{"id":244,"date":"2008-05-16T02:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-16T02:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/syncopating-i-4.html"},"modified":"2008-05-16T02:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-16T02:00:00","slug":"syncopating-i-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/syncopating-i-4.html","title":{"rendered":"Syncopating, Improvising and Responding to the Call of a Love Supreme (p5)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How do you follow strange fruit?<\/p>\n<p>We must know the answer to that question.&nbsp; It was Robert Lewis who wrote that, &quot;We could not make sense of the New Testament in particular, or Christianity in general, without its central figure&#8211;Jesus Christ.&nbsp; Christianity is not a philosophy or an ethic, but a person:&nbsp; Christianity is Christ.&nbsp; But neither can we make sense of Christ himself without his cross.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Christ was strange fruit indeed as he hung on the cross formed tree.&nbsp; I was Paul who said, &quot;Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it was written:&nbsp; &#8216;Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.&quot;&nbsp; The cross was a scandal&#8211;the ultimate in degradation.&nbsp; The Romans didn&#8217;t invent crucifixion but they perfected it through practice.&nbsp; They had crucified untold thousands of victims but Jesus, as he hung on that tree was different, odd&#8230;a strange and better crop.<\/p>\n<p>How do we follow strange fruit?&nbsp; By becoming strange fruit ourselves.&nbsp; To be a disciple of Christ is to follow Jesus, even to the cross, for the cross is core to knowing Christ.&nbsp; The goal is for us to be able to say, &quot;I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.&quot;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How do you follow strange fruit? We must know the answer to that question.&nbsp; It was Robert Lewis who wrote that, &quot;We could not make sense of the New Testament in particular, or Christianity in general, without its central figure&#8211;Jesus Christ.&nbsp; Christianity is not a philosophy or an ethic, but a person:&nbsp; Christianity is Christ.&nbsp;&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Syncopating, Improvising and Responding to the Call of a Love Supreme (p5) - The Jazz Theologian<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/syncopating-i-4.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Syncopating, Improvising and Responding to the Call of a Love Supreme (p5) - The Jazz Theologian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"How do you follow strange fruit? We must know the answer to that question.&nbsp; It was Robert Lewis who wrote that, &quot;We could not make sense of the New Testament in particular, or Christianity in general, without its central figure&#8211;Jesus Christ.&nbsp; Christianity is not a philosophy or an ethic, but a person:&nbsp; Christianity is Christ.&nbsp;&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/syncopating-i-4.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Jazz Theologian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-05-16T02:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Robert Gelinas\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Syncopating, Improvising and Responding to the Call of a Love Supreme (p5) - The Jazz Theologian","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/syncopating-i-4.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Syncopating, Improvising and Responding to the Call of a Love Supreme (p5) - The Jazz Theologian","og_description":"How do you follow strange fruit? We must know the answer to that question.&nbsp; It was Robert Lewis who wrote that, &quot;We could not make sense of the New Testament in particular, or Christianity in general, without its central figure&#8211;Jesus Christ.&nbsp; Christianity is not a philosophy or an ethic, but a person:&nbsp; Christianity is Christ.&nbsp;&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/syncopating-i-4.html","og_site_name":"The Jazz Theologian","article_published_time":"2008-05-16T02:00:00+00:00","author":"Robert Gelinas","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/syncopating-i-4.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/syncopating-i-4.html","name":"Syncopating, Improvising and Responding to the Call of a Love Supreme (p5) - The Jazz Theologian","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-05-16T02:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2008-05-16T02:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/#\/schema\/person\/5e3ecb360405bd8603a61c7115194e01"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/syncopating-i-4.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/syncopating-i-4.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2008\/05\/syncopating-i-4.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Syncopating, Improvising and Responding to the Call of a Love Supreme (p5)"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/","name":"The Jazz Theologian","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Robert Gelinas on Composing a Jazz-Shaped Faith","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/#\/schema\/person\/5e3ecb360405bd8603a61c7115194e01","name":"Robert Gelinas","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/fbe\/fbe4a8ffc24002390e969652fba5c72bx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/fbe\/fbe4a8ffc24002390e969652fba5c72bx96.jpg","caption":"Robert Gelinas"},"description":"\"For more information visit: Jazztheologian.com Robert Gelinas is Lead-Pastor (and resident Jazz Theologian) of Colorado Community Church\u00e2\u20ac\u201da multi-cultural, interdenominational community of 3000+ followers of Christ in the Denver area. Author of Finding the Groove: Composing a Jazz-Shaped Faith (Zondervan) and the upcoming, Strange Fruit: The Cross as a Way of Life (2011). Founder of Project 127, a ministry dedicated to seeing the day when there are no children waiting for homes in Colorado's foster care system. Robert deeply desires to see the body of Christ mobilized to serve the least of these. The poor, the down and out, the disenfranchised and disabled, those deemed unimportant and the unborn. He believes that God loves all people yet he has a special heart for the poor and the poor in spirit, the miserable and the marginalized. A Contributing Editor for Leadership Journal and Urbanfaith.com. He acquired a B.A. in Bibilcal Studies from Colorado Christian University and a Master of Arts in World Christianity (Missiology) from Denver Seminary. Robert is married to the love of his life, Barbara, and they have six energetic children (3 boys &amp; 3 girls--one bio, five adopted--two from Ethiopia). Friend of God...Passionate about the Body of Christ...Lover of this thing called jazz! Please visit Jazztheologian.com for contact info., speaking schedule, videos, Facebook and Twitter.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/author\/rgelinas"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/79"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}