northVUs: expanded or expurgated

'It's Time...'

2011-03-02T07:23:00.000-08:00

Fredd was a showdog, plain and simple. Being a showdog, he had been babied and fussed over and the result was that, as an adult dog, he had some fairly significant gaps in his development. This was, of course, well before we got him. By the time he came to live with us he was no longer Aramis, the award-winning canine supermodel, or even Aramis, the gigolo... Nope, for us he was just our dog, Fredd, and came to us late in his wonderful life with a load of irreversable baggage. We want to ensure our new dog, Hef (Hephaestus, blacksmith of the gods, tossed off of Olympus because he was so ugly) doesn't present the same kind of challenges to us as a household, so we’ve been taking him to puppy school. See, there are expectations for a dog that is no longer a puppy...

Paul is exasperated when speaking to the Corinthian church, for many of the same reasons that having a dog can be exasperating. The church has been established for a year a half and yet Paul finds himself not only having to clean up messes that should not be happening, but restricted as to how he can relate to the church in order to help it move forward, beyond mere humanity, into the thing that God desires for her to become...

First off, there's a language barrier. Paul says ‘I could not address you as spiritual people, but as worldly...’ The words Paul longs to use have no real meaning because there is a basic cultural difference between himself and his readers: they are still coming at things from a natural, worldly perspective, rather than an elevated, spiritual one.

It's like trying to teach algebra to students who have not mastered basic operations. When the foundational learnings aren't in place, the insight and experience available to the students through the teacher never gets beyond superficial levels. This is always frustrating for the teacher.

There are also some basic discipleship issues here. When Paul speaks of spiritual people, he uses a word that addresses ‘the aspect of a person who is akin to God and ready to serve as God’s instrument or organ... being higher than man, yet inferior to God... filled with and governed by the Spirit of God... Exposed to the wind”

There is no evidence of this in the Corinthian church.

So when Paul confesses his frustration, he chooses to illustrate it rather vividly. It's not so much that he is saying 'You're all a bunch of babies- grow up!' as it is that he is saying 'You are too big to be breast-feeding. It's kinda yecch! Just sayin...'

There was an expression that was fairly regularly used about ten years ago. It was even part of our present mayor's campaign for election:

It's time.

There’s a sense that time has passed and change has taken place but is being resisted. Paul is saying “People, it’s time.”

Time to move forward.
Time to stop making excuses.
Time to quit expecting leaders to spoon-feed.
Time to quit blaming others for disappointments.
Time to release old grudges.
Time to drop the shields.
Time to stop expecting to receive and start exploring how to give.

Yeah, it's time.

Only Fools Rush In

2011-02-01T11:22:00.000-08:00

Arriving at a belief through a rational thought process and espousing it is different from having a belief and then rationalizing it later. (a facebook status for January 25)

The challenge for us all is to reasonably engage our faith, isn't it?

Reason and faith do not need to be either/or scenarios, yet we are led to believe that they are diametrically opposed... Some of it has to do with the basic difficulty that we all have believing in things and people that we cannot see, hear, or otherwise experience with one or more of our basic five sense. The reality is that we need a reason to believe- belief doesn’t just happen.

In this letter to the Corinthian church, a church that Paul himself has planted just eighteen months earlier, he writes to a group of Christians that have started to form little unity-threatening factions. These are probably not people who have grown up in Jewish households singing psalms and hearing stories of Moses and Egypt or David and the Philistines. They are probably greeks, having their own rich tradition of philosophy and logic, their own famous teachers like Homer, Plato and Virgil, and their own gods and goddesses. The temple of Aphrodite with its 1000 temple prostitutes is right in the middle of town. The Corinthians are a wild and affluent bunch, favouring a life of lasciviousness and justifying it all by worshiping a goddess that is into that kinda thing. The Christians in town are carrying a bit of baggage with them, and their baggage is slowing them down, so Paul sends them a letter meant to redirect them a bit... to share around some of the wisdom afforded him by God. In it, he explores many themes in chunks. One such theme is this idea of wisdom.

Wisdom: Knowlege of what is true, coupled with just judgement as to action

We’re okay with the knowledge bit... we have a pretty good handle on the difference between truth and falsity (except for all of the lies that get hurled into our consciousness from hell, designed to cause us to doubt our worth, devalue our gifts and devise ways to approximate joy by embracing worship counterfeits that distract us from the voice of God:

entertainments
possessions
some relationships...

Where it breaks down for us is the just judgement as to action bit...We struggle with perspective here because God’s picture of things is from outside of the physical realm while still encompassing it and understanding it; outside of unrighteousness and the calamity of our fallenness while still factoring it in and offering grace and hope.

Jesus is

our ziggurat,

our Jacob’s ladder,

our Mercury space craft,

our stairway to heaven...

Jesus is

the Way

the truth and

the life

and no man comes to God without passing through him.

Jesus is

God’s just judgement to action

and this makes no sense to our natural and cultural reason.

Paraphrasing Paul's thoughts as written to the church in Corinth, E J Smith says:

Jesus is the way God sent his wisdom to us.

In Christ,

forgiveness is offered to even the most notorious of sinners;

grace is offered to even the most faithless of the fallen;

hope and peace are offered to even the most desperate of the tormented.

This kind of just judgement to action is exactly the kind of thing that makes no sense to minds developed within the aftermath of Eden- that great tragedy that tore the holy from the common so that it has become increasingly common to be holy. It makes no sense- this good news is too good to be true, so humankind has created religious structures that allow us to have some boundaries, enabling us to intellectually and emotionally fathom the boundlessness of the love and grace of God by restricting access to it- in short, by making it more difficult to receive these things than God ever intended when he sent Jesus to die for us all and bring new life.

Paul addresses this in a letter written to a different church plant a decade later when he challenges his readers in the Colossian church to 'see to it that no one holds [them] captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy which depends on human tradition and the forces of this world rather than on Christ.' The same things seem to happen wherever people are involved, whether ten years or two thousand years later.

So what’s the simple message- the uncluttered word of God's wisdom?

God loves us
We all have sinned and sin separates us from God
but Jesus came to die for us in our sin
so what we need to do is accept this work of Grace

This is the message of the cross and if I am a fool for believing it then so be it. My own solitary hopelessness is just the beginning of my reasons to believe.

Wise men say only fools rush in

But I can't help falling in love with you

Take my hand, take my whole life too

Cause I can't help falling in love with you.

(Weiss, Peretti, Creatore)

*click here for podcast

When the Saints Go Marching Out

2011-01-24T07:41:00.000-08:00

According to the L.A. Times in August 7, 1992, a 48 year old Illinois inmate named Jesse Loden, serving a 30 year sentence for attempted murder and other crimes, filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against the Illinois Department of Corrections claiming that his 1st Amendment freedom had been restricted because he was not permitted to worship in the nude. Other sources elaborated that Loden had wanted to cover his cell door for a few minutes each day so that he could pray in the nude, which he claimed was a requirement of his Technicians of the Sacred religion, described as "neo-African, voodoo-chanting."
"I'm not really sure why I have to be naked," Loden told reporters. "It brings me closer to God.")

We are living in times marked not only by moral ambiguity, but also with spiritual yearning. (Don Posterski)
***

Life is a spiritual journey. Many get lost along the way, having been told that all roads lead to glory and that one’s right to choose a road of his liking is sacred. Whereas the part about the choice IS sacred, we must never just shrug our shoulders and default to the notion that all roads are... that’s just not true.

The Corinthian letters are especially suited to give guidance to men and women in today’s religiously troubled times. (Walter A Elwell/ Robert W Yarbrough)

Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth is one of his most readable. However, the reason for its readability is that the Corinthian church was having trouble shaking off the residue of the past lives of its congregants. Crazy Corinth was known all throughout the Roman world as Sin City- it was recognized for its decadence and permissiveness. At the centre of town was the temple of Venus, (goddess of love) which employed more than a thousand temple prostitutes to ‘collect offerings from the people.’

So Paul, charged by God, had decided to plant a church there on his second missionary journey (circa AD 50-51) The letter we have as 1st Corinthians is probably a composite of two of his letters to this struggling church. In its opening lines, Paul speaks of God’s work within the church and the town that surrounds it, past, present, and future...

1.2-3 ‘Sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy...’ We are reminded of what Jesus has done for us AND how we have been called to respond to this with personal purity and holiness.

1.4 ‘...because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus...’ In spite of the things that are not as they could be in the Corinthian church, thanks is offered to God for the grace that has been given and is evident.

1.5,7 ‘in EVERY way... not lacking... enriched... gifts and graces’ Here’s the word for the church in Corinth and for us today: You have everything you need to do the task to which God is calling you. Every spiritual gift needed to see God’s redemption dream realized in this moment is right here. (12.4-11)

God has richly furnished his church to do and be his work.
But there is little point in all these furnishings if we do not pursue their intended use.

God is at the beginning, middle and end of it all.

God calls us at the beginning to live through the middle with the end in mind.

His end: The realization of God’s redemption dream for the whole world. He calls us daily as saints to be a ‘Future Faith Church’ to go marching out. He has called us, recognizing that we can falter and reminding us that he will be faithful in providing us with all that we need in order to see his future faithfully realized in our lives.

When the Saints go marching out, the world will change forever.

transfer of ownership

2011-01-06T11:16:00.000-08:00

For Christmas, a friend of mine gave me a book on a band that I've been a fan of for over 30 years, and in it I read some pop trivia that I had not yet heard. Funny how you can be paying attention to somebody's career for 30 years and still miss something as significant as their heroin addiction. Not funny at all, actually.

The other day I was talking with someone else about her journey out of a nicotine addiction. She had begun smoking again when her marriage broke down, and was now striving to break the hold of it for the second time. Her experience was interesting to me in that her smoking habit had begun again in secret as a coping thing. She had worked very hard to keep the truth of her tobacco use from her friends and her children because she feared their disapproval, and had seen the addiction progress much quicker than it originally had when she had been smoking to fit in with her friends as a teenager.

Thing is, addictions are private matters at first- they begin with dabbling in something, progress through regular involvement to dependency and ultimately slavery. The privacy factor is part of what makes it possible for a person to become addicted to something, I think. The dabbling and regular involvements are well-kept secrets, so that long before the time when a person's dependency has begun to interfere with his or her relationships, work, and other involvements/ responsibilities, there is a definite problem. Part of the problem- part of the slavery- has to do with the need to keep the story from going public. The grip of the disease tightens as the victim struggles to keep the problem hidden.

There are groups that exist to offer support and accountability to those who identify the hold that this or that addiction has upon their own lives. 12-Step programs afford the recovering addict with a structured, highly organized approach to systematically to break the hold of the addiction and cope with life outside its grip.

In one sense of the word, churches could be seen as support groups for recovering 'sin addicts.'

Redemption is a word often used to refer to the freeing of slaves. In the biblical sense, it denotes a transfer of ownership from a mighty master to the incomparable God. Jeremiah, a prophet of Israel commonly referred to as the weeping prophet, speaks of the Lord redeeming his people from the hand of those stronger than they. It's important to note that whereas the slave master is, indeed, mighty, this might does not compare with that of one called Lord. Whether we are talking politics and economics or applying homiletics, one called Lord is on an entirely different level than one who simply masters slaves.

But we mustn't be fools. Addiction to sin- in whatever expression it may take in the lives of people- is a big deal. It is mighty. It enslaves. We’re challenged by Jeremiah's word redeem to embrace the incomparableness of God and accept his Lordship, not to scoff at the spiritual calamity that befalls us on a daily basis. Thinking that sin is no big deal usually just leads to more sinning. However, we are to recognize that there is greater hope in God than there is hopelessness in the slave masters of this realm.

Lest we forget this, the Apostle Paul opens his letter to the Ephesians with an exciting exploration into the incomparableness of God. This past Sunday I rambled through this massive passage allowing very little room to explore any one theme in depth. In truth, this passage probably contains the conceptual outline for six sunday morning talks. For what it's worth, here's the executive summary...

1.3 Blessing: The blessings promised are largely Spiritual in nature and in context. There is no promise here of health or riches. We are not to think of God, his Kingdom, nor his Lordship in purely natural terms. Spiritual blessings are incomparable to natural ones.

1.4-6 God's will and our destiny: Can destiny be contingent upon our will? Definitely. Destiny is a deal requiring two consenting parties. God has made provision for all to both participate in his work and enter into his rest, but the full realization of God’s dream for our lives requires our willing involvement. God will not take us where we don’t want to go. His desire for the world is too great for us to envision, but whereas his will is incomparable with ours, it is essentially compatible. God desires partnership, but it is incomparable to any partnership that we might experience with other human beings.

1.7, 14 Redemption: is a buying back- purchasing one’s freedom to choose a life. This is accomplished in Jesus’ sacrifice. He is hope. In him is the hope of being able to truly accept God's offer of Lordship/ partnership in his work. Otherwise our sin addiction keeps getting in the way. God's intervention in Jesus Christ can only be provided by him since his holiness and worth are incomparable to that of any human being.

1.9-11 Mystery of God: What does God want? Relationship with us. “To know and to be known” by his crowned of Creation: Us. Knowing the Creator of the Universe and being known by him is incomparable to any other natural human relationship.

1.12-13 Belief and Trust: The engagement of our will with the will of God. Up until this point, all of the work has been God's. However, the believing and the trusting requires faith and it is only by faith that we have hope of accepting ‘the demand imposed upon the believer that he shall realize in this life that of the world to come.‘ (H. Chadwick) God requires that of us which no one else has the right to require.

