The 1:16 Spot

2009-07-27T10:25:00.002-05:00

The fear of the Lord is....

I've been asked a lot about this phrase. What does "fearing the Lord" mean? If the Lord is good and loving as we've been told, why are we to "fear" God? Doesn't this speak of an angry, smiting God, something characterized by preachers of long ago who preached about hellfire and brimstone? How do fear and love occupy the same space for God?

Throughout our Scriptures, we come across this decree, this foundation of wisdom..."fear the Lord." The ancient Egyptians had no "fear of the Lord" (Exodus 9) and so God delivered the Israelites through plagues and pestilence to a land where they could "fear the Lord." God required the Israelites to fear him and walk in his ways as they entered their new land full of new possibilities and with a future only God had created for them (Deuteronomy 10).

Do we fear God like we fear spiders, snakes, and Jerry Jones's decisions for the Cowboys? Do we fear God like we fear public speaking and heights? Or is this fear something else?

I've come up with answers for this phrase that revolve around, "Well, you ought to respect the majesty and sovereignty of God. You ought to never make God too small, or treat God too lightly. You ought not to take God for granted, and never take your sin for granted as well. God is our friend, and Jesus is our brother; but we never treat this casually as we do our friends and brothers."

I've never been satisfied with these answers. For me, it has always seemed that something is lacking. That this didn't quite explain what this particular "fear" meant. I centered my definition of fear based on God's "Bigness" and our "Smallness".

Here's a better answer that I ran across today. From Proverbs 8:13, we hear, "The fear of the Lord is the hatred of evil." I like this answer much better because it centers on God's loving action to eradicate all evil from the world and his call to us to participate with him so that we can live well in the land/life God gives to us.

God is good and hates all evil. All the actions of God in our scriptures culminating with the sending of Jesus are God's way of dealing with evil in this world. As a redeemed person, one who has been brought out of slavery (either physical as the Israelites' release, or spiritual as our release from sin), our "fear" of God is to participate in God's dealing with evil in this world through the power of the Holy Spirit. We fear God by hating evil and working against it, no matter where it may be found, no matter how big it is.

Evil is not, as the Hollywood films would give us, that ugly monster that lurks in the shadows ready to cut us through with an axe. Evil is anything that would oppose God's will. Loving the Lord is fearing the Lord is hating evil.

2009-07-20T13:55:00.004-05:00

Don't go outside on July 22 ... unless you want to encounter pestilence, terror, and war. Why?

Because there's going to be a solar eclipse, and we all know what happens when the moon covers the sun for several moments ... we who use satellite tv might encounter a brief interruption in service and some might call it an early day because it's dark outside.

Seriously, folks on the other side of the world who will have better seats than us are worried about the implications of the solar eclipse. Check out this story on Yahoo! about how folks from certain religions are interpreting this latest move by Mother Nature.

This is an interesting case study of how religion, science, and life play together. I could call this reaction to the "swallowing up of the sun" for a few moments as something that stems from a pre-scientific worldview. There is a belief that unseen gods are playing with the elements of nature, and this latest play is one that has disastrous aftereffects for us humans. It would be easy to call this pre-scientific. In fact, this looks more like superstition - basing behavior on irrationalistic belief. Some may call this even a religious worldview. After all, the belief is stemming from a major religious system of thought.

Science shows us that the simple rotational patterns of us, the moon, and the sun are simply lining up for this unique event to occur. It's nothing more than patterns within Nature where we find ourselves. Nothing more. And so it's foolish to associate world disorder with what is a beautiful, unique, predictable event. This is a scientific worldview, and it helps alleviate our fears. So, go ahead and have your baby on July 22 -- there's nothing to say that this day will create more birth defects than any other day.

But could there be something more to this? In the pre-scientific worldview, we see assignment of Cause. The Effect is the eclipse, but who causes it? In these certain religions, it's the gods of those religions. In Science, the effect is caused by patterns in nature. But who causes it? Science can only postulate here.

Our Bible has some interesting ideas about nature and how it works. The Ancients believed in a big Dome that covered the sky. God could open certain windows in this Dome and let in the elements -- rain, sun, snow, clouds, wind. We see the Dome a little differently now, especially after our voyages to space where we can see it quite clearly.

But the Ancients had the Cause right -- it was God who created and God who acted in the world. The How was a little off, but the Who was right on.

I guess if I were to run across someone a little superstitious about July 22 and solar eclipses caused by gods, I wouldn't necessarily be led to dismiss them right off for being naive about the ways our world works. They may have gotten the How wrong, but they're close on the Who. And that's a starting point to take us to the True Who of all Creation--the one true God of the Universe.

Psalm 89:6 "For who in the skies above can compare with the LORD ?
Who is like the LORD among the heavenly beings?
(v.11) The heavens are yours, and yours also the earth;
you founded the world and all that is in it."

Check out the rest of the Psalm, here.

2009-06-11T13:17:00.003-05:00

The Story of Stuff ...

Social thinking is changing these days. Words like "sustainability," "green," and "local/organic" are becoming more and more of our vocabulary. Slowly, change is happening.

There are always those early adopters who hop on the bandwagon to see where this latest fad will take them. Then there are those who hang back to see if this is "sustainable," meaning will it last, or is it a flash in the pan. Then there are those who won't go until the majority of everyone is on board, and finally those who will never join, or will do so kicking and screaming.

The calls to treat our environment differently come from many corners...from genuinely concerned people, self-promoters, and even my local Market Street store (buy a green, reusable shopping bag and get 5 cents per bag off your total purchase). Behind all the alarms to treat our environment differently, I hear a basic word from God calling us back to our God-given work as humans -- to steward the environment (Genesis 1 and 2). God has placed us in charge of what surrounds us. And God gives us the freedom to determine how to use/steward what we have. Because God is love, God also turns us over to the consequences of our stewardship. Because we're such poor stewards in the end, God comes to rescue us in Jesus and set us right again.

We have a chance to change our direction for the good. Some are leading the charge, others are waiting to see how this shapes up (I'm more in this camp), and others are just going to wait until they absolutely have to join us in a redeemed stewardship. Here's a link to a little video that gets you thinking about where all the stuff we use/consume comes from and the hidden cost of our consumption. The story of stuff...

My thoughts about the video -- it's fast, fact-filled, sometimes too simplistic in its estimations, but it gets the job done of revealing what is at stake currently.

And if you've ever wondered about where your keyboard ends up when you throw it out...check out this Time article, here.

2009-06-10T16:45:00.003-05:00

Getting back into the swing of things...

It's been a while since I posted. I've probably lost all of my audience (except for my faithful mother....hi mom!). I'm going to get back into the swing of things since I'm experiencing a resurgence of ideas, I'm being linked to by an awesome new blog, and I'm throwing my hat into the twitter game. (you can follow me @ twitter. i'm "patimu").

Here's the shout out to the new blog started by our overly qualified, sorely underpaid minister for Youth and Family at PMLC -- Jerry Watts. Follow his latest entries on living with a changing youth ministry environment, here. There's some other links to great folks on his blogsite as well. Jerry is best understood with a large cup of coffee in your hand. He would prefer it.

I'll be back later...I'm gonna figure out how to get the twitter updates and such. It's all so foreign to me...I just don't think in 1's and 0's for this technology stuff. But, it should all be fun.

2009-04-09T16:11:00.003-05:00

A prayer of Daily Offering ...

O Lord, take and receive my entire liberty, my memory, my understanding and my whole will. All that I am and all that I possess, you have given me; I surrender it all to you to be disposed of according to your will. Give me only your love and your grace; with these I will be rich enough, and will desire nothing more. Amen.

I'm struck by its boldness through its character of surrender. Am I strong enough to pray it for myself? Are we caring enough to pray it for our families? Are we daring enough to pray it for our church(es)?

It's Maundy Thursday, the day when the Church remembers the new commandment (Mandatum, where we get "Maundy") of Jesus--love one another as I have loved you. May we open ourselves to the surrender that Jesus showed to his Father so we, too, may receive eternal life--now, here, today.

2009-02-24T13:25:00.003-06:00

Great Ideas aren't Mine ...

... they're God's.

I'm sitting at my computer yesterday, typing up an email to a colleague to invite her and the people with disabilities she serves to join us for worship at our Annual Synod Assembly. I think her group needs to be there because we need them to complete our worship gathering. Without their presence, we're very empty. They bring joy and remind us of the gift of God's diverse people.

All I had in mind was inviting them to join us in worship. Come, be there, sing, pray, and eat God's grace in the Lord's supper with us. And then the idea struck me, why not invite them to lead worship?

It was one of those moments where I knew the idea was not mine. It was planted like a seed in the dark ground. God opened a hole in my brain, removed dirt, and placed this wonderful idea there.

I was moved to thankfulness and continued reminder that my "great" ideas aren't really mine. They're God's. Now, I'm just waiting on her reply (which I'm thinking will be "yes").

I wonder if this is how the writers of our Bible worked. They sat down with their quills and scrolls, started trying to articulate what they had heard/seen God say/do, and then God planted these ideas that weren't theirs but solely his. Is this the process behind our proclamation that God's Word is "inspired"? I certainly felt it.

2009-02-24T13:21:00.002-06:00

Free eBook

Who doesn't love a free eBook now and then? The folks at Church Planting Network are offering a free eBook that has compiled hundreds of blog posts from current church-culture influencers on the topic of leadership. There's some great insights here, from just a quick read through on my part.

Click Here for the freebie.

You're welcome.

2009-02-11T00:45:00.002-06:00

a test in the google docs sphere of life.

if you have 3.4 minutes, please help me out in a little experiment. we're looking for a cost effective way to do registration forms for our church (read "cheap, free" here). i've used the google form for other places but never set one up on my own. let's see how it goes.

click below.

My Google Form

ty!

2009-01-22T23:39:00.002-06:00

Windmills and the Holy Spirit ...

I confess. This image for the Holy Spirit is not mine. I heard it at a Catholic church in Llano, TX, after a weekend of hunting. The only thing I caught that weekend was a great image for the Holy Spirit working through us. No deer.

The image came in a sermon on the Baptism of our Lord. The preacher made his connection of Jesus' baptism to our own. He reaffirmed that in our baptisms the Holy Spirit dwells with us. And then he went on to say ...

We are like windmills. Without the wind, we don't do anything. But with the wind, we move. And as the wind blows, we draw up water from deep down. The Holy Spirit is God's wind which draws up the gifts we're given in baptism.

I love the image of drawing up gifts from deep down within us, and how that action is solely God's action. We don't make the windmill turn. We don't make the wind blow. God does, and stored deep within us, by God's providence, are gifts needed for life in this world.

2008-12-24T15:34:00.002-06:00

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them light has shined.
You have multiplied the nation,
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you,
as with joy at the harvest,
as they are glad when they divide the spoil.
For the yoke of his burden,
and the staff of his shoulder,
the rod of his oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian.
For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult
and every garment rolled in blood
will be burned as fuel for the fire.
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting, Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace
there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. (Isaiah 9: 2-7)

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-15T15:34:00.004-06:00

Marvelling and Pondering ...

We read in Luke 2: 15-20 that the shepherds hurry with haste to see what the angels described to them--the birth of a Savior in a barn. They make it to Bethlehem and find Mary, Joseph, and Little Baby Jesus just as it had been told them.

Then they tell. They tell "all who can hear" about the revelation of the angels. The bright light in the sky. The presence of the angel. Their fear. The comforting message of joy and hope. The sudden burst of an heavenly ensemble.

And most everyone is amazed at their story. They 'marvel' at it. They are 'amazed' at the events. They are 'astonished' by their experience.

But Mary is reported as doing something other than marvelling. She "treasures" and "ponders" the sayings of the shepherds. Her action is different than marvelling, than being greatly impressed by the story. She stores up their words deep within her heart and searches for understanding.

Marvelling is akin to seeing the Rocky Mountains for the first time. As you near the Front Range, you begin to see their outline. Then you begin to make out the individual ridges, until finally you have the great splendor of the mountains standing before you in crystal clear skies (providing you're outiside of the smog cloud of Greater Denver). You can stand there for several moments and hours even. The vistas of the Rockies are breathtaking. It's marvelling.

But then you go inside, or turn your car around, or look to something else. And the beautiful feelings that accompany your marvel begin to slip away. They are replaced. Our attention takes hold of something else, and marvel slips away.

The shepherds and others were filled with marvel. Their sight of the birth of a Savior prompted real action from them. They returned to their flocks with praise on their lips. They told many of what they saw. But night gave to day, and days gave into weeks, and weeks gave into months, and marvelled withered away.

But Mary ponders. She took what was said and engraved it on her heart. The angel Gabriel announcing God's hair-brained idea. Elizabeth's pronouncement of great blessing. John's leap for joy in the womb at a simple salutation. And now this--strange shepherds appearing in the night with stories of angels' songs and great light in dark skies.

She stores it all in her heart and ponders it. She doesn't just think about it. She thinks about it heavily, weightly, with great seriousness. She ponders.

Pondering has staying effects. Pondering means searching for truth, for meaning, for reason. Pondering means not giving up until the answer has been found. And sometimes when the answer is found, it means still hanging with it because the answer may never be enough for the pondering pose.

Pondering allows Mary to tell Jesus that he is special. Pondering allows Mary to pass on her hope in the Lord to the ears of the newborn Savior. Pondering allows Mary to bring Jesus to the faith of Israel and to let him explore and soak it up and live it for himself. Pondering prompts action, seeks understanding, lives with the tension of not knowing, of seeing how small we are in the greater scheme, and discerns the small part we play in big ways.

How will you celebrate this Christmas? Will you be full of marvel? Will you be astonished at great lights? Will you be amazed at nice gifts? Will you marvel at the special spirit that fills the air for a few moments?

After the presents are put away, the wrapping paper thrown away, the Christmas dinner gobbled away, the tree taken away to the curb (or attic), will your marvel give away? Will your amazement pass along the Christ scene and turn into something else and leave you once again with the feeling of emptiness and hope for something more?

Or will you ponder? Will you look seriously at this tiny child wrapped in borrowed clothes, laying among the barnyard animals and ponder by asking: What does this all mean? What is God doing to us? What is God doing to our world? Why this Child? Why this plan? Why this message? What does it mean? Will you ponder?
Let us ponder anew this Christmas at what the Almighty can do.

2008-12-15T15:32:00.001-06:00

On Believing...

"Believing means that what we listen to, we listen to as God's speech."
--Karl Barth

2008-10-22T22:02:00.003-05:00

PROTESTant REFORMation

We're in a season of PROTEST as a nation. Protest against economic mishandling. Protest against war. Protest against poverty. Protest against harmful emissions polluting atmospheres. Protest against other political parties. Protest against BCS ratings. Protest.

Protest seeks reform. We protest for a reason. We want a different Way, a better Tomorrow, another Shot. Protest seeks reform.

We celebrate a big Protest this weekend in my particular Christian tribe. It's the celebration of the PROTESTant REFORMation, the day near the day when Martin Luther nailed 95 theses of debate against an institutional church who had lost its center.

Martin Luther claimed in his theses that the Church's center ought always, and forever, be Jesus. During his time, the Church's center was something other than Jesus. It was building programs mitigated by a deal making institution. The deal was salvation, the cost was whatever you could afford. Martin thought otherwise.

He stood up for THE center. He sought reform back to Jesus. He wanted the church to reclaim its foundation. Granted, he wasn't always a saint. His mouth got him into trouble. His letters can be appalling at times, especially his bigotry against the Jews. But, in the midst of the mire, he was the First Trumpet playing the tune of Jesus.

Have things changed for our church in the last 500 years? Yes and no.

No--because I see the church still confused about its center. Are we about the Bible or the Gospel? Are we about Justice or social issues? Are we about making deals or stewarding God's grace? The center is unbalanced.

Yes--because tonight with 30 jr. high students, I asked them to tell me the church's central message. Their answers?

"God saves."
"God loves you."
"Jesus died for you."

The church has changed its message. It isn't one of fear, of earning God's favor, of forever making God happy. It's now one of living God's favor already granted to you through the costly death of Jesus.

BUT, we can't lose this center. We can't veer off somewhere else. Our center is Jesus. Our beginning is Jesus. Our destination is Jesus. Jesus is the REFORMation that God is waging in PROTEST to our sin. God is REFORMing us into Jesus.

Go God, go!

2008-10-09T13:14:00.003-05:00

Yom Kippur: A Day of Atonement

I went with a friend to Yom Kippur services today. It was my first Yom Kippur prayer service, though not my first worship with a synagogue. My friend explained it to me as the "Jewish Good Friday."

This Reformed Jewish worship was filled with petitions of repentance and pleas for God's mercy. Admonitions from the prophets calling Israel to a truer service to God were read. Individual confession was made by reading in silence two pages of internal self-reflection. We confessed our failure to love, failure to serve justice, and failure to live with Truth. Sexual immorality, not feeding the hungry, twisting the truth to fit our agendas--all of it was confessed and given to God.

And we heard the pronouncement: God forgives you out of his steadfast love and his unending patience.

There's many places I could go with this and our parallels with the Christian faith. But what I think is so striking about this Festival worship is its pertinence to our social condition now. Our systems are crumbling about us, and we need to repent. Our self-support puffed us up to think the bottom could never fall out, but it is. And instead of pushing blame, we need to look inside of ourselves to see how we are all entangled in this mess, and how repentance is the only true path to a better future.

Imagine if Wall Street participated in a collective repentance. Imagine if Congess passed a bill that said, "We're sorry." Imagine if the President held a press conference and apologized.

Imagine if we turned to the person we cut off in the Starbucks line and said, "My bad." And to our spouses, and to our children, and to our neighbors, and even to our Home Owners Associations. One big day to say, "We messed it all up, and we commit ourselves to pursuing God's path."

Would the stock market level off if we did? Would bipartisanship get a chance if we did? Would families speak lovingly instead of yell harshly if we did?

This focus on repentance makes it even more important that we, as the church, focus on the very first words of Jesus after his baptism: "Repent, for the time is at hand."

Today, millions of persons across the world will apologize to God and await forgiveness. May their pardon permeate everything, and may creation move a step further to wholeness, to Shalom.

2008-09-18T10:43:00.002-05:00

Terminator Eschatology?

I think I'm going to copyright the above phrase as a new way to talk about Christian eschatology. My thinking isn't fully clear here, but I've got some thoughts that might prove interesting.

I'm a big fan of the new series, Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles, on Fox that follows a growing teenage John Conner, leader of the resistance in the future against the machines of SkyNet that control the world. The series follows him, his mom Sarah, an uncle Derek sent from the future, and a terminator turned guardian named Cameron, also sent from the future.

The point of the show is to follow them as they make decisions to prevent SkyNet from taking over an inevitable future of total control and annihilate the human race. What I find so interesting is that their whole orientation to how they live their lives in the present is determined by what they know of the future. They have a unique grasp into the future because their future selves continue to send hints back in time to try to prevent certain events from happening. People are sent back in time with information on upcoming events. Even terminators are sent back in time by SkyNet to prevent the early resistance of the Conners. They live their lives now because of what they know of their futures.

It's the same for Christians. We have a certain picture of our future revealed to us in the death and resurrection of the man Jesus from Nazareth. God has shown the world what is in store for the future. The Apostle Paul speaks of our becoming a new creation. That we will die but our deaths will not result in futility or despair. Our deaths will be like a seed which must die to its normal character in the soil and be raised into a new creation, a new plant.

And because of this picture we get in Jesus' resurrection, our lives are changed--here and now. Our lives are re-oriented to this new picture of the future--a future of hope, a future with God forever. We have our hints from the future revealed to us in the Scriptures. They are there from cover to cover.

"Death is swallowed up." --Isaiah
"No one will have to say to one another, know the Lord, for we will all know the Lord." --Jeremiah
"I'm preparing a room for you in my Father's house." -- Jesus
"We will not all die, we will be changed, in the sparkle of a moment." --Paul, the apostle

We have our hints of what our future will look like. Our struggle is: what do we do with them now? It's the struggle that John Connor faces every day. There are times when he accepts his destiny as leader of the resistance, this person whom he will become. There are also times when he chooses to be a 21st century teenage boy who doesn't listen to his mom, skips school, and just wants to chill.

Our future is determined. There's no changing it. God has mind up his mind about where this world is heading. The resurrection has already happened. How does that change us now? Do we resist it? Do we accept it? "Reorient your lives, the time has come." (Mark 1:1)

2008-08-29T17:41:00.003-05:00

The Language of Organizing and Michelle Obama's Speech....

I listened carefully this week to the speeches of the Democratic National Convention. Some were more concrete and less lofty in their promises than others. Others were highly ideological, which just turns me off anymore to politics. I'm tired of much of the talking and am ready to get us to the votes. Let's get this campaign done and the money spending over with already!! We've got better things to spend money on than another negative campaign ad, especially the ones with no imagination.

