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“The thesis of this book is that evangelicalism has ‘given away’ being the church in North America. Simply put, evangelical churches have forfeited the practices that constitute being the church either (a) by portioning them off to various concerns exterior to the church or (b) by compromising them so badly that they are no longer recognizable as being functions of the church.”

David Fitch, The Great Giveaway

These are the opening words in a new book I’m reading called, The Great Giveaway. Pretty strong words. They actually made me flinch when I read them.

Yet despite the “cringe-factor” of Fitch’s thesis, I’m actually very excited about this book. What excites me is not the deconstruction that Fitch will offer in this book. I’m sure he will provide tight arguments to support his thesis, one that I completely agree with. In fact, each chapter examines a significant function of the Church that evangelicals have given away — our definition of success, evangelism, leadership, worship, preaching, justice, spiritual formation and moral education.

However, I’m actually excited about the reconstruction that Fitch will offer. Back in January, Scot McKnight blogged a nine-part series about this book that begins here. The suggestions that McKnight states that Fitch offers in each area intrigue me. So, I’m looking forward to working through this book not for ammunition against the evangelical church, but for fresh ideas to continue to journey toward an alternative and authentic expression of personal and corporate faith in Christ.

I was listening to some worship music this morning. This song, “Yet I Will Praise,” really spoke to me and I felt that it may speak to others who need reaffirming in their faith. Blessings to all of you who are struggling to worship and trust God through the storm.

Lord use these words and melody to strengthen all who feel overwhelmed. May a spirit of adoration and worship rise up within them.

David Fitch has a good blog on what he calls “The Myth of Expository Preaching.” What is the myth? Here it is in a nutshell:

“I believe there is a myth surrounding expository preaching among N. American evangelicals. It goes like this: if the preacher follows the text more closely in his preaching, both he/she and the congregation will stay true to the Word of God.”

Fitch then discusses how this myth fosters the commodification of Scripture:

“It carefully dissects the text into three (stereotypically) points and an application, which is then offered to the parishioner as the means to further her Christian life. The person sits isolated in the pew encouraged to take notes, analyze, digest the sermon, rarely giving the Amen. The sermon is crafted to give the individual an application to go home, apply and do to become a better Christian. Expository preaching operates under the assumption that the congregation (or radio listeners) is composed of individual Cartesian selves isolated and separated from each other yet capable of listening and receiving truth as information from the pulpit. And so the expository preacher commoditizes the Scripture putting it at the disposal of the user in the pew. He/she makes the text into an object to be dissected, cut up into three points, and distributed in “nuggets” by the preacher to be used by the parishioner to improve his or her Christian living, and/or to receive salvation. By default such a sermon cannot help but situate the parishioner so that (s)he is in control of the Scriptures because it is the parishioner who decides whether, how and what to consume in the preaching. Ironically, as the expository preacher carefully follows the text in his preaching, the center of control for the meaning of Scripture has shifted from Scripture to the autonomous mind of the listening parishioner. The parishioner’s ego remains firmly in tact governing her consumption of the Word as he/she returns home with what he/she thinks she heard or wanted to hear. And the preacher seeks comfort that somehow the Holy Spirit works in mysterious and unsuspecting ways and His “word shall not return void.”

Now I know these critiques seem to imply that preaching is bad. But that is not Fitch’s conclusion. Although he critiques modern assumptions of preaching, he recognizes there is a place for preaching in our postmodern world.

“What I have said above is a pretty heavy indictment. Some might imply that I don’t believe preaching is any longer possible in the postmodern worlds. But for me, nothing could be further from the truth… Against all of this, I believe we desperately need the preaching of the Word in the church today. But we need preaching done, not as isolated individuals, but in and of community of the Spirit.”

I know preaching style is one of evangelicalism’s “sacred cows” and everyone has more than just an opinion. But I definitely agree with Fitch in one area: Modern Christians have commodified Scripture. Rather than allowing Scripture to be in control of us, we maintain control over Scripture. We decide if certain pastors are worth listening to based on our preferences of style. We use our traditions or personal interpretations or favorite doctrine emphases to analyze and evaluate preaching ministries. I hear it all the time in comments about various pastors’ preaching styles.

But we Western Christians have been duped. As a result of modernity, we’ve been taught that the primary purpose of preaching is either correct doctrine or personal application, never realizing how this idea places the individual, and neither God nor his Word, at the center of the universe. In this view, Scripture revolves around my life. I determine its interpretation and its application.

But God’s Word is more than a source for correct doctrine or an owner’s manual for correct living. If God simply wanted to communicate doctrine or application, the Bible would look very different than how it does. And Jesus and the New Testament writers would have preached and taught in a very different manner.

By the way, if Jesus was a master teacher, then why did he never use expository preaching? In fact, most of his parables were explanations to his prophetic actions. So if we were to follow his style, we would perform prophetic actions and symbolism and primarily speak in parables and stories when people asked for explanations. But I digress.

Instead, through symbols and stories, allusions and actions, Jesus and the New Testament authors captured peoples’ imaginations and exposed the false stories they were living within and reconnected them back to God’s true Story and its multilayered themes. They immersed and saturated them in a dynamic and spectacular Story that began and ended and was filled with God and his loving and faithful purposes for the cosmos. N.T. Wright succinctly summarizes the Story and its themes in Simply Christian:

“Presence, Torah, Word, Wisdom, and Spirit: five ways of saying the same thing. The God of Israel is the creator and redeemer of Israel and the world. In faithfulness to his ancient promises, he will act within Israel and the world to bring to its climax the great story of exile and restoration, of the divine rescue operation, of the king who brings justice, of the Temple that joins heaven and earth, of the Torah that binds God’s people together, and of creation healed and restored. It is not only heaven and earth that are to come together. It is God’s future and God’s present.”

Surely in this Story there is room for correct doctrine and appropriate application. But first and foremost is the Story and the vivid imagination it generates. And preaching, whatever form it takes in the faith-community, must hold that central.

Chris Erdman has a great post called “Christ, the End of Violence” that is a follow-up post to another great post called, “The False Self and Violence.”

The pathway to the end of violence is Truth. And that Truth is Christ. I love this line, “Christ in us is the recovery or discovery of our original truthfulness, our unmasked selves…”

Lately, I’m very aware at how dis-integrated my inward life remains. I’m not getting down on myself or depressed about it. I’m just aware that after years of being saturated in the Christ-Truth, that I’m not fully integrated. And my dis-integration fuels forms of violence like pride, greed, lust, judgmentalism, pessimism, fear, anger, and the like. And often, my immediate reaction when these forms of violence surface and expose my inward dis-integration is to rationalize or cover-up.

But the pathway to the end of violence, both inward and outward, is Truth. It is the Truth that is Christ, that both exposes my dis-integration and its resulting sins and then performs my much-needed re-integration as an image-bearer. The Apostle Paul says it like this:

“You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Ephesians 4:20-24

To put off the old (dis-integrated) self being corrupted by its deceitful desires. To be made new in the attitude (truth) of my mind. To put on the new (re-integrated) self, created to be like God. This is the path of formation — the rehabilitation of the self as God’s image-bearer. And it is the path to the end of violence.

Lord, please make me a man of peace.

This guitar solo is amazing. It’s beautiful, original and mesmerizing.

I read a great quote by Mark Allan Powell, pulled from Scot McKnight’s book, The Jesus Creed:

“We cannot have a relationship with our christology — we can have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Our soteriology cannot save us from our sins — our Savior can.

Our ecclesiology does not make us one — the Lord of the Church does.

Our eschatology will not transform this flawed universe — Jesus the King of kings and Prince of Peace will do that.

And no matter how much we love theology — it will never love us back.”

