition to an over-emphasis on an overly private faith perhaps tempting the evangelical to leave one's convictions publicly irrelevant.

(Speaking from within this tradition too, I'd like to add the little nuance that maybe it's an individualistic faith that we must guard against even as we seek to grow in [private] intimacy with our loving Father. Maybe evangelical Christians require a more community-oriented praxis and theology.)

This was the first time I've heard David speak and I must say I appreciated the short hour-plus of warm-hearted sharing, honest challenging and (of course!) hearty laughter (*big grin!*).

Pastor Raj (who replaced Pastor Luke, who couldn't make it) then gave us a snapshot of his experience pastoring a Pentecostal congregation. He noted how he would like to see more Charismatic leaders and churches talk about the humanity and suffering of Jesus, to complement their emphasis on His power, victory and gifts in/of the Spirit, especially speaking in tongues. He also alluded to an extreme form of AOG-ism in which the sick are told that their healing is guaranteed, failing which the fault must lie with them.

Nevertheless, the experiential, viscerally impacting and ultimately life-changing dunamis of the Holy Spirit is something our Pentecostal brothers and sisters are leading the way in. We would look to them for more learning of and partaking in this power.

I then took the soapbox in a rather rough tumble of a summary of N.T. Wright's historical/eschatological Jesus (I can barely imagine how Wright would feel if he could hear what I half-shouted in a mega-hurried manner). How do you condense an ocean into a pond? I'm making it worse by summarising my summary(!), but for what it's worth:

Wright portrays Jesus as a prophet who believed that he was embodying and bringing in the kingdom of God which connotes the victory of God over His (and by extension, Israel's) enemies, the return from exile of Israel and the forgiveness of her sins. He attacked Israel's cherished symbols (Temple, Sabbath, Land, Family, etc.) and sought to replace them with redefined ones. He wanted to reconstitute Israel, invite people to be part of the "new Israel" with new badges of God's people (cf. the Sermon on the Mount), a new praxis. Jesus went to the Cross, then, as the ultimate act of God's judgment on Israel's enemies, Israel herself and His triumph against suffering via suffering. The Resurrection was God's vindication of Jesus and the confirmation that God's new world has come, a new dawn was breaking through the darkness.

We, as God's true humanity, are then called to reflect the glory of Jesus by 1) telling the story of Jesus, 2) challenging the ways and symbols of false humanity and 3) subversively and lovingly issuing a counter-empire declaration to the world that "Jesus is Lord!". That is what the Gospel means.

Sivin then closed us with a worship celebration of the Lord's Supper, a fitting (and embodied!) ending to the meeting, a worship service with a difference.

And maybe that was the best point of all: That our theologies and our perspectives find harmony, meaning and validity in our worship and coming together as a people, as a family.

So when's the post-modern Jesus making His appearance?