1.14 The Guarantee: The greek word translated here as guarantee also has, in its nuance, the promise of an engagement ring... The Holy Spirit’s presence in our life (that deep spiritual connection that we simplify for the theology of our children as ‘having Jesus come live in your heart’) is a right-now taste of the mind-blowing intimacy we will enjoy with God in fullness later...

All of this is just some of what makes God incomparable and relationship with God worth proclaiming.

Redeemed how I love to proclaim it. Redeemed by the blood of the lamb.

(Fanny Crosby)

With?

2010-12-23T06:55:00.000-08:00

Emmanuel...

God with us is a title that we struggle to understand. It can mean so many different things, depending on how we read the word ‘WITH’...

God has joined us, living, breathing, struggling in the natural?

God is amongst us, making his presence known, felt?

God is working to see his redemption dream come to realization and is doing so using Us...

If you google,
‘man with shovel’ you will get 1,180,000 image results in 0.40 seconds.
‘man with hammer’ you’ll get 7,910,00 image results in 0.41 seconds.
‘man with saw’ you’ll get 174,000,00 image results in 0.44 seconds...

There’s no way of googling it, but if you could somehow load in
‘God with man’, the number would presently stand at around 7 billion in this instant.

God with us.

If we take this thinking further, however, recognizing that every ‘image’ on the internet has been uploaded there over the history of the Net, how great would the number of pictures of God With Us be since that moment when he stated emphatically: “This is very good.”

The choice is ours, how actively we mean to be employed by God specifically towards the realization of his redemption dream.

'Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel has come to thee, O Israel!'

spiritual pretending

2010-12-02T07:09:00.000-08:00

confession time.

i take advantage of darkness to do something i would never think of doing in the light.

in those times when i wake up early in the dark, before the sun comes up even, and am immediately aware of something having gone dreadfully funkified in the kitchen garbage, i will run that garbage out to the dumpster wearing only the boxers and t-shirt that i've been sleeping in... i won't even put on shoes. i do so because i know that no one will see me in the dark.

interesting how taking the garbage out under cover of the darkness perpetuates the illusion of having created no garbage.

'those people are so clean. so... NOT wasteful'

I saw some good intentions at leadership conventions

But intrinsic motivations lead egocentric nations

Someone cried 'over here' and where the mud had cleared

Were names and dates all written- drowned like unwanted kittens

Don't stray from the rhythm

Don't fall out of tune

The good book says that dead flies

Taint the richest perfume

darkness is something that people have used since the beginning of time to cloak their actions- particularly the less-than-honourable ones. those who hold public office or who are otherwise always under the character scrutiny of the public eye often find the pressure of living up to the expectations implied in their callings burdensome and suffocating. over time, many fall into self-justified 'reward' behaviours which are not only unbecoming, but inappropriate and self-destructive. the whole 'holiness by day and hedonism by night' inconsistency has created many a charicatured non-example of how to live life inspiring to man or glorifying to God because this kind of thing always seems to surface. no matter how carefully the esteemed leader, pious preacher or public servant has been at hiding the evidence of his or her folly, eventually garbage day comes, the full dumpster is emptied and the truth is known.

spiritual pretending is one of the things that drove Jesus crazy.

the contrarian way

2010-11-08T11:04:00.000-08:00

Contrarian:

a person with a preference for taking a position opposed to that of the majority (wikipedia)
a person who takes an opposing view, especially one who rejects the majority opinion (dictionary.com)

Jesus was a contrarian.

his way was and is the contrarian way.

It's no accident the New Testament was written in the simple language of the marketplace rather than classical Greek- which was far more eloquent but way beyond the grasp of the common man. It was all part of God's plan to make the inaccessible accessible. When Jesus burst onto the stage, he confronted a religious system that saw God as anything but accessible. Spirituality was reserved for the elite- those with pedigree, education, and a commitment to rigid self-discipline. He countered this with a different path, one that farmers, fishermen, carpenters, even little children and sinners could follow. He raised the bar of righteousness but he lowered the bar of entry.

(larry osborne)

what we read in Jesus' words of blessing, woe and enemy love is his contrarian manifesto. he is at work establishing a new order- one that is designed by God to supercede the old, taking the spirit of the law handed down to Moses and turning up the intensity and the implication of it.

he challenges those who follow him to go beyond being a people set apart for God to being a people engaged by God to realize his intended order: LOVE.

Jesus speaks blessing upon his followers when people hate, exclude, revile and defame them ‘on account of the Son of Man.’ he says his followers should rejoice with dancing when we are attacked.

why? because there is reward someday?
no- Jesus didn’t seem to be much into the whole reward thing. the business of eternal reward seems to be a bonus to sweeten the deal a little.

why then?

why should those who follow him with the desire of participating in the realization of the new kingdom coming dance for joy when people throw stones through their windows or spray paint defamatory remarks or symbols on their houses, cars and churches?

because this kind of friction is an indicator that his followers are still edgy;

that they haven’t started to blend in;

that there is conspicuous difference and that this difference makes others uncomfortable- not because these followers are lording judgement over people or otherwise rubbing others' faces in their own iniquity and selfishness, but because the way of love creates an awkward tension in the loveless... always has.

could it be that love itself is contrarian?

come down from that tree!

2010-11-01T21:18:00.000-07:00

why do some climb trees?

depends on who you are...

the incredible tree climbing goats of morocco climb the argan trees searching for food

i used to read books and eat apples up in a tree.

michael jackson had his ‘Giving Tree’ where he wrote hit songs.

in a well-known gospel story, zacchaeus, one of the chief tax collectors in jericho, climbs a sycamore-fig tree because he wants to see Jesus. for him, a few issues have piled up on each other and have made seeing Jesus so difficult that he must climb a tree

his basic stature: he is vertically challenged.
his occupation: a chief tax collector would bid against others with the romans for the right to collect taxes from the people, and would probably have employed 'collectors' to do his dirty work- he has power but he probably doesn’t have strength...
his wealth: even with outbidding other collection agencies and paying his ‘staff’ (all with the taxes collected from everyday hebrews in rome-occupied jericho) he is still described as wealthy, rich, quite rich, or very rich (depending on the translation)
his social standing: remember the paralytic whose friends carry him up onto a roof and lower him down for healing? zacchaeus has no one. he has to run ahead and climb his own tree. his only peers are other chief tax collectors, and you know how they can be...

so, being short on scruples (conscience), caring trustworthy friends (community) and inner peace (comfort), zac establishes a worship scaffold that allows himself to see Jesus without having to change/approach/connect or otherwise interact with anyone, not even Christ...

but Jesus seizes the teachable moment- again. he is on his way somewhere else at the time, yet this poor little rich goat up in a tree receives immediate attention. why?

main reason: it falls under Jesus’ personal ministry mandate. Christ has come to seek and to save the lost and he's been talking about it for awhile. recently he's shared a pretty memorable series of parables which all deal with something precious lost and someone going to find it because it matters- whether it is a sheep or a coin or a person.

the encounter between Christ and the guy in the tree plays out famously. Jesus looks up, using his authority voice, calls him by name and makes him a strongly worded offer he cannot refuse: ‘Come down from that tree immediately- I must stay at your house today.”

then the drama begins. this outcast comes down and obediently takes Jesus into his house. for all we know, the tree is, like the one michael jackson wrote songs in, in his very own yard. whatever the case, this event is an enactment of a bunch of Christ’s teachings that have been delivered to the same crowd left standing outside zacchaeus' house as sinner and saviour retreat from the sight and earshot of the crowd for an undisclosed amount of time. apparently, when the great shepherd leaves the ninety-nine, they don’t take it well. they begin to mutter among themselves the way they have done previously when the master has shown kindness and mercy to sinners and others. from the outside, they observe and have opinions about it all.

there is no account of what takes place in there.

Jesus alone is welcomed into zacchaeus' home.

however, when zac actually says something that can be heard and written down, he is a new man. he has the strength within himself to rise to his feet and demonstrate through his life from that moment on that salvation has indeed come to his house. no facade need be in place. no scaffold supports him and separates him from real life and real people- from knowing and being known. he stands on his own.

the details of restitution are not complicated. they actually fall in line with old testament law... what is powerful is that, in front of everybody who knows this man and his treacherous infamy, Jesus welcomes him back into the family and, one by one, the goats in the crowd start hopping down from their own worship scaffolds.

goofus and gallant go to church

2010-10-25T15:10:00.000-07:00

there's this story that Jesus tells about two guys in church. one is all puffed up and pompous, full of self-justifying contempt for others. just the kind of charicature we're used to seeing portrayed in churches. at first glance, however, the other doesn't seem to really belong there either- he IS a new testament other and approaches God with reverence and fear, for where the first has self-justification, this one has self-knowledge.

it reminds me of a series of moralist cartoons that appeared in Highlights Magazine when i was a kid... Goofus and Gallant were two boys who would be placed in the same situation. goofus always did the wrong thing (which always appeared to be the more natural thing as well) while gallant always did the right thing. it became a bit too predictable to be entertaining, even for a well-intentioned sunday school kid. however, the whole thing clearly got under my skin because i was quite troubled when the pretty new school librarian who was from australia and probably had limited experience with that particular children's magazine started to call me 'goofus,' even in her comments on my report cards. although it was a term of endearment (how many teachers call their students by a nickname in official communications?) i wondered what negative truths were inherent in this name that somehow, despite my best efforts, i seemed to have earned.

anyway, Jesus' story is a typical goofus and gallant scenario with the classic Jesus twist: the pious poser is clearly goofus, while the reverent reprobate is gallant.

at least, that's what we were taught in sunday school.

upon reading this story recently in preparation for a talk, however, i didn't really feel like i was either character in Jesus' story; not specifically. when the circumstances are more general and the lines of life are softer, it can sometimes be tricky to know what to take from scripture. what do we do then?

go deeper, i suppose.

there is still a word there for those of us that feel we're somewhere in between the extremes. it has to do with basic perspective.

see, the problem with the big self-important guy is, of course, his pride. all that thanksgiving about having not been as bad as other people? all that boasting about fasting and tithing? if Jesus had been a singer, he might have burst into a song that george harrison would write nearly 2000 years later:

All through the day I me mine, I me mine, I me mine.
All through the night I me mine, I me mine, I me mine.
Now they're frightened of leaving it
Everyone's weaving it,
Coming on strong all the time,
All through the day I me mine.

I-I-me-me mine,

All I can hear I me mine, I me mine, I me mine.
Even those tears I me mine, I me mine, I me mine.
No-one's frightened of playing it
Everyone's saying it,
Flowing more freely than wine,
All through Your life, I me mine.

I-I-me-me mine,

All I can hear I me mine, I me mine, I me mine.
Even those tears I me mine, I me mine, I me mine.
No-one's frightened of playing it
Everyone's saying it,
Flowing more freely than wine,
All through your life I me mine.

for this guy, life

is about him.

even other people's misfortune, pain or depravity

is about him.

everything that is and everything that isn't

is about him

placed at a beeblebroxian centre of the universe, he and those like him enjoy viewing the swirling, ever-expanding universe from from its heart. pride is placing oneself there.

put that way, that's most of us.

it might even be the other guy- the reverent one,

the one that has the word gallant written beneath his mugshot.

he, like the goofus next to him, sees the world from his own vantage point. however, unlike that guy, from here he sees how unworthy his worship is compared to the eloquently resonant prayers of the saint next to him. from here he sees how unrighteous his life is compared to the piety demonstrated and confessed by the godly man next to him. he is so spiritually and socially intimidated that he laces his reverent humility with caution, lest he approach the throne of grace incorrectly.

with all this comparison, he is incapable of truly understanding the grace that he seeks.

comparison rarely offers us the kind of spiritual insight we seek. comparison certainly does not afford us God's perspective because God's perspective is purely objective. God loves all people uniquely and yet equally. God's love is not enhanced or diminished by genuflection or prayer posture or worship dancing or intercessory weeping. God's approval is not gained or lost by the things we do or the things we can do... remember paul's words about body parts?

God doesn't love me more than you or you more than me.

It's not like that.

God loves me as me and you as you.

free of the need to compare ourselves to each other, we are released from the pressure of those comparisons and, by this release, can enjoy freedom to pursue the realization of God's dream for our own lives.

***

lest the point of this video clip featuring 'the tick' be lost, focus on the big blue superhero as he is pressed by the interviewer to identify his super powers... the interviewer lists all these cool things and the tick- very mighty and very very blue- seems to be diminished in his person each time he answers 'no.' any resemblance to real persons living or dead OR spoken of by Jesus is purely coincidental.

silly songs from a bygone past

2010-10-21T14:35:00.000-07:00

By the rivers of Babylon where we sat down.

There we wept when we remembered Zion.

When the wicked carried us away in captivity, requiring of us a song.

Well how can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? (psa137.1-4)

May the words of my mouth

and the meditation of my heart

be acceptable in thy sight... (psa19.14)

it wouldn’t be the first time or the last that a pop song would capitalize on the strength of scripture for lyrics. the psalmist writes of being in exile and having nothing but faith to sustain. the psalmist writes of being chided by the inhabitants of the land to sing the silly songs of a bygone past... primarily because of the hopelessness that nostalgia can bring on.