For me, theology is a spiritual discipline. Studying, reflecting, meditating, and praying over how we should understand God as he has revealed himself and how we should live life in his grand creation is necessary and good. But in the end, theology is simply a vehicle to a much greater end and much greater love — Christ himself. All of the various “-ologies” that we deconstruct and reconstruct in our attempt to follow Christ are simply portraits, icons of a greater and richer reality — the magnificent person of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Yesterday, I talked a bit about what faith in Jesus is about. It’s having confidence in Jesus. But having confidence in him as a person also means having confidence in his intelligence and strategy for bringing about a complete global revolution, one that will ultimately transform the earth so it will truly emulate heaven.

(By the way, I called Jesus’ agenda a political one, because at its core it addresses how we, as humans, govern our lives, our relationships, our societies, our economics, our ecology, and our world. In other words, being the image of God, while emanating from a spiritual core, is primarily a political reality more than a “religious” one.)

A corollary to discussing faith in Jesus, especially in evangelical circles, is talking about having a “personal relationship” with Jesus. As a young Christian, twenty-plus years ago, I remember hearing and using this phrase to describe Christian living. “Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a personal relationship with God/Jesus.”

One of the few things that has stood firm through the last few years of personal deconstruction and reconstruction of my understanding of life with God, people and his creation has been the core truth of having a friendship with Jesus. In fact, Jesus calls his apprentices “friends.” (However, I’ve ditched the phrase “personal relationship” with Jesus. It began to sound too much like “life-partners” or something weird.)

“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

John 15:15-16

Confidence in Jesus results in a friendship with Jesus. But what does Jesus mean by the word “friend?” In our culture, friendship has many levels of meaning, spanning a spectrum of mutual affinity with another person to deep loyalty. The more I think about friendship with Jesus, I’m convinced it goes to a further level. Look at what he says:

“You are my friends if you do what I command.”

John 15:14

In other words, friendship with Jesus soars beyond liking Jesus and even beyond loyalty to Jesus. It’s having so much certainty in him and his plan, that you make it your life-goal to become like him. It’s emulating Jesus from the inside-out so that just as the earth will one day reflect and emulate the reality of heaven, our friendship with Jesus will do the same at the personal level.

One of the instant protests that arises from this line of thought is, “But I’m not perfect.” It’s funny how our Christology always boils down to this one facet of Jesus’ life — he was perfect. I could be wrong, but I can’t recall a moment in the Gospels where Jesus exhorts his students to be perfect. He does call them to be mature, a word often translated as perfect. But the dynamic Hebrew concept of “perfect,” “complete,” or “mature” doesn’t contain the same meaning as the Greek idea of static perfection, which we often associate with Jesus.

Bottom-line, a friendship with Jesus is ultimately expressed by learning from him how to be like him, not perfectly, but progressively. And like any “training program,” there will be ups and downs, successes and failures. But over time, I should be able to see a marked difference in the kind of person I am today as opposed to who I was one year, five years, ten years or twenty years ago.

And, ultimately, if granted a long life in this realm, I should reach the threshold of life in the renewed creation having become as much like Jesus as the limitations that this transient life on earth allows. Or to use the Hebrew concept, I will have become as “complete” or “mature” as this life allows. (Which, I suspect, is a lot more than our current imaginations allow us to envision.) And like I mentioned yesterday, this is the core to Jesus’ worldwide strategy for making this earth right.

These thoughts have been rattling around my head:

Jesus’ call to repent and believe in him is NOT a religious invitation. At one level, many evangelical Christians hear his invitation as a ticket out of this world and into heaven. But I think that many of us who are rethinking what Jesus’ message and life really mean in our world, still hear his invitation as primarily a “spiritual” invitation to spiritual formation. There IS a spiritual part to his invitation and I’ll touch on it in a moment. But I think if we jump straight there, we risk short-circuiting Jesus’ larger agenda.

I’m coming to believe that Jesus’ invitation is primarily a political one in nature. He’s saying that the powerful and dynamic kingdom or empire of God is available right now, in our broken, distorted and unjust world. That means justice for the oppressed, peace for the war-torn, joy for the mournful, revitalization for the bankrupt and broken and much more are available right now for this world. It means a complete overturning of the world’s empires and systems that have fostered economic, cultural and military imperialism.

So what are we repenting of? I think Jesus is challenging us to rethink how to be human, and as humans, how we would go about making a better world. I think he’s not just challenging all that’s bad in us, but even all that’s good in us as well. That’s because even our best intentions can be distorted. He’s saying, “Do you think you can really dethrone a dictator by using greater military means? You better think again!” And “Do you think you can make a better world by manufacturing, buying and selling more or by developing greater technological advancements? You better think again!”

Jesus’ way of global revolution on behalf of Yahweh — his strategy for global justice and peace — is pioneering a society whose citizens are becoming the kind of people who, like him, can absorb the world’s evil into themselves and release love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, compassion, and justice back into the mix. This is the daily implementation of what he uniquely inaugurated in his crucifixion and resurrection. Therefore, “believing in him” means to place our confidence in him and his strategy. It means being completely sold with his agenda, believing that it will really work in all situations and all cultures.

Because the political and spiritual realms are inseparable, Jesus’ political invitation has an equal spiritual aspect as well. Our confidence in him and his plan for global revolution compels us to join him and become like him so we can implement his plan. Though his strategy for global transformation is a political one, it requires spiritual formation into people and communities who bring wisdom, healing and renewal in all levels of life in his behalf. We’re being saved for the sake of the world.

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Here’s a slideshow of some photos I took when we went to Chinatown this weekend:

A lot has been happening lately with very little time to write. The wedding season is kicking into gear. Our wedding video business is busier this year than last year. Woohoo! But that means less time with the family, which sucks. If you want to see some cool demos of what our company does, check them out HERE.

Sunday, we took the kids to see Nacho Libre. Yes, that’s a second viewing for Deb and me within a week. (I wrote a little bit about Nacho Libre HERE.) Unfortunately, the movie was much funnier the first time. What struck me the second time, though, was the journey of Nacho’s friend, Esqueleto. I don’t want to give the plot away, but it was cool observing how Esqueleto changed through Nacho’s bungling, yet authentic influence. Esqueleto begins as a very self-centered man who doesn’t believe in God and “hates all the orphans in the world.” In a moment of watching injustice against a young boy, Esqueleto’s attitude towards orphans changes and he gets involved. By the movie’s climax, he encourages Nacho, saying, “We should pray.”

After the movie, we took the family to Chinatown. It was hot, humid and crowded. But we had a nice time hanging out together and visiting the different shops. There was this moment at the end of the day that I wish I could have captured and framed forever. We were window shopping. I turned around and saw my kids, each with a Boba tea in hand, looking through the shop windows at the various trinkets and food. In that moment, I was filled with such pride and admiration for my children. As pastor’s kids, they have endured so much junk through the years. Yet, through it all they have emerged as such wonderful people. I love who they are and I love who they are becoming. And I’m also reminded at how inadequate and ill-equipped I feel to raise them to be Jesus’ apprentices in this world.

Also, I wanted to say, “Death sucks!” Trixie, one of our kids’ cherished hamsters, died yesterday. It was pretty traumatic for everyone. When we first got the two hamsters, I thought, “Cool, disposable pets.” But they quickly captured the kids’ hearts and found their place in our family. Sometime while Deb and the kids were on their morning walk, Trixie passed away. My youngest found her. I tried to spend time helping each of them process their feelings. Chris asked, “Do hamsters go to heaven.” I’m sorry but my Master’s degree in theology did not prepare me for those kind of painful questions from a six year old. I also discovered that Trixie’s death really hit Michael hard. He would talk to Trixie every evening and share what had happened through his day. It was his form of journaling. When I went up to say, “Good night” to him, he had moved her cage out of his room because it was too painful. Danielle, who processes death with a lot of difficulty, took Trixie’s death pretty hard and was depressed through the afternoon. Cathy spent the afternoon trying to comfort her. But when I got home, Cathy broke down as I hugged her. We’re going to miss you, Trixie. You were really loved around here.

