6 posts tagged “jesus”

A friend’s blog contained the question “What do you want?” with a related question having to do with whether or not you're praying for what you want.  It’s an interesting thought, especially since it’s really easy to get wrapped up in life and lose track of those things that are really near and dear to us.  Suddenly we find the important things slipping away as the mundane atrocities of life choke out the dreaming, desiring and hoping aspects of our being.  We get wrapped up in the temporal desires and needs and completely lose focus on those things that we desire that are of a more eternal nature.

I have a desire that’s pretty unusual, judging from the practice of life I’ve observed.  I want to go to a church that I’m excited about.  An emerging church that looks like some of the books I have on my reading list.  Seriously, I want to be involved with an emerging church with people I respect who are so outside the box that we make a new box and invite people in.  (Not because we are spiritually superior, but because we are interesting.)  I want to work with the church to help poor and needy people in our community and do community service projects instead of services some weeks. 

I don’t want it to meet in a normal church building or be a “normal” church at all and definitely not on Sunday morning.  (another barf.)  We could meet at the park for all I care.  I want a full tilt dangerous honest to goodness church where people finally “get it” that it’s not about a service – yet it’s about service.  It’s not a building centric thing but could happily meet in a variety of places.  And since it’s about community, it would be cool if we all lived close enough together that we could really become intentional community, and share our stuff and help each other out by bartering services among the members and really connecting with people on a deeper level.  No religion, no pretense, and for heavens sake - if you don’t want to be at the gathering then don’t come!  Oh, and there should be food involved!  Good food!  And tables seem to go good with the eating thing.  Uh, and chairs.

Oh, and if I’m going to have to show up to some sort of service, then I want it to be a full tilt artsy thing with lots of interesting stuff going on.  Incense is good, and artwork that changes each week would be cool.  My brother is carving a cross and it progresses a little each week at his church.  Now how cool would that be?!  I want lots of dancers doing their thing, I love it when the dancers “dance upon injustice.”  I love it when they use big fabrics, banners, flags and Chinese ribbons.  These things delight me.  No preach praying allowed, poetry hoped for and plenty of reading from the Song of Solomon – which also delights me, and the Psalms which are better yet.  And I like the big projection screens with lots of excellent color and artwork!  Go ahead, distract me!  I like it!  I want to try all kinds of traditions and not do the same thing twice for any reason – especially not because that’s how we did it before.  Couldn’t someone read the introduction to “The Hobbit” one time?  I could gladly preach on that.  Let’s use donut holes for communion for crying out loud, and maybe the health freaks can refrain from making an unholy uproar over it for just once.  And music!  There must be lots of music of a variety of styles.  I want to play and sing in the worship team that is full of really killer good musicians who are also actually interesting people.  I want some “harp and bowl” worship along with whatever other kind of music makes God’s people happy. 

And there should be prayer.  Prayer for people individuals, about things that matter.  Not just about so and so who is in the hospital – those kinds of prayer requests we talk about just to fill up uncomfortable space.  But the real prayer requests we are scared to share cause they make us look… uh… human.  Real.  Transparent.  Authentic.  Human. 

I guess my prayer about church is pretty much swallowed up in complacency most of the time.  I go and stomach the ordinariness of it most of the time.  Sometimes for brief flashes I’m engaged and intent on what is happening around me.  If something is happening around me.  And I want to be a part of the story, writing the story, living the story.

I told my mom when I was a little kid, I wanted to be in the next books they add to the Bible.  Hmmm… yeah, didn’t quite strike the chord with her that it could have, but it’s still pretty much true.  I just want to be involved in the next chapters, that’s all.

I know many of my ideas are pretty strange on this one, plenty of religious folk would be rightfully concerned about such disrespect for tradition and predictability.  And any lessor God would have squished me by now, especially since I find a lot of His people especially annoying.  But I have somehow escaped so far.  Thank God.  For real.  Thank God. 