BUT... the exiles draw strength from the song. strength to carry on, even in exile, awaiting the time of hope and freedom. awaiting the day of the Lord.

what about us? when we find ourselves being chided by the powers of this world, daring us to live a song of worship, do we back down powerlessly? are we intimidated to point of denial? where does my help/hope come from?

eugene peterson translates the apostle paul's words on this present darkness this way:

This is no afternoon athletic contest that we’ll walk away from and forget about in a couple of hours. This is for keeps, a life-or-death fight to the finish against the Devil and all his angels. Be prepared. You’re up against far more than you can handle on your own. Take all the help you can get, every weapon God has issued, so that when it’s all over but the shouting, you’ll still be on your feet.

Q: can’t we just preach Jesus Loves Me?
A: yes, but that’s just a piece of the peace.

the management that matters

2010-09-24T15:23:00.001-07:00

(continued from the previous- the story of the film so far...)

in the last post i kinda went on and on about how to try to apply a meaningful hermeneutic to a confounding passage of scripture... the bit in question was an illustration of Jesus involving a shrewd manager.

so anyway, as far as the narrative of Jesus' life is concerned, he tells this story having already endured a fair bit of bump and grind from the established order. his willingness to break with some religious tradition regarding holy jewish sabbath; to hang out with ceremonially unclean people; to scandalously enjoy a good meal and even a drink with these same social undesirables and yet also dine at the house of a prominent pharisee does much to remind all present that, as apostle paul would say later, 'God is no respecter of persons' or practices, but desires that this kingdom of God which is so often the main topic of Christ's speaking is to be a place and time of holy levelling.

so this session with Jesus seems to feature a mixed crowd: up close are 'tax collectors and sinners' but within earshot are the muttering pharisees and teachers of the law. it is in this environment that Jesus launches into one of his most famous talks... the LOST trilogy.

LOST sheep... leaving the righteous, secure already in faithful living, in order to save the lost
LOST coin... searching obsessively for a lost possession because it is of great value and is part of a set which suffers when incomplete
LOST son... warmly receiving the repentant while challenging the cold, shortness of sight of those whose righteousness is presumed simply due to their lack of willful rebellion.

see the transition?

this talk begins by targeting the lost, but slowly moves into a message for the righteous who may possibly represent a greater spiritual challenge due to a hardness that has come from years of being religious and faithful to the letter of the law while denying, to some degree, its spirit.

by the time Jesus moves into the story of the shrewd manager, he has been talking for awhile, and has worked and warmed with words even the toughest clay in the crowd. it's time to address the righteous who have been blessed with incredible grace and have concluded that the blessing has come as reward, rather than as responsibility.

see, Jesus always preaches 'the kingdom' with special focus on the hope that is afforded the hopeless... a continuous reminder that it is not religion but redemption and realization that God is obsessively pursuing. this odd parable is just part of that lengthy dialogue that is ongoing between God and man through Jesus (as we refer to him at Christmastime: Emmanuel, 'God with Us'.)

in this epic love poem from God, intended to woo back to himself his beloved, this parable is but a word in a very well-written line.

the story of the shrewd manager is challenging because it is almost a bizarro world chronicle- a photographic negative of many of Jesus' other stories involving masters and workers. in this one, the worker is guilty of time theft as well as poor stewardship of the master's resources. he recognizes that he will very shortly be carrying a shoebox full of his personal items out into the parking lot, past his company car which remains parked in what was once his executive parking spot, and across the street to the bus stop. because he has nothing to lose, he calls each of the master's debtors to him and, by misusing the authority entrusted to him, reduces their debts on paper, instantly making friends 'on the outside' in preparation for his dismissal.

and if this isn't weird enough, in Jesus' story the master commends the guy for it.

but within Jesus' very large and very consistent message, there are some things that we need to note in order to figure out just what lesson Christ is actually teaching here, lest we become lost in our own defaults.

first, this is an earthy story. it says that dishonest people do dishonest things and other dishonest people commend them for it. the turn is when Christ delineates a difference between being people of the world and people of the light. he elaborates upon this further by tying this light to eternity with a logical thread, urging his listeners to do their investing in commodities that are going to be around for awhile, rather than in those things that are subject to rust and robbery. this illustration that seems, at first glance to be rather inconsistent, is consistent with the word that Jesus speaks in many other contexts.

there is another key idea here, though.

in Christ's story, there is a marked social difference between the manager and the debtors. the master is the master, but there seems to be a line between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots'... the manager is currently on the one side, but seeks to soften his transition to the other rather than seeking to improve his relationship with the master. regrettable, as that seems to be the way things make sense in all places and ways outside the light.

theologian, john wesley, observed that:

We are indebted to God for all we have. Although a debtor is obliged to return what he has received, yet, until the time of payment comes, he is at liberty to use it as he pleases. But it is not so with a steward; he is not at liberty to use what is lodged in his hands as he pleases, but as his master pleases.

he goes on to say that the master has the right to ask:

How did you employ your soul? How did you employ the body with which I entrusted you? How did you employ the worldly goods which I lodged in your hands? Did you employ your health and strength in a vigorous pursuit of that better part which no one can take away from you? Above all, were you a good steward of my grace, going before, accompanying, and following you? (John Wesley)

all the resources available to both sides are the master's first. the key difference is the relationship. whereas the debtor is simply owing, the manager is in the master's employ. the debtor is called to account and to pay, the manager is called to a reckoning and is required to account for how the resources of the master have been directed to do the master's work- the furtherance of his light, his intended way, his kingdom.

in the kingdom of light, the master seeks to see his grace put to work to build relationship between himself and those owing debts that are impossible to repay. this is what the manager is supposed to be all about.

this is the only management that ultimately matters.

everything is informed by everything else

2010-09-22T09:55:00.000-07:00

not everything written in the bible actually happened.

sometimes we forget that.

sometimes we think that everything Jesus said was true.

we forget that Jesus was acknowledged as a rabbi,

and that rabbi means master teacher.

Jesus was such a good teacher- in particular, such a good storyteller- that sometimes we find ourselves reading the stories Jesus told and dissecting them as faithfully recounted historical events, not illustrations told by a teacher to drive home the central idea of a lesson. and because Jesus told so many stories, many of which having similar characters or symbols, we sometimes mistakenly default to some presuppositions about the symbols and characters in this story based on similar ones in that one.

in many of Jesus parables (described by my someone in my childhood as 'earthy stories with heavenly meaning') socioeconomic roles are fleshed out as context and example of a lesson about the kingdom of God. in stories about workers and masters, the 'master' is usually God and the workers are usually people who are seeking to live lives glorifying to God. the stories often push back against the social and religious mores of the culture and the day because the lessons themselves are timeless and are meant to have meaning and significance both within the culture Jesus was immersed in and without it.

however, there is one story that G. W. H. Lampe calls 'the most difficult of all parables' with 'no interpretation (being) wholly satisfactory.' it is the one about the shrewd manager.

but what do we do with this one? if it fits the template, then the master who commends the manager for justifying the means with the end is God and the manager is any charlatan evangelist who can lie and embezzle in good conscience because the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is being shared... and if it doesn't fit the template, then we have to find some way of figuring out what it means and why it is in the bible. this one is tough sledding- even illustrious, credentialed scholars like dr lampe confess.

maybe it would serve us to look at something easier first.

when we, as children, are learning to read and are given a sentence with an unfamiliar word in it, how do we discern its meaning? by context clues, right? in order to pull the meaning of a single unfamiliar word out of a sentence, we look at the words that surround it, gaining a picture of the broader idea first, and then look at the role of this term within that broader idea. context establishes meaning.

in order to ascertain the suitability of a house, we look at the surrounding community, recognizing that together all these houses make a neighbourhood, and that it is pointless to consider the house or determine its value in a vacuum.

speaking of houses, think of it this way: for us to jump into luke 16 without considering the story so far, in particular the direction of the larger talk that Jesus is delivering at the time (of which this particular parable is only one part about 2/3 of the way in) is like popping in scene 2 of episode 3 of disc 4 of season 5 of 'House' and trying to figure out what's going on. i mean, we'll pick up some basic plot, but are in danger of missing the significance of many things in the overall story arc. everything is informed by everything else.

so when we look closely at this story told by Christ, taking into consideration the larger message of God as communicated through the life, death and resurrection of Christ, not simply his teachings, what meaning does it hold for us now?

(to be continued)

bakery

2010-09-13T09:21:00.000-07:00

so i'm going to jump ahead of the backlog of would-be posts that have yet to be finished, and just post this fabulous vid by malvina reynolds

the story of the little red hen reminds us that if we want to claim any right the enjoyment of the bread, we need to find our place in the bread-making process.

paul writes of reward, and the fact that the only reward worth worrying about as a believer in Christ is being allowed to offer people hope, free of charge. being that the prophet micah writes that the promised messiah would come from bethlehem to bring peace and hope to all, the fact that Bethlehem means 'house of bread' is a rich reminder that when God chooses to analogize, his analogies go deep.

ebike

2010-09-11T12:26:00.000-07:00

i call it the 'anti-hog'

it's everything that a hog isn't.

small, clean, quiet, green, cheap, slow...

everything a hog isn't.

still, no one said it was meant to be anything else.

why is it that we are so good at comparing things and people to other things and other people, rather than simply gauging their worth (if that's what we need to do) by identifying why that person or thing was called into being and then attending to its 'effectiveness' according to that calling.

we don't like doing that.

we don't like doing that with an ebike because we have bought someone's rant that anything with two wheels should be a hog or a crotch rocket. it's more fun to just compare the ebike to the touring bike or the cafe racer or the speedster and laugh because it just doesn't measure up. it's comforting, somehow, to find someone or something that seems even more poorly equipped for life in this intimidating world than we are.

the insecure bully within us all...

weird.

see, i think the ebike is uniquely equipped for life in today's world for exactly the same reasons that we laugh at it. it is small, clean, quiet, green, cheap, slow... everything a hog isn't.

it is so small and clean that i can park it inside the lobby of the church if the rain clouds are starting to appear on the horizon. very convenient. it is virtually silent because it is battery operated, and as such is environmentally responsible, not contributing to global warming or the depletion of nonrenewable resources like fossil fuels. this has the added bonus of being really cheap to operate. it is emotionally satisfying for one who hates spending money on consumables to silently coast by gas stations with petrol pumping people topping up their tanks with something that they're just going to burn up... my cash can go into things and people that are going to be around for awhile.

a surprise has come, however, in seeing being slow as an asset. although it is still much faster than walking or even cycling, the pace of the ebike is relaxed. riding it is stress free. put the iPod on 'shuffle' and see how many songs you can fit in before you get to your destination. no point in road raging it up when you can only go a maximum of 37km/h on a straight stretch. you just leave earlier and enjoy the ride... and it's surprising how often, like the tortoise in that old children's story, you find yourself peacefully weaving through the parked cars past the vehicles qeued at lights during rush hour, engines running, clocks ticking, going nowhere.

nope. the ebike was never meant to be a hog. its strengths exist in direct contrast to those of a really great motorcycle- it's just that nobody but ebike riders are even aware of them.

i wish that i had understood this simple joie de vivre much earlier in life. i could have been enjoying inner peace, rather than trying to be someone or something i wasn't.

see, i have spent most of my life comparing myself to others, coveting their strengths rather than celebrating my own. for some reason, i was always ready to believe that, whereas what others could do was essential, the areas that i excelled were merely ornamentation.

in an informal show of hands during a talk i was giving recently, i discovered that there were many like me who, in a lifelong quest for legitimacy, had wasted time, energy and emotion trying to somehow measure up to standards that were not reasonable or God honouring.

God honouring?

what does any of this have to do with God?

God has called each of us into existence and has equipped us with some basic gear. beyond this, however, we have each been entrusted with some special equipment and programming that is essential to the realization of the bigger actualization dream: God's desired picture of the world- the restoration of Shalom. burned into our DNA is arguably our place in the cosmos and to turn away from this in order to try to be like someone else is to say, in effect, that God doesn't know squat about anything that's really important. hardly God honouring.

God makes a tree and is glorified when that tree grows and bears delicious apples for kids to eat while they sit up in its branches reading books, dreaming dreams or stealing kisses. unlike tolkien's ents, real trees don't have any thinking, decisions or active involvement. they just are what they have been created to be and in so being, bring honour and glory to the creator.

so what is a man to be?

when i realize what 'mine' is

2010-08-03T13:20:00.000-07:00

apparently, it's an old problem that continues to this day...

in regina leader post, a story ran just tuesday morning about an inheritance dispute that 'exploded into violence.' the fact that one of the scriptural passages we looked at on sunday includes a person in the crowd audaciously interrupting Christ's lesson in order to get some help resolving a similar issue just serves to remind us that Jesus' words in response still pertain to our lives today.