I heard a few phrases in Michelle Obama's speech that I think the pundits and analysts missed in their responses, and ones I think are lost on the majority of the public as they listened to find out about this Woman behind the Man.

She mentioned: the world as it is and the world as it should be. Many may hear these phrases as ways that the Obamas see America and where they'd like to take it. That's true. But these are phrases that are born of the Community Organizing movement. I heard them several months ago at a workshop on community organizing. The community organizer teaching us used the phrases in an exercise to help us articulate positions on an issue. Let's say the issue is healthcare. In the 'world as it is,' healthcare is available to those who can afford it. In the 'world as it should be', we imagine healthcare affordable for anyone. These phrases accurately assess a current situation and then help others imagine a better world that's beyond our current situation.

Michelle Obama stayed true to her organizing roots in the speech with the use of the phrases. A few commentators I saw made no mention of how these phrases are tools to use in moving a community from one place to another. The commentators referred to them as clever word plays. But they're more than that. They are a strategy for moving a community beyond its current state to a better one. We want folks who can articulate the world as it is and the world as it should be on BOTH sides of the aisle. It's the "world as it should be" that's at stake in this election. Should be what ... is the question that McCain and Obama will answer in nauseating and unimaginative ways. My prayer is that they go beyond trying to outrage one another with petty comments on houses and experience and get to the root of their real plans for action.

2008-08-19T15:33:00.000-05:00

Thought for the day...

Are you in love with Jesus? Do you know the incarnate God? In our world of loneliness and despair, there is an enormous need for men and women who know the heart of God, a heart that forgives, that cares, that reaches out and wants to heal. —Henri Nouwen

2008-08-11T12:54:00.003-05:00

uncomforTABLE

Jesus is in the business of making people uncomfortable. We see this from the very beginning of his public ministry.

He eats with people that others excluded and risks bringing their own uncleanness and stigma upon himself. (Luke 15)
He heals people with illnesses and infirmities when healing and work are uncalled for. (Mark 1: 21-28)
And most of all, the way he reads ancient Scriptures and the meaning in his interpretations and expositions make people feel downright itchy and uncomfortable. He is almost launched off a hill after his first sermon in his own hometown. (Luke 4: 16-30)

There's a point in Jesus making people so darn uncomfortable and anxious all the time. Without uncomfort, we don't experience the kingdom of heaven. We share nothing of the presence of God that Jesus lives in constantly. We miss the kingdom boat and wade on the shores of boring reality as it is.

Peter learned this through one of his many arguments with Jesus. Jesus, kneeling at Peter's feet like a no-good slave with a towel around his waist, hears how Peter thinks there is a better way. "You shall not wash my feet!"

Jesus responds, "If I don't wash your feet, you will have no part with me." (John 13 )

Peter hears that he will receive nothing of the coming kingdom. He will be left outside. He will receive no share, no part of the inheritance. When he hears that his uncomfort is attached to his share, he flips his script.

"Not just my feet, then! Wash also my hands and my head!" In other words, give me more!

We see in Jesus that we have an uncomfortable-making God. God shows us through Jesus how uncomfortable he is with--poverty, racism, sexism, violence, unjust suffering, injustice, a lazy people, lack of connections among his own people, poor stewardship, and on and on. In our lives and even in our churches, we exhibit day after day how comfortable we have grown to all those scenarios. When Jesus comes to wash our feet, we put out the same words of Peter, "Not my feet. I'm fine the way I am, and you ought to be as well."

But God isn't fine with dirty feet and comfortable people. God is concerned about making us uncomfortable SO THAT we too may experience the living presence of shalom, peace, justice, and everything that is a part of God's rule in our lives.

We may not have Jesus bowing at our feet these days, but we do have Jesus imparting his very life to us through his meal at the TABLE. This table is a table of discomfort, a table that witnesses to the very presence of God's discomfort with all that is sin. The table reminds us of how we too must become uncomforTABLE to experience the presence of God's rule in our lives. God works through the table to take down everything that makes us comfortable with dirty feet, and sets us free to be an UNCOMFORTABLE people in this world--a people who tie towels around our waists, scoot from knee to knee on dirty, dusty floors, and take the grimy feet of an comfortable world into our own hands. It's in that connection where God's kingdom comes rushing in like a football defense on a blitz.

How is Jesus making you uncomfortable today?

2008-07-24T10:36:00.002-05:00

Some "country wisdom" from the movie Pure Country, the greatest cowboy movie ever to star George Strait...

The character Grandma gives this little bit of 'country wisdom' when commenting on George's character of Dusty who takes off in the middle of his tour to do some soul searching...

"Sometimes a tree grows too fast that you have to cut off the top of it in order to let the roots grow."

2008-07-20T23:02:00.003-05:00

Batman: The Dark Knight: A Must See

A couple friends and I went to see the latest Batman movie today. We hit the matinee, so I was happy to part only with $6.50 instead of the arm/leg prices they charge for evening movies. By the latest accounts, it looks like we contributed to the number 1 film of the weekend which has also broken box office records as the biggest open for a movie ever.

I was curious about the latest movie. I had seen again the latest in the series of Batman movies on AMC the other evening, Batman Begins. Batman Begins ends with the setup of this latest installment--they introduce the character of the Joker after Batman has first saved Gotham from destruction.

I was also curious in Heath Ledger's (+RIP+) performance. Some say that his heavy involvement and deep investment with the character of the Joker led to his death. I don't know what to believe, but I'm sad he's gone. He gave the performance of the year in this one. As I watched the screen, I couldn't believe that the same guy who took part in Brokeback Mountain was the same one playing the villianous, vile, disturbing, dark Joker. He was center screen, and by the end of the movie the audience was caught up in Batman's immense frustration to pin him down and finally win.

Overall, it was some of the best screenwriting I've seen in a while--especially for a Batman action flic. We all remember how silly the first Batman movies were. Remember when the scandal was whether or not to include nipples on the Batsuit?? I'm so glad that director Christopher Nolan has added the plethora of dimensions in this latest run at the Batman character. There's lots of pros and cons about how the movie was edited, how characters drop in and out with little explanation, and an endless timeline that goes on for 2.5 hours.

I was captivated by the performances. The themes were ones that reached out and grabbed me....the global AND internal fight of good-v-evil, the struggle to obey the narratives that create our lives and give us meaning or to shuttle them in the midst of passion and lose with them our identity, the scapegoat to allow society to live in the lie it has created for itself, etc, etc. I say, "Go and see it, suspend disbelief, and enjoy it as it moves over and through you."

2008-07-17T11:23:00.002-05:00

In Heaven and On Earth...a timely message from "Journey with Jesus."

If you've got 5 minutes today, head over to the Journey with Jesus blog run by Dan Clendenin. He writes a cohesive weekly message on the upcoming texts for churches following the lectionary pattern. This week, he weaves together the selected scripture readings to highlight the expansive love and grace of God who is father of all and redeemer of every-thing.

2008-07-05T13:19:00.004-05:00

IN-DEPENDENCE...

It's time to celebrate the independence of our nation America. It's time to celebrate the work of brave men and women who stood up to an old British regime which treated them unfairly by taxing them to the gills and then demanding more. It's time to remember those who weathered further incursions and threats from other power-hungry nations in the world seeking to further their renown by taking over control. It's time to celebrate our independence. So pass the hot dogs and ketchup and light those fireworks already!

On this independence day, I'm struck by how independence can become a fatal flaw to honor. Don't get me wrong here and dive off into rants about how I might not be a patriot because I question the need of independence. In a culture as individualistic and self-serving as ours, the celebration of independence can quickly turn into a farce.

We are an IN-Dependent nation. I depend on you to pay your taxes, and you depend on me. When we do, governments run, roads are built, police protect us, and water is delivered to us. If we were all on our own, life would look at lot different.

I depend on our troops who stand on the front lines of danger to protect our journey to treat one another equally. Recent politics has shown us how we still treat others unequally. The point is, I depend on troops to allow us to keep trying at this process.

Finally, I depend on God to create the next moment and the moment thereafter, and to give me grace, mercy, and unfailing love. If God stops, it all stops. We don't realize how much God is involved in our lives. The next second is not a guarantee, neither is the one after that. God lets us live in limited/finite freedom where we can become fully developed individuals, but we're not left to live on our own. God is involved, and we depend on God.

Independence day is a day that ought to remind us that we really need each other to make all this work. And this is hard, gut-tearing, uncomfortable work. It means that I may have to let go of my agendas at times in order for us all to enjoy life in a community.

But the point for me is not to have my best life now. The point is how we can have our best life together. That's what an IN-Dependence Day celebration should look like.

2008-06-03T14:37:00.002-05:00

A closer look at bottled water and our THIRST...

I'm prepping for a sermon this weekend on Psalm 63. In it, David says, "My soul thirsts for [God], my flesh faints for you as in a dry and weary land."

As an opener, I'm going to talk about our search to satisfy our thirst in our world. Some internet research has led me to some pretty eye-opening facts about our obsession with satisfying our thirst.

We spent $15 BILLION on Bottled Water in 2007.
38 Billion plastic bottles were pitched into landfills accounting for $1 BILLION in thrown-away plastic.
24% of our bottled water is repackaged TAP WATER from distributors like Coke and Pepsi.
In the sports drink department, we spent $5.4 BILLION on fancy sports drink to rehydrate ourselves, when most nutritionists will point out that a normal glass of water will work for the average exerciser. Olympic and pro athletes are really the only ones who need the super sports drinks.

(visit "here" to learn about water, and "here" to learn about sports drinks)

2008-05-18T19:33:00.003-05:00

Do you see what I see?

Today, I preached on Psalm 8. It's largely regarded as a psalm of creation, although there are good arguments about why it could be considered a psalm of royalty--one devoted to extolling the vocation of Israel's ancient king for the entire world.

The psalmist is able to proclaim the majesty of the Lord's name throughout the earth based on what he has seen in creation. "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in place..." The psalmist sees a BIG God behind a BIG creation, and that God just happens to be the same One who has rescued Israel from its slavery dilemma. This God behind creation is their God, and that God's name is majestic in all the earth.

At the same time that the psalmist recognizes the splendor of creation, he also recognizes his own insignificance in the face of everything. "What is man that you are mindful of him/the son of man that you care for him?" Who are we in the midst in relationship to this God who can create planets many times the size of ours AND enzymes/proteins/atoms that make everything work? We're nothing from our point of view.

But from God's point of view, we are the crown of creation, set in creation for a purpose: to be caretakers of the work of God's "fingers." The psalm is full of praise for what God has been doing in creation and how God pays special attention to us in this creation. "O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth."

...

Truth be told, I haven't felt like proclaiming the Lord's majesty lately by proof of his creation. It seems, from the perspective of our global community, that creation is running amok and out to get us. A cyclone in Myanmar blew away tens of thousands. (An NPR reporter interviewed a man from an outlying village. He said that 9 in 10 of his villager were gone. Can we even fathom that?) A week later, an earthquake in China topples homes and buildings on families, schoolchildren, and workers. More people are lost. Even here in the states, tornadoes have been wiping out whole towns and killing some. A woman from Picher, OK, said this about God's creation when a tornado destroyed her entire town: "It felt evil...it didn't feel like Mother Nature. It felt personal."

Truth be told, I feel more like Peter who has to distrub a sleeping Jesus as a storm ravages their tiny boat on the sea and ask the question: "Do you not care that we are perishing?"

...

Perhaps Psalm 8 really isn't the psalm that we need at this time, however, it is the psalm appointed for the church to consider this weekend. Can we do that realistically in the midst of everything the global community has faced over the last few years in respect to creation? I think we can.

I struggled in prayer with this psalm over the last two weeks. I asked God why he stuck us in this kind of creation that is running out of control. The suffering we cause on each other...I get that. But this kind of indiscriminate suffering...I don't get. Through prayer and lots of conversation with others, I received two words of comfort and truth.

Truth #1) We belong to nature, and nature belongs to God. Our God is BIG enough to handle the vastness of creation. From end to end of universe, places we haven't even discovered, God handles it all. Yet, God is not caught with the BIG problems of creation, God is concerned about the details. God is concerened about the enzymes and proteins and atoms that make everything BIG work in the first place. We belong in the midst of this and under the care of the God who owns nature.

But if we stay with this truth alone, we run into a problem. Nature doesn't work with us at times, and if all we have is nature to infer the kind of God to whom we belong--we have a problem. Nature doesn't always lead us to the kind, caring, concerned God whom we see in Jesus and our Scriptures. That takes us to Truth #2).

Truth #deuce) God is mindful of us. This is at the heart of Psalm 8...it's the psalmist asking deeply, why are you mindful of us? From our very beginnings, God has been revealing himself to us to show us how valued we are in this creation. To Adam and Eve, they walk with the presence of God. Abraham is visited by God through three strangers. The Israelites are led by pillars of fire and clouds as God leads them into the promised land. Job sees God in a whirlwind, Ezekiel finds him in absolute silence of the night. God has been popping up all the time to remind us that we belong to him and we are specially loved.

Even though this is nice of God to show up in this way, we're still left in this creation that isn't so concerned about our value. That's where the true force of this psalm comes into play. "You have given him dominion over the works of your hands."

This psalm is about Jesus. And Jesus is God's final revelation of just how much we are loved and valued and known in the midst of this creation that causes us to suffer. Jesus is God-becoming-flesh, joining himself with creation and putting creation to rights for all the ways that it has gone awry.

In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, a new creation is raised up by God through this old one. Jesus' victory over death secures him the rightful place as the one who truly has dominion/authority/and rule over all of creation. And it's through this unique act of God that we can truly proclaim the majesty of the Lord's name throughout all the earth.

Nature and all its works fail us. Jesus doesn't. Thanks be to God that all God's glory is found fully in Jesus and not just in some pretty landscape scenes that we witness every once in a while.

2008-05-05T15:58:00.003-05:00

Did Jesus have to die for this sermon?

...That was a question often posed to us at seminary as we trodged our way through the world of composing sermons. One professor, it is rumored, would follow student preachers back to the sacristy after daily chapel and confront them with this question if he felt that it didn't bring the hearer to the critical answer of relying on Jesus' encompassing sacrifice on the cross. The question has been set up through the ages as a kind of standard by which to measure the effectiveness of a sermon. (And it seems, it's been a particularly Lutheran question to ask.)

Many of us would-be preachers, to avoid the professor-ial confrontation, inserted quick notes on Jesus' death in our sermons, hoping against hope that a mention of his death would suffice as an answer to this standard bearing question.

The question is built in such a way that it helps preachers discern whether their words are simply self-help or true gospel--that is, that the words we preach bring hearers to the place where they must cling to the hope of the cross or face eternal peril. Did Jesus have to die for this sermon? Or did Oprah help you with your research? The question has a good deal of merit.

But where I begin to sweat coldly is in the venture of preaching through the Old Testament. It's much easier to mention the death of Jesus when you're talking about him as explicity as the New Testament does. In the Old Testament, it's a much harder deal to help hearers appreciate the good news of Jesus' death.

Yet, it's precisely in the Old Testament where Jesus gets his good news in the first place. In the Psalms, buried in the codes of Leviticus, under the sub-text of Abraham, Jesus discerns the message that will become his life -- the kingdom of God is at hand. And wasn't it this message that led Jesus to his death? Wouldn't a more fitting question be asked: did your sermon show people the kingdom of God in our world?

After all, that's what is happening in Jesus' death. God is reigning. That's what is happening in Jesus' miracles. God is reigning. That's what's happening in Jesus' teachings. God is reigning. And wouldn't it be a fuller standard if we pushed people to ask the question of their sermons: did your hearers see more of God's kingdom in our world?

My biggest beef with the "did Jesus have to die for your sermon" question is its narrow focus on the atoning work of Jesus. While this is huge (don't get me wrong, it's very huge!), its narrow focus drives us only to see part of the story. The whole story is that God reigns with Jesus, and his death and resurrection are confirmation of that fact.

What say y'all? Is the question a helpful one for preachers to continue to lift up as a standard for measuring effectiveness in preaching? Are there others? What about this kingdom of God question?

2008-04-23T14:23:00.003-05:00

"If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
"I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him." Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, "Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?" Jesus answered him, "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me." --Jesus in John 14

We've been praying fervently over the last week for a little boy in Haiti named Job. When we met him in January at Wings of Hope, a home for disabled and handicapped children in Fermathe, Haiti, he was suffering from encephalitis. The disease was causing his brain to swell and create too much pressure for his little body. Anyone in the US with the same problem would have been whisked away to a hospital for treatment. It wouldn't be so for him.

His story weighed heavily on our hearts, and folks were able to pull enough money together once we returned stateside to get Job to a hospital in Haiti to have the procedure done to alleviate the pressure. Unfortunately, while the procedure did help for a while, Job died this week from complications post-surgery.

Job was an orphan until Wings of Hope took him in. When they did, he stopped being an orphan and became family. It's hard to call any of the places the Haitian Timoun Foundation sponsors "orphanages." These kids aren't up for adoption, and the way that the St. Joseph's organization approaches its mission steers us away from this designation. These children, having been thrown out by their own families and treated like trash in their own society, are adopted into a new family, one of faith, hope, and love.

Jesus promises us that he won't leave us as orphans. And he didn't leave Job as an orphan. He surrounded Job with the family of Wings of Hope, a family only God could build. While Job has died, he has entered a new life, one of no suffering and of true belonging and where Jesus comes through on his promises. He was a teacher always, showing us what it is to live in the hope of God's new future.

His story is one of thousands in Haiti, which are always pressing the need for urgent attention. But less we just see the death of yet another child, we are reminded there was much more happening here than meets the eye. Jesus was coming through on his promise for Job. "You will not be an orphan. I will make my home with those who love me."

I've visited Jesus' home. It's in the hills surrounding Port-au-Prince and the capital of despair.

2008-04-18T13:06:00.000-05:00

Writing a sermon is a lot like untangling last year’s Christmas lights that were hastily thrown into a box, covered, and stored away in an attic. You get a strand, make some progress, and encounter the biggest knot possible. You work your way through that knot and make some more progress only to discover more knots. After a few hours, a couple of beers, some huffing and puffing, you end up with an untangled strand ready for hanging. Just make sure you plug it in first before you put it up to make sure there are no lights out and you have a dead strand.

2008-04-14T11:11:00.002-05:00

Your new, fancy car that runs on biofuels may be killing the poor....

That's a little bit of a sensational headline to draw your attention to the plight of the hungry in our world. I posted over the weekend on the tipping point of the hungry in our world. Riots are breaking out in every sphere of our globe by desperate people who are hamstrung by rising food prices. There's many ideas as to why the food prices are rising. This article addresses how the increased need for biofuels by developed countries is raising prices so that the poorest of the poor in our world cannot eat. Of particular shock and interest is this quote:

According to Earth Policy Institute president Lester Brown, the amount of grain needed to produce enough bio-ethanol to fill the 25-gallon fuel tank of an sport utility vehicle (SUV) tank could feed one person for a full year.

Haiti voted out their Prime Minister over the weekend because of escalating riots over food prices. A UN soldier was shot and died as well.

There aren't easy answers to these problems. I'm not suggesting that with these posts. In fact, some of the work of addressing these problems will result in a careful look at how we each contribute to the problem or are avoiding wanting to be involved in the solution. Right now, prayer is the most powerful weapon in our arsenal to combat this problem. Lord, in your mercy....

2008-04-13T19:20:00.004-05:00

I am the Good Shepherd...
...so says Jesus in John 10. Today was the "Good Shepherd Day" in much of the church. It's a day to remember the great image of the shepherd that Jesus gave us to describe his relationship with us.

Over the years, I've tossed this image around and have learned different nuances that are available within it. This morning, as I heard the passage read within the church, my mind discovered one more that I'd like to share to you.

In the movie, "Waking Ned Devine," you learn a little about what it means to work with animals. A central character in the movie is a pig farmer deeply in love with a woman adverse to his profession. She often comments that he smells way too much like the animals for whom he cares. To win her over, he uses "fruity soaps". It's a great movie about more than a love story, and I recommend it to all.

The pig farmer takes on the smell of the pigs. I've heard the same said about shepherds--they take on the smell of the sheep. Shepherds, in a more pre-modern world, stayed with their sheep constantly. They were always found in the midst of the sheep. They provided for them, encouraged them to follow and move along to different pastures, and protected them. They'd often corral them into some cleft where they could keep them all in one place over night, and place themselves in any natural exit point to prevent the sheep from escaping and from wolves and thieves from snatching one of them.

All of this is a dirty job. Shepherds were covered in earth and all the smells and fluids that come from sheep. They showed ultimate devotion to their job, and they had to for success as a shepherd. Sheep are good for slaughter and their coats. If you don't have any sheep leftover, you wouldn't have much of an income.

But there's something to this taking on of the smells and character of the sheep that lends richness to Jesus' metaphor of his relationship to us. Jesus is the Good Shepherd, the one covered in the stink of the sheep. We are the sheep who lend him that stink.