Deb, David and I saw Nacho Libre on Friday. I have been looking forward to this movie since the trailers were released. I was nervous since Roger Ebert gave it such a bad review. But I must admit, that I really liked Nacho Libre. Like Napoleon Dynamite, we’ve been quoting lines since we came out of the theater.

There’s one line though, that grabbed my attention the moment Jack Black said it. It was funny in its context. But I think it’s even more poignant when applied to kingdom living. Speaking about the priests who oversee him, Black states, “They think I don’t know a buttload of crap about the Gospel. But I do.”

Nacho is a man that has been simultaneously cared for and crushed by the religious leaders above him. As an orphan they’ve sheltered him and raised him. Yet, because of their paradigm of spirituality and holiness, they’ve punished him for his dreams. Tethered to a life that he hates, Nacho longs for something better.

He has grown up in the shadow of the Gospel. But the way that it’s been modeled convinces him that his dreams are sinful and that serving God is a drudgery. So he tries to live a double-life — one foot in the world where his dreams lie and one foot in the only form of spirituality that he knows and, in many ways, cherishes. When those two lives collide, we discover that God inhabits all of life and that Nacho does know a lot about the Gospel.

I believe this is true for a lot of people longing to live a substantive life with God. They’ve been convinced that unless they can exegete Scripture, lead a committee, or perform on stage, then they can’t do much for God. Yet, God desires to inhabit the places where our talents, gifts, passions, and even our blunderings, can touch the world’s pain and transform it into goodness on behalf of others. That is the road to authentic spirituality we must travel. And don’t be surprised if you discover that one of your traveling companions is a squash-shaped man in blue and red stretchie pants.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the cross within the Story of God.

I really believe that Jesus reconfigured Israel around himself. Israel was to be God’s people, especially chosen to suffer and rescue God’s world. Having abandoned their vocation, Jesus does for Israel what they couldn’t do themselves. He becomes their representative. He is what they were to be as the “people of God” — embodying God’s transforming presence on earth in order to reconcile and restore creation.

In this light, I think the doctrine of substitutionary atonement misses the real focus of the cross. Don’t misunderstand me. Jesus died for our sins. That alone is such a beautiful and wonderful fact that I completely understand why so much of western Christianity concentrates on this fact.

But I think Jesus’ death for our sins is meant to accomplish more than making divine forgiveness available. Here is what Paul says in Titus 2:11-14:

“For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope — the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.”

A couple of things stand out. First, salvation is described as a transformed life in the present, not a blissful disembodied existence in the future. Salvation is abandoning patterns of living that are destructive to myself, others and the world (ungodliness and worldly passions) and embracing patterns of renewal and repair for myself, others and the world (self-controlled, upright and godly). I cannot emphasize this enough. Salvation is not being snatched away and rescued from this world in the future. Instead, salvation is living a new kind of life (as defined and demonstrated by Jesus) in this world here and now. This new kind of life is a small piece of the future New Creation. So in a way, we anticipate and pave the way toward the future by living it now.

Second, salvation isn’t primarily about my blessing or privilege. Paul’s words reflect Abraham’s calling in Genesis 12 (“I will bless you… and you will be a blessing.”) Paul says that Jesus gave himself for us in order that we can give ourselves for the world. He redeemed us from wickedness (that’s our blessing) so that we can be purified as his people, zealous to do what is good (that’s our blessing to the world). We have been saved for the sake of the world.

How does the cross do this? I think it must start at a cosmic level and move inward. First, the cross breaks the back of all the powers that have dominated humanity and creation (Col 2:15). Then it reconciles everything in heaven and on earth back to God (Col 1:20). Then it rescues us personally from the dominion of darkness (Col 1:13) and deals with our personal rebellion and self-destruction with divine forgiveness (Col 1:14).

But it doesn’t stop there. As Jesus is Israel reconstituted, I think the cross is Israel’s calling reconstituted (blessed to be a blessing). The “salvation” of the cross from the cosmic level all the way to the personal level must now be embodied, demonstrated and announced from the personal level back to the cosmic level. We have been saved for the sake of the world. We are being taught to abandon our old way of life and to embrace God’s new way of life. We are redeemed from wickedness and purified to be Jesus’ new community, eager and prepared to actually go out and make God’s New Creation happen in our world. And as Christ was the fullness of God in a human life, we have been given the fullness of Christ and join him, above every ruler and authority (Col 2:9-10).

So when we see moments in the Gospels where Jesus is “seeking and saving the lost,” he’s doing much more than offering them God’s forgiveness for their sins. His focus is on Israel. They have “lost” their vocation. They have lost their way of being God’s people on earth for the sake of the world. So Jesus seeks them out and saves them. He rescues them out of their rebellion, their confusion and their destructive false identities and back into their vocation as God’s people.

That’s what the cross is all about! The cross is rescuing people back into the vocation of being God’s image on earth, about being God’s restorative community for the repair and renewal of the world, about being the fullness of God so that heaven and earth actually overlap and connect in the practical moments our lives. Like Israel in the past, we are blessed with relationship with God, with forgiveness of sins, with divine presence and love and grace… so that we can bless the world.

For God so loved the world… Now so must we!

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In light of my last post about photos, I’m posting a montage of photos that we took at our last trip to the zoo.

I think photos are cool. They’re like little windows into people’s lives. Even if we don’t know the people, the faces, postures, and surroundings provide a snapshot of a much larger story.

I came across this website through Photomojo. It’s a collection of photos begun by Frederic Bonn, who found a few photos in 1998 on a street in Paris and decided to post them on the web. He’s continued to post more lost and found photos. It’s a neat collection of forgotten people and moments from the past.

Our faith-community has been having a good time discussing the Songs of Ascent (Psalm 120 to 134) at our weekly gatherings. I wish I had more time to post thoughts about these wonderful Psalms.

One thing that struck me last night as Mark facilitated our discussion around Psalm 124 was the phrase “Maker of Heaven and Earth.” It’s the second encounter with this phrase in the Songs of Ascent and it made me wonder about what the Psalmist is affirming with this title.

In the two occurrences so far (Psalm 121:2 and Psalm 124:8) the context has been Yahweh’s covenantal faithfulness expressed by his help and rescue. The first occurrence is in the individual’s prayer, “My help comes from Yahweh, the Maker of heaven and earth,” and the second occurrence is the corporate prayer, “Our help is in the name of Yahweh, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

So the phrase seems to affirm four things: First, it affirms Yahweh’s power in creation. He is the Creator and is therefore thoroughly capable to rescue his people in whatever need they find themselves.

Second, it affirms Yahweh’s Lordship over creation. He has made the realms of heaven and earth. As the Creator, he is creation’s Lord. Therefore, everything must answer to him and he is capable to set everything in creation right again

Third, it affirms Yahweh’s intentions for creation. Earth is not a mistake while heaven is our ultimate destination. God has made both dimensions — heaven and earth. In fact, both form the one reality called creation, which is designed to be a growing expression of God’s goodness. And while the earthly dimension has become disjointed and mostly divorced from the heavenly dimension and while we live with those consequences, earth is still an important part of God’s good creation. In fact, the final vision in the Book of Revelation reveals the ultimate “marriage” or rejoining of these two dimensions.

Fourth, it affirms Yahweh’s covenantal faithfulness. As creation’s Creator, he has intimately bound himself to creation and its journey to his final designs for it. He is not an impartial spectator, but like a Father, he is directly involved in creation’s growth, even through its rebellion and brokenness. Therefore, we can trust God not only to be faithful to his creation, but also to the covenant he has established with people. He is a covenant God, faithful to his promises to his creation and to his people, who live in the midst of a currently broken creation. He is faithful and will bring both humanity and creation out of their long exiles in sin and brokenness.