Jesus, as any great teacher does, recognizes that there is a teachable moment here. he recognizes, as any great teacher does, that this guy (and probably others affected by the same situation or one just like it) won't really hear anything he is trying to say (especially a lesson about the intrinsic value of people and God's provision for them) until the burning question is addressed. he recognizes, as any great teacher does, that if he's paying attention to his pupils then they will ultimately pay attention to him and gain from the interaction.

in this case, the burning question is simply:

'when am i gonna get mine?'

in this case? we still have trouble hearing God's words to us about our value and his provision when our entitlement buttons are being pushed by circumstance... even more when they're being pushed by people's decisions.

now, inheritance is a rather hot topic for a 1st century jew to interrupt the rabbi with. the nation has been waiting for an inheritance for awhile- waiting for the promised messiah and the 'day of the Lord' that will accompany his arrival. the fact that someone has to die in order for someone else to inherit anything seems to have escaped many- both before and since.

in any event, Jesus responds by telling a story with an unexpected twist. in it, the main character does everything right and knows it. he has attended to everything that is controllable and has set himself up with a solid business plan and some stable investment portfolio options for his retirement. he fails to spot one rather wild piece of quantum data: the number of his days. that's one fairly intense probability factor that remains undisclosed for us all. Jesus wraps up the anecdote with a reminder that our focus should really be outward, rather than inward- that we should be directing our attention and energy towards building God's kingdom, not our own.

but we forget this sometimes. especially when we are trying to deal with life left vacant by one deeply loved. amidst the shock, the stages of the grieving process and whatnot, people start looking for compensation. the entitlements that rise to the surface are pretty typical. quite regularly we try to fill a something-shaped hole with a something-else.

however, when Jesus resumes his talk on the inherent value of his listeners and the importance of not worrying because of this value in the eyes of God, his words are informed by the interruption and its response. he realizes that everyone has been listening and is now considering the number of his or her own days, and challenges his audience to seek first the kingdom of God, that everything would fall into place within it.

Q: when am i gonna get mine?

A: when i realize what 'mine' is...

that it isn't something that i can possess, but someplace that i am called to occupy, engaging with the world around me and shining the light of God's good news into the faces of those within proximity- illuminating them and affording them greater opportunity to know and to be known by myself and others as a result. it's where i fit in the larger scheme of things.

dare i say, it's where we all do?

making the highlight reel

2010-07-20T10:51:00.001-07:00

faith fills the space between believing and receiving...

Wide receivers... are among the fastest and most agile players in the game, and they are frequent highlight-reel favourites. (Wikipedia)

God’s biblical highlight reel begins with some words on faith... all that stuff about 'the essence of things unseen, the substance of things hoped for...' then, as example or evidence to be considered, the writer of the letter reminds his readers of their faith history, giving particular attention to the great patriarch, abraham... the one to whom God made the big promise: to make of him a great nation of descendants of greater number than the sands of the seashore, through whom the hope of the world would be realized.

abraham receives this promise from God, and is required to act upon it, leaving his home and his people with very little direction as to how it is all going to play out.

this whole thing can, perhaps, be compared to the work of the wide receiver in a football game. i mean, this player is required to do the ridiculous- to leave the rest of the team brawling at the line of scrimmage and run as hard as he can down the field as if he already has the ball. having run the designated distance, he angles slightly inward or outward, depending on the play called, and turns his head a bit in expectation: he has been told that he will receive the ball here somewhere and resume his run with it in his possession towards the goal line.

abraham seems to have been one of God's wide receivers- a man of significant faith. faith fills the space between believing and receiving.

just looking at one particular play in the sequence God is calling at the time is fairly telling (genesis 18.1-18)

this is the 5th time God appears to abraham. each time the ball moves further down the field, and each time momentum builds. however, there is a problem. the clock is running and the team is getting tired. abraham is now a really old guy, with his wife sarah not far behind him in years, and they still don't have children... a fairly large pushback on the whole 'descendants too numerous to count' bit of the promise.

in their passion to get the ball moving, team 'ben-Terah' has even tried calling a running play of their own involving a handoff to hagar, one of sarah's servants, but this is whistled down on a technical and results not only in a loss of yards but a fairly significant break in morale and momentum.

so when three heavenly representatives of Almighty God appear through the heathaze as abraham is in a time out, they are a welcome sight.

in the huddle, abraham humbly offers some refreshment to them, for he recognizes who has just appeared on the field. sarah, having not yet encountered God in this way, acts out of natural disbelief, laughing out loud (just like Abraham a couple plays back in genesis 17.17)

however, the play is called, the huddle breaks and faith fills the space between believing and receiving.

the ball is snapped and the 100 year-old wide receiver bursts off the line once again, as if he has the ball the whole time. of course we know how the play ends because we've seen the glorious catch on God's highlight reel.

faith is the reason the wide receiver makes the big catch, time after time. he runs as though he already has the ball... he acts upon his belief that there is a point to his running. every step is marked with expectancy as he executes his part of the larger play with speed and agility... and because his belief in and commitment to the plan is demonstrated in these steps, he is exactly where he needs to be in order to receive the ball and carry it to the goal...

okay... all football analogizing aside:
Q: what are we doing with the promises of God in our own lives and relationships? are we walking blamelessly, doing what is right and speaking the truth from our hearts? (psalm 15.1-2) or are we testifying with our inner laughter and our cynical perspective that we have either never encountered God, or have forgotten what it was like because it was so long ago?

delores is a beautiful model

2010-07-15T09:16:00.000-07:00

my family has a nickname for me. my wife started it and the rest of the gang has, over the years, acquiesced. to those who love me, i am known as Darryl 'the long way' Dozlaw.

it's not that i can't find my way around when i'm driving. it's just that i always think that there is a better way to get somewhere... not a silly shortcut that takes us through an alley and a farmer's field, just a more efficient route. however, for all my deliberation and my many alternate passages, it seems as though i am more prone to choose a longer trip over a shorter one 2:1.

so to quiet things down a bit on trips, my wife bought a GPS for me one fathers' day. i call it delores. no reason, really, other than that this device has a female voice and ever since i heard the monty python sketch novel writing i have found the name to bear silly, voluptuous connotations.

delores does a masterful job of directing me towards my stated objective, and at first i did exactly what i was told. after awhile, however, i began to disagree with her. i knew my way around this or that particular town, and was aware of a more economical route to the place i had keyed in. i began to pretend to not hear when delores would calmly advise to 'take the next left.' i knew where i was going and i knew how to get there, thank you very much.

delores would take each of my rebellions in stride, triangulating our position and recalculating our course, taking into account my own free will.

delores is a beautiful model of how God can take into account our free will and the decisions we make, all the while patiently trying to give us directions that will take us where we said we wanted to go:

to see the realization of God's dream for our life.

God never stops hoping for us

pulling for us

cheering us on..

God is lovingly extravagant and generous, but not wasteful.

he wastes neither our joy nor our pain

neither our life nor our love

neither our strength nor our song.

God intends to use all of us for the furtherance of his kingdom and he intends to do so by redeeming our respective journeys...

even when we are committed to taking the long way home.

the complicated transition from coal to diamond

2010-06-29T13:06:00.000-07:00

how many times do we read in scripture about apprentices being blessed by their predecessors as a rite of passage? a lot. the patriarchs, the kings, the prophets- they all speak words of blessing over their young padawans before being released of the work to which they were originally called. it's God's succession plan. even Jesus, baptised by john, prays blessing over his disciples. this moment is a significant passing of the baton, the torch, the scroll or the mantle- you pick the metaphor that works for you.

in each case the follower(s) encounter an intense challenge early on which frames in the faithfulness that will be required, lest anyone think that following will be a comfortable gig, tailor-made to fit the gift mix and passions of any successor. no servant steps into a preformed role ready to fill it. the servant is shaped by it over time and pressure the way diamonds are created out of lumps of coal.

i wonder if we’ve gotten some things a bit turned around a bit in our church culture with all of our talk and training about gift mixes and personal passions. i wonder if we may have even become fickle ministry consumers, trying things for awhile until the thrill, newness and novelty is gone, replaced by an ongoing bumping and grinding that never seems to abate- then wondering if, because we’re no longer passionate about every aspect of the gig, we’re still supposed to be engaged in it.

like involvement in work of God towards the realization of the Kingdom of Heaven is going to be easy simply because it’s right...

where is that written down? if anything, the opposite is often true: the things that are right seem to encounter some of the greatest friction in life simply because they are right. look it up: even Jesus' ministry years weren't glorious, trouble-free do-gooding... and he was God!

at my high school graduation commencements, bob chalmers, kamloops city alderman and the father of one of my graduating classmates, was asked to speak a few words about the future to the class of '82. i remember him telling us as we gathered there to celebrate this important life transition that he wasn't gonna lie to us: times were tough and many of us were gonna find ourselves out of work, with families to feed and no hope in the desperation. that there was no point in expecting things to be handed to us because the hands of provision would already be tied up by things like fiscal policy and an uneven and unfair distribution of power and wealth. although it was supposed to be a 'when the going gets tough...' kinda thing, I remember sitting there in the may heat wearing my cap and gown over my three-piece suit, thinking 'Geez- couldn't you lie to us a little?'

still, it was 1982 and we were in the middle of a recession- the man wasn't being cynical; he was just being real. in the years that followed, his prophetic words resounded and proved to be inspirational for me. we had been aptly warned and the world that we bold and beautiful young people were about to inherit would be instrumental in transforming us from our glib and naive arrogance into the meek and the wise the way a work boot must reshape the foot before being reshaped by it on the jobsite.

in his book Desire, writer and scout leader john eldredge posits that '...because we have not solved the riddle of our existence, we assume that something is wrong- not with life but with us.

when i delivered this talk in a sunday morning gathering, i showed what i had found to be an inspiring video clip. featured in it was a man named nick vujicic ('VOY-chik') who has overcome the complex range of human emotions resulting from being born with an overwhelming physical disability: for no medical reason, he has no arms or legs.

at that time, i had not dug deeper into his story in order to find the source of his seemingly limitless optimism. i shared simply that, in my view, he was doing the work of God because he was inviting everyday people to recognize and embrace their own intrinsic value by modelling it in his own life's journey. with a little further snooping around online, however, i discovered the place fromwhich his inner and outer strength originates. his is a spirit-filled life. to live by the spirit is to live in faith and service to maturity and to the realization of God’s dream for you within his larger context.

"The Spirit-filled life is not a special, deluxe edition of Christianity. It is part and parcel of the total plan of God for his people." (a.w. tozer)

where's daddy?

2010-06-21T14:10:00.000-07:00

Q: why does the rhetoric of the church regarding the character, purposes and actions of God so often default to something that would shock us as abusive or otherwise neglectful if modelled by a parent?

A: because we (like isaiah, the biblical prophet) struggle for words, models and comparisons when it comes to understanding the things of God... especially God's silence.

***

in henson's 90's television series dinosaurs, there is an episode which delves into the troubling silence of God in a fun way.

the story of the film so far...

fran and earl sinclair discover that their child (tellingly named baby) is not their natural offspring due to a nest mixup back when he was hatched. bacause of baby's rather bombastic personality and some marked rejection of earl as 'NOT THE MAMA,' earl has never really bonded with baby. he is very open to a switch because, in his words, they're 'not exactly trading down.' fran will, of course, have no part of it without proof and so, after a battery of tests, the babies are declared to have been regretably switched at birth. baby goes to live with the other family and aubrey, the other child, comes to live with the sinclairs.

after a very short time, earl discovers that aubrey has no athletic ability, and so (at approximately 5:25 of the clip posted below) they choose to play a game that is less physical: peekaboo.

aubrey, however, panics and has an anxiety attack when earl invites him to cover his eyes and then asks 'where's daddy- where'd he go?'

AUBREY: Father! Father! Where have you gone? Oh! Don't abandon me! Ah! Ah! I'm having an asthma attack!

after taking a couple puffs from his inhaler, aubrey becomes a bit more lucid...

AUBREY: Oh what a cruel, cruel game- I felt so alone! Promise me you'll never play that again, Father!

he misses the point. earl is just playing a game, inviting interaction, but with his own hands over his eyes, little aubrey fails to see it. the immediate absence of the father from view preys upon his deepest fears of non-connection and abandonment. in his panic, he is unable to be reasoned with or even spoken to because he is busy putting into words these deep-seeded anxieties.

i'm not saying that all the pain and confusion we encounter is just God playing a game with us. i dare not say that. truth is, most days i don't know where a lot of that stuff comes from or why it is permitted here. that's been the subject of debate for greater minds than my own for millennia, with no satisfactory conclusion in sight. however, as i thought of how ready we often are to push the panic button when we lose sight of God, this clip came to mind. silence and darkness challenge our faith like nothing else, enflaming our fears of rejection, abandonment, and helplessness. it could be that we are simply engaging with the silence in the wrong ways.

i recently posted a question online:

What do you do when it feels like God is hiding?

a number of responses came back. a friend of mine provided a link to powerful piece of writing by latter-day beat poet, bradley hathaway. his poem silence says much which is consistent with my picture of who God the father is and how he interacts with us, even as we rant and blaspheme like the psalmist on his darkest days... our hands placed firmly over our own eyes.

What’s happening here?
I was once so alive and now I’m so full of dread and almost dead
Show me your wounded head that is lead to communion with the father
But where did he go?
His presence seems farther and farther away each day
but I’m trying so hard to steer his way
Yet still lonely and confused on this cold hard ground I lay

Speak to me wise mouth and say “it’s all good kid, it’s nothing that you did, and though it feels like I’m not here with you right now just be still and silent and listen for that sound..
Shhh..
Did you hear it?
Listen again.
Did you hear it?
That silent voice that just spoke nothing, that is me, I’m listening to your plea with open ears Counting all your tears flowing from your irritated eyes
Searching the skies looking for that hope that beyond there lies.