Yesterday’s sermon was about Gideon.  This really unassuming humble guy got up and spoke about Gideon in a way that really captured me Sunday.  Sad to say that is really unusual because if there isn’t something to go with the intellectual content I have a hard time staying tuned in.  I love Gideon; he and I go way back.  I’m always thinking I’m nobody but there is something in the back of my spirit that dreams of bigger things, bigger adventures, and even a desire for greatness.  This preacher guy with the sweet spirit talked about how God sees us the way He created us, we view ourselves very differently.  God says to Gideon “Mighty Warrior” and Gideon goes looking all over the place to see who God is talking to, because certainly it couldn’t be him.  I get that.  Moses got that.  There are others who get that.  And Gideon struggled to believe the truth about himself.  He saw the fire burn up the food he had prepared, he saw the angel vanish from the place where he had just been standing.  He saw the fleece dry with the ground wet, and again the fleece wet with the ground dry.  Over and over God confirmed Himself to Gideon while he struggled and wrestled with how these things could possibly be true.  And then God started messing with his army.  So Gideon sent the scared ones home.  Then he watched them drink from the creek and sent some more home.  I can picture his journal reading something like this:  “God, do you even like me at all?  You’re going to send me up against the biggest army I’ve ever seen and you want me to go with 300 wirey little guys?  Well, I might as well die an honorable death, that way I’ll be spoken of with respect when I’m gone.  I can be somebody in death at least.”  But God continued to patiently work to confirm His word to Gideon.  This time he got to overhear the enemy as they pronounced their own defeat.  And Gideon defeated them. 

I often wonder how it was for Gideon on the evening of that battle.  He must have sat at a fire with a weary body thinking back over his day.  He had seen a lot of death that day, and he probably had some cuts and bruises.  But three hundred men had captured an amazing victory.  Did he turn to God in absolute humility and confess his shock and amazement that the God of the universe would use him to do this?  Did he turn to the mirror and smile at himself and puff out his chest and say “I know you could do it ol' chap!”  I don’t know.  I’d love to sit down with Gideon and ask him questions about what it was like.  I wonder if he ever ceased struggling and wrestling with the truth of who God created him to be in contrast with what he believed of himself. 

Abram was a tired old man with plenty of wealth and no one to leave it to.  He was a childless man.  God gave him a son and then asked for him back.  And Abram started to obey before the angel said ‘just kidding.”  God called him Abraham.  God made his children like the stars.

Elijah was a lunatic who poured water on the wood and provoked and picked at his enemies like a mosquito asking to be swatted.  But God poured out fire from heaven and toasted everything.  Then God visited him when Elijah started hanging out on the mental ward section of the desert.  How amazing that encounter must have been.

Joseph, that annoying dreamer child, the convict with abandonment issues, became the best friend of Pharaoh and the brightest star in his family, a provider and administrator and gifted in interpreting dreams.

Moses was a judge and liberator, but he went about it his own way until that blew up in his face and he had to scurry off to the desert for fear of his life.  Then the burning bush thing rocked his world.  There is a little verse about God considering squashing him like a bug but Moses’ wife did something that saved his neck.  I wonder what that was all about.  Was Moses trying to weasel out of this gig that God had planned for him?  We humans are slow to comprehend and slow to believe.  But Moses grew into God’s design, and we know his name all these generations later. 

Rahab was a women used and abused by many men.  But God made her a haven and protector.  And the spies that she protected liberated her and her family.

Ruth was an abandoned and bereft woman, but God made her steadfast and her fidelity to Naomi brought her into God’s redemption plan.

Joshua had to be reminded to be strong and courageous repeatedly.  Was he really a weak and cowardly man that God transformed?  How many nights lingering in the Presence of God after Moses and turned in did it take till the old weak and cowardly man began to give way to the strong and courageous man?

John was the voice crying in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord.”  He really lost his head.

Peter was all over the charts, one day up and the next day.  One day he was recognized for listening to the Holy Spirit and another time it’s “Get thee behind me satan.”  But God called him Peter  - rock. 