Paul will later expound upon God’s covenantal faithfulness, ultimately revealed in Christ:

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

Colossians 1:15-20

I thoroughly adore my wife. She is God’s gracious gift to me. Proverbs 31:10 says, “A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies.” That’s how I feel about Deb. She’s everything to me. I cannot imagine life without her.

And she’s not only God’s gift, but also God’s instrument. I am becoming a better man because of God’s love and word through her.

My conversation with Deb last night was one of those moments when I experienced God’s presence and voice in a powerful way through her. I’ve mentioned before that Dallas Willard states that we are at the mercy of our thoughts. How we perceive things shapes our feelings and sets us on a particular course. If our perception is distorted or faulty, then so are our feelings. And even worse, our direction can lead toward some fairly destructive consequences.

To make a long story short (and ambiguous), I’ve been swept up with some fairly faulty thinking about life and personal success, influence and importance. And that faulty thinking was being reinforced by some powerful, yet distorted feelings. I tend to process this kind of stuff internally. But our conversation last night was a safe place to finally verbalize a lot of inner turmoil.

And that’s when God used my precious wife. She listened and thanked me for trusting her with my thoughts and feelings. And then she began telling me a different story from the one I had just told her. Within just a few minutes, she opened my vision to things that my faulty thinking and feelings had blinded me from. It staggered me. Five minutes and my distorted story was deconstructed and reconstructed so I could get my eyes off of myself and back onto the real Story that God has placed us in. It was so gentle and so loving and so affirming.

Thanks, Deb! You’re amazing. I love you.

I had mentioned before that Debbie has been reading Genesis to the kids and me whenever we travel somewhere as a family. Well, she has finished with Genesis and has begun Exodus. As she read the opening chapters this morning, I was struck at Moses preparation as a leader of God’s people.

First, the early chapters of his life foreshadow the journey Israel will undertake. As a child, Moses is saved through the waters just as Israel will be saved through the waters. Later as a man, as the consequence of his actions, Moses settles in the wilderness for forty years just as Israel will. As an individual, he embodies what the nation will eventually experience.

Second, what I find fascinating is what occurs during the forty years of Moses’ exile. Remember, he has fled Egypt because he has attempted to utilize the dominant culture’s leadership style in order to implement justice on behalf of one of his kinsmen — he kills an Egyptian who is beating an Israelite. Moses has simply acted in a way that is natural to the culture and leadership style he has learned as a member of Pharaoh’s royal family. But this backfires and God must take Moses on a journey to renew his identity and in the process, his leadership style.

Back in Genesis 46, when Jacob and his family migrated to Egypt to escape the famine that was sweeping the land, Pharaoh had instructed Jacob to leave all of his possessions (and therefore his identity) behind. Pharaoh offered the best of Egypt to Jacob and his family. New land, new possessions, new identity. Assimilation is futile. But wise Joseph counseled his father to tell Pharaoh that his family were shepherds, which the Egyptians detested. In this way, Pharaoh allowed them to settle in Goshen, which in turn, allowed them to maintain their unique identity.

Approximately four hundred years later, Moses emerges on the scene. However his identity and leadership have been shaped as a member of Egyptian culture and Pharaoh’s family. He looked, talked and acted like an Egyptian. (Reuel’s daughters describe him as an Egyptian in Exodus 2:18-19.)

As an exile in Midian for forty years, Moses is immersed back into the vocation of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He becomes a shepherd. It is a vocation that prepares him to embrace both the identity of God’s people and the essential leadership style to help the descendants of Israel to re-imagine and walk out their calling as God’s people in both victory and failure.

Moses cannot learn this overnight. It is a journey of formation. Yet in those forty years, Moses is transformed from a leader, who naturally and easily kills another in order to accomplish his agenda, and into a man that the Bible describes as “more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.” What a beautiful picture of spiritual formation. As a new man and a new leader, Moses is able to shepherd God’s people through the liminality of their wilderness wanderings from Egypt to Canaan.

Okay, you’re probably pretty tired of N.T. Wright quotes. But I love his ability to articulate concepts that seem to lie on the very edge of our language. The following quote probably isn’t extremely profound, but it reminded me of our discussion on Thursday night. Speaking on the Bible’s role in the Christian life, Wright says:

“It [Scripture] is there to equip God’s people to carry forward his purposes of new covenant and new creation. It is there to enable people to work for justice, to sustain their spirituality as they do so, to create and enhance relationships at every level, and to produce that new creation which will have about it something of the beauty of God himself. The Bible isn’t like an accurate description of how a car is made. It’s more like the mechanic who helps you fix it, the garage attendant who refuels it, and the guide who tells you how to get where you’re going. And where you’re going is to make God’s new creation happen in this world, not simply find your own way unscathed through the old creation.”

(N.T. Wright, Simply Christian)

I think one of the banes of modern western Christianity is the over-emphasis on our “personal relationship” with God. Don’t misunderstand me. I think that our relationship with God is foundational to everything else that God wants to accomplish. I think it was Dallas Willard who said that the forgiveness of sins is the doorway to the gospel, not the gospel itself. Whether he said that or not, the underlying point is valid. The ultimate goal or focus of the gospel is not me.

There’s a popular worship song that illustrates this point and drives me crazy. Here’s the chorus:

“Crucified, laid behind a stone

You lived to die, rejected and alone

Like a rose trampled on the ground

You took the fall and thought of me

Above all”

I’m sorry, but I really don’t think that Jesus’ greatest thought while dying on the cross was me. (Nor do I think he lived to, but that’s for another blog.) I think Jesus’ imagination was filled with thoughts of his Father’s glory and the new creation he was inaugurating.

It is so easy to approach all aspects of our Christianity with this hyper-egocentric perspective. The good news is that Jesus is Israel’s Messiah and therefore Lord and Savior of the world. The world. The cosmos. Not just me. The personal application of this good news is that I can bring my life into his. This begins a personal relationship, but the end goal is that I now participate in making the new creation happen by learning from him how to be like him, by being an active member of his redemptive community, and then by implementing his new creation in my unique aspects of the world as I’m empowered by his Spirit.

All the seemingly personal promises of Scripture must be read from this larger kingdom perspective. The mission of making the new creation happen in an otherwise hostile and violent world is a dangerous one. One that did not allow Jesus to live unscathed, nor his people. So promises, as we read in Psalm 121, are beautiful word pictures of God’s faithfulness and presence. But they are lyrics to a song sung by God’s pilgrim people expressing only one aspect of a larger reality, not blanket promise of an unharmed stress-free life. We have to remember that Jesus quoted a very different, but equally valid Psalm on the cross, “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me.”

But both Psalm 121 and Psalm 22 are both beautiful songs expressing essential aspects of our life in God as we help the new creation birth around us.

Conrad Gempf has no-holds barred take on the Gospel of Judas. I think his description of the Gospel’s importance as a window into the historical Jesus and Judas is great:

“What does the Gospel of Judas tell us about the historical Judas and Jesus? Well, sorry: nada. And it’s funny how some people who refuse to trust first century documents’ accounts of first century find room in their hearts to trust second and third century takes on first century events (provided they’re shocking). It’s like people a few centuries in the future watching DVDs of Disney’s Pocohontas to find out what motivated the British settlers.

“Even the most enthuiastic proponents of the Gospel of Judas acknowledge that the earliest it could have been written was over 100 years later. Written in a different language. By someone from a very different culture. And bearing distinctive marks of that different culture.

“So, let’s be clear. The Coptic Gospel of Judas is the historical equivalent of going to Japan and finding a document written last week in Japanese in which John Wilkes Booth has a conversation with President Lincoln who asks to be shot in order to join his honorable ancestors.”