Oh you young worrisome sparrow, find rest
Lay your battered head upon my omnipresent breast and make it your nest
No strong cold wind could ever blow and carry you from this your home
Look around, see the life shooting up from the ground
Spring colors springing fourth and celebration of your trusting

It’s a constant process this is
Growing you into the man you are to become
But when you sense the setting of the sun know it is only rising and has just begun
Now go fourth, sing songs of faith, and lift up others in the midst of this race
And if you can’t keep the pace or lose sight of my face
Know that I’m always near so you need not fear
But don’t worry about all that right now
Just sit here and enjoy the peace I offer in my silence
When I am silent I am listening, and not abandoning.

cloudbusting

2010-06-16T22:01:00.001-07:00

every act of human justification comes from a sense of entitlement. just think about it. we give ourselves permission to think or behave in certain ways because we feel we deserve something extra.

L'Oreal launched a powerful slogan a number of decades ago that still resonates for many of us today. it even received recognition in 2002 when it was inducted into the ad slogan hall of fame (although i must confess, until now i did not know there was such a thing...)

because you're worth it

this whole business of worth establishment can get rather muddled if we set up our portfolio in relation to the wrong people, places or accomplishments. this muddling can place around our heads a very thick cloud cover that hides some of the most obvious things from us- leaving us with significant blindspots in our field of vision and vocation.

but when does entitlement become a justice issue?

when it violates the rights of another.

peter gabriel once wrote a troubling song about a little child who, being abandoned by his parents, finds himself alone at home and staring out into the streets. the emotional detachment that is accomplished through his ongoing alienation and loneliness causes the child to play new imaginary games. from his place behind the front door, he plays the assassin, imagining every car going by as part of a motorcade. a chilling lyric says it all:

I don't really hate you. I don't care what you do.

We were made for each other, me and you.

I wanna be somebody- you were like that too.

If you don’t get given you learn to take... and I will take you.

we read in scripture, history and today's newspaper of emotionally detached people in positions of power who act out their sense of personal entitlement to the complete disregard of the human rights of those being exploited. human beings are just really good at putting themselves and their personal interests before those of others.

to take the enthnocentric edge off, what is needed is an accountability partnership- a bonding together in the pursuit of commonly agreed-upon values; two people who decide to listen to one another in case their own personal perspective gets a little too comfortable. the busting of entitlement clouds is accomplished best within voluntary relationships of trust and vulnerability.

back in the old testament, pretty much every king (e.g. ahab, david) had a prophet- one who would speak with the king for God.

To us a single act of injustice- cheating in business, exploitation of the poor- is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. To us injustice in injurious to the welfare of the people; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence; to us an episode; to them, a catastrophe, a threat to the world.

(Rabbi Abraham Heschel)

a prophet is an entitlement cloudbuster.

we all need one of those- not just they who are kings.

learning disabilities and revelations

2010-06-03T09:52:00.000-07:00

so i thought it would be a good idea to get involved in the community in a new way- i went out for regina summer stage's production of My Fair Lady.

nobody said anything about dancing.

it didn't come up at my audition (which felt an awful lot like an american idol sing-through. there were even three people at the table) and i disclosed on my application that i had no prior dance experience or involvement. i mean, my wife won't even dance with me at weddings. just sayin...

anyway, over the course of rehearsals- 80% of which have been choreo so far- something very interesting has come to light. i think i have a learning disability.

not even joking. we will work a sequence again and again, but as soon as we move to something else, the previous work just disappears.

it's like this: imagine that within a city full of buildings you are commissioned to erect structures in a new subdivision of lots that have been cleared as part of an inner-city revitalization project. so, working together with others, you

lay the foundations.
frame in the basic forms.
rough in the walls, and even
mark where the windows are to be cut to correspond with the framing...

then you all realize it's lunchtime, so you leave the site to eat. when you return to the construction site, every one of the buildings is just as you left it except yours.

yours is gone.

not torn down.

not vandalized.

no...

it's as if no one had ever worked on your lot. from then on, every time you get together to resume construction, the other buildings progress, but you are back building from the ground up... and falling further and further behind.

weird.

i've always known i was not a particularly kinaesthetic learner, but apparently i cannot internalize sequences of movements and then reassemble them in order. who knew? ever since realizing that i didn't have any real dance moves (which is an entirely different problem) i've just avoided dance environments, period.

whatever the case. i now personally understand the frustration of many of my students in the past who struggled with math. those who

did all the homework
came in for the extra help
reviewed prior to exams, and even
took and completed extra assignments...

and still went completely blank upon sitting down to write the exam itself.

on a side note, i'm sure glad i didn't play the sanctimony baloney card back in the day as a math teacher, loading these kids up with guilt and sarcasm when what they really needed was a little grace and perhaps an adaptation or two as simple as taking a sheet with the formulas written on it into the test.

whatever. here's my point:

there are things about us that we don't really know are true until we find ourselves in the situation where these are given expression. as long as we steer clear of unknown situations, there are things about us that also remain unknown. our strength or weakness in this area; our ability or disability; our giftedness or lack thereof. these things about us are as unknown as the contexts in which they would come to realization.

this is the problem with spiritual gifts inventories and the like. life is a process of self-discovery and these instruments, although very useful in affirming our positive suspicions about ourselves regarding our natural aptitudes for service and ministry, remain silent regarding the things that we don't actually know about ourselves through previous encounters with others and God. if a person has never been in environments where he or she has received opportunity and encouragement to, say, speak in tongues or heal another person or utter a prophetic word, then these spiritual gifts continue to remain undetected just below the surface of experience.

and who knows what revelations lie just below the surface of experience?

wanna see something really scary?

2010-05-28T18:07:00.000-07:00

Q: what was (or is) the scariest thing about church?

L.G. To quote DCTalk from the 1990's. "The Number one cause of athiesm in the world today is Christians who profess Jesus with their mouth and go out and deny him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world, simply finds, unbelievable" I think the scariest thing about church as a Christian (Christ-like) is that we think we have to be perfect ...

May 18 at 10:01am ·

L.M. Judgement and when you need a place to let your guard down, need to just be yourself, your unable to in fear that you'll be turned away and alone

May 18 at 10:32am ·

D.S. The first time you enter a new church and you feel like you might not be accepted. The other thing is talking to your friends about yor church exsperience and them not understanding or not wanting to know.

May 18 at 10:59am ·

T.H. I would have to say fear of rejection is one, the other is fear of not being accepted, as weird as this sounds the two can be very different. Many people are at the fringe of church where they show up and a re accepted but still don't feel they can get deeper involved.

May 18 at 12:22pm ·

A.L. was: feeling alone and disconnected in a room full of people
is: seeing the world impact the church, instead of the other way 'round...

May 18 at 12:24pm ·

R.F. Being the only person who doesn't know anyone in a large click. This is made worse by an over friendly welcome crew. I don't imagine it's the same walking in a mega Church

May 18 at 9:29pm ·

JB no, mega churches are probably comprised of many large clicks ;)

May 23 at 6:15am ·

(sadly, i had to remove the names and pictures of our 'panel' because these were all hyperlinks back to their facebook accounts... not really as interesting anymore. sorry, but people's privacy is kinda important, even though Jesus DID say that "there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs." Luke 12.2-3)

so i posed this little question on facebook, thinking i would get lots of stories about strange spiritual experiences in churches... chance encounters with the spiritual gifts like tongues, prophecy and healing that left people confused and a little edgy every time they came upon acts 2 in their devotions and whatnot.

my plan was to share a couple of my own experiences: one that weirded me out and one that inspired me to explore my own giftings more deeply. however, i never got there. apparently, the folks responding to the simple prompt went a very different direction with it... and did so together.

the common denominator in this little thread, and two others like it that i began in different places, was the fear of non-acceptance due to lack of grace. this is troubling, considering the majority of the folks responding were regular 'church folks.'

how did the church get this reputation, even among its own people? Jesus certainly didn’t have this in mind when he described the future of his movement in john 14.16-27.

fair enough... but you wanna see something really scary?

the church that emerged from that amazing day when the Holy Spirit touched people in the way that Jesus had promised was hardly a religious institution prompting fear and anxiety among those who came looking for truth and hope. sure, the day of Pentecost was absolute mayhem- but it was God’s mayhem, accomplishing major life-change and freedom for thousands the very first day and birthing the new covenant church in the process, entrusting its leadership to uneducated sellouts for Christ. it was a grassroots movement of regular people just trying to sort it out as they went along, but doing so within the safety of intentional faith and fellowship communities that were as committed to the meeting of others' needs as to the progress of their own personal spiritual pilgrimages.

the really scary thing is that somehow this beautiful movement eventually turned into a religion. the encouraging thing is that it's not too late to change it back.

find us on facebook, follow us on twitter

2010-05-25T15:14:00.000-07:00

i think i want to be like president obama...

not in the power or the celebrity. in the way that he, in his campaign for the presidency, engaged in a collaborative effort, inviting not only support, but active involvement from varying demographics in the movement he was leading. this approach resulted in the mobilization of, among others, an entire generation of young Americans who seemed to be just waiting for someone to invite them into a dialogue about how their country should be run and their resources should be channelled in order to participate in the realization of a better world...

I got my chance on the South Side of Chicago, as a community organizer, and it was the transformative experience of my career. It allowed me to put my values to work and to see that real change comes not from the top-down but from the bottom up, when ordinary people come together around a common purpose...

(barak obama 2003)

Jesus said that the time would come when it would be possible to network effortlessly, but when it would also become increasingly difficult to be an ordinary, private citizen, keeping anything secret because information would flow so easily. it appears as though we are in a time like that. there is always someone with a cell phone taking pictures that show up in albums on facebook or movies that appear to the masses on youtube.

it's enough to make you paranoid.

except we need to remember that nothing in God's creation is inherently evil. all is originally authored by God so all is inherently good. the uses of things are what determines their current righteousness or fallenness.

take rock music, for example. in the past, it has been mistakenly seen as inherently evil simply because of the misuse of its emotive power and energy by some. generally categorized by generations having gone ahead of us as anything incorporating electric guitars or a drum kit, this fledgling genre was attacked in the 60's and 70's by fundamentalist christians as being 'devil music ' and therefore responsible for the everything wrong with the world of the day. this was made worse by the fact that it seemed to be drawing their apple-pie-faced young people out of the hard pews of the churches and into dark concert halls where their innocence would be assailed by demons having leapt out of many a drum kit and into their youthful hips causing them to gyrate in time with the sinful beat.

i mean, yeah. there were and are many things going on at shows that are not healthy at all and never have been, but it's not the presence of drums or electric guitars that causes these things to happen, it's people using something created by God to aid their rebellion. this has been happening since the garden, not just since elvis presley sang and danced on tv in 1957, filmed from the waist up.

the fact that rock music is used regularly to lead people into an awareness of the presence of God at worship events worldwide should offer some support for this little tangent...

so even though there is a lot of garbage on the internet, it isn't inherently bad. we should take advantage of the innovations at our disposal in order to make the good news of Christ known, redeeming this space, this technology.

"The goal is to have a conversation in which people become engaged in life, think about issues, get active in improving their communities and mobilize society for positive change. Politicians and citizens alike would become more informed and learn from each other..." (Dan Tapscott, author of Wikinomics: How mass collaboration changes everything.)

so many of the things that we address together are more meaningfully explored when we are in dialogue. in addition to the online address of this blog, there is a weekly invitation to 'find us on Facebook (Northview Community Church) and follow us on Twitter (NCCtweets)' within the church program. each of these social media is a means by which we might continue the conversations that begin when we come together on sundays.

furthermore, we're thinking it would be fun to get the conversations started before we even arrive at the building. we have begun a regular discussion on northview's Facebook page called 'Field Research.' this will be a way to gather thoughts and insights from our people in preparation for our gatherings on sundays. we all grow from knowing one another and hearing from each other.

there is also some fairly intense work going into a new WEB2.0 website, targeted for launch late this spring. it will also be a means by which we engage in ongoing interaction.

see, this site is not to be viewed as a large online book with information about our church in it. who would go there? although it will have a lot of information regarding where we've been, what we're doing now and where we're going, a more accurate way to see its role in Northview's future is to see it as a wing that is being built onto the church- except instead of being a physical one, this is a virtual one. many of the same things can happen there that happen in a church building: fellowship, discipling, dialogue, laughter, ongoing interaction... except in this case, none of these things are limited by time or space.

online interaction can never be a substitute for face-to-face engagement with one another, but in those times when the face to face time and space are limited because of the busy lives we lead and the breathing room available in the lobby, the conversations can continue in this forum.

roger waters quipped in 1990, while staging an all-star presentation of The Wall, his landmark work with pink floyd, that "What it comes down to for me is this: Will the technologies of communication in our culture, serve to enlighten us and help us to understand one another better, or will they deceive us and keep us apart?”

recently, in planning to rebuild The Wall for audiences this fall, he posted a reflection upon this old soundbyte:

I believe this is still a supremely relevant question and the jury is out. There is a lot of commercial clutter on the net, and a lot of propaganda, but I have a sense that just beneath the surface understanding is gaining ground. We just have to keep blogging, keep twittering, keep communicating, keep sharing ideas.

indeed...

i read this and thought this3

2010-05-22T10:22:00.000-07:00

"Sometime after Apollo 11, I happened to catch Neil Armstrong on TV doing a Chrysler commercial in civvies. Well!! Homo sapiens, peak of evolution, American icon, star of the cosmic drama, in the toils of Madison Avenue!" (herman wouk)

sell out...