This taking on the stink works in two ways: 1) it highlights how Jesus takes on human nature. He's not some divine agent in a human shell. He is human, and his commitment to being human is stinky. 2) He takes on the stink of sin that we as sheep give to him. The Good Shepherd is not the remote person who shepherds from afar for fear of getting dirty. Jesus is down in the midst of his sheep, stepping in their crap, lifting them from danger, leading them to green pastures and water, and protecting them from outside danger. He is committed fully to his role as the Shepherd who takes on the stink of the sheep.

On the cross, we proclaim that Jesus takes on the sin of the cosmos and puts it to death in his own death. On this Good Shepherd Sunday, we see that he was stinky with the smells of his sheep on that cross.

Who's taking on your stink these days? Jesus is the Good Shepherd.

2008-04-12T13:51:00.003-05:00

The Hunger Tipping Point...

Widespread riots in Haiti broke out this week from desperate people who can no longer afford the simplest of foodstuffs: rice. You can contribute to the UN's food assistance plan and raise your vocabulary by going over to FreeRice.com.

I was in Haiti in January, and we ate pretty well. There wasn't any mention of food prices soaring and people having a hard time providing for themselves.

That was January...since then, rice prices have increased 20% each month. A BBC report last night noted that rice prices have risen 75% (!!!) since March 2007. When you're poor and food takes up 75-80% of your budget already, this increase now puts food from beyond your reach.

Like much in life, the rising in prices is driven by market fear rather than current reality. A UN spokesperson on the same report noted that rice production in our world will increase an estimated 1.8% this year. There's plenty of rice, just like there's plenty of oil in reserve right now. But, countries are concerned that their people won't have enough to eat so they're taking rice (and oil) off the market. Some rice importers are beginning to hoard rice (and oil).

The problems are numerous to address. Developing countries don't invest in local agriculture and most import their food. Importers are taking advantage of growing prices and passing it on to those who can't afford it.

But the problem is simple: people can't eat and are dying. What can we do?

Pray for the impossible-making God who raises Jesus from the dead will lead people to address and answer this problem.

Pray for the impossible-making God to work through you, somehow, to help. If it were someone in your family, would you change and help? How about in God's global family?

2008-04-07T19:07:00.004-05:00

Will the real Easter please stand up?

Easter surprised a lot of people this year with its earliest arrival in years on March 23. For those who follow the church calendar, Lent started just days after Christmas. Christmas presents hadn't even lost their shine by the time we were kneeling down and confessing our corporate sins and entering the 40 days of repentance. Easter just came way too early this year.

Its early arrival prompted many in my own congregation to search further behind the reasons why the church sets the calendar the way it does. I received a record number of forwarded emails from people who were passing along the ancient formula of establishing Easter by the lunar calendar. We follow the Jewish practice of setting Passover which falls after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. It's confusing, but it's ancient and helps us get beyond our own need to control time and to live in God's rhythm for the world.

Many began to ask when will future Easters fall, as if to be able to plan their schedules into the future and not be surprised again. Very bright people who understand how to turn everything into a mathematical formula are able to create algorithms that let us know when future dates fall. April Fool's Day will fall on Easter in the year 2040. Click here to figure out any Easter date possible.

Today, April 7, is the real Good Friday according to a few scholars. Wednesday, April 9, will be the real Easter. Instead of looking forward to plan out vacations and other possible conflicts, some smarty pants people looked backward through the biblical record and have estimated that Jesus died on Friday, April 7, and rose on Sunday, April 9.

I have a couple of thoughts about this...1) it's cool to know the actual date (even if it's our best estimate). Like my birthday, I can look to it with anticipation and excitement. It makes Jesus that much more human to point to the day that he actually breathed his last, and to the day where he took his firstfruits breath. I have a lot of those days in my own life. The day I met my wife (March 15--the Ides!), the day I was ordained (June 18), the day I even drank too much for the first time...(that will be unnamed). Those days have special meaning to me and take on a larger significance.

2) I don't mind living my life according to an archaic church calendar that moves most celebrations around throughout the course of a year. I like that when I show up to worship this coming week, it will be the 3rd Sunday after Easter...not April 13. I like that the church has chosen to pattern its life after God's interaction with the world and not our own attempts to master time. This interrupts our lives and disrupts our activities. It reminds us that God is the one who owns Time, and not us. As much as we try to control our schedules and get in front of time, we never can. When we join with the church's concept of time, we join with the God-intended movement of our lives. The ordinary calendar days of our lives now can become transformed by the power of God working through something as simple as the title of a day.

And I thought today was a hum-drum Monday like any other. Who knew?

2008-04-05T22:07:00.006-05:00

Finding the church's center:

I'm taking the church I serve through the experience that I and another church partner had when we went to Haiti in January. It has taken us a while to collect our thoughts and pictures and hone our message to where we want it to be. But we're there, and now we put it into God's hands to be able to work it in the fabric of our congregational life and into the hearts of all our partners.

Going through all the pictures and asking a larger question of why a church ought to engage in mission work has been running through my mind this week. Thanks to the God-timing of a conference on "missional leadership" I attended on Monday and Tuesday, my mind was a perfect storm of thoughts on mission. At the end of my thoughts, I find myself here: mission is the church's center.

The question of why a church ought to engage in mission is one that questions the identity and calling of church. What you believe about the role of the church and how it understands itself in this world will help you answer this question.

Here's what I believe about the church's identity and calling:

The church is the community gathered and sent by God to live trust in the good news of Jesus alone. What does the church do? It worships the Trinity as revealed to us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And through this worship, it discerns the active reign of God in our world and participates in it. This discernment is not without aid from God's Holy Spirit to show us that peculiar reign of God and gift us to participate in it. I can no more participate in the reign of God on my own than help the Dallas Mavericks figure out their downward spiral. Without God's Spirit revealing to us the reign, we're lost.

In our particular time of being the church, this is an 'out of the box' idea. It's not your normal run-of-the-mill way of being church. The way of being church that is now threatened and crumbling is a majority view of a stagnant church that relegates discernment and participating to few but not all. I advocate that the entire church is to be involved of the triune activities of worship, discernment, and participation. No one is excluded from partnering in this adventure of church.

Everyone is a missionary. Not just those adventurous folks who sell everything and take off to the sub-tropics to evangelize a new tribe. Those folks are certainly worthy to be called missionary, but in the enterprise of a church taking seriously its calling to discern and participate in the reign of God, all have a stake in being God's missionary.

God's plan A to spread salvation to the world includes the primary use of the church. To accomplish this, God embeds congregations in communities across this world to live as embedded missionaries, much in the same way as journalists live as embedded journalists during wartime. They hang out with the troops, they go on missions with the troops, and they serve as witnesses to what they see. God is embedding the church in our world to live as witnesses to the reing of the Triune God who promises to raise the dead and restore all of creation.

If the church's identity and calling is to live as witnessing missionaries in God's world, then all of life is the field of mission. The coworker in the next cubicle who has just suffered the loss of a family member is now your primary target. Pray with her, show her the comfort of God, witness to her about the hope of salvation in Jesus. But don't shrug her off because she's not in some faroff place as one who has never heard or experienced the gospel.

Missionary work is a lifestyle and not a one time event. It's not a week where you pay a lot of money to separate yourself from the comforts of our world to get 'down and dirty' with others. It includes these one time events, and these serve as inspiration and training moments for the rest of our missionary lives. But discerning and participating in the reign of God is the purpose and center of our lives. Ephesians 2:10, the rest of the good news, clues us in on this.

"He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing." (The Message version)

2008-03-26T11:06:00.003-05:00

WEBSITE OF THE DAY:

For all you word nerds out there, check out Free Rice, a sister site of Poverty.com. For every correct answer, Free Rice uses its ad sponsors to donate 20 grains of rice to the UN. One hundred grains gets a full bowl. While you increase your capacity for the English language, you help someone stave off hunger for a day. It's a simple concept and lots of fun. It's also better than playing those Orbitz ad games. So far, my highest vocab level has been 42. Can you beat that? Boo-yah.

2008-03-24T13:55:00.003-05:00

Ruminations of Good Friday ...

Jesus, from the very beginning of his ministry, spoke about his death. He spoke about it in very intentional ways. He spoke about how he would die, the process he would take, and what it would gain him. He spoke about his death from the very beginning, so it was no surprise for him when it finally came.

It was a surprise for those who were following him. Even though they heard him speak about the manner of his death, even though they heard him speak of his own intention to die and be raised again, even though they questioned him repeatedly about it, they were all caught off-guard.

In the book of John, Jesus refers to his death several times as being lifted up.

Focus on John 12:32: And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.

The word has two meanings:
1) it means to be exalted, or to be brought up from a lowly place, and
2) it means to be lifted up on a cross before all people

The Romans had a custom of lining the roads with Crucifixions. It was part of their strategy of spreading the Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome. If you disrupted the peace, you faced a horrible, excruciating punishment and death.
· As you entered into a town, you were forced to look up and see death.
· Deterrent to crime, thwart those who would oppose
· Recognize who was in charge.

But Jesus is changing how he wants people to see him lifted up.
· He doesn’t want them to see him as a criminal.
· He doesn’t want them to see him as a loser rebel to the greater Roman empire.

Jesus wants people to see him on the cross as if he were on a throne. And that’s very confusing. The cross is far from being a throne.

The cross means nothing of what Jesus intends it to mean.
· It’s debasing, it’s horrible, it’s brutal.
· It’s about power over others. It’s about intimidation.
· It’s about death.
· But Jesus wants it to mean something entirely different.
· When we lift up our eyes and see him, Jesus wants us to see something else. He wants us to see God in a way we’ve never imagined possible.

To accomplish this feat of seeing God in the death of Jesus, Jesus laid the groundwork through his stories. He told one specific story early on in his ministry, in his conversation with Nicodemus.

There’s a story of a different kind of lifting up in the book of Numbers.
· Israelites complaining to Moses about being out in the wilderness.
· The grumbling has angered God who sends “fiery” serpents to add to their complaint.
· God instructs Moses to make a bronze serpent, put it on a pole, and lift it up.
· When people gaze at it, they are healed.

The Rabbis have said that the snake on a pole didn’t have the healing power. It wasn’t some magical potion to heal the people. This instrument of healing was simply a pole with a snake on it.

The act of looking up was really a reminder for the Israelites to lift up their eyes heavenward and be reminded of their God who saves them. The snake on a pole redirects their thoughts away from ‘the danger at their feet’ to God.

The snake which was their point of pain now was their reminder of redemption. The lifted up snake reminded them of God, and they were healed--healed not only of the pain of the snake bite, but also of their own sinfulness that had gotten them to the spot they were in.

Jesus, since day one with his disciples, has been re-framing our thoughts on the cross. He wants us not to look at it as an instrument of torture and death and the absence of God, but as the throne of God where God reigns.

This is scandalous, and it has been ever since Jesus was crucified.
· Who would ever believe that such a powerful God, the One who creates everything there is, would choose to be crucified and die a failure’s death?
· Who would ever believe that God could suffer in this way?

We would expect to see God somewhere else, not gasping for breath and crying out in agony. I would expect to see God at the eastern slope of Breckenridge where all is majestic and beautiful in the world. I would expect to see God in a wonderfully played piece of music. I would expect to see God in the quiet of a butterfly exhibit.

Yet, God doesn’t primarily choose these places to reveal himself to us. It is on the cross where God shows us his face. It should be no surprise to us. Jesus has been telling us this since day one.

On the cross, in human suffering—this is the way that God chooses to operate in our world. He takes what we consider to be death, and flips it on its head to become an instrument of his healing.

What we see on the cross is more than a good man who tells us how to live good lives also. What we see on the cross is more than a wise teacher who reveals to us the hidden secrets to a more enjoyable life.

What we see on the cross is God, hidden in the life of Jesus, and now suffering with him in his death. We see our hidden God who is taking away all the pain of life and putting it to death once and for all. God is taking away all that threatens us and burying it through the very instrument that represents it all—the cross.

We are bitten by life at all sides, just like the Israelites were hundreds of years ago.

We are bitten by the power of death over our lives, a power that takes people from us and leaves us with questions.

We are bitten by the power of suffering in our lives, a power that hurts us and stamps down.

We are bitten by the power of our own sin, a power that destroys our relationship with God, stains our interactions with others, and ruins our own identities to be God’s loved people in this world.

Instead of torture, we find healing through the cross.
Instead of guilt, we find forgiveness through the cross.
Instead of shame, we find acceptance through the cross.

Jesus said he would be lifted up and that we would be drawn to him. We don’t worship the cross—we worship the God hidden in this cross. And because God chooses to be lifted up in this way, our views on how we see God in this world are changed forever.

We see God in the hidden places of life—in the cries of suffering, in the grief over loss, in the loss of hope. Because God lives in those places, all those places can be transformed by him. These aren’t places lost from God’s reign. They are the very places where God is transforming this world and taking away the sting of death.

The cross is where we are reminded that God is the one who saves. It should be no surprise. Jesus said it from the very beginning. Will we ever trust him? God alone saves.

I’m thankful to the following article for providing some of the thoughts contained herein:
http://urj.org/PrintItem/index.cfm?id=10579&type=Articles

2008-03-21T14:03:00.003-05:00

A Prayer for Good Friday

Lord,

Forgive my tolerance of sin,

for my

sensitive,

culturally,

hardened heart.

May I so know your heart,

May I be so attuned to you

that what breaks your heart

will break mine also.

May I weep over sin

rather than

laugh at it with the world.

Amen.

(Source unknown, picture is royalty free from www.sxc.hu)

2008-03-17T13:09:00.002-05:00

Disappointing Jesus

I preached on Palm Sunday, and I decided to share some of my thoughts on John 12: 9-19. Most of my thoughts are simply my wonder about two significant points contained in this passage.

Wonder #1) How can the crowd go from "Hosanna" in one breath to "Crucify Him" in the next? They're waving palm branches on Sunday and looking to him as their new King, and on Friday, they're waving their fists in the air and have venom on their lips. How is it with the crowd that they can change their message in such a short amount of time? I think this is answered in wonder #2.

Wonder #2) Why is Jesus so silent on that donkey? Here is a crowd as eager as ever to believe in Jesus, and he stays absolutely silent upon the borrowed donkey that he rides. I was at a stump speech rally 4 years ago (has it really been four years ago?!?!). The candidate at that rally seized the opportunity to speak to a prepped crowd and made promises for 30 minutes to solidify his position as our candidate of choice. You'd think that Jesus would take this opportunity to do the same with this crowd. But he doesn't. He's absolutely silent. He makes no summary sermon, no final miracle like he did just days ago by raising Lazarus, he rides in quietly and listens to the praise of the crowd.

Is it because he knows what happens to a crowd when you disappoint their expectations?

The praise of the "hosanna" is really a politically charged campaign slogan that places the allegiances of the crowd upon the shoulders of Jesus to be their new King--a king they want to replace the current scum who control their nation and the occupiers who run it all. We see "praise," but I wonder if Jesus is hearing something different than phrases we can put to music someday.

Could he be hearing the expectations of the people that are too narrow and too small compared to the expectations that his Father has given him?

The crowd had tried to seize Jesus earlier in the book of John when he fed over 5000 people with a handful of fish and loaves. Imagine a king who had power to multiply food! I wonder what he could have done with the national treasury and the harvests?!

And just before his entry into Jerusalem, Jesus shows his power over death by raising Lazarus from the grave. A growing gathering of pilgrims for the Passover hear of this sign, and begin to think: imagine a king who has the power over death! He could certainly restore our nation to power by leading us against the Romans and displacing all of their puppets in government!

I think Jesus is so quiet because he hears these expectations in their hosannas, and he doesn't agree with a single one of them. In fact, he knows that he's riding into Jerusalem to disappoint their expectations and give them the king they need.

Their expectations, like our own of Jesus, are really the larger than life agendas of our sin. Our sin looks at salvation in too narrow a scope, considers us first, and uses whatever we can to preserve and save ourselves. Our sin is about us and us alone. It is out of our sin that we create our expectations of Jesus. And the good news of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem is his coming to disappoint our sin.

We expect people to get what they deserve in life. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, so we say. In fact to prevent you from taking my eye, we usually return force with greater force. Just look at how our kids argue with each other. Someone takes a ball, and pretty soon the bad mouthing begins and the tears flow soon enough. You get what you deserve.

But with God, we don't get what we deserve. God disappoints this expectation by giving us Jesus who is his mercy. Jesus is our Final Judge, but instead of hearing how horrible we are and the deaths we truly deserve, we hear how he has come to ransom us from our expectation-laden sin and set us free in his kingdom. Jesus disappoints us.

We also expect that not all people are lovable in this world. There are despicable people who have done horrible things in life. With these people, we think it easier to lock them up, throw away the key, and let them rot. Even with people who harm us and abuse our trust in life, we would rather let them rot than to do what God does with us.

God loves the very people who have abused the love and the gifts he gives. We are the unlovable, but God loves us beyond our abuse. Because of that, all people are lovable, and it's really for the 'worst of us' that Christ came to die. We will never see another person in this world for whom Christ hasn't died. That includes Osama, Hussein, Hitler, and you and me. God loves us all. God raises each of us from the rotting places in our life and sets us in his new kingdom. God replaces the stench of death that we make when we choose to love some and not all, when we make the judgments about whom we should love. God loves us all because we all receive his gifts.

God's love disappoints our expectation that we ought not to love everyone. And it's this love that the crowd yells, "Crucify him" instead of "Make him our King because he loves us!" We don't want a king that disappoints us. We want a king to fulfill our expectations. But thanks be to God that Jesus has come to disrupt, disturb, and disappoint our sin!!

2008-03-05T10:49:00.003-06:00

The Texas Flip-Flop

Something the pundits haven't discussed in the myriad of exit polls taken throughout Texas last night is this new category of voter -- the Republicans who voted in the Democratic Party for the one candidate whom they thought stood the least chance of beating John McCain. I have a slew of Republican friends who stood in line yesterday to cast their vote for the "best loser." Most of them went toward Hillary Clinton thinking that she stands the best chance of losing to McCain. They are worried about Obama's potential to beat McCain in the general election. A McCain-Obama contest has a slimmer margin of victory for McCain than a Hillary-McCain contest in their minds. They want to make sure McCain gets the weakest opponent to run against.

The state of the current election and the confusion of the Texas Primary System allows such a category of voter to turn up. If the McCain-Huckabee contest had been much closer, more Republicans would have turned up in that primary and eliminated themselves from the Democratic Primary. In Texas, you don't have to declare your party affiliation before the Primary. You declare it by voting in the Primary, and retain that affiliation for the reminder of the year. At the end of the year, everyone resets. Since McCain had clearly won the nomination by yesterday, a lot of would-be Republican Primary voters came out to the Democratic primaries to help sway that vote in their favor. I wonder how much of a percentage that was of the vote last night. I don't think exit pollsters were asking that question. They were looking at more traditional demographics. I'm willing to suggest that as much as 10% of the vote yesterday was from this kind of flip-flop voter. My friends think it's less than 5%, but how can we ever tell?

This is akin to playing golf with a handicap. You start out ahead of your competitor. Your competitor could play a better round than you, but because of your handicap you come out better in the end. I'm willing to bet that the same thing happened in Ohio last night. I'm not saying this guaranteed a win for Hillary, but it didn't hurt her cause any. In Texas, the majority win was so slim, that I'm willing to think that enough Republicans came out to make the decision to break the tie.

Of course, this is playing with fire. Things could backfire, and the one for whom they vote could take office in January '09. These voters would then find themselves in a precarious situation of knowing that they made it possible for their opponent to assume the office they so desperately were trying to keep for themselves. Talk about irony!

2008-03-04T21:21:00.004-06:00

The Texas Two Step

In 2004, I waited in line for 2 hours to cast my vote in the super-important presidential election between George W. Bush and John Kerry. My wife waited 3 hours. I went early in the morning (which, if you know me, is a feat in itself), and my wife went after work. In all my years of voting (and that's not many really), I never felt like my vote counted as much as it did in Ohio in 2004. The country was waiting on our vote. I went to bed thinking one candidate had won just to wake up and find out that another took his place.

Today, I stood in line for 15 minutes for the primary voting in Texas. It was early in the morning again. Snow blanketed our North Texas landscape from the night before, but things were melting quickly as our sun pushed us up to 60 degree weather. I cast my vote in relative ease and looked forward to the caucusing tonight. In all of my research, I came up more confused about the caucus process for the Democratic party than before I started any at all. Texas Democrats are about as clear as a saloon window in West Texas.

I went back tonight to place my vote, again. There were about 150-200 people in line to vote, and election officials were closing off the voting line. The line next to it that led to the caucus was twice as long. They moved us into the school quickly, and we snaked our way through the building. We were told that caucusing wouldn't start until the last vote was placed. Luckily, I had grabbed a journal to read in line.