You can read Part 1 and 2 of his Gospel of Judas posts here and here:

ChristianAudio.com has some free (that’s right free) lectures in their online catalog from two of my favorite teachers — Dallas Willard and N.T. Wright. Here’s a list for your viewing pleasure:

Dallas Willard

Church Staff Retreat 2004

The Cross and Discipleship

Interview: Dallas Willard on Renovation of the Heart

Interview: Dallas Willard on Hearing God

What Does It Mean to Be Human

N.T. Wright

The Future of the People of God

The Jesus of Myth and History

Also, each month, ChristianAudio.com has a free download from one of their classics. The free download for May 2006 is The Holy Rule of St. Benedict.

And if that weren’t enough, ChristianAudio has several podcasts that are worth checking out.

You’ll need to subscribe to download any of the audio files.

As I mentioned a few posts ago, our faith-community is focusing on the Songs of Ascent for the next few months. Right now I’m sitting in a coffee shop reading Simply Christian and N.T. Wright’s observations about the Psalms fill me with great expectation for our community’s discussions and reflections.

“In particular, Christian worship from very earliest times has made good use of the Psalms. They are inexhaustible, and deserve to be read, said, sung, chanted, whispered, learned by heart, and even shouted form the rooftops. They express all the emotions we are ever likely to feel (including some we hope we may not), and they lay them, raw and open, in the presence of God, like a golden retriever bringing to its master’s feet every strange object it finds in the field. ‘Look!’ says the Psalmist. ‘This is what I’ve found today! Isn’t that extraordinary? What are you going to do with it?’ The Psalms join together what often look to us like polar opposites as we come into God’s presence. They pass swiftly from loving intimacy to thunderstruck awe and back again. They bring together sharp, angry questioning and simple, quiet trust. They range from the gentle and meditative to the loud and boisterous, from lament and black despair to solemn and holy celebration.”

Bob Hudson points to this funny video about church shopping from the King of the Hill series. Very, very funny.

Over the last several weeks, Debbie has been reading Genesis aloud to the kids (and me) while we drive around in the van. As she read through Joseph’s story, a couple of phrases stood out to me.

In Genesis 45, when Pharaoh invites Joseph’s family to flee from Canaan to Egypt in order to be saved from the famine, Pharaoh instructs Joseph to tell his brothers:

“Do this: Take some carts from Egypt for your children and your wives, and get your father and come. Never mind about your belongs, because the best of all Egypt will be yours.” (Genesis 45:19-20)

But after Jacob had been encouraged by God to go to Egypt, Genesis records:

“Then Jacob left Beesheba, and Israel’s sons took their father Jacob and their children and their wives in the carts that Pharaoh had sent to transport him. They also took with them their livestock and the possessions they had acquired in Canaan, and Jacob and all his offspring went to Egypt.” (Genesis 46:5-6).

Jacob has shouldered the calling God gave to his grandfather, Abraham. God’s designs are advancing as he and his family have settled in the land of Canaan, forming their identity as God’s special nation. But now circumstances seem to force them to abandon that call. Faithfully, God appears to Israel, promising that he will continue to cultivate his plan through them, even though the journey seems to distance them from their calling. In Egypt, Israel will become a great nation and God will be with them and will return them to Canaan (Genesis 46:3-4).

As Israel and his clan prepare to leave the geographical symbol of their vocation, Pharaoh encourages them to leave all of their belongings behind as well and offers them the best of Egypt. Yet the belongings they have acquired in Canaan are integral to their vocational identity. Pharaoh is inviting them to leave their identity, but their identity anchors them to their calling.

Yet, Jacob wisely and subversively disobeys Pharaoh. He brings all of his livestock and possessions with him. He brings his vocational identity with him on this new journey, knowing that it is essential to God’s unfolding plan to develop Israel into the people God desires. As he stood before Pharaoh, face to face with the endless potential of a new life and new occupation in a new land, Jacob tells Pharaoh that he is a shepherd, something detestable to the Egyptians yet essential to God’s ongoing plan.

I feel a sharp affinity to this story. A little over twenty years ago, shortly after responding to God’s grace and choosing to follow Jesus, I sensed a strong calling to be a pastor (the same Greek word for shepherd, by the way). Heeding the counsel of mature Christians, I began testing that calling over the next couple of years. Person after person and event after event seemed to confirm that calling. I then decided to pursue the educational and occupational experience to prepare me for that calling. And over the years, that calling seemed to be affirmed.

But something happened. A famine threatened my livelihood. But it wasn’t an external famine in the land. It was an internal one of my own soul. I had allowed my occupation as a pastor to distort my vocation as a pastor. And God in his mercy made a way for me to leave the Canaan of my calling to sojourn in Egypt.

And as I initially stepped into my Egypt, I felt what Jacob and his children probably felt — the potential of a new life and new occupation in a new land. But the more I began to explore the passions of my heart toward a new occupation, I was not sensing any type of release to pursue something new. Rather, I kept sensing an ongoing turmoil. What had happened to the calling of my early years? Had I misheard? Were the endless confirmations simply an ongoing delusion? Or was the calling valid, but somehow I had disqualified myself? If so, why was there still a passion to pastor and no direction or release to pursue something new? Did God revoke my calling? If so, then I felt abandoned without further direction. If not, then what was happening to me? For almost three years I’ve felt confused and uncertain, unwilling to move in any particular direction.

While in Egypt, I wonder if Jacob ever stared into the night sky and struggled with the seeming failure of his calling?

It’s now been three years since leaving professional ministry. And with wonder, I can look back upon this time and realize that my sojourn in “Egypt” was necessary to save me from my famine. During this time, God has been disentangling my identity as a man and my calling as a pastor from the distortion of occupational ministry and strengthening who I am as Jesus’ apprentice. By removing me from my profession as a pastor, I feel God has been able to renew my calling as a pastor. I sense that calling is now being strengthened inwardly and not outwardly. I’m less dependent on the external validation of a title, a position, the accolades of others, a busy ministry calendar, or a paycheck to remind me that I’m a pastor. Rather, the calling I sensed two decades ago now seems to be fueled by who Christ is forming me to be from the inside-out.

Currently I work in the area of finances and videography. And I’m content doing these things. I love the people I work with and the experience I’m gaining. But they define what I do, not who I am. I am a pastor. I am a pastor to my wife, my kids and anyone else who will allow me to be, speak and act in that manner.

Speaking about Jesus’ awareness of his relationship to YHWH, N.T. Wright says:

“It was more like the kind of ‘knowledge’ we associate with vocation, where people know, in the very depths of their being, that they are called to be an artist, a mechanic, a philosopher.” (Simply Christian, 119).

When I read that, I immediately understood what he was saying. I know, in the depth of my being, that I am called to be a pastor. And that calling isn’t validated by a paycheck or position. It’s validated by God calling something forth from within me. Or as Jim Wallis has said, a vocation is defined by taking your gifts, talents and passions and discovering where they can touch the world’s pain and hurt. That’s what I sense and know.

I still don’t know what this means for my future. But I’m more secure in God’s faithfulness. Like Jacob, my children may eventually close my eyes while I’m still in Egypt. I may or may not ever return to occupational ministry. But my identity is solid. I am Jesus’ apprentice. And as such, wherever I go or whatever I do, he has called me to be a pastor. He has called me to be a shepherd. That is my vocation regardless of my occupation. I am increasingly more confident in and humbled by that calling and responsibility.

Our faith-community has begun a new discussion topic. For the next 14 weeks, we’re examining the Songs of Ascent (Psalms 120-134). As a supplement to our discussion, we’re also reading Eugene Peterson’s, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. Our first discussion was a great start and I’m looking forward to our conversations.

As we discussed the first Song of Ascent, Psalm 120, a particular phrase unlocked a door inside of me, “I am a man of peace.” This one line has churned eight months of restless thinking into a froth. Let me explain:

In four months, I’m turning forty years old. And that fact has occupied my thoughts quite a bit since my birthday last August. Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not anxious about growing old. In fact, I’ve always looked forward to each new year. Turning forty isn’t a crisis of that sort. Nor is it the catalyst for some sort of a mid-life crisis. I’m very happy with my life, my family, and my friends. I like who I’m becoming in my journey with Christ and I’m blessed by the people that he has surrounded me with.