it's how we establish and maintain our progress

it's what we do best...

that and kill one another.

interesting, that the teachings of emmanuel levinas speak fairly specifically of murder... in particular, that to rob another of autonomy is to effectively kill that other.

so it seems that in both of the things we do best, someone has to die.

killing another begins foundationally with robbing the other of the autonomy that is rightfully theirs, and selling out is to rob oneself of the same autonomy. even Jesus speaks of this in the scriptures when he implores me to deny myself, take up my cross daily and follow him. to surrender to lordship of another is to willfully give up my autonomy and die to self.

where this all breaks for me personally is that i don't feel like i've sold out on anything. i've accepted my role in the murder of Jesus (one life one time for all for all time ) and have sought to follow him... even when that following demands more of me than i can fathom, much less articulate.

click on believe and follow the instructions

2010-05-20T07:36:00.000-07:00

The doctrine of Redemption is the fundamental mystery of our holy religion- whosoever believeth in it shall not perish but have everlasting life in which to try to understand it. (Ambrose Pierce)

Q: What must I do to be saved?

indeed, what? as canadians, we can stumble over the answer to this question simply for fear of telling someone else how to live their life. however, when we, for all our stumbling, realize that our own answer is decidedly more cluttered by religion than Jesus’ answer was, or than Peter’s or Paul’s answers were, it is then that we are able to throw off our cultural baggage and move forward in both our understanding and our sharing of God’s grace.

we run hard in our quest for redemption.

look around: people do amazing things for their community in search of their place in this world. coaching teams, performing in community theatre, organizing hip hop groups in the inner city, serving at camps for the disabled, teaching children bible stories at church- we want to be part of a work that makes the world a better place and establishes a legacy that will somehow live on after we’ve gone. we want to leave a good mark and our quest for purpose, for redemption, drives us.

but sometimes we get things backwards. mistakenly engaging in these community-building activities with the hope of somehow attaining salvation through our involvements. these involvements should be the expression of salvation, not a means of somehow accomplishing it.

but when asked the big redemption question, paul answers with a hyperlink: 'click on BELIEVE and follow the instructions.'

receive hope and then live it out in obedience.

that's the redemption deal.

but remember:

the ‘living it out’ is not where the religion comes in-

it’s where the light shines out

going home?

2010-05-19T10:21:00.000-07:00

Tuesday's lectionary reading this week takes us here

²²"And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. ²³I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. ²⁴However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace.

(Acts 20.22-24)

you ever get gripped with nostalgia upon returning to your hometown, or the place where you went to university, or a place in which you used to work? it can get pretty trippy, depending on the emotional colour of the memories that continue to reside there in your mind.

returning to jerusalem is a fairly intense homecoming for paul. probably not since arriving in damascas blind has paul felt such trepidation about going somewhere. jerusalem is where paul, once called 'saul of tarsus' in what probably feels like a whole nother life to him, was stationed during the period of his life when he was busy holding the coats of the murderous, stone-throwing mob and 'breathing murderous threats' against the followers of Christ.

so returning to jerusalem represents a closure, of sorts, for paul- the finishing of a marathon; the completion of a task. it is as if all that began on that damascas road is reaching its inevitable conclusion for him personally. it even seems that the guy is a bit worried about being murdered himself- and yet he presses on because, as we read in his writing, the Spirit compels him.

and when the Spirit compels me, am i faithful? i mean, when i KNOW it's God talking, am i ready, willing and able to move?

what if it means 'going back' even though i've 'moved on?'

very few faith opportunities in this western life represent any real threat to my actual life, so why do i find faithfulness itself so challenging?

perhaps i'm still thinking this life is mine.

i read this and thought this2

2010-05-19T10:12:00.000-07:00

www.twittermosaic.com

Want to meet God? Look into the face of the next person you meet. (Leonard Sweet)

in spending time with God’s word

i will discover the very face of God,

increasingly visible,

increasingly involved

increasingly engaged...

largely because i am.

(psalm 119.5-9 , john 17.17 )

loaded questions and God's redemption jokes

2010-05-14T16:02:00.000-07:00

so Jesus challenges his followers with a loaded question.

'what good will it be for a man to gain the world and forfeit his soul?' (matthew 16.26)

he challenges them to think bigger than

he challenges them to dream bolder than

he challenges them to love deeper than

anything they can possibly pull off on their own steam.

unfortunately, he has to die and resurrect himself before anybody actually gets it. he's not joking... or maybe he is. perhaps it's just that these humble followers have such an earthly perspective that a punchline with a heavenly accent fails to register. humour is so cultural- so subjective.

(some further thoughts on God's sense of humour and how we fail to recognize his best jokes can be found here )

whatever the case, years later, paul choses, instead, to lose his life for Christ’s sake (Matthew 10.39) and in so doing, find the realization of God’s purposes for the time he has left.

having been a both a roman citizen AND a jewish pharisee, ‘breathing murderous threats’ against the followers of Christ; having been actively involved in the persecution that ultimately drove Christianity out of its Neonatal ICU of Jerusalem and into the rest of the world (unwittingly spreading the Gospel far beyond the borders of anything that is manageable for temple authorities to suppress... another one of God's jokes) paul meets God face to face on the killing road and lets it all go.

so when, on his second missionary journey, he receives a vision from God, he acts upon it immediately, (acts 16.9-13) to Macedonia. because of its proximity to the sea as well as to one of the major roads to europe, philippi is a commercial centre of macedonia.

once in philippi, paul leads his group down to the river, for this is where praying takes place in towns that have too few Jewish households to erect a synagogue... makes sense: in many places in scripture, but most pointedly in accounts of israel's exodus and ultimate arrival in the promised land and in writings of the prophet ezekiel, the river is a rich symbol of the Holy Spirit as well as God’s cleansing, anointing and life-giving resource and hope.

paul, arriving in town, seeking to plant a church there, waits until the Sabbath and then seeks out the praying people where he knows they will be. his hans landa-type detective skills also serve him well as a church planter.

and God laughs

(NOTE: the comparisons between the apostle paul and fictional nazi colonel, hans landa are really quite strong: The Jew Hunter)

to gain the whole wide world

2010-05-10T08:07:00.000-07:00

but what does it mean to gain the whole wide world?

when Jesus uses this phrase (matthew 16.26), he is talking about trying to figure out the plans of God. he challenges those who are following him around to truly follow- to let go of all that might get in the way of being part of God’s larger plan. he reminds us that, while up to our eyeballs in life on earth, our perspective is limited by it and so we are well advised to be eager listeners and learners, living and loving rather than presuming...

God alone knows all the facts, sets all the goals, and determines morality. Nowhere in Scripture are his principles to be replaced in favour of human calculation. He allows us to play the game; he does not allow us to make the rules. (Erwin W Lutzer)

(for some further thoughts on perspective, its limitations and the problem of objectivity, go here )

the enemy line

2010-05-06T09:06:00.000-07:00

canadians are known worldwide as a fairly easy-going, self-effacing people. just watch how canadians are charicatured in films and television shows. we dodge the big deal. we avoid banquets held in our honour. we make funny remarks to counter someone else’s thanks... (for some more canadiana, go here)

our self-consciousness is cultural.

and we’re not alone in that.

look within the story of the early church and you will find glaring examples of cultural attitudes that divide the people Jesus had been dying to unite. (Acts 11.1-18)

peter receives this vision from God where real people are relegated to deplorable eats. it's not that God has reduced people to this. God speaks to peter in pictures that peter recognizes and peter's cultural perspective on non-jewish persons recognizes the symbolism of the gross animals. God intends for that to change. the future of the church is at stake, so God paints peter a dream picture and then interprets it for him. after some initial push back, peter gets it and sets out to do what God is calling him to, even though it is culturally uncomfortable for him.

but there is another perspective here: that of the unsavoury animals.

the non-jewish people ('gentiles') would also recognize the symbolism in peter's vision, for they've been treated as such for millennia. even during the times of exile when the rulers of the land have been non-jewish, there has been a sense of spiritual and cultural arrogance expressed in the behaviours and practices of the jewish people. there has been a line drawn that has created an animosity on either side of the line towards the other. this is why God gives a complementary vision of an angel to cornelius, the non-jewish guy to whose house peter is being sent .

because the attitudes on both sides of a line of segregation

are informed by the line itself.

so does this sound like the line between born-agains and non-believers?

see, as long as the people who don't subscribe to the evangelical christian worldview feel marginalized and looked down upon (with gentile-type labels like nonbeliever, heathen, sinner, joe six-pack, unchurched harry etc) there will still be reticence regarding the overtures of love offered to them. when people don't feel beautiful or loved, it's hard to receive love messages without doubting their sincerity...

***

When the church fails to break the cultural barrier, both sides lose. Those who need the gospel message of hope and the reality of love, don’t get it, and the isolated church keeps evangelizing the same people over and over until its only mission finally is to entertain itself... When the church transcends culture, it can transform culture.
(Charles Colson)

new stuff

2010-05-02T19:43:00.000-07:00

And he that sat upon the throne said,

Behold, I make all things new.

(Revelation 21.5)

what does the word 'new' mean when Jesus says it?

i mean, at first glance, Jesus seems to be very much about redefining things in new terms. however, perhaps he isn’t redefining so much as redeeming the original value and intended meaning of things. taking familar passages of scripture from moses and the prophets and delivering them with such spin that the scriptures themselves ae revitalized and the standard for behaviour is raised beyond the parameters of traditional expectation, Jesus’ work on earth is to purposefully exalt this human experience of living... to resurrect it.

and so, within the teaching part of his ministry, he often takes direct questions from the gallery on the simplest of truths, and uses them to radically rework his listeners’ paradigms and deepen their understanding of that which they think they already know...

matthew 22.35-40 "greatest commandment"
luke 6.27-31 "golden rule"

note how, in both of these instances, Jesus reminds the people that their own perspective is valuable. “as yourself” and “to you”... it's not enough to debate- to speak in logic and abstracts. he doesn't simply invite his listeners to think right. these words of truth only matter when placed in the context of human experience and lived out there.

there is the real challenge, however.

see, Jesus seems to hold that we already know ourselves implicitly and treat ourselves well... but what if we don’t know these things? failing to love ourselves appropriately, failing to take care of ourselves conscientiously, do Jesus’ words here have any meaning to us at all?

unleashed

2010-04-27T10:04:00.000-07:00

it may just be cheesy wordplay, but i find it very interesting that a group of lions is called a 'pride'... not a herd or a flock or anything else that has come to mean 'followers'. a pride carries with it all the pomp and power that befits the king of the jungle. (for more thoughts on this one, go here)

saul of tarsus belongs to a very elite pride of lions... and it is that same pomp and power that characterizes saul's movements in the early chapters of the book of acts.

as a jewish roman citizen, raised in a family of means and consequence, saul has attended all the best schools and received top marks for diligence in his studies. he probably has the torah, the books of the prophets and even the hymnal of his people committed to memory by the time he begins breathing murderous threats against those belonging to 'the Way'... the latest religiopolitical anarchist group to rise up in palestine following the teachings of the rabbi Yeshua Ben Yosef (Jesus, son of joseph)

murderous threats?

how does all that attention paid to the scriptures somehow lead to murderous threats and, ultimately, murderous action? well, let's face it, saul's case is neither the first nor the last time a little knowledge has or will become a dangerous thing, nor is it an isolated incident where religious fervor results in many lost lives. as poet and troubadour mark heard once cynically penned:

'everybody loves a holy war'

all throughout our history and into our fiction, both past and future, the Word of God (as coming to many cultures through many representatives of many gods... but that's probably a whole nother blog) is something that gets misused by men and women in order to realize personal ambitions and justify committing great offences against each other and against our planet.

saul's story is just one of these.
but he is no lion.
he is a man.

this man has a lion on a leash, however, which accompanies him everywhere. in fact, because the leash is so strong and the lion is so powerful, it is probably more accurate to say that saul accompanies the lion everywhere. that's just the way it is.

yes, saul belongs to a very elite pride of lions.
belongs, not in terms of being part of,
but rather in terms of being owned by.

for saul, the law is the leash that ultimately keeps him tied to this lion and its pride. the pride tells him he is in the right and the lion that drags him from place to place, seeking out the weak and the scandalous, carrying out its own little inquisition about a millennium before the spanish one, tugs so hard at its leash that saul has no control over it. he is a kept man, his eyes being used by the lion of the pride to hunt down and destroy its prey. the leash keeps him bound to this task.

so Jesus’ confrontation on the road is epic- complete with flashing light, loud noises, symbolic blindness and two complementary visions thrown in for good measure.

the point?
he needs to break the leash.

break the leash and you set the man free.

set the one man free and all those who are subjected to his disease will taste freedom as well. just ask anyone in a twelve step program who has endured 'family day.' this is how it works.

now, we've already said that this lion of the pride needs saul's eyes to hunt. it's pretty significant, then, that Jesus engages saul with a fairly symbolic wonder: the light in which he enshrouds himself is so bright that saul is blinded by it.

saul's exposure to the light has left him blind.

great metaphor, isn't it? the revealed word of God in scripture is described in the psalms (119.105) as 'a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path' and saul has been so exposed to this light that he has become blind to anything that is not light itself. it's much easier to kill people this way.

so to undo what has been taking place for awhile in the spiritual realm, Jesus accomplishes the same in the physical realm: saul is stricken blind through exposure to light.

this sets up some real problems for the lion that's dragging saul around, for the lion needs saul's eyes to hunt. without the use of his eyes, the lion no longer has use of the man. humbled, the man finds himself all alone- abandoned by the pride that once controlled him.