Once in line, we began questioning each other about the process. Could we sign and leave? Did we have to stay? How many delegates are determined here? What if you early voted, did you have to come back for this as well? I awaited about an hour and a half before I entered the cafeteria where I could cast my vote, again. It seemed like the officials did wait until the last vote was cast in the primary, which had been told to us. What I don't understand is the whole purpose for the caucus anyway.

It's reasonable to think that I would give the same vote to the person for whom I voted earlier in the day. It's unreasonable to expect people to come back again to voice something we've already said. What about all those who were at work who couldn't make it back? What about all those who have responsibilities at home? What about all those who chose to stay home and help their kids prepare for the statewide testing tomorrow that will take place at the same school we filled? It seems odd and convoluted to show up again. Of course, precinct delegates will be chosen tonight to go to the state convention later in this year, but who wants to stay around another hour for that?

I've been listening to the news media talking about how Texas Democrats have fouled up this latter process of caucusing. I can't say that really happened in my precinct. What I can say is that the voting system we have nationwide is ill-prepared to handle the overload if all of us decide to show up. It's created for a smaller voting turnout because that's what has happened in years past. We're showing now that folks better start getting more election officials at locations and more voting machines ready, because we're turning up more and more.

I was privileged to be in another state where it felt like my vote really did matter. Early on in my voting life, it seemed that my vote was a lost cause because I lived in a state that didn't want to hear a democratic voice. Today was a different story. It was great to be surrounded by my fellow American citizens as we took place in a process that doesn't fill our lives normally. If America is really going to change, it won't be because of the leaders we elect. It will be because we cared enough to SHOW UP and PARTICIPATE. When was the last time we could say with confidence that we all were voicing our care and concern for our country. I can point to this time now, and I hope it continues for many years to come.

(pic courtesy of www.barackobama.com)

2008-03-03T16:33:00.003-06:00

Thought for the day:

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?

It comes from a former president who lost his bid to become his state's senator. He had no national experience before he was elected as president. He ran his farm, split fences for rails, ran a little store, and served as a state legislator for 8 years. He led the country through crisis and turmoil and the most change it had seen since the constitution was created. He paid the ultimate price with his own life a few years later.

The president with little national experience but a heart for change??

Abraham Lincoln.

2008-02-06T14:03:00.000-06:00

“Ash Wednesday” (1930).

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgment not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to careTeach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

From TS Eliot, Collected Poems 1909–1962 (London: Faber and Faber, 1963).

2008-01-30T09:58:00.000-06:00

Stimulating God's Economy:

It seems that Americans will soon receive some kind of rebate check as a way to stimulate the American economy away from it's downward trend. News agencies are beginning the hype of just how exactly consumers will save the day with more spending. CNN reported that consumer spending makes up 70% of the economy. Who knew Slim Jims and Slurpees could do so much for us on my daily commute?

I can't imagine how my buying a new flat screen TV will help the economy any further. I can imagine what God could do with the extra cash flow that I was counting on this year. I propose we exercise our work in 'patriotic stewardship' and use the money to stimulate ministry in God's economy of the kingdom. Consider this an opportunity to live the parable of the talents. Read the parable here for a quick upload.

Let's do some quick math. If the average person is to receive $600, what could be done with it? I've got some ideas for you.

#1a) I hear that in Haiti, people are eating dirt cookies for less than 5 cents to survive. Read the story here. If you're moved by it, donate some of your entrusted talents to the Haitian Timoun Foundation. I just returned from a trip to Haiti with this organization. They're equipping Haitians to lead Haiti out of its desperate situation. And the ones who are leading the charge are the children. A donation to them means kids eating dinner at night and having a place to go so they don't have to turn tricks on the streets.

#1b) Find a Seminarian and sponsor her for the month. Send your money her way so that she doesn't have to dig deeper into debt to lead God's people in the future.

#1c) Send it to the scholarship fund of your alma mater. I received scholarship moneies from my alma mater (Go Mustangs!), and it meant a lot to me at the time. It meant my not having to graduate with debt for an undergrad degree. Having others in a situation where they're not as confined by debt as we are is just as good for the economy as you buying that la-z-boy.

#1d) Sponsor a youth going on a mission trip this summer. His life will be changed greatly by the experience. Who knows what seed will be planted and will blossom later in his life? Your money could make it possible.

#2) Pay down the debt you owe and cut up your credit cards. (let me take the log out of my own eye here). We owe too much as a nation. We spend more than we earn. Here's a nifty little site that shows how you rate with the average home.

#3) Invest and add to it. Let's say you invest the $600 in a 4.25% interest bearing account. You also get the great idea to add to it every month with a modest amount of $20. (That's about 3.27 Chipotle burritos). In 10 years, you'd have $3881. In 20 years, you'd have $8856. In 30 years, you'd have $16,399.

You could do all of these by splitting your money up. You could do only one of them. You could do a combination of them. It's up to you. But, THINK before getting that next TV of what real stimulus in God's economy would look like.

2008-01-03T22:55:00.000-06:00

The IRONY of it all ...

This one is just too obvious to pass up. Have you seen the CASA commercial on TV that features a short snippet from the campaign-trail days of current President Bush? A question is posed to the stumping president about whether he ever ate dinner with his family at the family table. He replies (paraphrased), "Yes, so long as it wasn't my mom who was doing the cooking."

A current day Barbara Bush is put on the screen to which she replies, "Now George, it's not nice to poke fun at your mom."

Mrs. Bush follows this up with a set of stats that mentions how teens are LESS LIKELY to try drugs, smoking, and alcohol the MORE they eat dinner with their family. You can go to the CASA website to see their reports about this correlation. CASA stands for Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse. They have a worthy cause, they're doing fantastic work to curb the addictions and substance abuse.

But here's the irony of it all....hasn't Mr. Bush admitted to a drug problem in his past, didn't he admit to alcohol abuse and the such? It seems that if you were to make a commercial touting the good benefits of eating dinner with your family and how it works to prevent substance abuse that you'd find someone for whom this worked.

I'm not knocking on Mr. Bush here. He's admitted his problem, and has made strides to prevent it and answer for it. I just wonder about the irony of it all.

2007-11-27T15:19:00.000-06:00

Folding the Ends into the Middle.

Basically, this image of folding the ends of the dough into the middle is a great image for what God does with Jesus' resurrection in our experience of time.

I stumbled on it while preparing a sermon on Revelation 21: 1-6a. In there, a voice from the throne says, "Behold, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end."

I find great comfort in knowing that our God who raises Jesus from the dead is the beginning and the end of all that IS. I think most people agree that there is comfort in knowing that God--however you might define 'god'--is there from the beginning and at our end. It's either comfort or terror, but I choose comfort because of what I know in Christ Jesus.

Anyway, most people believe that God has appointed everything in its direction from the beginning to its end. But most people live day to day as if God is not involved in the L, M, N, O, P of life. Most people live without respect to God in the Middle. God is really isolated at the beginnings and the ends. God has appointed this little creation to run its course, entrusts us with everything, and then promises to show up at the end. We get to live our lives the way we want to, and God will clean it all up at the end. This is the greatest lie ever.

But God wants us to know that he is not only the Alpha and the Omega, but also the Lamda, Mu, Nu, Omicron, and Pi of life. How do we know this? Jesus' resurrection proves this all to us. In the resurrection, the first disciples see what the END of our world will be like: we will have the life that Jesus shares with God right now. That's what was revealed to them that miraculous Sunday. Yet, we continue to live life in the MIDDLE. We're not at the end, yet. We're here where there are wars, famine, droughts, fighting, abuse, slander, libel, adultery, brokenness and hurt. We're in the middle. And many of us wonder if God cares about the Middle or just about the beginning and the end.

God does care because God shows up with the END in our Middle. Here's how--imagine someone kneading dough. I imagine my grandmother at work in the kitchen. My grandmother has the best recipe for butterhorn rolls that we only eat twice a year--at Thanksgiving and Christmas. A butterhorn is a roll all dressed up in butter. It melts in your mouth, and you fill up on them before turkey and stuffing. They're jst that good.

As I grew up and watched her, I noticed a peculiar thing that all bakers do. They take the ends of the dough and fold them into the middle. They do this to help the dough rise. They take each end and fold into the middle. The middle then become the ends and the ends then become the middle. This goes on for a little bit.

It strikes me that this is what God has done for us in Jesus' resurrection. God has folded the middle into the ends, and we are given hope. We're given hope because we see what our future will ultimately be like. It won't be one of pain, hurt, sorrow, and cause for tears. Death is not the final word on us. Death is not the Omega of our life. God is our Omega. God is our L, M, N, O, P because God cares. And this God is the One who raises Jesus from the dead, if you're still wondering who 'god' really is.

2007-11-19T16:05:00.000-06:00

The old passes away, behold the new!

So I'm prepping for a sermon this weekend on Revelation 21: 1-6a. It includes the cool verse of Jesus saying he is the greek alphabet, and also the descending of the new heaven and new earth. For all you Left Behind fans, I'm sorry to inform you that if you think you are going to be whisked away to some place other than a new earth, you might be on the wrong side of the Apocalypse.

For my prep help I've turned to Jurgen Moltmann's The Coming of God. Why? Well, it's a book on my shelf that just begged for some reading in prep for this text. And when I flipped through the table of contents, part IV is titled "New Heaven -- New Earth." Pay dirt.

Here's a little snippet of where I am right now. The big question plaquing me is: how in the world do I make this preach? Take a gander for yourself:
(p. 265, 266) ... "What is the difference between the beginning and the consummation of creation, and what distinguishes 'the first heaven and the first earth' from 'the new heaven and the new earth'? It is the different presence of the Creator in the commuity of those he has created. Creation-in-the-beginning is 'finished' (Gen 2:2) in God's Sabbath. God blesses all the works of his creation through his resting presence in them. All six days point to the seventh day, and everything that is created is created for this festival of the Creator's, and is blessed in it. But the creation is created anew so that it may embrace the 'new Jerusalem' and become the home of God's Shekinah (Isa 65; Ezek 27; Rev 21). The sabbath in the time of the first creation links this world and the world to come. It is the presence of God in the time of those he has created or, to put it more precisely, the dynamic presence of eternity in time, which links beginning and end, thus awakening rembrance and hope. The eschatological indwelling of God in the 'new heaven and the new earth' is the presence of God in the space of his created beings. That which went up with Israel out of bondage in Egypt, that which found a temporally restricted dwelling in Jerusalem on Mount Zion--that very same presence will fill and interpentrate the great spaces creation, 'heaven and earth', and will bring to all heavenly and earthly creatures eternal life and perfect justice and righteousness: God's Shekinah."

yikes. love it!

2007-11-07T14:25:00.001-06:00

From an article at Rolling Stone of one highly influential scientist's view of our world in the next 100 years ...

"I wish I could say that wind turbines and solar panels will save us," {James} Lovelock responds. "But I can't. There isn't any kind of solution possible. There are nearly 7 billion people on the planet now, not to mention livestock and pets. If you just take the CO2 of everything breathing, it's twenty-five percent of the total --four times as much CO2 as all the airlines in the world. So if you want to improve your carbon footprint, just hold your breath. It's terrifying. We have just exceeded all reasonable bounds in numbers. And from a purely biological view, any species that does that has a crash."

Read the full article here.

Here's another quote from him: "I would sooner expect a goat to succeed as a gardener than expect humans to become stewards of the Earth."

2007-10-19T23:01:00.000-05:00

i know you probably hate it when folks copy youtube videos and place them in their blogs and pass that day off as if something worthy was accomplished. please grant me some grace and check out this latest copy of a youtube video called, "Consumerism: the Miracle." If you distrust consumerism, this video is your buddy. Enjoy!

2007-10-02T23:30:00.000-05:00

jesus has your back ...

2007-09-26T16:09:00.000-05:00

It seems the fate of Barry Bonds' 756th home run baseball has been decided. In an online vote, a majority of voters (read people with time on their hands) decided that owner Marc Ecko should brand the ball with an asterisk to note that Bonds' historic achievement came with a footnote called steroids. The ball will be displayed in the Hall of Fame with the distinct reminder that this record is tainted.

I see lots of ways to jump off of this event for the preacher who cares to raise the issue. I noticed it today when I was reading through the book of Mark where Jesus calls out his disciples from the crowd who had been following him around. Mark names them all, gives their nicknames even (Peter, Sons of Thunder), and puts an asterisk next to the most infamous disciple of them all Judas Iscariot. It seems that whenever Judas is mentioned it is always with an asterisk. After all, Judas was the one who betrayed him, and he deserves it. But is he the only who deserves it?

Peter denied three different accusations that he belonged to Jesus. Other disciples returned to their previous livelihoods only days after Jesus was hanged. But they don't get asterisks.

And what of us? Do we not deny Jesus throughout our days and abandon the Way for our own petty interests? Do we get an asterisk as well? We shouldn't be so quick to put the asterisk next to Barry Bonds alone. If we look closely at ourselves, we'll see we each carry an asterisk of sin, and no amount of manuevering will knock it off its place.

Look at it just sitting there all smug and happy. There is a way to remove it from your lives. (No, h'way, Wayne says). It's called baptism, and it's how God shows us that the asterisk of our lives has been taken care of. You see, Barry Bonds' baseball will have an asterisk for only so long. Jesus forgives the sins of cheating, and at his next return, will render final judgment. Barry Bonds should have something to fear because Jesus' judgment is lasting. Yet, his fear should be more of the God who chooses to redeem his mess. Jesus redeems our asterisks through his selfless sacrifice on the cross and his amazing resurrection to a life beyond asterisks. The day is coming (finally) where all our asterisks will be washed away--baseballs included.

God sees us as ones who have no asterisks. And baptism proves it. No matter how corrupt, divisive, or junky we may be, God puts no asterisk on his great love for us. We may alienate ourselves from God through stupid things like lying to the public, hiding things in secret, or blatantly going it our way, but God doesn't let those silly things stop his love for us. Asterisk or not, God's got us covered. Jesus' resurrection is the steroidal juice to our asterisk-lives that helps us live our future kingdom lives now. Repent, the kingdom has taken the field. And watch out for Jesus' wicked knuckleball. It drops like a ton of bricks.

2007-09-24T23:00:00.000-05:00

Wow, just simply wow. Check it out and see what I mean.

2007-09-09T20:17:00.000-05:00

INVITE THEM TO SEE GOD, STAND BACK, AND BE AMAZED

My buddy over at Discipleship Coach came up with an acronym that helps capture what several of us believe to be central to the identities of Christ Followers. It falls under the name: WORSHIP. They're 7 habits that Christ followers in our world have that distinguish them from Other-followers. The "I" stands for "Invite."

This is a purely evangelistic term, but when we say it, we mean to differentiate it from what most folks hear when they are "invited." When most are "invited", they're normally invited to something -- like a special event at a church, a kickoff worship, or some place that they must go to experience the power of God in their lives. When we "invite" folks, we invite them to see the power of Christ already working in their lives. Invitation starts by careful, attentive listening.

I've had a couple of experiences over the past few weeks where I have seen the power of invitation at work. Both experiences were funerals, and specifically funerals of people who were not connected to our particular Christ-community. They were loved ones of partners in our Christ-community, and in a pinch, we stepped in to provide the needed funeral and bereavement care they needed. It's weird preaching at the funeral of folks I didn't even know existed. It's hard to be true to their lives and how they lived. Both folks weren't particularly "churchy." They believed in God, had made the intimations that they were Christians, but just didn't connect primarily with church. They hadn't done normally "churchy" things like attend worship regularly, go to bible studies, bring casseroles to potlucks, or sit on churchy committees. I'll admit--it's easier to do funerals of people who are particularly "churchy" because you have some evidence that their lives were dedicated to God, as sinful as they continued to be. For folks who don't fall into that category, I wonder what their lives were dedicated to. I felt half like a pastor and half like a community chaplain. But these people were loved by members who had called me to serve, and I gave them my all. In both circumstances, I stumbled upon lives that were richly lived in devotion to helping others out of the generosity of their hearts. If the stories I heard were true, they rival anything from "churchy" folks.

I didn't know either of the people, so I listened to stories from loved ones. I asked questions all night long in order to get to know the people, and come time for the funeral sermon, I invited people to see where God's grace had worked itself through their lives. The outcome was amazing, because folks recognized God's presence in the lives of the bereaved, and they began to see God in their own lives as well. When I look at the task of preaching, this is one of its primary tasks for people: invite them to see God in the text and in their lives.

All I did was listen to stories. I heard them in the context of the larger story we have in our Scriptures -- the story of the God who comes to rescue all sinners regardless of churchy affiliation. And I recapitulated them back to their loved ones with the invitation to see the touchpoints between their story and God's story. Isn't this what evangelism, at its purest and simplest form, is? It seemed to work pretty well, and, truth be told, it was rather easy. Can't we do this more in our lives as Christ-followers?

2007-08-30T12:02:00.001-05:00

Happy Birthday to Me!

That's right--I turn 29 on Friday. Birthdays have taken on special significance for me since my 25th birthday. Driving around on that day, I discovered an overwhelming feeling of my own mortality. (A professor friend of mine calls this "ontological shock"--an feeling that we recognize that at some point we will cease to be.) At that same time, I had a couple of friends my same age who were diagnosed with terminal illnesses. I realized that at least 25% of my life had been lived and most of that in school. Where was it all going?

I have done something each year since that lets me take a step back and gain some perspective on life. One year I decided to get a better hold of my finances. Two years ago I started this blog. This year, I'm rejoining a gym to get a better handle on my health.

There's something about my birthday that reminds me about how I spend my time. I realize that there's two aspects to time-- chronos and kairos. Chronos is the straightforward, second by second, moment by moment, movement of time. It's the daily routine of our lives. It seems to go by faster each year since I've had to pay my own bills. We often become slaves to this aspect of time, always punching the clock. It has the upper hand on us (or at least those of us who aren't super-planners!).

Then there's kairos time--moments in regular time where we sense the presence of opportunity, promise, and possibility. My birthday has become this for me. This day is different than all the rest because it shows me that I can do something different if I choose to. Other kairos times in life have been: the beginning of a new school year, the death of friends and loved ones, new moves and transitions into new jobs, and the breaking and forming of relationships in life. Each of these moments are pregnant with possibilities that weren't available before. And I consider them to be gifts from God.

In Jesus' death and resurrection, we are reminded that time is moving somewhere. It has a purpose other than what may seem like the perpetual ticking of a clock. Time is going somewhere. Many have asked, "Where?" For us Christians, we know where time is going because God has revealed it to us in the cross and resurrection of Jesus. We are moving toward new life. The great Kairos moment of the resurrection reveals the temptation to treat time as a commodity or to let it rule our lives. All other times in life where we sense the presence of opportunity, promise, and possiblity we are sensing the presence of the resurrection. It breaks into our lives to remind us that what we have is holy, precious, and determined. It's determined to reach the resurrection life. Sometimes we are dragged there. Sometimes we can enjoy the ride. But often, if we're off track, those kairos moments help us redirect ourselves to enjoy the journey.

Here's to my latest kairos moment. May it remind me of the great Kairos that God has given us.

2007-08-05T15:56:00.000-05:00

I'm off to a side conference for Young Leaders in Chicago this week. Keep the national assembly in your prayers.

Christ, you are the head of the church. Surround the National Assembly of the ELCA this week with your Spirit. Be with those who are gathering in Chicago to preside over the election of a Presiding Bishop and to tend to the business of our church. May their worship be full of praise, may their prayers discern your will, and may their actions reflect your abundant grace in our lives. Continue to use the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as an instrument to make Jesus known in our world. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

2007-08-03T13:14:00.000-05:00

South Korean hostages in Afghanistan ...

I've been on a search to find good information on what's happening with the South Korean hostages in Afghanistan. Our USmedia coverage has been slight on them, although, amazingly, I know where Britney Spears is at all times of the day and who she's threatened most recently. It's so pitiful.

I heard that the hostages were Christians, and I began asking myself, if they're Christians, why isn't the church speaking more loudly on such a subject? Here we have our brothers and sisters caught by terrorists and we are wondering if Barry Bonds is pure enough to have the Homerun title.

My search has led me to a fellow pastor, Eugene Cho, of Q church in Seattle. I haven't heard of him before, but as I read his blog, I'm liking his approach to the faith more and more. He's a Korean-American, and because of that, he's got more resources in this internet world than I have, which has given me many of the answers I've been looking for.

He's taken to a blogging vigil for information on the hostages. Today, he included a prayer from a fellow saint at his church. I include the link here, and I highly recommend carving out 5 minutes to pray through it. It's simple, beautiful, and pointed. The pray-er certainly has the Spirit's gift of prayer. It's a living example of the Spirit interceding in our sighs to deep for groaning.

We'll be praying for the hostages in worship this weekend. Two are confirmed dead. Some of the women are gravely ill, from who knows what has been done to them. Continue the prayers. And may their witness to the resurrection strengthen our own.