Paul was the guy who held truth above all.  But he went about it his own way and had really quite the list of martyrs to his credit.  Then he “saw the light” on the road and it wasn’t a UFO.  His grip on truth transformed him into a door keeper for those people out there beyond the Jews – the Gentiles.  That’s how I (a gentile) came to be writing about him.

David was a man whose whole life was a search for the beauty and presence of God, from shepherd to king – that was his primary vision.  He faced his Goliaths and engaged his own epic battle to break through the garbage and grief of life to get to God.  And God saw a man after this heart.

I don’t get it.  I look today back over a checkered history.  I see failures and triumphs.  Times that I won big, and times that I lost even bigger.  I remember people who are not a part of my life any more because our relationship was broken.  I remember those who misused me and, sadly, those I’ve misused.  I remember times when I’ve been a good friend and times when I’ve gotten into the face of a good friend and said some really horrible things – even with good intentions.  I’m nobody.  I fight the truth of that because it isn’t what I want to be, but that doesn't change the truth.  I haven’t done anything exceptional that hasn’t already been done by others.  I have not become something amazing or assended to some great height.  But there is something within that God sees when He looks at me.  I shake my head at the silly grin on His face, wondering if He’s really thinking of someone else.  There is greatness within.  Or at least God sees it.  And I have vision for a future that can be most different and unusual.  And I have vision for what I can grow into.  My new employment, the transitions in my life this year, the paradigm shifts I find in my own mind, all this is preparation for what He’s got around the bend on my journey.  I can’t see it from here but I don’t have to.  And maybe I don’t have to even fully believe it as long as I try to listen and do as I’m told.

If He can look at

Gideon and see a warrior,

Moses and see a judge and ruler,

Peter and see a rock,

Abraham and see a father,

Rahab and see a haven,

John the Baptist and see a voice in the desert

John, the disciple that Jesus loved, and see a mystic seer,

Paul and see a doorway for the Gentiles,

David and see a man after his own heart,

Mary and see a mother,

Well, then

There is hope

Sweet hope

For me.

I think the shout still echos through history...  "For the Lord and for Gideon."  Yeah, for the Lord and for nobodies everywhere who dare to hope that God still creates something from nothing, still takes on the impossible, still sees the possibilities in someone like me.  For that kind of God.  Yeah, I'm all for that! 

I feel something stirring within me.  I’ve seen so much come and go in the church, so many good ideas, so many great sounding principles.  So much talk.  What if we laid aside all the church planning books and this and that model of attaining church growth?  What if we recognized that our traditions are for us, not for God?

What if it really is as simple as a person gathering around a few close friends, and beginning to talk about the really important things in life?  What if it involved asking questions and exploring silence?  What if each person took turns talking about the struggle that they were facing or the lesson that God was in the midst of teaching them right in the here and now?  What if there was a little less pretending?  What if there was a lot less shame in coming forward to confess a sin that just has been kicking your bum?  What if participation was mandatory and you couldn’t just come and silently observe and consider your duty served?  What would happen if we talked a little less about wealth building and gaining financial “blessings” a little more about spreading around the news that Jesus is on the scene doing His thing?  What if we talked about salvation as a journey that we choose moment by moment rather than a single prayer designed to keep our tails from frying on the other side?  What if we engaged the world around us and sought to do something about the hell so many people already live in?  What if we talked about ministry as something other than the guy who gets paid to be good and tell us all about it on Sunday mornings?  What if we engaged the marketplace as ministry?  What if we stopped being afraid of the devil and put him out to pasture, taking responsibility for our own poor choices instead of passing the blame?  What if we quit begging for signs and wonders and began to actually work within the normal ordinary physical realm for real change rather than hoping for the big bang to do it for us?  What if we really took a look at political involvement with fresh eyes and became a little less gullible to any politician who talks about Jesus and appears upset over abortion?  What does it mean to follow that compassionate homeless guy from the back side of Nazareth?  I have a feeling it isn’t at all what we’ve been told it is.  So then how do we live?