Many people begin coming to God once they stop being religious because there is only one master of the human heart. (Oswald Chambers)

hmm... okay, enough allegorical posts about zoo animals.

effervescing elephant

2010-04-23T08:44:00.000-07:00

in john 21, Jesus returns to find a rather tormented leader out on the water with his crew once again. it’s as if everything and nothing has changed. peter’s elephant is in the boat with them.

elephant?

yes, the one that followed him home on the night Jesus was taken away. now it goes with him everywhere. he knows it's with him and so does everyone else. he takes good care of the elephant- he takes care of it the way all good pet owners do. he feeds it, takes it out for exercise and, most importantly, he pays a lot of attention to it. peter takes better care of his elephant than he does of himself.

don't we all.

so there they all are, out in the boat. peter's been a bit preoccupied of late- more so since resurrection day when he ran to the tomb and saw with his own eyes that Jesus was not where they had left him. truly a holy moment, especially since this was probably the only time since it began following him around that peter's elephant wasn't there with him, somehow informing everything by its presence. the thing just couldn't keep up with the hope that had driven peter to the empty tomb.

sadly, once the endorphins abated, the elephant was right there... imposing, demanding, controlling. the picture of codependence.

so now, peter's perspective has become so dark and tormented that, upon announcing to everyone that he is going out on the water, he finds his closest friends deciding to join him. see, they just don't trust peter these days, out on the water, alone with his elephant. who knows what might happen?

and into this scene comes Jesus with his almost taunting greeting from the beach: "have you caught anything?"

no doubt there are those in the boat thinking
perhaps if we didn't have to try to work around this elephant here in the boat we'd have more of a catch- but thanks for asking!

but no one says anything... not even peter, who is known for having no difficulty in this area. quite the contrary, in fact. he is, of course, tending to his elephant again and hasn't really been listening.

so Jesus tries again.
‘you're throwing your nets on the wrong side... throw them on the right side of the boat and you might actually catch something!'

this one pokes peter. it pokes his elephant too. way back in their shared memory, there was a time when somebody claimed to know more about fishing than peter did. that somebody seemed to not only know about fishing, but about pretty much everything else, including the time and place that peter would go about procuring for himself one rather large and obtrusive pachyderm that is now becoming a bit cumbersome to have around.

he looks up at about the same time one of the others shouts out in triumphant recognition: the master! peter jumps into the water and enthusiastically swims to shore. the elephant remains in the boat with the others who paddle in.

as they eat breakfast, there’s a certain indescribable tension in the air. Jesus allows the elephant to remain there with them on the beach. he does not feed it. he does not tend it. he does not, however, chase it away either.

see, God seems to be okay with a little dramatic irony. apparently it is we who are in this big hurry to resolve every conflict and explain every mystery in a timely fashion.

There is nothing miraculous or mysterious about the things we can explain. We control what we are able to explain. Consequently it is only natural to seek an explanation for everything. (Oswald Chambers)

when the teachable moment is ripe, Jesus strikes up some casual conversation, flatly reinstating peter. after all, enough is enough. three times Jesus challenges peter to confess with his lips in greater measure than the original denial and in these moments of restoration, Jesus calls peter beyond the basic undoing of a wrong and into a new day, a new identity.

with Jesus’ resurrection and peter’s confession of love, the elephant in the room is finally put down.

The work that Jesus called Peter to do was the work of shepherding the flock of God... There could only be one motivation. Love. Not a love for the open fields. Not a love for shepherding. Not even a love for the sheep. It had to be more than that. It had to be a love for the Shepherd Himself. Everything had to come from there. Every sermon. Every prayer for the sick. Every search for someone who was lost... All of the work, even the lowliest part of it, had to come from there. (Ken Gire)

zombie apocalypse?

2010-04-17T10:33:00.000-07:00

i couldn't help noticing this easter that one or two remarks have been made online concerning the whole zombie element to the easter story. however, rather than be shocked by the 'irreverence' of this idea, i decided to push the metaphor a bit and see where this led me... mainly because, as leonard sweet recently said in a talk that i attended:

"our currency is no longer words, but images,

and the essence of change is reframing with new metaphors."

so here's some evangelical spin on the zombie heresy that i left on my facebook page:

Christ rose from the dead, beginning a movement of spiritual transformation which begins with an albeit symbolic death to self, offering its adherents both a fearless existence and immortality in exchange for their autonomy. these followers are everywhere, inviting others to enter into the same experience which appears, to all outside of it, to be a form of spiritual fanatacism at its best, super-holy madness at its worst...

before Jesus’ resurrection, life led to death...
after Jesus’ resurrection, true life begins with death:

not a physical death, but a death to the temporal in exchange for the eternal... to self-satisfying behaviours and habits and all that crap that we cling to which inhibits the expression of the life and light within us that has been put there by Almighty God.

some of the zombie culture rhetoric refers to zombies as 'life-impaired.'

in this new metaphor, i almost wonder if the life-impaired are those of us that still insist on running things ourselves, informed by incomplete or otherwise flawed intel and powered by emotional, neural, cardiovascular and respiratory human batteries that eventually run down to expiration.

please tell me life isn't simply the sum total of our biological processes and body functions. please tell me there is something more- something eternal that continues on even after we have, as shakespeare put it in hamlet and monty python's john cleese shouted it in the parrot sketch, "shuffled off this mortal coil"!

one final thing occurs to me as i consider the zombie Jesus. within zombie literature and films, there is this time coming when everyone in the world falls prey to the zombie disease and unity is once again established. it is called zombie apocalypse.

however, if Jesus is patient 0 or, as we read (and warp a bit here) in revelation 1.5 firstborn of the dead, then what is the zombie apocalpyse but an event of unprecedented revival?

there's a new world coming

;)

to believe or not to believe

2010-04-14T14:16:00.000-07:00

we're all familiar with thomas. even if we haven't read his story, we know his name. although scripture reminds us that he was also called 'didymus' (john 20.19-31) we have a different d-word for him.

doubting thomas

poor guy. makes one simple statement that anyone might make and is stuck with a deprecatory nickname for millennia to follow. just doesn't seem fair.

a statement that anyone might make.

see, thomas requires hard data. he isn’t a pessimist- he’s a realist. it’s not that he doesn’t believe in Jesus... it’s that he doesn’t necessarily believe in his friends. after all, they’ve been under a lot of stress lately.

he does NOT say ‘It’s a lie.’

he simply says ‘prove it.’ (20.25)

so Jesus returns at the end of the week

challenging Thomas to make a choice:
‘to believe or NOT to believe- that is the question.’ (20.27)

gazing upon the scars of the passion of just a little over a week earlier, thomas’ lordship issue is broken, and the breaking resulting from the collision of his skepticism with this incredibly hard data prompts his confession of faith: ‘my Lord and my God!'

for doubting thomas, this visual proof not only establishes Jesus’ credentials as the Christ, but also this Christ’s divinity.

thomas is now ready.

it's interesting that scripture does not share whether tom takes Jesus up on the challenge and extends a timid finger into the wounds of his master or hangs back, sheepishly. i suspect the latter. after all, Jesus has not only exposed his lack of faith, but also his hyperbole. more importantly, perhaps, Jesus gives him another opportunity to believe without physically experiencing. Jesus invites thomas to further experience the proof, or simply believe his eyes. the choice is his.

and the choice is ours.

it is always ours.

recently, a friend sent me a note that sounded a bit like, perhaps, the kind thomas might have sent in that moment. my friend was facing a personal situation that was pushing him beyond the natural realm where the causalities are certain and control is sure and into the supernatural, where everything is bigger, faster, more absorbent and therefore all consuming. life, it seems, has the capacity to drive even the most self-assured of us to our knees:

Essentially I've depended on sound logic and self-reliance to guide me through life because I knew those things would never let me down. I've had a long relationship with God that has gone well with logic, and I could always rely on my own strength and determination to translate that logic into action.

I realized today that God has seen (my) situation before and he has a plan for recovery. Unfortunately the path he has laid out for the broken to walk on isn't designed to be walked alone. In order to walk this path I have to cast aside logic and accept true supernatural intervention. And instead of just pounding through the problem myself I'll have to rely on the wisdom and care of others. I'm not ok with this. I'm private by nature, and given any task, any mountain to climb, I know I can power through it most efficiently by myself. But this path isn't designed for that. If I wasn't so awesome I might even say I was scared.

to believe or disbelieve... that is the question

***

one of my favourite bands of the 90's was a band called the prayer chain.

their song 'dig dug' puts it this way:

It comes creepin...

Can you hear me?
Do you even know me?
I'm just like the rest
Need to stick my finger in your wrist

Dig in deep...

Can you hear my heart beat?
Do you even know my heart?
When i hold the doubts of thomas
As hard as i hold your promise?

Dig in deep
And bury me
Let it grow
Let it believe

(sadly, this recording is from 2003. the youtube vid from their heyday back in 1994 is so out of sync that it is unwatchable... in my view)

the way out

2010-04-13T07:54:00.000-07:00

there are words in songs that we often get wrong, and getting it wrong can change the whole message of the lyric. here are some faves:

Great is my faithfulness, Lord unto thee...

(from 'Great Is Thy Faithfulness')

Then sings thy soul, my Savior God to me: How great thou art...

(from 'How Great Thou Art')

He arose a victim from the dark domain...’

(from 'Up From The Grave He Arose)

the first couple are just ridiculously self-centred, unconsciously betraying an egocentricity that probably needs to be explored on its own in a separate post. however, the third one says something different about our worldview and, more importantly, how we see ourselves and Christ as victims in this big mean place.

Jesus was NOT victimized.

Jesus stepped into this calamity with a spoiler alert:

he knew where the story of redemption had to climax.

that's the big difference between being the victim and the victor...

Jesus wasn't a helpless puppet.

Jesus was the man in charge.

one of the most dangerous things about films like The Passion of the Christ becoming more frank about how Jesus was treated is that it becomes easy to forget that Jesus was the one in charge... we are so emotionally moved by the lamb being led really roughly to the slaughter that we lose track of the ultimate victory that God is orchestrating there.

but it's an easy mistake.

we often forget that God is God.

once again, we are dealing with the scandalous and confusing message of God's grace on human terms and, in our pathos, find ourselves occasionally even feeling sorry for God, as though the almighty creator of the universe was some big old guy sitting on a cloud somewhere all depressed because he is constantly misunderstood, mulling over the unfaithfulness to the point of murder of his crowned of creation and wondering where he went wrong as a diety. our post-Genesis3 understanding of the way things are makes it difficult for us to actually see what’s going on because our perspective is so clouded by the inescapability of sin and its wages.

and yet untying the knots of our fallenness is the whole point of the resurrection.

Up from the grave he arose with a mighty triumph o’er his foes

He arose a victor from the dark domain
And he’ll live forever with his Saints to reign
He arose! He arose!
Hallelujah, Christ arose!

(Robert Lowry)

the challenge of response...

2010-04-09T07:59:00.000-07:00

...is to discern the difference between the needs that exist in our field of vision and those which are actually in our path because attending to every need within our field of vision will result in a really random path.

is finding/navigating God's will for a life or a church simply a matter of connecting the dots or does this approach actually impede progress?

and what is progress anyway?

lost passion

2010-04-07T09:49:00.000-07:00

so in reflecting a bit on easter, good friday, lenten fasts etc, i was drawn back to an old blogpost from 2005.

i have a question: why the recut?
mel gibson's controversial film 'the passion of the Christ' has been recut with the more 'offensive' stuff removed.

i have another question: feel better now?

once again we have opted for a tidy retelling of the story- as if there aren't already enough of those. about a month ago my marcy and i were tossing around some of film's more comical (:-0) portrayals of Jesus' story.

***
marcy said
This all started when I started asking people who they thought the worst ‘Jesus Actors’ of all time where. I mean, we’re talking from Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion’ on down through ‘The Robe’ and what-not, the worst Jesus Actors of all time.

We’re talking the worst method actors known to cinema: “A November Boston Globe review of Jesus Christ Superstar called the non-Equity show "so unspeakably awful it's enough to make a writer give up theater criticism forever and set up a shoeshine stand in the middle of a mudslide."