2007-07-17T21:38:00.000-05:00

The Forces of this World Have Been Upset ...

Our church sent out 80 servants of Jesus in the last month across the region from New Orleans to Austin and Juarez, Mexico. Most of them were teens, who happen to be some of our most active disciples of Jesus. They're the ones quick to invite their friends to come to worship. They're the ones quick to come to the next Bible Study. They're the ones who sacrificed a week of their summers to bond with friends, get away from parents, and, oh yeah, make a difference in our world for God's kingdom. And people say, "They're the future of the church." News flash *** they're not. They're the church right now!

We really messed with the kingdom of this world this last month. You see, the kingdom of the world has this project to conform all of its citizens into a strict mold that rules out sacrificial love and unabridged compassion. And we seriously messed with 80 of its citizens.

Who knows what kind of impact their week of service will have on their lives today and into the future.... And who knows how their service will impact those whom they served this week and into their futures. We might have set off a revolution that will gain its momentum beyond our watch. We just don't know. God only knows. And this month, God threw another knuckleball to the project of this world that wants nothing to do with a God that loves it. Steee-rike!

Those folks could have been out at the mall buying something they don't need. But they were instead praying with children in apartment complexes who hadn't heard the word of God before. Those folks could have been at another fast food restaurant putting on more calories they don't need. Instead, they were laying cinderblock for an orphanage in one of the poorest communities in the West. Those folks could have been relaxing by the pool, but instead they were burning brush for a camp that gives inner city kids the opportunity to get out in nature and away from the gunshots, the sirens, and the drugs.

We really messed with the world. And I'm happy and scared at the same time. The world doesn't like to be messed with. Look at what they did with Jesus. It doesn't like people who offer another alternative beyond the world's agenda. So, we need those prayer warriors out there to unite over these 80 servants to pray off the attack that the world will launch at them now that they're home and back in their comfort zones. Seven days of intentional Christian community will be the focus of this attack. The world will woo them with temptations to take up the consumptive lifestyle again, with temptations to take a sluggish approach to the faith, and with temptations to 'unholy living' where they can degrade each other with their judgments and their speech.

I pray over them that God's kingdom will embed in their hearts and minds. I pray that their eyes that saw Jesus this week will be the eyes that they use at school and at home and at the playground (which means soccer fields, gyms, and hockey rinks since our kids don't really go to playgrounds anymore). Won't you join me in this prayer?

Peace out!

2007-07-07T22:54:00.000-05:00

Beer, Cigarettes, and the Kingdom of God

I was invited to a 311 concert the other night with a good friend from church. The opening act was Matisyahu, and I couldn't pass up. I was first introduced to Matishyahu when I heard him on the Edge music station in Dallas about a year and a half ago. It was one of those driveway moments: you're listening to a song, you pull up into the driveway, but can't turn off the car because you're too caught up in what's going on with the radio. I couldn't believe my ears that day when I heard a Hasidic Jew rapping to reggae on my alternative radio station.

He was talking about the kingdom of God in a lucid, clear way reminiscent of the sayings of Jesus. "Lord, raise me up," "I want Mesiach now," and "King without a crown" are phrases in his lyrics. They speak clearly of the alternative world that God is setting up in our midst. He sings with passion and hope for what God is doing in and through Israel.

I saw him do his business for 50 minutes last night on the Smirnoff stage. At the beginning of the set, his fans were close to the stage. About halfway into the set, the band left the stage, and Matis began beatboxing with a microphone and about 70 speakers surrounding him. It was unreal, and at that point, he caught the eye of all in the stadium. If they didn't know who Matis was before, they certainly knew him now.

He spoke about the yearnings of Israel, to be light to the nations, for the God of Israel to save his people and redeem them. He spoke of how our souls are thirsty and that there's only one source in our world that can fill it. He spoke about the kingdom of God. And folks took long drinks from their overpriced beers ($8 for a 16oz!!) and breathed in deep from their cigarettes. I couldn't help but think at how God goes about getting in front of people.

I hope that his message will connect with people and draw them closer to the true Fountain of Life. We have a name for such a Fountain--Jesus, himself a righteous Jew from the Holy Land who caught the attention of the people. I wonder if Jesus ever laid down a beat box session with his peeps....

2007-07-02T09:22:00.000-05:00

Retaliation, Teenagers, and the Cross

I spent last week with 20 junior high youth from our church as we did acts of service and love in downtown Austin. The week was sponsored by Group Workcamps, and we enjoyed ourselves. I did look forward to returning home for some long naps after my adventures in TeenagerLand.

Throughout the week, I noticed a very peculiar and disturbing pattern that is so prevalent with teenagers, but truly indicative of human society as a whole. It's the pattern of retaliation. The script goes something like this:

Teenager 1: "You're stupid."

Teenager 2: "nuh-uh. You're stupid."

Teenager 1: "Your mom's stupid too."

Teenager 2: "Whatever, you're a dork."

Teenager 1: "I know you are but what am I?"

Teenager 2: "You're stupid and your arm hurts."

Teenager 1: "What?" .... "Ouch" (teenager 2 lands a punch on the upper arm.)

Teenager 1: "Oh yeah, you're stupid and your leg hurts."

Teenager 2: "Get away" (as teenager 1 chases teenager 2 through halls and gives a swift kick to the backside of teenager 2)

Teenager 2: "My leg hurts, but your mattress is flat..." (as teenager 2 dives onto teenager 1's air mattress with a thumbtack and begins to hack away)

Teenager 1: "You just wait, you dumb dork."

The pattern starts off small and then begins to escalate. You call me a name; I call you a worse name. Your feelings get hurt and begin to punch me. I begin to kick you. You begin to tear up my property; I become enraged and go for your property. By the time the adults have separated us, we're sitting bruised, with burnt underwear and a flat mattress to sleep on.

This happens so much in our own world. We are a world of retaliation. You wrong me, so I wrong you. But I just don't wrong you in the same level of wrong; I wrong you even more so that you are intimidated to wrong me again. But that doesn't deter you and you come back even stronger, and I must react even more.

In some cases, folks bypass the intermediate levels of retaliation and go straight for the clincher -- murder. It's the rage we see on our highways. You cut me off back there, so I shot you in the face. It's the anger we see on our streets. You called my wife names, so I stuck you in the stomach with my knife. It's the burning desire to be bigger and better than you so all may know that I have the power in this world.

It's also extremely against the way of following Christ. I told the teenagers that if they truly wanted to be Christian, they'd have to get off this need to retaliate. I asked them if Jesus retaliates, and someone piped up, "No, he even forgives the thieves on the cross."

YES! On the cross, Jesus lays aside the need to get back at the world. On the cross, Jesus defeats our world of retaliation with a different kind of retaliation. Jesus retaliates with LOVE.

On the same trip, our youth minister was pranked (rather amateurish pranks, but nonetheless, pranked). He and I talked and we had a great plan of retaliation to get back at the kids. But that morning in worship, we were asked to live under this verse from Colossians 3: 15 -- Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.

And it did rule. In fact the peace of Christ ruled in our hearts and changed our schemes to include retaliating with love. We stood up at worship that night with a big bag of stuff. Folks in the front row began to move away from us out of FEAR of what we were going to do. We had talked enough in the morning to build the anticipation for them. They wouldn't know when, or wouldn't know how, but we were coming from them.

The problem was that Jesus came for us that day through his WORD and cast a new vision for us. Retaliate, yes, but with acts of love. So out of the big bag of stuff, I reached in and threw out tons of candy at the kids. We told them about the cross. We told them how Jesus chooses to engage this world. Not with another prank that shames, humiliates, and discourages others, but with the greatest act of love that gives us new life--by enduring our humiliation of him and redeeming it through his ultimate trust in the God who promised to raise him from the dead.

It's the hardest way to be in this world today. We want to blow each other up; but Jesus says to hug those who harm us.

2007-06-19T20:39:00.001-05:00

To the Guy who argued that Free Market Capitalism is the best invention on the history of the planet:

I argued with a guy at length tonight on free market capitalism, Religous Science, spirituality, and Nebraska football among other things. He contended that profit is the powerful, and good, motivator for human activity. Profit, with careful regulation, seeks the good of the individuals. Albeit, I was able to have him hone his definition of "individual" to mean "shareholders, owners, and trustees."

He used the church as an example to prove the success of capitalism and how it fits in with God's plans. He lifted up examples like Joel Osteen and the folks at Prestonwood as they were able to deliver the best "product" because of the masses they were able to bring in.

He said if a minister set his allowance at 10% of what was received, then who's to argue that whether $10 or $100,000 is brought in. It's a matter of capitalism that a better preacher is able to produce a more abundant "harvest."

To this guy, I offer one rejoinder that got lost in trying to understand each other: the church, unlike profit-driven corporations and industries, does not exist for itself. If it has more at the end of the day, it may have actually done its job wrong.

A friend of mine uses this illustration: Miller Brewing Company exists to bring Miller beer products to the market. In existence with other brewing companies, Miller must resourcefully present and establish their product in this pluralistic beer market. At the end of the day, for Miller, a successful bottom line proves its successful existence.

The church does not exist for a bottom line but to give itself away totally and freely just as Jesus did for the world. The bottom line for the church is: "how did we give our lives, resources, time, and talent away today?" In a profit-driven world, where the bottom line means improvement for investors and shareholders, the church stands as a counter cultural society that says, "we receive in order to give."

Miller brewing exists for itself and for its self-interests. The church is interested in being faithful to the mission that God has called it to, and that may mean giving everything up and forsaking profit lines and statistically wonderful data.

I consider this line of thinking--of existing wholly for the other--to be one of the major examples that lives out the Apostle Paul's line of thinking in 1 Corinthians: the message of the cross is utter foolishness. It's nonsense. How can we give it all away and expect to be successful at God's mission? Maybe success needs redefining. And I believe that the redefinition will not have much to do with free-market capitalism.

2007-06-15T13:26:00.000-05:00

The anticipation is ... boring me.

On Monday night, in the midst of a church council meeting, I started to experience some serious pain in my lower right abdomen. I had eaten some week old hamburgers from the grill, and I thought it was a serious case of bad gas.

It turned out it was a 4mm kidney stone on the move. Folks have told me that this is the closest that a man can come to experiencing what it's like for women to give birth. I think that there are easier ways to avoid a church council meeting.

I went to the ER that night. Most of the pain had stopped before I was admitted. They gave me a cup and set me up in a bathroom for a while. They shot me full of motrin, and sent me home with a strainer and their most sympathetic looking faces that said, "sucks to be you."

There's no real certainty to when a stone will pass. A stone will pass when it wants to pass. There's no telling. You could go in and get it through operation. That's something I'm willing to avoid for now. I thought that the stone would come out on Tuesday. I stayed home and hydrated, hydrated, hydrated. And nothing happened.

I went to work on Wednesday. Nothing. Same on Thursday. Nothing. Until last night when the curious bugger decided to move a little more. But it has still yet to move on to its freedom from my ureter, and I have to say-- the anticipation is boring me.

But there's something to this anticipation that reminds me of one of the key postures of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. The church year starts its year in December with Advent. It takes Jesus' birth on Christmas, and backs up a month to anticipate it. I've always thought it a little funny, but Advent has become one of my favorite times because of the focus on our posture of anticipation.

A Christian is one who anticipates the return of Jesus, finally, and lives that anticipation NOW by participating in God's kingdom where God is ALREADY establishing it. This is anything but boring, yet we treat it as such because we have become so accustomed to the fact that Jesus is taking his sweet time coming (like my kidney stone).

The earliest Christians weren't concerned in creating institutional structures of the church because they thought that Jesus would return within their lifetime. It'd be pointless to set up too much of an institution. So they focused on people LIVING ANTICIPATION. We find tons of "household codes" in the New Testament on how to organize our lives knowing that Jesus is on his way back. And I see these really as early Christian attempts on living their HOPE, living their ANTICIPATION. With Jesus prolonging his return, institutional structures are needed to live the faith for future generations. But we've become so caught up in the building of institutions that many find the life of following Christ to be extremely boring.

The fact of the kidney stone has changed my routine. I've cut out most soda and coffee (although I did have a nasty caffeine withdrawal and had to make a Starbucks run). I drink water, and I think about what foods might have contributed to the buildup of the materials in my kidney stone.

The fact that Jesus is going to return ought to have the same DAILY effect on Christians. This future reality changes our lives now, and it's lived through ANTICIPATION. I tell folks that what we believe about our future changes who we are today. If I believe I'll amount to nothing in my future, I live that now. If I believe I'll be successful, that shows in my life now. If I believe that the future is nothing, my behaviors would reflect that in the present. What we believe about our futures changes us now.

And I believe that Jesus is going to return again to judge the living and the dead.

We don't focus much on ANTICIPATION in our teaching nowadays. Perhaps the church needs a kidney stone to wake it up to what it means to live in anticipation and really, truly own that Jesus is returning again. I have a few that the church can borrow.

2007-05-31T15:56:00.000-05:00

Has anyone ever told you about the Holy Spirit?
Today, in the life of the church, we celebrate Pentecost, the arrival of the Holy Spirit upon the followers of Jesus. Before Jesus dies on the cross, Jesus promises the arrival of a Helper who would lead his followers in the same way that he was leading them. Fifty days after his resurrection, the Holy Spirit comes through on Jesus’ promise to his followers.

We’re starting a new preaching series for the next 5 weeks dealing with the person and work of the Holy Spirit. It’s hard to talk about the Spirit because the Spirit is so unlike anything we know in this world. It’s like trying to explain the nature of wind or the nature of love or the nature of why the Rangers can’t win games. The Spirit is just not tangible, like a rock, or a table, or a baseball.

Early on in my life my grandma told me about the Holy Spirit. For the first six years of my life I lived in Chicago, and often I stayed overnight at Grandma’s. Her parents were original immigrants from Austria and still spoke much of their native language. At bedtime, grandma would tuck me and my brother into bed, and would give us a little night time blessing. She would lean over, whisper her blessing, make the sign of the cross over us, and give us a nice little kiss before turning off the lights and leaving the room.

I couldn’t understand any of the blessing because it was in Austrian (and no, Grandma did not sound like Arnold Schwarzeneger). After many times of receiving the blessing in the shape of a cross, I began to make out some of the words.

One of those words was Heilige Geist, and I figured out that this meant Holy Ghost. I had heard that word in my Lutheran preschool that I attended – the Holy Ghost. From that I was able to piece together that the other words referred to Father and Son.

My first introduction to the person and work of the Holy Spirit was from my grandma, and in my tiny child world, I believed that the Holy Spirit was a ghost. And I believed that if this Holy Ghost was God’s Holy Ghost then it must be a nice Holy Ghost because I believed that God was nice.

In my little child world, I thought of other ghosts that I knew that were nice so I could have some comparison with the Holy Ghost. I came up with Casper, the Friendly Ghost, and for years, I believed that God’s Holy Ghost was like Casper, the chubby Friendly Ghost.

Some years later, when I started paying attention to sermons, I heard my pastor speak of the Holy Ghost at the baptism of Jesus. After Jesus’ baptism, the heavens open up and the Holy Spirit arrives in the shape of a dove. For days afterward, I couldn’t help but wonder if one of the doves that lived outside of our house was the Holy Spirit. I tried to look for one that didn’t potty so much, because I thought the Holy Spirit wouldn’t need to potty if it were a dove.

I tell you these stories because it shows us how what we believe when we’re little affects the way we look at life today. Two people told me two different things about the Holy Spirit that have stuck with me today, and I wonder what you may be thinking of when we sit down to speak of God’s Holy Spirit.

Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel that the Holy Spirit is the Paraclete. Not a parakeet … that’s the wrong kind of bird. But the Paraclete. This ancient Greek word can best be described with three words that we have in English.

The first word is “Advocate.” The Holy Spirit advocates for Jesus and his agenda in this world. An advocate is someone who partners with somebody else and represents them before others. I think of Child Advocates, adults who represent children when they are abused and neglected. Because they are so vulnerable and have little to no voice, an Advocate is needed so that they will not get lost in bigger systems, and that they will not be forgotten.

The Holy Spirit advocates for Jesus today since Jesus is with his Father in heaven. It’s so easy to lose sight of what Jesus was truly about because Jesus was present to us so long ago. The Holy Spirit advocates for the mission of Jesus in our present day when Jesus is not physically present.

When churches advocate to build themselves into country club type of settings, the Holy Spirit advocates that we take up Jesus’ call to follow him by losing our lives. When our own human spirits begin to build cliques, the Holy Spirit advocates that we welcome all people the same because we remember that God values us all.

When churches advocate to become organizations built solely around social justice issues, the Holy Spirit advocates for the worship of Jesus and how this worship is our basic witness to his total reign in our lives.
The Holy Spirit represents the spirit of Jesus and his Father in our midst when we’d rather advocate for something totally different. The Holy Spirit advocates to keep us on track when following Jesus.

Another good word to use for the Holy Spirit is “Counselor.” The Holy Spirit counsels us to keep us steadfast in placing our trust in God. When life looms large before us and we turn looking for direction, the Holy Spirit is present in our lives as a counselor.

The Apostle Paul mentions this role of the Holy Spirit in Romans 8. When we walk in weakness, the Holy Spirit, Paul says, supports us. When we can hardly pray, the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with “groaning too deep for words.” When there seems to be nothing but a big mess in front of our lives, God’s Holy Spirit counsels us to make sense of it all and walk in God’s will.

Through the Holy Spirit, God uses any mess that we’ve made to his glory and can bring good out of it. I was watching a sitcom the other day; it’s called Scrubs. It’s a comedy based on the life of several interns at a Medical Hospital and their daily activities.

In a recent episode, one of the resident doctors began to take issue with a nurse who was serious about her faith in God. She was trying to show the doctor that many things happen for a reason in life. The overly cynical doctor tried many arguments to disprove her assertion.

A child patient came through their ER who had been stabbed at a robbery. The cynical doctor thought that he had finally found a case that could disprove the nurse’s faith that God can use any situation for good. What good can come from the stabbing of a child?

During the tests that were run on the child, the doctors came to discover a large tumor near her stomach that wasn’t causing any symptoms. This would have gone otherwise untreated. The doctor was frustrated, and the nurse stood vindicated that God can use anything for good.

Now, you may think this is Hollywood, but it happened for my mother-in-law. She was in a car accident several months ago, and after doing a scan on her head to check for any head trauma, they discovered a tumor underneath her jaw. Fortunately, it was the kind of tumor that is usually benign, but they wanted to operate and remove the tumor just in case.

The Holy Spirit counsels us when all we can see is the negative in life. The Holy Spirit counsels us to see how God works through the worse situations in life to make his presence known. When we can’t even speak from grief or anger or despair too deep for words, the Holy Spirit is our Counselor.

A final word that sheds some more light for us on how the Holy Spirit is the Paracleet and Jesus’ promise for us is the word “Helper.” Martin Luther spoke about the Holy Spirit as our Helper in this way—he said, “By my own understanding or strength, I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy, and kept me in the one true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens and makes holy the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one common, true faith.”

You are not here today because you thought it was a good idea to come to worship. You do not dig into your pockets and give generously because you think it’s a good thing to do. You do not love your children, have patience with coworkers, or give compassion to those in need because they seem like the right thing to do. You do all those things because the Holy Spirit has brought you to Jesus and has made him known in your life.

In each of these cases, God is building his kingdom through the presence of his Holy Spirit here. They are glimpses of heaven that we are privileged to experience now, today, because God has given them to us through his Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit makes Jesus and his Father known in our lives. Without the Holy Spirit we’d no more know about God than we do about what exists at the furthest end of our universe.

Today is Pentecost, the day when Jesus comes through with his promise to dwell within us forever. The Holy Spirit is the down-payment on that promise. The Holy Spirit is here advocating, counseling, and helping us to know Jesus, to follow him, and to delight in him and his agenda for our lives always.
I’m praying for the Holy Spirit to be made known in your lives! Amen.

Notes:
“My Good Reason” Episode of Scrubs is found in the 2007 season.
Luther’s quote taken from his explanation to the third article of the creed in his Small Catechism.

2007-05-01T10:47:00.000-05:00

A Little Fun Today ...

and,

On the supposed connection to the mob, click here.

Look about halfway down, under "Columbo." :)

2007-04-25T17:37:00.000-05:00

Howdy, pard'ner!

It's how we say, "Partner," in Texas. It's also what God says to us when we are created. The breath of God animates us into life, and the word of God welcomes us into a partnership.

I'm teaching four weeks of being a partner with God in our adult education classes while we run a capital campaign to reduce a lot of debt that we have at church. It's not the most exciting aspect of being the church -- the reduction of debt -- but getting out from under this mound of debt will free up constricted money for other ministries, like building wells for safe water in Africa, ushering a new family into the faith, and lifting our voices in praise to God in ever-diverse ways.