So what’s my problem? I don’t know if any of this will make sense, but I’m going to try and put words to stuff that I’m just discovering has been swirling around inside of me. And I apologize if any of this offends you in any way. That’s not my intent. I’m simply trying find expression and to pin down what has been rather elusive to this point. In finding expression, I may actually discover that I’m completely wrong and need to alter how I think and feel. But I can’t do that until I put words to what I’m thinking and feeling. So I appreciate your listening ear and any correction you feel led to bring.

I think I’ve viewed entering each decade of adulthood as significant milestones. As I approach the forty-year milestone, I’m discovering that personally, it’s probably more significant than the twenty-year and thirty-year ones. For me the twenty-somethings categorize young adulthood. A person moves from the youth of their teens into the larger life of adulthood. Yet, like packing clothes that they will quickly outgrow, the only thing one can bring on this new journey is the experience of their youth. As they explore higher education, or a newfound career or perhaps the formational years of a marriage and family, they soon discover that the experiences of their youth are quickly replaced with newly formed adult beliefs, values and character. Granted, this is an over-exaggeration, but I think this was my experience.

The thirty-somethings are a transitional decade. It’s a time when a person shifts from their from their youthful zeal and naivete into a more mature perspective on life. It’s a time when all a person has formed in their twenty-somethings is tested and re-calibrated in preparation for their established adult years. This is what I experienced in my thirty’s. The beliefs, values and character that I had formed in my younger twenty’s were being measured against something much larger than myself. And, too be quite frank, I came up sorely lacking. It was in my thirty’s that I experienced a significant course change to my life. I realized that if I continued on my present course, I was becoming a man, a husband, a father, a pastor, and a Christian that I didn’t like and that was completely out of sync with the biblical portrait of apprenticeship to Jesus.

So with God’s grace, I launched on an alternate journey in my mid-thirty’s. Following a severe episode of burnout and inward crisis, I began exploring the realm of Christian spiritual formation. This eventually led to the deconstruction and reconstruction of much of my theology and practice and ultimately to my leaving professional ministry.

Now, as I face the impending approach of my forty-something decade, I’ve begun to feel “weird” about turning forty. It wasn’t until our discussion on Thursday night when the line from Psalm 120 initially flushed my feelings and thoughts into my consciousness. I’ve become aware that when I think of forty-something, I associate it completely with established maturity. I equate forty-somethings as the beginning of truly impacting the world at large with character and wisdom. While I would have associated immaturity with the twenty-somethings and even excused it in the thirty-somethings, it becomes sad and intolerable when discovered in the forty-somethings and a tragedy in the fifty-somethings and beyond.

Until now, all of this has been agitating below the surface of my conscious thinking. It wasn’t until I read the line, “I am a man of peace,” that it really hit me. I’m entering what I’ve accepted as the decade of established maturity. And I don’t have it. I wish I could say, “I’m a man of shalom. I’m a man of mature harmony and wisdom ready to impact this distorted and disjointed world with God’s love, compassion, reconciliation, healing and justice.” But when I look inward, I find that I’m terribly lacking. I’m consumed by immaturity when I should be marked by the maturity of Christ’s character. It shames me when I discover that large portions of my character are still marked with the passions, thoughts and values formed in my teens and twenty-somethings — stuff that although excusable in my thirty’s, should have been replaced with deeper maturity.

I remember a saying John Wimber used to say, “I want to grow up before I grow old.” That sentiment is very poignant as the inward restlessness of the last eight months begin to find its voice.

Now having said all of that, I also want to say how grateful I am that God intervened in the latter half of my thirty-somethings. He allowed events to force me to a decision that I would not have been capable of making on my own — leaving professional ministry. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, my identity and worth as a human being was completely tangled and knotted with my concept of pastoring. So a lot of my immaturity and distortion were being enabled by what I had allowed myself to become as a professional pastor. And with the value of hindsight, I now realize that much of the healing I’ve experience and that now enables me to follow Christ in a new and healthy way could not have taken place if I remained the kind of professional pastor that I was. I needed to step away from it so that Christ could successfully disentangle my being from my profession. The last three years have been filled with both incredible difficulty and grand healing. I liken it to the physical therapy that one must engage with in order to experience new health. And I’m so grateful for my wife and kids and friends who have been with me through the rehab I’ve experienced since “detoxing” from church. (Who knows. Maybe I’ll need follow-up my “detox” article with a sequel “rehab” article to discuss the journey toward health.)

Ready or not, in four months I will step over a symbolic threshold. I’m scared, not because I’m growing old, but because I haven’t matured enough. I know I do not possess the necessary maturity of Christ’s character and power to be what I envision my forty-somethings to be. Yet, I’m convinced I’m now on the right path. I also have greater confidence in Jesus ability to teach than in my inability to learn. I don’t know where this journey will take me. Part of me still feels that the calling I sensed in my early years to professional pastoring will come back into greater fruition. If so, it will be in a new way than what I’ve experienced. But if not, I’m okay with wherever Jesus leads me. Over the last several years, God has proven himself more faithful than I could have imagined. It’s one thing to read about God’s faithfulness and nod at it. It’s an entirely different thing to feel like you’ve gone as deep and as dark as you could go and find God enabling you to go further and then emerge from the other side, finding forgiveness and compassion where originally I only felt hurt and bitter.

I found this story on digg.com.

Fifteen-year-old Ava Lowery is getting herself into a lot of hot water these days. She’s a peace activist and produces short Flash animations on her website, peacetakescourage.com. She submitted an animation called, “WWJD,” to a contest. It is a powerful animation of children singing “Jesus Loves Me,” while showing image after image of wounded Iraqi children. (Please be warned that these image are very graphic.)

Although she has received a lot of positive comments, she has also received vicious threats and slurs for her work. You can read the article about Ava here. (Please be warned that the article contains graphic quotes from email that Ava has received.)

Church of the Saviour has a blog! This church has been doing missional church way before many of us were even thinking about it.

Gordon Cosby has posted a great article entitled, “Becoming the Authentic Church.” What he writes about is what I dream our community could become — an authentic community of God’s love expressed in diversity, reconciliation, and justice through nonviolent love.

Or as Alan Roxburgh has defined in his book The Missional Leader, to be a “community of God’s people who live into the imagination that they are, by their very nature, God’s missionary people living as a demonstration of what God plans to do in and for all of creation in Jesus Christ.”

I don’t have much to say this morning so I’ll leave you a cool quote by N.T. Wright from his newest book, Simply Christian. Great book, by the way.

“The whole point of Jesus’ work was to bring heaven to earth and join them together forever, to bring God’s future into the present and make it stick there. But when heaven comes to earth and finds earth unready, when God’s future arrives in the present while people are still asleep, there will be explosions. And there were.”

N.T. Wright, Simply Christian

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.

John 15:13-15

As I read this passage this morning I was struck by the frequent use of the word “friend.” The word “disciple” occurs far more frequently in John than the word “friend.” Yet in this portion of the farewell discourse, Jesus calls his students friends three times.

And each use of the word, Jesus defines his friendship with us. First, the greatest expression of love is laying one’s life down for his friends. Friendship is not simply possessing warm fuzzy feelings for another person. Rather, friendship is built upon self-sacrificing love and intimate trust. This must have been like a splash of water in the disciples’ faces. Throughout their ministry they seem to be competing with each other for the best positions in what they understand to be the political kingdom Jesus is about to establish. Their relationships with each other are more about measuring one another up, outdoing one another, and jostling for the closest position to Jesus so that when he establishes his kingdom (as any good Messiah would) he would then choose the wisest, closest, and most exceptional to be his highest lieutenants. (It almost feels like the myriad reality shows that fascinate our culture.) But Jesus turns the disciples idea of relationships completely on its head. The greatest expression of love, which is the fruit that Jesus’ students will yield (John 15:8-10), is sacrificing oneself on behalf of others.