Anyways, here’s a partial list of Jesus Actors:
Willem Dafoe in The Last Temptation of Christ
James Caviezel in The Passion of the Christ
Jeremy Sisto in Jesus (made for tv)
Brian Deacon in Jesus (from '79)
Claude Heater in Ben-Hur
Kenneth Colley in Life of Brian
Ted Neeley in Jesus Christ Superstar
William Powell in Jesus Of Nazareth
Max Von Sydow in The Greatest Story Ever Told
Jeffrey Hunter in ‘The King of Kings’ (61)

Okay, but Willem Dafoe also played the mad scientist in the Spiderman movie. Enough said there.

to which i felt compelled to reply:
as for willem dafoe, thank God actors play roles, rather than live them (another plug for "Jesus of Montreal" yay!) because a bunch of the guys on this list have either taken bizarre/embarrassing parts somewhere along the way, or have never worked again...

ted neeley played 'curly' (the creepy cowboy with a glove full of vaseline) in the 70's version of john steinbeck's "of mice and men"

"max von sydow was 'brewmeister smith' (a deranged scientist who goes for global mind control by adding hallucinogens to canadian beer at oktoberfest)in bob and doug mckenzie's "strange brew" (major canadiana piece there) and has portrayed mostly malevolent authority figures ever since, in mind-bending psychological films like "minority report" and "shutter island"

jeffrey hunter went on to be commander pike in the "star trek" pilot, returning to the little screen in a recut version of it called "the menagerie"

there's probably many more great laughs we could have over the aesthetic folly/curse (it's kinda interesting that in casting the new superman, both jim C and willem D were not even considered because they had both already played JC. darned do-gooders!) attached to playing Jesus- i just don't have my big fat cross-referenced movie book handy to go digging further.

i am just glad that malcolm mcdowell has never played the Christ (unless you include "a clockwork orange"- but that one's probably just conjecture) because i don't think that i could see "Caligula Christ" without becoming really uncomfortable.

and on it went...
***

point is, there are already a bunch of 'biblical epic' type portrayals of Jesus' passion which just don't rate, and clearly it's not about visual desensitization, because desensitized people would dismiss the flogging scene as merely running too long without moving the story forward...

it's about letting love in. we hate that a good person could be so cruelly treated; or we hate that people will watch a film and weep, but will eat supper on the couch while watching wars and their atrocities chronicled on cnn; we hate the idea that such horrific torture could be undergone by the son of God on our behalf (although that is still too personally and spiritually problematic for many- let's just stick with the good person part; it permits filtered consciencing.) telling a story is one thing, but depicting a troubling historical event in such extreme detail is somehow too much.

give us 'kill bill.' we know that that's silly. we know that that isn't supposed to get into our hearts. we know that people are not, as presented (brilliantly, i might add) by tarantino, huge sacks of blood just waiting to explode, and therefore we can laugh at our mortality rather than fear losing it to face a loveless forever, completely absent from the presence of God.

don't kid yourself- none of us has any idea how dark the darkness really is. how dark can you imagine? does it compare to what we find offensive about the original cut of the film?

Jesus said 'forgive them, for they have no idea...'

sometimes it feels like we've given up truth for lent.

setting captives free

2010-02-10T07:18:00.000-08:00

(click here to view this dramatic piece by edward poitras in the context presented)

it's always interesting to monitor just how things link up.
a deterministic theology? perhaps.

here's the thing: whether we believe in coincidence or co-incidents, there is a challenge for us to do something with events, words etc that seem to harmonize with each other, taking us in a single direction. just as many streams form one great channel to the sea, these complimentary happenings serve as invitations to consider glory, design and the will of God.

for him who has ears, let him hear, right?

so this sunday, as part of our 'turning towards the kiss of God' we were moved to look into 2 Chronicles 7.1-16 and meditate with singing upon the words:

If we'd ask, you would come.
Lord send your rain on everyone
That we'd see your glory here.

and on monday i received the email message below which deals with a movement across the country to set the captives free: free from the bondage of non-forgiveness.

what might God be whispering through these co-incidents?

if God is speaking, what can we do to be part of the great channel of unity, restoration and deep social, spiritual and cultural healing that God longs to bring to this land and these peoples,
regardless of ethnicity,
regardless of shameful backstory,
regardless of the obscene injustices that have been inflicted in his name by one people upon many others...

the restoration of broken relationships and identity sets those on both sides of a conflict free by God's grace.

***
If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

(2 Chronicles 7:13, 14)

Saskatchewan call to 3 days of prayer and fasting
February 11, 12, 13, 2010

February 13 Gather corporately to pray

Regina
Healing Hearts Ministry
766 Angus St
Saturday February 13, 1-4 pm

This tour is to present the message of forgiveness as a national response to the Prime Minister's apology in 2008 to Residential School Survivors and their families. Several national leaders have felt the need to offer a national response and will do a 3-day summit in Ottawa in June 11-13, 2010. This tour is to simply bring the message to people across Canada who have experienced Residential schools and the families who have also been affected. This is seen as a way to bring healing to our people as an opening step for our community as well as others in Canada to embrace the healing we all want and need.

(Jean Hill, provincial co-ordinator)

"The release of forgiveness will not only be a major landmark in the journey of Canada towards our destiny to bring healing to the nations, but it will be a new beginning in covenant relationships within the family of God for kingdom authority purpose for our nation; and Canada will be a blessed nation under God even more!"

(Gathering Nations International leader, Kenny Blacksmith)

Saskatchewan House of Prayer is calling the province to seek the Lord for three days February 11, 12, 13.

As we humble ourselves to pray "Forgive us as we forgive those who've sinned against us" FORGIVENESS will be released in the spirit realm.
Pray for Jean Hill and her team.
Pray for Kenny Blacksmith and his team, those travelling with him.
Cry out to God for healing upon our 1st Peoples, the people of this province and upon our land.

Words/visions/dreams can be sent to freedomwords2010@gmail.com

Gather together in your local areas to pray with others on February 13.

"If My people will . . . . then I will"

raise and release

2010-02-09T08:32:00.000-08:00

so the struggle with sharing vision is to try to translate this sharing into different media. all fine and good to speak passionately before an assembled crowd, quite something different to post those same thoughts somewhere to be read without the benefit of all the things that make listening to an inspiring speaker inspirational.

the benefit, however, is the hindsight that is afforded in the process of somehow transcripting spoken words into written ones. there are shining sparks of revelation not found in the notes which take on major significance as God moves in the live moment of interaction, making apparent to all assembled (even the one speaking) that this is what he wanted someone to say.

example: a three word phrase that did not occupy a whole lot of space in the wildly scribbled, footnoted, annotated and even roughly illustrated notes that i brought with me to the front at a recent gathering of our people:

raise and release

that was it. so simple. buried amidst gathered quotes and ministry opportunities and examples to be shared with our missionally-minded, yet progressively active crowd at the annual 'society meeting.'

yet these words say so much.

raising requires investment work. it requires a discipling/mentoring relationship to be forged which is, at its centre, collaborative.

releasing requires trust and affords validation. whether the release is internal, releasing one to pursue his/her piece of the mission locally, or external, being allowed to leave the shelter, comfort and safety of the nest, that the larger picture would be realized.

yes, to raise and release is to invite, inspire, equip and empower. it is to place words of vision and challenge before people, then to walk alongside them, all the while sharing your pieces of the picture with them, that their own would be informed by it while not being controlled or restricted. it is to afford people the opportunity to meaningfully engage in the ongoing work as part of their own journey to self actualized, entire sanctification. to boldly go where no man has gone before...

transformation to a better way

2010-01-22T15:39:00.000-08:00

in his book God Bless You, Mr Rosewater , kurt vonnegut tells the story of a millionaire philanthropist who, in his quest for the meaning of life, decides to spend his life and the family fortune on society’s throwaways at the risk of losing control of the foundation’s millions upon being proven insane for doing so. in the book, vonnegut (ever the idealist cynic) makes some wry observations about the way people deal with wealth…

Think about the silly ways money gets passed around now,
and then think up better ways. (Kurt Vonnegut Jr)

on january 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake tore through the ‘poorest country in the western hemisphere.’
I found myself journaling...

O God, what is our role in the relief of this disaster?
the answer was given in psalm 20, my devotions for the day.

this psalm is a song of blessing akin to something that might have been traditionally sung in an irish pub down the road. within the lyric are many 'fare-thee-wells', but it was the first couple lines that had a specific word for me, for us. i mean, if we are comfortable referring to the world as a global village, then we need to accept the responsibility that goes with the metaphor: we need to take care of the people in our village.

in your time of trouble, may the Lord answer
sending help from his sanctuary (psa20.1-2)

the word for 'help' is 'ezer.
it is a noun meaning succour/aid/support/relief.
relief from his sanctuary

in other words, the way God chooses to bring help and relief is to provide some within his sanctuary, his place of solace, refuge and protection, having both means and opportunity to actively and faithfully distribute his grace and mercy to those in need

and yet, in sanctuary, we are so accustomed to be blessed and protected that we can frivolously throw the blessings out into the street on folly and still sleep at night. this is the danger of being entrusted with so much, i suppose.

in Jesus' early ministry days following his baptism and temptation in the wilderness, we find the Lord celebrating at a wedding. someone has made a grave error of calculation, and the party grinds to a halt as the announcement is made that the celebration is over as they are all out of wine. Jesus' mother motivates her boy the way only a mother can, and he gets up, protesting the whole time, goes over to where the big jars for ceremonial washing are standing and promptly changes them into an award-winning chardonnay.

important to note: it isn’t that the water is multiplied- Jesus does plenty of multiplication on other occasions- it’s that it is transformed from

something common to something miraculous
something meaningless to something meaningful
something of social utility to something of social gravity…

what has been basic water, fit not even for drinking but for washing, is transformed into something not simply drinkable, but surprisingly good.

perhaps God intends to do the same with the cash that we keep making and keep throwing away on ridiculous luxury. we know, after all, that the interest against the loan we have taken out to pay for contentment so gravely outweighs the principle itself that we'll never be truly free of the debt. what if we were to take the common currency of commerce and let Jesus have a go at it?

relief is a God thing. God wants to provide it for people and he wants to use the generosity that he has placed in people to be its distribution system. God wants to use his church- his people today- to be part of this action.

*note: this post was drawn from a talk that i gave the week following the earthquake in haiti. at that time, the board of northview community church agreed to simply give that morning's entire offering to the relief effort, releasing our human grip on the cash that God has entrusted to our care in faith. the good people of our local church responded generously and, with matching from the CIDA, a goodly sum was sent to haiti. we have chosen to partner with World Relief and would invite anyone who has not yet done so to participate in the haiti earthquake relief effort by giving generously to the cause.

www.worldrelief.org

the unforgettable fire

2010-01-14T12:32:00.000-08:00

What is it, Papa?
Nothing. We're okay. Go to sleep.
We're going to be okay, aren't we Papa?
Yes. We are.
And nothing bad is going to happen to us.
That's right.
Because we're carrying the fire.
Yes. Because we're carrying the fire.
(from 'The Road ' by Cormac McCarthy, p83)

***

when john the baptiser speaks of the long-awaited messiah, (soon to be revealed as his own cousin Jesus in luke 3.15-17), he speaks of someone operating on a higher plane, affecting exponential change to the world. whereas john baptizes with water, he reminds the people of the scriptures they have already learned, announcing that Jesus, will anoint people’s very hearts with the oil of royalty and then flambé them. like Moses’ bush in the wilderness, they will be set afire to burn brightly in the darkness of a fallen, cannibalistic world, but will not be burned up- instead, offering the warmth, illumination, guidance and hope of God's unforgettable fire in the darkness.

however, sometimes we start to be a bit territorial and protective with this flame that has been entrusted to us. although Jesus reminded all who had ears to hear that they were not to hide their light under a thick shade, in fact this is often the case within today's church.

yet in the words of the prophet recorded in isaiah 49.6, we are challenged with the phrase “It is too small a thing…”

"It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth."

it is too small a thing to restrict our focus to our own people, our own programs, our own facility. it is too small a thing to engage only with those who believe as we do, that we would be mutually encouraged. it is too small a thing to protect our traditions in deference to the cries of irrelevance from a world in pain. it is too small a thing to only read christian books by christian writers, only listen to christian songs recorded by christian musicians, only support christian businesses listed in some exclusive christians-only directory. it is too small a thing to, as steve taylor put it in a song over a quarter century ago, "only drink milk from a christian cow."

in the luke 3 account of Jesus' baptism, the whole narrative begins by saying We are challenged to bear this light, to carry this unforgettable fire of God’s love and presence into every situation requiring it. To live with eyes wide open for opportunity to share his hope, that those who are ‘Gentiles’ to us (those who do not know the name of Jesus in a life-changing way), would experience the salvation of a relationship freedom from sin and relationship with Almighty God through Jesus Christ, rather than be somehow swallowed up by the calamity that befalls us all.

as we carry the unforgettable fire of God’s love and presence, let us run fast and sure, that this light would reach into every life and bring warmth, hope comfort and freedom there.

***

You have to carry the fire.
I don’t know how to.
Yes you do.
Is it real? The Fire?
Yes it is.
Where is it? I don’t know where it is.
Yes you do. It’s inside you. It was always there. I can see it.
(from 'The Road ' by Cormac McCarthy, pp 278-9)

the road

2010-01-12T06:24:00.000-08:00

my son made an observation recently. apparently all literature placed on high school reading lists has to do with biblical themes- in particular, Christ’s redemptive work through his incarnation, his passion and his resurrection. he brought a few examples, the most recent of which was 'The Road ' by cormac mccarthy.

this got me thinking. if all great literature seems to, in some way, grapple with the common theme of existence: that we feel rather helpless facing the harshness of our physical reality, rife with pain, sickness, betrayal, violence, vengence and death. that we long for a little help as we travel along a mostly cold and impersonal, often completely unexplained road, upon which we often aspire to little more than basic survival with dignity. well what if it’s also true that all scripture is about life?

2Tim3.16 claims that all scripture has a point and is useful, but if we neglect to explore it outside of our own knowledge of it then we might be guilty of reducing the bible to little more than a comic book.

Thy word have I kept in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee (Psalm 119.11)

we’ve gotta be putting it in
if we want to live it out
on the road.