Here's some thoughts that I've sketched out as I approach week 3. I must admit that I'm heavily influenced by two books, Free of Charge, by Miroslav Volf, and Giving to God, by Mark A. Powell (bible critic by day, rock critic by night). If you have the chance to get into them, do it!

1) God designs humans to be partners in creation. (see Genesis 1, 2)

2) As design(er) partners, we are created to reflect the image of God in the world. (cf. Gen 1,2)

3) The God who creates us is the God who gives -- everything. Without God's word ushering forth creation, there is nothing...absolutely nothing. Without God's giving of life to creation, we are not. (cf John 1:3)

4) As God's partners, we are solely receivers. We have nothing to give of our own. The idea that we can is an attack at God's position as God. What can we give to God? Nothing. We bring nothing to the table of partnership with God. (And that's ok!)

5) God, instead, positions us as partners with good gifts. For example, my "earning potential" is actually God's gift to me of the ability to work in the world. I could "earn" nothing without that primary gift of being able to work to receive. God owns, I owe.

6) God does this because God wants us to participate in his kingdom(= where God reigns).

7) These gifts are more than material things, although we enslave ourselves to these "things" and to our getting more of them. The giving that God positions us to reflect is God's good grace. We are grace-givers in this world.

8) The presence of sin in our lives makes us discontent with our position as givers. We'd rather own it all, not God.

9) We confuse our position as partners when we think what we give is truly our gift. It is first, and always, God's gift given through us to others for the sake of the kingdom. (For example, the forgiveness I give is a reflection of the forgiveness I receive from God first. The same for love, hope, joy, and good tunes).

10) We also confuse our position when we think that God has stopped creating and stopped giving in this world. As if God says, "here's everything you get to tinker around with, I'll be back later to check in on you." That's deism and not the God whom the Scriptures describe as being active in this world, and upon which we depend for every thing.

11) If you don't believe that, ask yourself, "where does the next five seconds come from?" The answer is that it doesn't come from us. God must speak them forth, and they are given to us as a gift.

12) The goodness of God is that God gives to everyone indiscriminately and gracefully. The drug lord smuggling drugs and people through Haitian boundary waters receives the same five seconds that the Catholic brother who is rescuing boys from a life on Haitian streets does.

12a) This giving by God may seem rather stupid when you put a drug lord next to a Catholic brother, but the reality is, who among us really deserves what God gives to us? God gives based not on how we give, but on who God is. Good partners reflect God's grace. Bad partners, obviously, don't. The question we must always be asking ourselves, "what am I reflecting now?"

13) Our envy of God's position as giver tricks us into absolving our role in life as partners.

14) But, God won't have that, so Jesus is sent. Jesus shows us true partnership, and his continued presence among us through the Spirit moves us further into the partners we're created to be.

15) This happens immediately when we repent and believe as Jesus provides us opportunity to.

16) We repent of our agenda to own it all, or to squander it all away. We repent really of our need to be KINGS and QUEENS, and our need to be God.

17) We believe when God's Holy Spirit moves us in such away that we adopt the identity of being God's partners and live in the grace-giving life.

It's been an exciting few weeks, and there's one more left. More thoughts to come when I actually create that session. Just thought I'd share what I've been wrestling with for 2.5 weeks now. Peace y'all!

2007-04-19T10:49:00.000-05:00

Turn off the TV, folks!

I just can't bear to watch news agencies grasp in the dark for new (and the latest!) developments in the sad situation involving the shootings at Virginia Tech. My latest disgust is over the broadcast of the shooter's "manifestos" sent in video and pictures to NBC. It turns my stomach. Since when did news become simply showing video to people and adding inane commentary to it?! (I don't know why I even asked that question, it's been like that since I can remember. Especially since they first followed OJ along California freeways. What purpose does that serve?) I thought the purpose of journalism was to get to the root of the facts and assemble them in such a way that they make sense and propose something to agree or disagree with. Showing a video just to show a video is sensational reporting. It's not news, but an odd, twisted version of entertainment--it serves some need in the human psyche to want to know everything. Anxiety and fear produce confusion and questions. Dealing with our anxiety and fear helps us to form the questions we ask and where we ought to look for information.

I want news agencies to pour over the videos, ask questions of it, get further behind it, and then decide wether it is news-worthy or not. But we don't live in that world anymore. We live in a world where we watch anchors come up with meaning over video that they see for the first time along with the public. We live in a world where anybody can be a reporter, where anything can be construed as "news." I'm just turning it off. Let the folks do their job at Va-Tech. They're in my prayers.

2007-04-10T14:36:00.000-05:00

TO MERELY PRAY?

I was given the privilege of preaching at an ecumenical service held at a Catholic church around the corner from us on Good Friday. I had great fun with three other preachers at the hour-long service. At our conclusion, we prayed this prayer. I have two thoughts on it for the next post, but I offer it to you here to see what you glean from it.

"We cannot merely pray to you, O God, to end war; for we know that You have made the world in a way that we must find our own path to peace within ourself and with our neighbor.

We cannot merely pray to You, O God, to end starvation; for you have already given us the resources with which to feed the entire world if we would only use them wisely.

We cannot merely pray to You, O God, to root out prejudice, for you have already given us eyes with which to see the good in all people if we would only use them rightly.

We cannot merely pray to You, O God, to end despair; for you have given us the power to clear away the slums and to give hope if we would only use our power justly.

We cannot merely pray to You, O God, to end disease, for You have already given us minds with which to search out cures and healing, if we would only use them constructively.

Therefore, we pray to You instead, O God, for strength, determination, and will-power, to do instead of just to pray, to become instead of merely to wish."

--Jack Reimer, Likrat Shabbat

2007-04-04T15:03:00.000-05:00

(the following is from an email I received earlier today from the Bishop of the Lutheran Church in Palestine; it highlights why we must work harder than ever to be God's peace and justice in our world. and, if we truly are the church, then the grief experienced in the Middle East is our grief; our joy their joy.)

Middle East Call to Prayer: A Call for Prayer to Partner Churches All Over the World on Maundy Thursday, From Middle Eastern Christians

Greetings to you during this blessed Lenten season!
In the spirit of Maundy Thursday, as Jesus gathered with his disciples to celebrate the Paschal Meal, your sisters and brothers in Christ in the Middle East are asking you and Christians worldwide to join them in prayer & supplications.

This call comes after a recent meeting of the Executive Committee of the Fellowship of Middle East Evangelical Churches (FMEEC), where Middle Eastern Evangelical representatives from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Jordan, the Sudan, and the Holy Land gathered to discuss the
concerns of the Evangelical Testimony in the Middle East. Although there is encouraging work going on in the ministry of these churches, we are very worried that the unstable political environment is fueling extremism, endangering civil peace, and causing increasing emigration of indigenous Christians. The ongoing occupation, violence, and land confiscation in the Palestinian territories, and the worsening quagmire in Iraq, only add fuel to the fires of extremism, and threaten to turn political problems into religious wars. The carnage in Lebanon, and the heightened tension with Iran, are viewed in the same manner.

For these reasons, we Christians in the Middle East ask you to join us in prayers for our troubled region, which is in dire need to keep alive a vital Christian witness of love, justice, forgiveness and reconciliation.

We Christians have been here since the first Pentecost and Evangelicals since the early 19th century. We must not allow the lights of Middle Eastern Christianity abate.

Please, pray for the Testimony of the Evangelical Churches in the Middle East, and stand with us in spirit and prayer. Learn about what is happening here. Stand against extremism in all forms, including our own Christian extremists who often undermine the work of local churches here.

God Bless you,
On behalf of FMEEC Executive Committee:
Bishop Munib A Younan, Rev. Habib Badr and Mrs. Rosangela Jarjour
(President, Vice President and General Secretary)

A prayer

Gracious and loving God;
On the eve of your Great Sacrifice, you sat at table with your disciples, sharing your life in the Holy Meal of bread and wine. We join our Christian brothers & sisters in the Middle East in your One Uniting Spirit, praying that their witness remains effective, their spirits high, and their hearts steadfast.
Draw us all together, Lord - sisters and brothers across the globe, so we can receive your forgiveness, healing and new life poured out for us, and pass it on to others in this conflicted and broken world. Make us instruments of peace, ministers of reconciliation, and apostles of love. In your name we pray, Amen.

2007-03-24T14:01:00.000-05:00

Chocolate Crosses and Bunnies who lay eggs ...

I've been teaching a class for 20- and 30-somethings this March on our USAmerican culture's confusion over the celebration of Easter. It's been fun and informative for us, and we've come across some realizations together that I want to pass along.

We learned about early Christians and their weekly cycle of remembering Jesus' passion on Friday (which often led to fasting) and their celebration of his resurrection on Sundays.

We've learned about the creation of the church's calendar and how the church marks time according to the story of God. So while it may be March for most of the world, it's Lent for us. We live within God's story and not beyond it.

There's lots of pagan influences in Easter that we often confuse as being simply Christian. Instead, these pagan influences were baptized into popularity by a Church evangelizing new worlds. Easter gets its "name" from Eostre, a Teutonic goddess of Spring who was often depicted with a hare that symbolized fertility and gave hope for fertile crops in the new year. Hence, the origins of our easter bunnies. Eggs were also given in the middle ages to people who often dyed them and buried them on their property to further the blessing of good crops and health upon their households.

When Christianity moved into these lands, they didn't ban the festivals, but instead re-positioned them as Christian occurrences that coincided with the calendar created with God's story in mind. So the goddess of Spring is replaced with God the Creator of All Things, and eggs are dyed blood red and given to others in remembrance of Jesus' sacrifice.

The above was all well and good for us, but last week we came upon a bigger insight for us. While the culture tries to push easter egg hunts, candies of every color and creation, and largely looks to reinforce our roles as consumers (buy this, market that), it really doesn't understand the story of Easter because it is a story that involves death. In a culture that denies death (Botox, subdivisions with no plans for cemetaries, the dead being handled by professionals), the Christian witness is that we no longer fear death, we take up our own deaths, and follow Jesus into his, because we trust his Father to save us. By loading up on new dresses, candy, and hallmark cards, we conveniently forget that Easter is the story of how God deals with death through Jesus so that we might live (and get fat eating too many Peeps). And we revert back to where we were before, celebrating the un-named goddess of life who brings fertility and false hope. The cross becomes no longer an instrument of death, but something that's ooey-gooey and cuddly.

The sad part is that the church must own up in how it has reinforced this model of a behavior the produces chocolate crosses. In our desperation to seem relevant and fun to the culture, we've come up with chocolate crosses. Most of these things are produced by well-intentioned Christian-owned companies.

But there is hope. It's called paying attention to our story, getting the details right, and offering it to the world. A chocolate cross isn't much comfort when a loved one dies from a heart attack in her sleep, when a child is abused by parents, when nations favor corruption over the well-being of their citizens. Easter is the story of how the world can deal with all of this, here and now. We deal with it through God, who for the shame of the cross, endured it for our joy.

2007-03-06T15:34:00.000-06:00

SCRIPTURE THAT I'M WRESTLING WITH TODAY...

"So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." (2 Corinthians 4: 16-18, ESV)

How is the outer nature of the church (the BODY of Christ) wasting away today? We look to signs of loss in our tribe of Lutherans---500,000 members lost in 15 years. No significant growth. Flat, stagnant financial giving. Arguments over minor things that split families, congregations, and synods. We are tempted to believe that our destruction is our inevitable future. To some degree it is our future, but is this all we pay attention to? This slight momentary affliction is preparing us for something greater ... and it always has.

"Our inner nature is being renewed day by day." Do we stop to look and appreciate how God is renewing our inner nature? A five year old realizes God's love greater than a 50 year old, a congregation makes the hard decision to move from maintenance to mission, a dying church gives away its property to a new mission start, new leaders are filled with energy about God's future for the world. Renewal happens, and it's not of anything that we do. God renews, restores, and replenishes.

How do we embrace renewal when the pain of the wasting away of our outer nature can be so great at times? How do we look forward to the eternal weight of glory when the slight momentary affliction sends searing pain that shuts down vision? How does our renewal embrace our wasting away instead of creating an escapist compartment where we experience neither renewal or affliction? How does renewal help us not to lose heart?

2007-02-21T09:16:00.000-06:00

REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE DUST AND TO DUST YOU SHALL RETURN.

2007-02-21T08:38:00.000-06:00

I'm continuing my thoughts on the Transfiguration with another post here. In some study and reflection, I came across some more insight (or what I like to call "insight") on Peter's hasty conclusion to build three tents to mark the sighting of Moses and Elijah with Jesus. You can re-load the story of the Transfiguration here: (Luke 9).

I've always wondered about Peter's 'vomitting of the mind,' and Luke's description that he had no idea what he was saying. Many of us have been in that situation before. We are presented with a scenario, and then we fill the air with meaningless words. Perhaps the situation is so uncomfortable, we add the words to give us a security blanket, or to ease our anxiety. I think people can certainly relate to Peter's circumstance of not knowing what to do with what he just saw.

But I've always been perplexed by why Peter offers the words he does. What drives him to say those phrases, even if he didn't know what he was saying? Here's something I'm recently considering as an answer for this question, and I offer it to the greater conversation that surrounds this reading.

Peter sees Moses and Elijah standing with Jesus, and instead of seeing the "transfiguration," Peter sees the "Trans-posation" (a new word that I have coined, I'd like you to know). The "Trans-posation" is kin to the musical term of "transposing," of seeing notes in one key and reworking them into a new key.

Peter sees Jesus with Moses, and he transposes Moses' life work into the key of Jesus. Perhaps, Peter thinks, Jesus will be like Moses who negotiated with Pharaoh for the release of the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery. Maybe, just maybe, Peter thinks, Jesus will negotiate with Caesar for the release of Israel from Roman control, and Israel may return to its birthright.

Or, perhaps, Peter sees Jesus with Elijah, and transposes Elijah's life onto Jesus. Maybe, just maybe, Peter thinks, that Jesus will be like Elijah and enter into the temple courts, throw out the idolaters, uproot kings, and return Israel to its true devotion of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, just as Elijah battled with Ahab, Jezebel, and their prophets.

Is it too much of a stretch to assume that Peter had these "transposing" thoughts flying through his head when he saw Jesus transfigured before him? One thing we do know for certain: Peter wasn't satisfied with Jesus' mission as Messiah, revealed to the disciples 8 days before our transfigured scene. Peter wasn't so quick to follow up on Jesus' invitation "to take up your cross and follow me." He'd rather build an attraction for people. If the attraction coudl get word out that Jesus was seen with Moses AND Elijah, then there'd be all the motivation to build a large army for a great revolution to throw out the Romans. Right? This was the modus operandi for "messiahs" at this time.

Imagine this over-the-top scenario: how would President Bush's credibility change IF he were to be seen standing with Abraham Lincoln AND Franklin D. Roosevelt (this assuming that they both agree with our current war, which I don't want to make their assumptions for them)? Receiving counsel from those two might just banish the Democrats to Canada, and galvanize a country. Now imagine the same intensity and credibility being given to Jesus with Moses AND Elijah standing with him. See what I mean? Enough motivation to galvanize a revolutionary force to storm Jerusalem as many of the other "messiahs" were doing in the first century.

Jesus AND his Father want none of it. In fact, Jesus' Father wants us to listen only to Jesus for the lead on what it means to be Messiah, not Moses, or Elijah, or any other of our preconceived notions about 'messiah.' Follow the bouncing ball on this one, Peter. Listen to Jesus.

2007-02-17T21:55:00.000-06:00

I'm preaching this weekend. It's TRANSFIGURATION weekend for the church, an odd story of Jesus' encounter with Moses and Elijah on a hilltop. Jesus' clothes turn whiter than snow, and his face shines brighter than a LucasFilms effects crew can make it. (Read the account here in Luke 9).

We're also making our way through a sermon series on 2 Corinthians. This weekend we focus on 2 Cor 4: 1-6. In my studies for these two, I've stumbled across something that I hadn't seen before. Let's see if I can get your thoughts on it.

In Luke 9, the cloud comes across Peter, James, and John, and a loud voice thunders from it, "This is my Son, the Chosen One, listen to him!" I've always read it as, "Of course we ought to listen to him, so we'll try harder now."

BUT, I've been wondering about the setting of the scene as the context for this voice. Here we have Jesus with Elijah and Moses. You couldn't get a better A-list of figures of the faith to bring in. I can read this scene in a few ways, one way being that this scene validates the Jewish-ness of Jesus and his role to take up Israel's identity in his mission of redemptive suffering (just eight days earlier Jesus reveals his mission to go to Jerusalem, suffer, die, and be raised to his disciples.)

Here's the new thought I've had, and perhaps it's not new to you, but it sparked a fury of ideas within me. What if God, in this THX voice, is telling Peter, James, and John that the time for listening to Moses and Elijah is now over and that they must turn their FULL attention to the voice of Jesus? While Moses and Elijah are important figures in the Jewish faith, what if this voice is saying to discount them? Perhaps a better way to say it is: you must now understand Moses and Elijah through the voice of Jesus. The only way to understand Moses and Elijah is by what Jesus has to say about them. There is NO OTHER WAY; listen to him!

I came across this idea by listening to what Paul says in 2 Cor 3. He sets up the ministry of Moses to be a ministry of 'condemnation' and a rather glorious one at that. But what the Spirit of God has NOW done is give to Paul a ministry of 'righteousness' that "far exceeds [Moses' ministry of condemnation] in glory." The Spirit is the Spirit of the Lord, and "where the Spirit is, there is freedom."

Paul says that we are now ministers of this new covenant. Perhaps we can say that we are ministers of this NEW VOICE. As disciples of Jesus, we see/read/hear/taste/touch our world by what Jesus has to say about it. When Jesus walks with the disciples on the road to Emmaus after his resurrection, he OPENS their eyes/ears/head to understand all that Moses and Elijah HAD TO SAY ABOUT HIM!

So much for my Old Testament class where we couldn't "read Jesus" into the Old Testament and that we had to accept the Old Testament on its own. If what I'm thinking about the Transfiguration is right on, then the Old Testament takes talk of Jesus into its own.

A question for another time is: who is Jesus in the Old Testament? As anticipation, I'm willing to side with Origen and say "The kingdom of God is God," so the kingdom of God is Jesus.

I've got another thought on the transfiguration and Peter's haste to build some tents for another post. I'm always wondering why Peter was so hasty in wanting to build his memorial. I think I've stumbled upon another explanation that I hadn't considered before. But, alas, it's night-time, and I'm on tomorrow. Peace out.

2007-02-01T10:05:00.000-06:00

EQUIP-ment

I've had a recent revelation, and it's stupid that this hasn't come to me any sooner than now. I'm throwing out the word "training" from my vocabulary. It doesn't belong in church, and it doesn't belong in the mouth of one of its leaders.

The Red Cross provides training for its volunteers; the YMCA provides training for its employees. I worked as a "Trainer" for a corporation for 2.5 years during college where I trained other managers and employees to perform their job with excellence.

I just don't think that training adequately describes what we're about as architects of Christ communities. Training seems to be a rather technical approach to passing on instruction to others to perform their duties well. We follow manuals; we sketch out scenarios; we show, teach, do, and repeat. All of this is important in the learning process as one assumes a new role to perform.

Yet, it just doesn't quite translate to the church. When we gather leaders together for any of our various ministries, we gather for equipping. I could very well be splitting hairs on this one, but the posture of our approach is what matters as we lead. It's the same as a batter's stance before she smacks a softball out of the park; and the same as the golfer's posture as he swings away for the greens. If you're off in your stance, you're definitely not going to hit one out of the park. You'll pop one up for an easy out, or you'll slice your way into the rough.

Equipping comes to us from the Koine Greek of "katarismo". A little research showed me that this is a medical term meaning, "setting the bone." When the followers of the Christ community gather together to discern how they will participate in God's reign in our world (doing ministry), they gather before the Spirit who equips them with the tools necessary to participate. They discover that God has given them specific gifts for specific tasks in their participation. They discover how the Spirit "sets us in place" to be the body of Christ for the sake of our world. We move from dis-location and into location through equipping.

Equipping happens in a multitude of ways--through small groups, through individual coaching, through sermon and worship time, through coffee hour conversations that spill over superficiality and into mission, etc. But what is being done is more than training, it's being set in place to carry out God's mission for us in the world and be the witnesses God calls us to be.

I've let training take too large a spot in my approach to my call; let equipping pave the way.

2007-01-24T21:42:00.000-06:00

If you haven't heard about it, get yourself over to www.goodsearch.com. Finally, something good has come out of the internet.

The good folks at www.goodsearch.com have decided to donate half of their profits earned from advertising revenue to any, and I mean ANY, charity of your choice that has registered with them. They have over 27,000 charities currently registered.

For every search that you do on their site--and this isn't some C-rated search engine; they're powered by Yahoo!-- www.goodsearch.com will donate a penny to your designated organization.

So 100 searches in a day = 1$ for your organization. If you have multiple people doing multiple searches, that's more money in the pocket of your favorite charity.