Second, friendship to Jesus is living in sync with who Jesus is and what he is doing. It’s more than shaking Jesus’ hand or saying a prayer that transfers possession of admission into heaven. Rather, as Paul says, it’s having the mind of Christ. It’s partnership in Jesus’ character, life, and mission. Read it slowly and let it sink in, “You are my friends if you do what I command.” You’re my friends if you become like me — filled with my life, my love, my compassion, my power — and do what I’m doing — completing, renewing and rescuing my Father’s good world by loving God and loving others.

Third, friendship with Jesus is hearing God’s will through Jesus. Notice, Jesus hears from his Father. And then he shares what he hears with his friends. Being friends with Jesus transcends the servant/master relationship. Jesus doesn’t just give commands to follow blindly. He doesn’t keep his friends in the dark regarding his Father’s mission. Jesus is the revelation of God, continually keeping his friends in the intimate Father-Son communications. He makes known everything he hears from his Father. But this means abandoning our values and beliefs as Jesus makes known his Father’s mind and heart. This includes personal hopes and dreams, wounds and hurts. It includes our culture’s indoctrination regarding what we value and how we measure success, beauty, worth and goodness. It includes nationalistic pride and political affinities. As Jesus shares with us the intimacies of his Father, drawing us closer to him by sharing the Father’s deepest plans for his creation, it assumes our drawing near by casting off everything that contradicts what is shared. Jesus shares what he has heard and learned from the Father so we may join in partnership with him, not debate its viability or determine how it can be assimilated into our current value system or personal quests.

The strange title is sound advice from Phyllis Tickle, the author of The Divine Hours as she responds to some Q & A. The question that evoked this response was:

“In a typical day, how do you use The Divine Hours or equivalent at this stage in your life and how did your daily practice of prayer work when you were in the labor-intensive, kids-at-home stage of life?”

Tickle responds that she and her husband raised seven children. Spending a lot of time in the bathroom to pray was essential to developing a divine rhythm among the demanding needs of young children. What I find interesting is that Tickle also says that her children have become so accustomed to her Benedictine schedule that they hardly notice.

This is encouraging to me. I’ve found that my spiritual life has become segmented once again. With four children, I find myself needing to get out of the house to pursue a rule of life. That means, when I can’t get away, my rule of life crumbles rather than sustains me. But Tickle’s words challenge me to develop a rule of life in the midst of the often chaotic and distracting activity of my family’s life. And if her experience is normal, it seems my rhythm will not only become natural for me, but also for my children.

You can pray The Divine Hours online here or here.

I enjoy Despair.com. If you’re not already familiar with them, they’re a company that specializes in the art of demotivation. They create and sell, “demotivational” posters that are downright hilarious.

Well, I just found out that they have audio and video podcasts. You can subscribe to the audio podcast here and the video podcast here. The video entitled “Addressing Employee Complaints” busted me up! I’m a big fan of The Office and the video podcast is in the same genre.

Well, it had to happen — The Left Behind Video Game Series. I first saw this on Justin Baeder’s blog. Here’s the game’s actual site. And below is the game’s description from the site:

Wage a war of apocalyptic proportions in LEFT BEHIND: Eternal Forces – a real-time strategy game based upon the best-selling LEFT BEHIND book series created by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Join the ultimate fight of Good against Evil, commanding Tribulation Forces or the Global Community Peacekeepers, and uncover the truth about the worldwide disappearances!

· Lead the Tribulation Force from the book series , including Rayford, Chloe, Buck and Bruce against Nicolae Carpathia – the AntiChrist.

· Conduct physical & spiritual warfare : using the power of prayer to strengthen your troops in combat and wield modern military weaponry throughout the game world.

· Recover ancient scriptures and witness spectacular Angelic and Demonic activity as a direct consequence of your choices.

· Command your forces through intense battles across a breathtaking, authentic depiction of New York City .

· Control more than 30 units types – from Prayer Warrior and Hellraiser to Spies, Special Forces and Battle Tanks!

· Enjoy a robust single player experience across dozens of New York City maps in Story Mode – fighting in China Town , SoHo , Uptown and more!

· Play multiplayer games as Tribulation Force or the AntiChrist’s Global Community Peacekeepers with up to eight players via LAN or over the internet!

I’m not sure if I want to laugh or cry.

Deb and I took the kids to Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center to visit the Stations of the Cross. It was gloomy and rained pretty hard during the first several stations. Yet, the weather seemed appropriate for the occasion. I was moved during several moments. One was when Danielle was praying at one of the stations and she said, “God, make earth like your heavens.” Another time was when Christopher prayed, “God, help me to be a good person.” Also, during the drive home, all of shared which stations were particularly gripping for us. It was a very special time hearing the kids and Debbie which stations were memorable for them.

I posted this on Good Friday last year and decided to post it again. I’m hoping to take the family to walk through the Stations of the Cross later today.



_________________________________________________________________

About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” — which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” — Matthew 27:46

Being in the middle of God’s will, climaxing his age old dream, and all the while being abandoned by God. For that is the irony of God’s plan. The climax of God’s saving work upon the earth is the Great Reversal. The healing one wounded and suffering. The sinless one becoming sin. The eternal life dying. The Father’s beloved abandoned.

In this climactic moment, the unthinkable occurs. Suspended above the earth like a hypodermic, Jesus becomes the anti-venom necessary to save creation. Woundedness, evil, death and abandonment are injected into the healing one, the sinless one, the eternal life, the Father’s beloved. And the poison courses through his body, racking him with a pain only he can bear. And when the toxin has taken its toll, it is injected back into the earth from which it came.

And the reaction is almost immediate. Creation shudders and retches under the introduction of this new element. Centuries of momentum seem to cascade back upon itself within the bowels of the world. Feverish, the world closes its eyes, blanketing the land in darkness. Unable to stomach God’s eternal life, death trembles and vomits, spewing forth the righteous dead from its gullet.

Earth spasms under the force of two powerful currents colliding into and mingling with each other.

And as suddenly as the convulsive violence began, it ends. Silhouetted against a darkened sky, the divine syringe has been spent, its healing elixir expulsed into creation’s soil. The fever breaks.

And there is silence….

“Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.”

The fragrance of roasted lamb, fresh unleavened bread and bitter herbs hangs heavily in the air. Oil lamps bathe the room in a warm glow and cast specter-like shadows upon the walls. These wraithlike spectators seem to hover, bearing silent witness to the drama that is unfolding. It is an ancient drama, but one being infused with fresh life and meaning.

Thirteen men recline at the table, enjoying a meal. Embedded in the meal’s elements are antediluvian reminders, residues of an age-old story. In that moment, time and space collapse, plunging these men in a river of antiquity that once again spills over history’s banks to flood the present with reviving water. God is alive and faithful to his covenant. As he once delivered, he will do so again.

Then the unthinkable! The storyteller sheds his robe and dons a servant’s apron and towel. Filling a basin, he begins to wipe the day’s grime and filth from their feet. Suddenly the atmosphere grows tense with instinctive recoils and embarrassed glances.

But a new chapter of God’s ancient story is being etched upon their hearts. God’s delivering presence, his awesome pillar of cloud and fire, is manifesting once again, yet, in a startling unexpected way – a towel and basin. God’s rescuing and restoring presence tangibly fills the room as it did Israel’s camp through the intimate, cleansing, even embarrassing touch of a friend’s serving hand.

In that moment, one can almost hear the pursuing army crest the hill in hot pursuit as it did millennia prior. But this army is neither Egyptian nor Roman. No, those empires were only puppets in the hands of the true enemy, an enemy that God now comprehensively engages. This time the enemy charges at us from within. Pride. Arrogance. Anger. Contempt. “You shall never wash my feet!” The worst sins are often cloaked in the noblest rationalizations and intentions.