There has been an old song ringing in my ears for weeks now.  “Ain’t nothing like the real thing baby, Ain’t nothing like the real thing…”  Yeah, wish we had a little more of that and a whole lot less of the other.

I’m growing unfond of the word “saved.”  Well, not in the sense that I have received a gift of salvation from Jesus that has significantly altered my life for the better.  But more in this “us and them” kind of semantic way we talk about saved and unsaved people.   I wonder how many times words like “unsaved” have been used with cruelty, to determine community membership, or rather – community exclusion.  I believe God is at work in everyone’s life, whether or not they recognize it or even approve.  God may work to rescue a witch from the full consequences of a delivering a curse, or He may divert a plane away from its intended destination like on 9/11.  He may allow a person to break an ankle rather than loosing the leg entirely.  Yesterday I was rear ended by a teenager who wasn’t paying attention.  Who’s to say that wouldn’t have been much worse had God not protected us both?  Maybe that kid needed a shake up, and God went easy on him.  I think there are so many ways the hands of God save us that we may never fully understand this side of heaven.  One of the most devastating and bizarre betrayals of my life may have actually saved me in the end.  I would be a different person now if I had stayed too closely aligned with an ultra religious friend who was (at one time) my mentor mother.  I’m more compassionate than ever now, seeing up close and personal the harm that hyper-spiritualism can do.  I’d like to find new ways to speak of people who don’t know Jesus in the specific and intentional way that I like to think I do.  There are many out there who are more generous, more compassionate, more tactful, and more thoughtful about many aspects of life and truth than I am, yet maybe they haven’t thought of Jesus much in the last year.  It is unrealistic to think that I can determine from my earth bound perspective the saved or unsavedness of such a person.  God alone knows the attitude of the heart.  Clearly good works is not enough to purchase a ticket to heaven, but since when has heaven been the major point of Christianity?  Yes, it’s been used as a motivator, or perhaps a scare tactic.  But isn’t Christianity more about death and resurrection engaging the common moments of our lives in the right here and now?  There are many religious people who are more cruel than many unreligious would ever dream of being, but they think the ends justify the means.  They think that because they have truth on their side, that being right is enough.  Dead right, is still wrong.  I guess I’m on the search for new words to express more than just whether or not someone has prayed a prayer – as if salvation was a one moment thing rather than an every-breath-I-breathe kind of thing.  There is so much more to this, and the words fail so miserably.

One little question kept running around in my head this morning in church. (and apparently ever since)  What does it mean to follow Jesus, a homeless man?  Let me quickly say, I don't know the answer to that question.  In light of verses like "go, sell all you have, give the money to the poor and then come and follow me…" it's hard to reconcile much of the current representation of Christianity with the fact that its leader is a homeless guy.  Yet, the question seems to ring in my ears.  I believe that generosity is the key to financial wisdom.  As long as we are busy giving, then money has no power to rule us.  "For where your treasure is there your heart will be also."  If we can't loosen our grip on our financial lives, then we become the antithesis of that homeless guy we speak of.  And speaking about him was never enough anyway.  What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus, a homeless man?

We believe in the Burger King.  And in his only son Ronald McDonald.  Who was conceived of Capitalism.  We believe in the Holy Coca-Cola, who washes down our hot burger and salty fries. 

Have you taken Ronald McDonald as your personal savior?  We know that if you really examine your life you’ll find that you are always hungry and pinched for time.  He can meat that hunger of your life.  He promises a super sized life if you’ll but let him in.  You’ll get your red meat hot, with a bun and special sauce.  Your fries will always be hot and crispy.  Can you imagine a life with no more green beans, ever?  That life can be yours today!  Your coca-cola will be tall and cold with plenty of ice.  But our Ronald isn’t like those others, he even offers a milkshake-like drink anytime you need a little something sweet.  Isn’t he amazing?  I just love him.  He’s super sized me, and he can super size you to.  It’s a promise you can take to the bank, you’ll always get it your way, right away.  It’s the McGospel.