I support the Haitian Timoun Foundation (Littleton, CO) when I'm at home, and MOSAIC-Supporting People with Disabilities when I'm at work. I'll be fair and flip-flop them as the time comes.

If you're like me, you're constantly scouring the net, and looking for any useless or useful piece of information to fill out the random thoughts that pop into your head. Now you can search and donate at the same time. I hope www.goodsearch.com stays up for a long time. I'd like to see how this will impact the world. It might not end up being much, but a little is more than nothing.

2006-12-21T13:14:00.000-06:00

From the mouths of babes...

A friend tells this recent story of his 3 year old...

We had a series of rain showers yesterday that left us mostly cloudy all day long, a weird thing for Texans who are so used to the sun. At the end of the day, just in time for the setting of the sun, the ceiling of clouds began to part, and the sun could be seen from the horizon. It was casting beautiful hues of reds, blues, purples, and yellows all about the scattering ceiling of clouds.

My friend's 3 year old was particularly interested in one big purple cloud. "Mom," she said. "Is that the cloud that Jesus is coming back on?"

My friend had been leading devotionals with her family throughout the month of Advent. They focused on the return of Jesus and his second coming. The kids, apparently, were soaking up the stories.

It caught my friend off guard. She was worried about getting to the store on time to purchase one more Christmas gift, then loading everyone back in the car to be back home in time for dinner. She was caught up in 'lesser things.' Her 3 year old was spot on. She was looking for Jesus' return.

Where have you seen Jesus today, or even signs of his return?

2006-12-19T14:24:00.000-06:00

Prayer Matters

December 21st is the longest day of darkness in our calendar. It is our winter solstice, the official start of winter, though cold temperatures usually settle in by then. I never really appreciate the light that we have (especially in Texas!) until I’m immersed in total darkness. My soul yearns for earlier sunrises and later sunsets, and an opportunity to soak up the sun.

There can be periods in our life where our prayer lives reflect the balance of light and darkness in our world. Absence of prayer in my life lets the darkness creep in. Along with darkness come dark thoughts that cloud out the vision of God’s Light in my life. The presence of prayer in my life is the lamp that God turns on in my soul to expose the darkness and bring me further into his marvelous light. When I feel particularly negative, pessimistic, with small thinking and small believing, I notice that my prayer life is nominal. When my prayer life is burgeoning, I’m better able to see what God is up to in my life, and how can I keep from rejoicing?!

In this season of Christmas and (soon) Epiphany, we celebrate the Light in the face of darkness. We celebrate the truth that the Christ-child brings into our world—that we are NOT abandoned by God, that darkness does NOT rule the day, that God is working to give us a new life by putting his Light in us. When you’re feeling down, particularly negative, and moody, stop and pray. Light will rush forth into your life when you do (and I’m sure others would be grateful for that!).

I’m praying for Light in your Life!

2006-11-22T18:24:00.000-06:00

What song will be sung to us?

I went and visited a friend in a nursing home today. The guy is 99 years old and is ornery/happy/frustrated/satisfied as they come. Today, we sat together as another gentleman--I'll call him Wayne-- sang lots of old standard songs to the nursing home crowd.

"Wayne" looked like Wayne Newton, with puffed up, slick-backed hair, dark pants, boots, a black puffy button-up shirt, and a black and steel belt with frills on it. I didn't know what to make of this man. He walked around the room, microphone in hand, and sang his old standards. He sung to the women, gave them necklaces, kissed them on the cheek. He danced with the men, and gave them the mic to sing one or two verses of a song here and there. For a moment, I felt like I was transported to Branson or one of the early showrooms in Las Vegas before the monolithic new casinos staked their claim in the desert. It was truly a kingdom of God moment, as in ... the kingdom of God is like a man who looks like Wayne Newton and shows up to sing songs to nursing home folks and bring them some joy the day before Thanksgiving.

Everyone new the songs he was singing. He sang Elvis (Don't Be Cruel), "Blueberry Hill," "You are My Sunshine," and even "How Great Thou Art." Lots of folks sang, and I thought to myself, "When I'm 85 and in a nursing home, what songs will Wayne be singing to me and the rest of the folks from my generation stuck in wheelchairs and sucking down oxygen through tubes?"

This really has me worried, because I don't know if there truly exist any songs that unite a generation as these old standards do. Literally, everyone in the room was singing with him. These songs transported everyone back to the first time they heard them. I overheard one octogenarian comment, "That song was popular when I was dating my husband." There's power in a common song.

But, really, what will be sung for me when I'm 85 and homebound? Will it be "867-5309" ? How about "Thriller?" Will Wayne sing some Pearl Jam? Or, God forbid, *gulp* Britney Spears?

What will be sung? Will it be hip-hop renditions? I just don't know, and it's got me worried. But it also has me curious about what songs I will want to hear when I'm 85. I hope there's some Dave Matthews in there. Maybe even some Q Source and the Cosmic Junk. (ask if you don't know).

Let's get a list going of songs you want to hear when you're 85 and homebound and Wayne comes to sing to you. Leave them in the comment section. I'm curious to know!

2006-11-15T22:10:00.000-06:00

Ever wondered the essentials of existence but couldn't quite find that perfect answer to your ponderings?? Never fear, E-Z Squirrel is here.

Provided by the United Church of Canada, this particular website exists to connect other "wonderers" with each other. The squirrel puts you at ease and lets you get comfortable in meeting others to explore the wonders of human existence and life on earth.

I think E-Z squirrel would make a great addition to our next guest speaker lineup at church.

The question for discussion is this: do websites like this one sponsored by official church bodies make a difference in the searchings of people? I pray that they do, but do they really make a difference?

2006-10-30T17:44:00.000-06:00

Re:form

I was walking to my truck in the parking lot of Barnes and Nobles the other day when I was approached by a man in a red shirt, jeans, and a white baseball cap. He quickly handed me a pamphlet and asked me if I had a couple of moments to spare.

I was curious, so I bit on his offer. In a few short moments I learned that this man had been a drug addict for most of his life. He had started smoking dope when he was young, he upgraded to other drugs later on, which led him to a life on the streets. Up until 5 years ago, he was homeless and near death, when he met a man from a drug recovery ministry in Dallas.

The man shared the message of the cross with him, and it saved him. He gave everything up, went into rehabilitation, and came out clean. Now he works with the man from the drug recovery ministry in Dallas, and he was hoping to raise funds that day.

I asked him, “You mean that all the man did was share the message of the cross with you, and that was enough to turn you away from everything that was killing you in your life?”

The man replied, “The message of the cross set me free.”

In John 8:31-36, we find Jesus speaking with those “who had believed in him.” He tells them that the only way to be his disciples is to live in his word. His word is his message about the advancing reign of God where God was doing powerful and wonderful things in and through Jesus. 'If you want to be my disciples, live in this message of God’s love.'

Jesus showed them about the saving power of his message. He healed the sick, he gave sight to the blind, and hearing to the deaf. He helped the crippled walk, and he raised the dead. He set people free from what held them in bondage. His message—his word—set people free. To be a disciple of Jesus is to live in the truth of Jesus’ message. To be a disciple is to be set free.

Now to those who had believed in him, they believed they were already free. They were descendents of Abraham, and they thought they were free. They believed a message that said that they were enslaved to no one. They were mistaken.

For a few hundred years, they hadn’t lived as a free people. They lived with different occupying countries who controlled them. Even their own history shows moments when the Israelites were free and not free. There was the whole event of Egyptian slavery that lasted over four hundred years. How could they say they were free?

They said they were free because they were living under an illusion of freedom which made them feel free, and that was enough for them. Even though they lived under a Roman occupation, the threat to their lives was tolerable. The Roman nation took fairly good care of them for minor inconveniences issued through taxes. Sometimes tax collectors took advantage of them, but for the most part the Jews were doing alright.

They could raise their kids the way they wanted to, they could work at their businesses the way they wanted to, they had better access to trade routes by using Roman roads. They even could continue to worship in their synagogues. They had to tolerate being outcasts in the Roman society, but at least they had a shot at their lifestyle.

When people did rebel against Roman rule, there was a hefty price to pay. Highways were often decorated with crucifixions, as a reminder to the oppressed of who was really in control. But if one could navigate around this, life went on almost as normal. They lived under the illusion of freedom, and Jesus’ message offered them nothing that they didn’t already have…so they thought. (ed's note: I realize that these few paragraphs may sound extremely insensitive. I've never experienced life under an occupying force. I've never lived under the kind of threats that first century Jews lived under. But, given more extreme alternatives, the Jewish state was allowed to exist within the Roman state, albeit from a controlled perspective.)

We’re not too unlike these descendants of Abraham. We live under our own illusions of freedom. One way that we see this illusion is through the myth of the American dream. This dream says that anybody can rise up from the lowest ranks and embrace the highest riches our planet can offer now. The promise is that once you make it big, you’ll have little to worry about. There have been a few success stories to promote this illusion of freedom from poverty, but largely it is untrue for many of Americans.

Many Americans live without health insurance, our poverty rates continue to climb, and the dream focuses on an individualistic reality that at its present rate threatens the success of life on this planet. If all the citizens of the world lived as Americans do, we would need eight planets to use for resources and to store our trash.

We live under an illusion of freedom. Compared to many other societies in our world, we are considerably free. We can roam between states without much thought for security. You can travel up to Oklahoma without worrying about your security. Why anybody would want to go to Oklahoma is beyond me (Go horns!0, but if you wanted to you, you wouldn't be stopped at checkpoints, searched for identity, and questioned for your motives of travel (which you ought to if you're traveling to Oklahoma ;)

We can go to any place of worship that we want to without threat from the government.

When Jesus tells us that his message can set us free, we who live under the illusion of freedom have a hard time seeing where Jesus can help us.

We have large disposable incomes that can get us anywhere in the world and experience anything we’d like to. You can book a flight tomorrow to travel to Peru and smell fresh Peruvian coffee as it is being harvested.

We have technology that connects us to anybody who has access. No longer am I enslaved to the television to receive updates on sports scores, but I can get those beamed directly to the pager on my hip.

HDTV frees us from looking at cloudy pictures.

Digital Surround Sound frees us from listening to 2 channel speaker systems.

Prescription drugs free us from living with much pain after major surgeries and speed up the recovery process.

Fast Food restaurants free us from slavery to countertop stoves and waiting for dinner.

So when Jesus walks into our lives, and tells us that his message can set us free, we wonder, “We’re free, aren’t we?”

Jesus’ words of delivery cause us to pause and truly assess our situation of so-called freedom. At the same time that we enjoy all of these so-called freedoms, we are experiencing global brokenness in the human system.

Nations threaten each other’s security. Wars are being fought over territory and resources in Africa. Children are conscripted into armies in the dead of night. Simple drugs that we can get at CVS over the counter are not available in many parts of our world. Those same prescription drugs also carry the dizzying power to control us.

The freest nation in the world also has one of the largest crime rates in the world. The truth is that no matter how hard we try to structure our governments to allow for individuals to experience freedom, we can’t free ourselves from the state of sin that Jesus says we’re in.

“Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” We may be able to view crystal clear broadcasts of Dallas Cowboys’ games and Drew Bledsoe interceptions, but we don’t bring that same crystal clarity in our relationships with one another, so we end up hurting the ones we love. We manipulate and coerce, we guilt and we shame our way to love with one another.

“Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” We may be able to grab a full meal on the way to our soccer games, but we forget that many on this planet die of thirst because of lack of access to clean water.

“Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” We may be able to listen to THX sound in carefully planned movie theaters, but we have a hard time hearing God and figuring out what God wants from us.

Our slavery to sin shades the way we think. Our so-called freedoms that we experience manipulate us when we come to the table with God. Our freedoms puff us up with power, and we actually believe a lie that says we are free to choose God over everything in our life. But we aren’t.

We tend to serve our own interests before we serve God’s. That’s why we need Jesus, and his message of truth and deliverance. Without him, we would live content under the curtains of our so-called freedoms.

Jesus works to release us from our limited freedoms and to set us in his freedom. Jesus lives in full relationship with God, and doesn’t settle for anything less like we often do. Jesus lets God be God, and he lives as a testament to what his Father does in our world. This is what it means to be free. You let God be God, and you enjoy what God does.

By doing so, Jesus is God’s Son and carries his authority to release us from our sins, to give us new life, and to help live as we ought to. All of our so-called freedoms can’t release us from the guilt, the shame, and the anxiety that we feel from day to day because of the mess we create in our lives. But Jesus can.

And he does it with his words. He walks into our lives, and speaks the truth. He speaks the truth that frees us from pretending that we are in control and that we are slaves to no one. He speaks the truth that says we will never be able to free ourselves from the sin we find ourselves in.

Jesus is God’s Son who sets us free forever. We experience it in baptism when we die and rise with Christ. We taste it in the bread and wine when we taste the future where we live just as free as Jesus does. We live into our freedom when we pray to the God who sets us free.

Jesus’s message is true. When we live in it, we live in freedom. And because Jesus is risen from the grave, we know that one day we too will be wholly free as Jesus is. For now, we cling to him to set us free every day. We clamor for his words and looks for his truth. When his truth finds us, we are set free, and free people are able to tell others where freedom will find them. It isn’t in drugs, it isn’t in government, it’s not in a TV.

It’s in God’s Son.

2006-07-22T22:04:00.000-05:00

New Orleans, Here I Come!

I leave early tomorrow for a mission trip to Chalmette, LA. Together with 11 servants from Preston Meadow Lutheran in Plano, TX, we will lead a week long day camp for 100 elementary children called Camp Noah. More information can be found on Camp Noah here. Suffice to say that this week will take the children back through their experiences of Hurricane Katrina as they follow Noah and how he dealt with the tremendous disaster that he faced. Who knew that this story could bring hope and healing to Hurricane victims. They, like Noah, faced a time of preparation, of building, of fleeing, of temporary housing, and of recovery. God is with us no matter what.

You can follow along our adventures by following our Field Journal. We hope to see you there. Keep us in your prayers.

2006-07-20T12:20:00.000-05:00

I recently was honked at by several cars at the intersection of Coit and Hwy 121. This is nothing new to me; I usually get honking at this particular intersection. It happens on my drive home from the office. There are just a few times when I catch this intersection just right so that I can see the big, blazing Texas sun setting in the West. Coit and 121 offers me a few mile view of this sight, with its orange, blue, and purple hues. It’s in moments like these when I’m caught up in the splendor of God’s good creation. The sun has been setting in the West for thousands and millions of years, before there was a construction project on 121 and probably long after it.

It’s in times like these when I’m drawn into Adoration of what God does in our world. Adoration is the first part of a four part prayer that I use around the acronym of A.C.T.S.: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. There’s many reasons to be in adoration of God, and this prayer helps remind me when I’m feeling all self-centered when nothing goes right in my day that God is involved in our world. Adoration is about loving God and showing how worthy God is in our lives.

I adore God for that big Texas sun; I adore God for the child who cries in worship—she could be on a ventilator in some hospital clinging to life; I adore God when people disagree with one another but don’t end up breaking off relationships or hating each other; I adore God for folks who make time to greet someone new; I adore God because God never gives up on us. For what do you adore God in your life? What catches your eye and makes you think of our Creator? What stops you in your tracks and makes you see the Redeemer? You can share your responses with me if you’d like to. I’m praying in adoration for you!

2006-07-14T19:08:00.000-05:00

Prayer is about one thing: it’s about having conversation with God. It’s about talking with that which creates life. It’s about speaking the desires of our heart to the one who put the sun in the sky, the one who makes the rain to fall, the one who has the whole world in his hands. It’s about connecting with the very One who brought us into this world and watches us always.

Jesus does give us a word of caution about how we pray (see Matthew 6). He warns us not to make a big show out of it. He uses those who stand on the street corners, and those who are long-winded in their prayers. We may walk by them and think that they’re very good at what they do. But Jesus says that their prayers are answered not by God but by us. They wanted attention in their prayers, and they get it by creating a spectacle out of prayer.

Jesus would rather prefer us to lock ourselves up in a room and pray in secret. Have you ever tried that? Have you ever just gone into a closet, sat down, and prayed? It’s an odd feeling. In that closet you are confronted with yourself. And in that closet you are confronted with a very big fact. The God who sees you, even in secret, knows everything. You can’t hide from this God. God sees everything.

And because God sees everything, God knows everything. That, to me, is a very scary thing. You can’t just show God all the good stuff in your life in prayer. God knows it all…God knows how we shine and knows all of our warts. Huckleberry Finn figured this out. He said, “You can’t pray a lie—I found that out.”

Prayer is about having a conversation with God. And there is no special way to pray except to be honest with yourself because you’re conversing with the God who knows it all.

There are two more things that I think are very helpful in understanding prayer. If prayer is truly about having a conversation with God who knows everything, then prayer is about hearing what God wants to say. Prayer is how God is heard.

If you look at our Lord’s prayer, you will notice that God wants to be heard in this prayer. It starts out with God. Our Father, who is in heaven.

This is about God. It is about naming God. Jesus wants us to address God as a 2 year old speaks to her daddy. Jesus wants to show us how personal God wants to be with us. God wants to be more than “father,” he wants to be ‘daddy.’ And in naming God in this way, we strike out all the other gods that exist. We don’t name the god of work, or school, or sports, or selfishness, or of good times. We name the God who is beyond us, who is in heaven, but the One who wants us to be in heaven too, the Daddy who brings us there.

And then it moves on, Hallowed be YOUR name, YOUR kingdom come, YOUR will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

We’re halfway through the prayer and we haven’t even spoken about ourselves yet. We haven’t said a word about our problems, about our petitions, but have spoken volumes about God. This is because God wants to be heard in prayer.

Martin Luther fussed with prayer over his life, but what he discovered was that the act of prayer brought us closer to God’s promises. By praying through the Lord’s prayer, we discover that we are drawn to God’s promises. We see that we are spoken to by a God who will do anything to bring holiness to his name. We are spoken to by a God who will move mountains to make his kingdom of peace, justice, and truth reign supreme. We are spoken to by a God who will go through death in order to bring us life. God wants to be heard, and these are the words he is speaking to us.

Prayer is how God is heard, and we see that in the Lord’s prayer. But prayer is not only how God is heard, it is also how we are heard. I’m always amazed at the fact that God wants to hear our prayers, that God wants to hear what bothers us, what makes us anxious, what keeps us up at night, what angers us, and what brings us joy. God wants to hear all of these things.

When we come to the second half of the Lord’s prayer we discover the “us” part. Give US this day our daily bread, Forgive US our sins as we forgive others, SAVE US and Deliver US.

Jesus knows that we are full of problems. So in this first prayer that he delivers to his disciples, he makes room for us. Jesus knows that we cannot provide for ourselves. We didn’t make these lungs that live off of oxygen, we never put the mountains in their place, or the ocean in its place. We are totally dependent upon God for everything. So Jesus makes room in his prayer for US. Give US, Forgive US, Save US, and Deliver US.

Jesus shows us that we have room in his prayer to bring all of our problems there. We need God’s forgiveness in order to live out our lives. Once we are forgiven, we can practice that in our lives. We need God’s salvation to lead us away from dangerous situations. We need God’s salvation to work in us, we need room to make our case. So Jesus gives us that room.
Prayer is about having a conversation with God, who knows all things. In this conversation God is heard, and we are heard.

2006-07-05T12:10:00.000-05:00

WHY I'D PAY ATTENTION TO POLITICIANS MORE...

Sen. Obama of Illinois recently delivered a rather insightful and helpful address at this year's PENTECOST gathering sponsored by Sojourners, among others.

Check it out here

I get tired of politicians trotting out 'faith' language in election years. I'm tired of the pandering. I'm tired of promises made with few results. I'm tired of being in political wars. I just want to see results that reflect what I think are common values we all share.

There's a genuiness about Sen. Obama's religious/political statements in his address. When Sen. Clinton makes statements of faith, I can't help but see it as a political ploy, as much as I would not like to. Perhaps Sen. Obama hasn't been around on the national scene long enough to have this tainted perception hang over his head every time he speaks. Enjoy it.

2006-04-27T11:08:00.000-05:00

PRAYER MATTERS

Many of you know about the recent events that have happened in my wife’s family. On Easter weekend, Susan lost her aunt, and a week a later she lost her grandmother. Both of the deaths came out of nowhere, as death often seems to do, and interrupted our nice, set schedules. But in matters of life and death, well-laid plans are subject to change.
When you wait for someone to die, you spend a lot of time doing nothing but waiting. As you look upon them breathing, you wonder if this is it...is this the last breath, the last time we will see her? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. This is almost an addictive activity. You watch the chest cavity go up, hold for what seems forever, and then release with a shake. You find yourself wishing that this would be the last one, or maybe it'll be the next one, or the next one, or the next one. Soon enough, an hour has passed by...then two hours...then three hours.
My wife’s family, who comes from a long line of German Catholics, adds prayer into the mix of their waiting. They pray the rosary—sometimes silently, sometimes aloud—as they watch their loved ones pass on.
I know Lutherans respond with our Catholic allergy anytime we hear about Catholic piety, but perhaps that should be re-evaluated. In the midst of their powerlessness in the situation, my wife’s family turned to God in prayer. They didn’t grasp for words to articulate the situation, but joined with a company of people who have prayed this prayer for hundreds of years. As I joined them, I was reminded of a song that we sing called “How firm a foundation.” The second verse goes like this:
“Fear not, I am with you,
oh, be not dismayed,
For I am your God and
will still give you aid;
I’ll strengthen you, help you,
and cause you to stand,
upheld by my righteous,
omnipotent hand.”