Once again, as in ages past, the pillar of cloud and fire sweeps between God’s people and their foe. “If I don’t wash your feet, you can’t be a part of me.” Sin is exposed and routed, yielding to clarity and invitation.

Jesus’ words are not a threat, simply a statement of fact. He is enacting a new climactic movement in the divine drama and invites his friends to join the inspired improvisation. “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”

The cloud and fire – now the towel and basin – not only rescue and restore, but also commission, foreshadowing a forthcoming charge, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”

Like Jesus, we too must embody the rescuing and restoring presence of God. We must wield the towel and basin. We must disrobe, kneel, touch and restore.

So Jesus’ chastisement of Peter’s swagger makes sense. In order to improvise authentically Christ’s pattern, one must first abide comfortably in that reality. One cannot participate in Christ’s restorative work unless he or she has been the humiliated recipient of Christ’s love. Otherwise, our attempts to serve and love others easily dwindle to our own pride and superiority cloaked with false sentiment. And this, by far, is more insidious than any conquering army.

Station 14: Jesus Is Laid in the Tomb

Their hope is sealed with the finality of grinding stone and clanging centurion armor. They turn and depart, each step rending them from their dreams. The swelling darkness and silence smother the fading cinders of ardency from their hearts.

Station 13: Jesus Is Taken Down From the Cross

Limp. Lifeless. Ravaged by evil, now gently handled by friends. Even in death, he draws the fearful from the immunity of shadows.

His body is already cold. Mary tenderly holds her son. She weeps and whispers her love, unwilling to surrender him. But the ebbing sunlight infuses the companions with haste. Reluctantly, she releases her firstborn into their waiting hands. And they bear him to the tomb.

Station 12: Jesus Dies on the Cross

It is finished. The antidote for creation’s curse is discharged. God’s great reversal is complete. But not without its pain and price. The Pure One has become sin. The Just One consuming humanity’s crimes and consequences. The Living One swallowed by death’s maw. The pall of stunned silence only intensifies ruination’s rank.

But from the nadir of creation’s rue, a roiling surge of renewal gathers momentum. Powers are broken. Redemption is purchased. Creation is reconciled. The new heavens and new earth are about to dawn.

Station 11: Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross

Healing hands forever wounded. Comforting hands locked in clawed agony. Eternal life fused to the instrument of death. Yet, love, not nails, secures them in paradoxical union.

Suspended between heaven and earth, a lightning rod before evil’s wrathful thunderstorm. Black havoc strikes at beauty’s core. Fury upon fury unleashed upon the Abandoned One.

Station 10: Jesus Is Stripped of His Garments

A moment’s reprieve. The course and heavy cross lifts from his shoulders and is laid upon the ground before him. Crossbeams silently outstretched, beckoning him to its rough-hewn bosom for a final deadly embrace.

Time slows as he waits. Two others groan in pain from above. Birds circle, waiting to feast. Onlookers murmur, seduced by morbid fascination.

The soldiers approach. It is time. They strip off his clothes, exposing his ravaged body. The last humiliation before evil’s rapacious barbarity.

Station 9: Jesus Falls a Third Time

He is almost there; the last several steps. He gazes upon the blood-soaked ground. He hears the screams of terror and agony. He stands at hell’s threshold. This is despair’s domain. And it almost crushes him. He stumbles once again. Has evil defeated love? Will God’s renewal fail? Bracing himself, he rises. The heights of heaven descends into the depths of hell. Eternal life pounds on death’s door. Creation’s anguish will soon be sated by the sweet elixir of God’s renewal.

Station 8: Jesus Comforts the Women of Jerusalem

The din of aching and fatigue is punctured by sobs, though not his own. Women mourning his devastation, not realizing it will soon be theirs… and their children’s. They, not he, are in need of comfort from the unseen terror that approaches. So the Shepherd comforts. And warns. And mourns.

Station 7: Jesus Falls the Second Time

The road of suffering becomes steep. Shuffle. Stagger. Stumble. Face-first into the ground, the taste of dirt and blood mingle. Stark reminders of his destination. Planted in the earth, watered with his blood, God’s new creation will bloom.

Station 6: Veronica Wipes Jesus’ Face

Kindness in the heart of atrocity. Tenderness in the midst of savagery. Sweet mercy and a soft cloth to wipe the sting of sweat, blood and thorns. Seemingly insignificant actions form the minute shoots of renewal reaching up through the cracks of human desolation.

Station 5: Jesus Is Helped by Simon

Replacing evil with good is never a solo endeavor. More than two hands are needed — a community of transformation. In a project so divine, there is no shame in accepting aid. Such an unique privilege, to help the Messiah carry his cross. Eyes meet. Heads nod. And together, step by step, they carry creation’s hope.

Station 4: Jesus Meets His Mother

Imagine the anguish of a mother watching her child die. His body broken, heaving with exhaustion. Sweat, blood and agony. She longs to caress his face, to salve his wounds, to sweep away the afflictions. Yet all she can do is look on through a veil of tears and pray for mercy. A sword has pierced her heart.

Station 3: Jesus Falls the First Time

The cross. Pilate’s instrument of death being transformed into God’s instrument of life. A process of pain; a journey of anguish. So staggering, it drops Jesus to his knees. We wince at a stumbling Messiah. We cringe at frail humanity. But with each taxing step, his frailty accentuates our own. Jesus stumbles not under his own burden, but ours. Our fall causes him to fall. Such is the calamity of our sin.

Station 2: Jesus Bears His Cross

Innocence accepts guilt. Goodness embraces evil. Love touchs contempt. Jesus shoulders the unbearable pain assigned for the worst of humanity. And in doing so, our cross becomes his cross. Our backs straighten as Jesus’ back sags under the sharp unyielding weight of the lumber. This timber, which is meant for death, will soon be shaped and crafted into the new tree of life.

Station 1: Jesus is Condemned to Death

Pilate and Jesus. Kingdoms in conflict. Face to face; toe to toe. The love of power assuming the upper hand against the power of love. Pilate fearfully wielding the power of death. Jesus confidently resonating the gift of life.

One will live and one will die. Evil lashing out at goodness, burning itself out upon unending love. And in the end, the one who lived dies forever and the one who died wins life for all. Such is the great reversal of love.

The accompanying images of the Stations of the Cross are from St. Anthony’s Catholic Church.

A Florida State University Professor of Oceanography stated that based on his study, Jesus most likely walked on a patch of ice and not on water. He says that his study points to a rare combination of optimal water and atmospheric conditions that causes unique and extremely rare localized freezing called “springs ice.” Check out the article here.

Okay… I’m not sure which would be the greater miracle, 1) Jesus walking on water, 2) Jesus walking on a huge patch of ice that extended from the shore and into the middle of the Sea of Galilee or 3) Jesus floating on a smaller chunk of ice from the shore to the boat in the midst of fairly severe wind and waves (Matthew 14:24).

But if Jesus did walk on ice, he’s a great practical joker — “Hey Peter, come out here with me.”

Kersplash!

<Snicker, snicker, snicker.>

“Hey, can someone help me onto the boat, my feet are freezing!”

“The most powerful apologetic for Christianity is a local church body living the way it should.”

I love that line. Okay, it’s probably not original, but it’s awesome!

It comes from the article, (you’ve got to love this title) “Church Advertising is a Waste of Time.”

Update: After posting the quote above, I came across the article about the Church of the Nazarene in West Palm Beach. It seems that after a string of burglaries and losing about $25,000 in equipment, the church members decided to take matters into their own hands. Armed with baseball bats, they slept at the church and waited for the next burglary. When Ralph Thomas broke into the church, they hit him with their bats and tied him for the police.

(I bet you that church has some hot advertisement brochures, though.)

You can find the article, video, and picture here.