Build your foundation of prayer now upon God before the hardest times hit you in life. It comes in handy, and it matters.

2006-02-07T13:26:00.000-06:00

Thought I would pass this along. Found it in some surfing...thoughts???

A new confession of Christ
by Jim Wallis

Confessing Christ in a World of Violence

Our world is wracked with violence and war. But Jesus said: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God" (Matt. 5:9). Innocent people, at home and abroad, are increasingly threatened by terrorist attacks. But Jesus said: "Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you" (Matt. 5:44). These words, which have never been easy, seem all the more difficult today.

Nevertheless, a time comes when silence is betrayal. How many churches have heard sermons on these texts since the terrorist atrocities of September 11? Where is the serious debate about what it means to confess Christ in a world of violence? Does Christian "realism" mean resigning ourselves to an endless future of "pre-emptive wars"? Does it mean turning a blind eye to torture and massive civilian casualties? Does it mean acting out of fear and resentment rather than intelligence and restraint?

Faithfully confessing Christ is the church's task, and never more so than when its confession is co-opted by militarism and nationalism.

- A "theology of war," emanating from the highest circles of American government, is seeping into our churches as well.

- The language of "righteous empire" is employed with growing frequency.

- The roles of God, church, and nation are confused by talk of an American "mission" and "divine appointment" to "rid the world of evil."

The security issues before our nation allow no easy solutions. No one has a monopoly on the truth. But a policy that rejects the wisdom of international consultation should not be baptized by religiosity. The danger today is political idolatry exacerbated by the politics of fear.

In this time of crisis, we need a new confession of Christ.

1. Jesus Christ, as attested in Holy Scripture, knows no national boundaries. Those who confess his name are found throughout the earth. Our allegiance to Christ takes priority over national identity. Whenever Christianity compromises with empire, the gospel of Christ is discredited.

We reject the false teaching that any nation-state can ever be described with the words, "the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it." These words, used in scripture, apply only to Christ. No political or religious leader has the right to twist them in the service of war.

2. Christ commits Christians to a strong presumption against war. The wanton destructiveness of modern warfare strengthens this obligation. Standing in the shadow of the Cross, Christians have a responsibility to count the cost, speak out for the victims, and explore every alternative before a nation goes to war. We are committed to international cooperation rather than unilateral policies.

We reject the false teaching that a war on terrorism takes precedence over ethical and legal norms. Some things ought never be done - torture, the deliberate bombing of civilians, the use of indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction - regardless of the consequences.

3. Christ commands us to see not only the splinter in our adversary's eye, but also the beam in our own. The distinction between good and evil does not run between one nation and another, or one group and another. It runs straight through every human heart.

We reject the false teaching that America is a "Christian nation," representing only virtue, while its adversaries are nothing but vicious. We reject the belief that America has nothing to repent of, even as we reject that it represents most of the world's evil. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).

4. Christ shows us that enemy-love is the heart of the gospel. While we were yet enemies, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8, 10). We are to show love to our enemies even as we believe God in Christ has shown love to us and the whole world. Enemy-love does not mean capitulating to hostile agendas or domination. It does mean refusing to demonize any human being created in God's image.

We reject the false teaching that any human being can be defined as outside the law's protection. We reject the demonization of perceived enemies, which only paves the way to abuse; and we reject the mistreatment of prisoners, regardless of supposed benefits to their captors.

5. Christ teaches us that humility is the virtue befitting forgiven sinners. It tempers all political disagreements, and it allows that our own political perceptions, in a complex world, may be wrong.

We reject the false teaching that those who are not for the United States politically are against it or that those who fundamentally question American policies must be with the "evil-doers." Such crude distinctions, especially when used by Christians, are expressions of the Manichaean heresy, in which the world is divided into forces of absolute good and absolute evil.

The Lord Jesus Christ is either authoritative for Christians, or he is not. His Lordship cannot be set aside by any earthly power. His words may not be distorted for propagandistic purposes. No nation-state may usurp the place of God.

We believe that acknowledging these truths is indispensable for followers of Christ. We urge them to remember these principles in making their decisions as citizens. Peacemaking is central to our vocation in a troubled world where Christ is Lord.

************

And:

"It is one thing to say with the prophet Amos, 'Let justice roll down like mighty waters,' and quite another to work out the irrigation system. Clearly there is more certainty in the recognition of wrongs than there is in the prescription for their cure."

- William Sloane Coffin

2006-01-06T17:56:00.000-06:00

Epiphany 2006

Read Ephesians 3:1-12.

YOU HAVE ACCESS!

I’ve been real proud of myself for the last six months. Each morning I walk into the office and log into my computer. We each have a password that we set, and it changes every 30 days. For six months, I have known my passwords. I haven’t forgot them. Until today.

It figures that I was in a rush. I just wanted to stop and shoot off a quick email before I went to get my haircut. So I entered my password, and nothing. It beeped at me. That real annoying kind of beep too. The one that says, “You’re in trouble. What you need, I have, and you can’t access it without your password.”

So I tried other passwords. I tried capitalizing certain letters. I tried. And finally I had to admit defeat and walk over to Bob and ask for help. I couldn’t access my computer.

For thousands of years, folks have been looking for ways to access God. Different religions are built upon different ways to access God. Buddhism shows you how to have access to the divine through its principles, Islam has its own way to access God, Judaism has their way to access God, and Christians have their specific take on how to access God.

Religion tries to give you access to God. But what Paul says here in Ephesians is that religion can never give you access to God. Paul would know this too. He was the best religionist that there ever was. He was trained in the finest religion school, and became a leader among his people. When Christians began to grow in numbers, Paul was one of the first to try to stomp them out. He tried to stomp them out because he did not agree with their version of how to access God.

On his way to Damascus to persecute more Christians, Paul was stopped by a great light and a loud voice that asked, “Paul, why do you persecute me?” Paul was confused because he wasn’t persecuting any one individual. He persecuted everyone who belonged to the Way, the ones who followed Jesus of Nazareth.

But the voice made it clear to him, that when he persecuted the church, he was persecuting Christ himself. After his encounter, Paul became blind, went off to Damascus, sealed himself in a room, and did not eat for three days. He had much to think about.

The voice later visited a man named Ananias. Ananias was told to visit Paul, because the Lord had great things in store for him. Ananias was dumbfounded, he was to go visit the one man who put fear into the hearts of every Christian. But Ananias visited Paul. When he encountered him, he announced himself to him, and immediately scales fell off of Paul’s eyes. He could see, and what he saw changed his life.

Paul saw that for thousands of years, folks had missed the point. They had created laws, rules, and regulations that mitigated their access to God. If you wanted to access God, then you had to follow a certain way. You had to live morally, righteously, and holy. But no one could ever do that full-time. No one could ever live that perfectly. No one had direct access to God.

What he saw after his blindness is that no person can ever access God. Instead God becomes accessible to us through Jesus.

Many people have questions about the nature of God. What is God like? Does he live in heaven? Is he a Spirit? Does he exist? Is he a “he” at all? And many folks have tried to answer these questions. But all of our answers fall short of God’s answer to us. God’s answer is Jesus.

For Christians, we tell the story of how we have access to God because God finds us first in the person of Jesus. We don’t offer a way to access God. We offer Jesus. If you want to know what God is like, then turn to Jesus.
Don’t turn to the maleness of Jesus. Turn to Jesus’ actions, to his compassion, to his mercy, to his righteous anger. Look at how he thinks through the faith; look at how he lives it like no one else can. Look at how he forgives sins, and look at how death cannot hold him in.

Paul says to the Ephesians to stop trying to gain access to God. It has already been given to you in Jesus. Follow him, love him, obey him, and offer him to others. Tell them that they don’t have to work so hard anymore to find God. God has already found them. And tonight we join with the three kings to celebrate how God finds us. In the tiny squeals of a baby. A baby named Jesus.

2005-12-08T09:20:00.000-06:00

GIVE CHRISTMAS BACK TO THE PAGANS...

It wasn't the Church's festival to begin with, and since we took it over, we've done an abysmal job at using it for anything other than saying, "Hey, Culture, we're cool too. We have cool plays to tell old stories, and we'll use live donkeys at that too!"

A long time ago, the church and Christianity lived on the sidelines of life. We were a minority following of scraggly folks who lived in radical dependence upon the God revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. We believed in this faith so much that most would give everything they had to the gathered community. They gave everything. Trend reports tell us today that we give, on average, 2.9%. Guess we're too busy buying presents to satiate our consumer needs these days to rely too much upon total dependence of God.

For several hundred years, the church did not celebrate Christmas, and it got along fine. In fact, it saw a flourishing of theology, the arts, and true evangelism. Today, preachers will fine tune sermons for a largely pagan audience, because going to Christmas eve worship services is like putting the angel on the tree, the bourbon in the eggnog, and eating the last bit of Christmas ham for all of our Christmas festivities.

A friend of mine commented the other day he had heard the song, "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," on his commute to and from work. Something was wrong with it, he said. "It's totally wrong," he said. "Isn't the most wonderful time of the year -- Easter?" he stated out loud. This is the Christian story!

Now, don't get me wrong. I love the story of Jesus' birth. I love the theme of incarnation. I love how liturgical renewal movements in the past years have turned Advent into a season of eschatological anticipation...that we not only journey through the season of Advent as shepherds to the little baby's manger, but also we journey as people who await the second coming of Jesus, his parousia. But all that anticipation is lost for many people who simply anticipate the gifts under the tree, and the credit card bills in January.

The story of Jesus' birth is a late development in our Scriptures. Two out of four Gospels composed a perfectly good telling of the good news WITHOUT the story of Jesus' birth. And the two that do include the story tell it totally different. Matthew has wise men, stars, angels talking to Joseph, and the flight to Egypt. Luke has shepherds, Zechariah, angels talking to Mary, and a simple return home after the census. Yet, all four gospels think Jesus' death and resurrection vitally important and include this story in their accounts of the good news.

Too much of the church's time is coopted in December to satisfy the sentimental longings of most people who want kids in little shepherd's outfits. The church is also coopted in that we'll get in trouble if we tell the truth about Santa Claus. I've seen the fear and shock in people's eyes when I've hinted that I don't want to tell that lie to my future kids. "What?! How do you celebrate Christmas then?" Hmm...let me think about that....

I say, "Give Christmas back to the pagans. It's their holiday in the first place, and we'd make more of a statement as a community if we were to be a-cultural, like our Jewish brothers and sisters who celebrate Chanukah. They have kept their story and their witness. It says something. Christmas, nowadays, teaches us that we are valued by how many gifts we get, and how cool they are. Pssshhaaahh!"

Anyway, just a little Christmas ranting and raving, and Have a Happy Jesus Birth Day!

2005-11-15T17:37:00.000-06:00

So I'm about as committed to this blog as I am about doing my own journal, which isn't much. Sorry my performance has been so sporadic. But there's been lots going on.

I attended a conference led by Dan Kimball of Vintage Faith church in Santa Cruz, CA. He's written a handful of books, most noteworthy is Emerging Worship. He's about creating worship gatherings for new generations of folks as we enter our own postmodern world that defies definition. There's no dumbing down of worship, but a lifting up of worship that reclaims some of the most ancient practices of the church.

Anyway, he led a conference that I attended and had an interesting metaphor that I want to explore. His contention: Most Christians have become citizens of a bubble instead of citizens of God's kingdom. To support this he lifts up how Christians have carefully created their own forms of entertainment (Christian music, movies, and art), their own forms of clothing (T-shirts, jewelry, socks) and, yes, their own forms of candy (see Scripture Candy).

By doing so, Christians have been known in the world not for their ability to announce the coming of God's reign in and through the person of Jesus of Nazareth but for their ability to consume and to look weird while doing it. Kimball asks the question of: What do we look like to the world when we seclude ourselves in such a manner? Do we lose any ability to relate to those who do not know Christ?

We have become citizens of the Bubble. I recognize it within my own sense of self. I have grown up in the church, made most of my friends in the church, and over the last five years have sequestered myself by studying about the church in Seminary. Now that I am out into the world, I'm discovering that I'm having a hard time figuring out what questions the non-churched are exactly asking of us. This scares me.

Jesus said to go out into all the world. We have gone out, staked out our territory, built our buildings, and have waited for the world to come and search us out. I belong to another bubble within that bubble called the ELCA. Citizens of the ELCA bubble have a hard time relating to other Christians and their take on faith. I even saw in recent confirmation curriculum that it's recommended we poke fun at the faith stories of other Christians in order to show our own faith stories of a life lived by baptismal faith. This scares me even more!

Over time, the longer you are in a church community, the less non-Christian friends you will have. I spoke with a woman recently who is fired up about evangelism, but doesn't know where to start because everyone she knows, all of her friends, belong to the church. She lives in the bubble and the bubble has been exposed for her. Now she's reaching outside that bubble.

So how do we pop the bubble? How do we extricate ourselves from behind our well-fortified buildings, theological systems, and liturgies in order to encounter the ones to whom Jesus sends us? How do we motivate and equip those whom we lead with the mindset that we are Christians as a verb, the ones who are sent, not the ones who sit down?

The answer starts by popping your bubble. Check it out!

Grace and peace,
pt

2005-10-02T22:30:00.000-05:00

Recovery of Joy in a Lutheran Context

This is the first installment of a few wranglings I foresee on the topic of "joy" as a benchmark of living as a disciple of Jesus in the 21st century. Specifically, I wish to approach this subject through a Lutheran lens.

In Seminary, I learned much about the Bible. I learned much about Church history. I learned about preaching and attending to pastoral care. I learned about family systems and about the postmodern context. I learned much about the doctrines of God, justification, and salvation. Yet, and I believe this is due to our heavy Lutheran focus on the doctrine of justification, I don't recall learning much about the daily characteristics of what a disciple of the risen Jesus looks like. Joy, I believe, belongs in the realm of sanctification, and there aren't many Lutherans who are willing to cross over into that realm for fear of any synergistic (50 cent theological word of the day) efforts.

I did hear that a disciple is to advocate for justice and peace. I learned that a disciple takes care of the poor and hungry. I did learn that a disciple is one who confesses Jesus as Lord, believes in the Trinity, and has cursory ideas about the atonement. I did read about how a disciple loves the Lord our God with all my heart, soul, and mind, and loves my neighbor as myself. This is not a mushy-gushy kind of love, but a call to suffering love. I guess I really did learn much about a disciple's life of service/ministry in the Lord, but what about the attitudes that a disciple bears in this service. Recently, I am rediscovering the need for joy in living the life of a disciple. Joy is not only a benchmark but also serves as a motivating agent in the life of a disciple.

I believe Lutherans have several knee jerk reactions to stating that joy is a benchmark of being a disciple. Joy is too much of a feeling for us. And for a people who predominantly associate with a Northern European culture, feelings aren't readily expressed.

Jesus prayed for our joy. In John 15:11, he remarks, "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full." One of our knee jerk reactions to joy is also that it is associated with happiness, and happiness nowadays is such a superficial and fleeting feeling. And for Lutherans who value the centrality of the somberness of Jesus' cross and passion, it is hard to imagine any semblance of joy pervading our lifestyle. How can joy, sacrifice, humility, and suffering abide in the same space? "One of these things is different than the other, which one could it be???"

But when I look back to those initial moments when I discovered God's grace pro me, I remember profound feelings of joy. This joy stemmed from knowing that my future was one of hope and not despair, of true happiness and not sorrow, of praise and not cursing. Joy made me want to tell the world about what was revealed to me. Joy made me want to engage worship more fully, the community more fully, and explore my faith more fully.

Joy has stayed with me in the toughest of moments. Even in my darkest pits, the fact of God's reigning in our future keeps me strong and brings me through to God's new day. There is a time for sackcloth to be worn and dirt to be thrown over our heads. But do we stay there in that spot? Is joy a psychological construct to avoid and repress hard feelings of life?

Or do we begin to live life as a new creation, one created in joy that sustains us through all of life's trials??

Again from John 16: Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.

And from Romans 14: For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit;

OK...my thoughts are pretty loose, but like I said, it's only wrangling.

Fight the good fight of faith!
PT

2005-09-12T16:25:00.000-05:00

I was up from 12-4am this morning, and it wasn't because of the beer my wife and I drank as we watched the Longhorns slip one by the Buckeyes.

We were standing guard at doors and rooms, aiding hurricane evacuees as they slept at a local United Methodist Church. The good folks at Christ United Methodist (www.cumc.com)have taken in 60 individuals seeking shelter and refuge from the torments of a storm gone bad.

I am amazed by several things that have happened with the influx of evacuees into the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. For one, this mass exodus is forcing the continuing question of why America avoids providing for the poor and disadvantaged. It also raises questions about systemic poverty that predominantly includes one race over another.

But more than these questions, it has ignited floundering churches in search of mission and purpose. God has brought mission to the doorsteps of churches all across this country. Of course, mission has ALWAYS existed for us because God's kingdom is ALWAYS advancing in this world. God's advancing kingdom has long since left churches who have been embroiled in serving themselves, but now God has come back with a 2x4 to smack churches stuck in a rut. If the initiative to rebuild New Orleans, provide for her people, and engage each other in true neighborliness doesn't jumpstart the thousands of churches in this country, then we might as well close the shop.

This influx of evacuees has also brought people from varied backgrounds who normally would never cross paths in life into direct confrontation with each other. I live in a primarily white, uber-affluent suburb of Dallas. "Affluent" doesn't quite capture the money that is contained in this county. The cookie cutter houses and tons of consumer opportunities to speND, spEND, SPEND has the ability to anesthetize, mesmerize, and lobatomize a person if s/he is not careful. I like to travel into Dallas just to get a sense of diversity and culture back again and remind myself of who I am. The large gathering of evacuees has forced the above issues off of our TV screens and onto our street corners. Well-manicured hands are now reaching out to the weather-worn. Decked out SUV's are arriving with in-kind gifts. And McMansions are becoming temporary boarding houses, as most have their heart strings pulled by the suffering that New Orleansians have been through.

The last thing I'd like to remark about (for now, anyway) is the tremendous outporing of support from Americans for fellow Americans. I'm thankful for the support, I even see God in it. But I also have a thought that plagues my mind, what if, just what if, Americans reacted this way to...say...the suffering of orphans in Africa because of the HIV/AIDS epidemic? What if we rallied around the cause of eliminating world hunger (www.one.org) as we are for fellow Americans? What if?? plagues my mind. Again, I'm thankful for the support that Americans are showing other Americans, but can we take it a step further once we grapple with the immensity of what is happening in New Orleans?

I was initially disgusted with the comparison of the storm-torn areas with that of ghettos and slums of Third World Countries. In fact, some news agencies compared them as being worse off than Third World Countries. It may be so, but in a matter of a few months, enough money and redevelopment will occur that will obliterate that comparison, and the Third World will still be the Third World.

I believe in America with all of its faults and issues. I don't believe in its government to provide liberty, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness. But I do believe in America, and I pray that we can transform this spirit of generosity into global consideration.

Keep up the good work!

PT

2005-08-31T14:08:00.000-05:00

My name is Paul, and I'm new to this blogging endeavor. I figure that I have read enough of these blogs and it's time to give it a shot. I have sat silently observing enough of them to know that REAL conversation can occur through this medium. (Besides, it's my birthday today, and I have dedicated each year to do something that challenges me and my sensibilities.)

I do have an agenda with this site, and I thought I'd be upfront with y'all before we get any further. I'm passionate about a Jew from ancient Nazareth who died and is risen from the grave. And I think that this story of this person we call JESUS ought to be told to the whole world.

But before you click on your "back" button and navigate yourself away from this page because you weren't too interested in reading more RIGHT-eous propaganda, please bear with me.

It's my intention to be open to conversation, live into mystery, and fuss with the stuff of life. I'm a pastor in my "day" job, and the operating definition that guides what I do and who I am in that role is: one who lives life deliberately and tells others about it theologically. I pray that what happens on these pages has true existential cash value for us all, and that the reign of God is better served by it.

My agenda and objectives for this blog all deal with Christian faith...what it means to have faithFULL conversation, live faithFULLy, and engage this world not through a primary naivete (as Paul Ricouer shows us) but to have EyeS wIDe oPeN. I believe we ought to look at this world through a "Jesus Lens."

inJoy,
Paul M.