Trying to figure it out? That phrase seems to be the one thing that we are doing these days. It seems to be the thing that so many young churches are trying to do these days.
Last night Joel McClure pondered what might happen when we finally all "figure it out." This morning I want to suggest something that I will revisit later. Perhaps we never figure it out. Perhaps we never have a big vision of water's edge. Perhaps we don't have a five year plan. Perhaps this is a more biblical approach to being God's church than all of the church leadefship stuff we have read and swallowed over the past ten years. Perhaps God is calling his people to follow him day by day, hanging out with him, loving the brothers and sisters that he gave us, loving people who are not yet in the camp by loving the strangers and aliens within our midst.
I'm not currently down on the idea of vision or considering the future. It's just that God loves to mess with our ideas, and maybe we are learning to acknowledge the movement of God's hand. Perhaps it is time to stop figuring it out?
Did Adam have a vision? Did Abraham have a five year plan? Did Moses really have gifts of leadership? Did Paul forsee the future of the works of his hand, both good and bad? Did...? Let's keep loving God. Let's keep loving one another and learn to do it better. Let's stop being overly concerned about where we are going and simply acknowledge that God is in full control of this rocket ship and let God do the day to day leading.
Blessings!
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
Tuesday, February 25, 2003
I just arrived at the home of Jason & Brooke Evans; I'm staying here while I attend the Emergent conference in San Diego this week. I am looking forward to the conference, BUT I have no doubt that the highlight of my week will be hanging around this home. God is here! I sense his presence... not in some strange sort of way. It's just that Jason, Brooke, and their young daughter Paige have placed their lives into God's hands in very real and very concrete ways.
One final thought after a long day of delayed flights --- I thank God for the Evan's family. They live out here in CA, but they are helping me understand what it means to be brothers and sisters as God intended.... night :)
One final thought after a long day of delayed flights --- I thank God for the Evan's family. They live out here in CA, but they are helping me understand what it means to be brothers and sisters as God intended.... night :)
Monday, February 24, 2003
In a culture that denies the possibility of an overarching explanation of life, the people of God cannot afford to forget the story that is to shape them. The alternative is to be shaped by the fragmented ‘un-stories’ of our culture. Regrettably, this is already under way.
What I am suggesting is that many (most?) Christians—okay, let’s say white middle class (because that’s where I happen to live) evangelical Christians—have become de-storied. Our lives are as fragmented as the 30-second-hyperactive-advertisement culture around us. It is prying us (has pried us?) out of thinking about life as disciples of Jesus—and thereby it is prying us out of living as disciples of Jesus.
We have a different agenda than Jesus. Think about this carefully. Weigh your ambitions in life and evaluate what you see us setting out there as goals. Do Jesus’ words and teaching shape our ambitions and attitudes? I’m afraid that if we were honest we might find that our ambitions and attitudes are more a reflection of the culture around us than those of the one we claim as Master.
Mostly I think we’ve gotten ourselves here because we’ve gone adrift from being a storied people—at least from being a God-storied people. The way we story our lives today makes us the central character—it’s all about me, or at best, it’s all about us (our localized group). Beyond myself as an individual (or my immediate social group), I am not concerned with seeing life as more than what I can do today or tomorrow. It is as if the story by which we are choosing to live began at our birth and is being written with each breath. Sure, it is important to see some significance in our lives (we all want to “make a difference”). But in these kinds of stories, I’m still the main character—it’s still all about me, or us.
The Story we are supposed to be living by, however, places God firmly at the center. You and I have our parts to play, but they are bit parts—it’s not about me. That is not to say you and I are unimportant in God’s story. It is only to say that we don’t have the lead role—so let’s get over it.
Okay, now the story idea is getting in the way. What am I suggesting? I am suggesting that you and I, as disciples of Jesus, must re-attach ourselves to the overarching explanation of life that is laid out in the complex, multi-faceted, diversely integrated, beautiful story of God and his people. If we may appropriate an ancient text to our situation today, would it not be appropriate to apply ourselves to the eleventh and twelfth chapters of the letter to the Hebrews?
There the author goes back through the whole story of Israel and shows how it was all pointing forward to what God was going to do through the Messiah. The people, therefore, were to respond by ordering their lives by the reality that the Messiah had come and he was Jesus of Nazareth. All around them, the author argues, are the storied lives of their ancestors pointing to Jesus—and they risk destruction if they attach themselves to some other story. Shake of those other stories, he says, and attach yourself to God’s story told in the person of Jesus.
You and I place ourselves in the gravest of dangers when we attach ourselves to some other story and forget the story that is supposed to shape us. The call for us is to go back and re-attach ourselves to God’s story—not a contemporary and partial version of it, not choice selected fragments of it, not slick and palatable but truncated portrayals of it, not even systematized, boxed-up, ready-to-ship explanations of it. We need the whole, life-consuming, life-demanding, life-giving story of God and his kingdom come to creation.
We’ve lost our sense of story. We have tried to write our own. We’ve allowed our consumerist, individualist culture’s stories to shape us. We are lost, confused, adrift. How do we reattach ourselves to God’s story? We remember by re-telling and re-hearing the story, and ordering our lives by the central figure in that story. We rethink our pursuits of the ‘un-stories’ of today, and go back to place our lives beneath the story that starts with, “In the beginning…”
What I am suggesting is that many (most?) Christians—okay, let’s say white middle class (because that’s where I happen to live) evangelical Christians—have become de-storied. Our lives are as fragmented as the 30-second-hyperactive-advertisement culture around us. It is prying us (has pried us?) out of thinking about life as disciples of Jesus—and thereby it is prying us out of living as disciples of Jesus.
We have a different agenda than Jesus. Think about this carefully. Weigh your ambitions in life and evaluate what you see us setting out there as goals. Do Jesus’ words and teaching shape our ambitions and attitudes? I’m afraid that if we were honest we might find that our ambitions and attitudes are more a reflection of the culture around us than those of the one we claim as Master.
Mostly I think we’ve gotten ourselves here because we’ve gone adrift from being a storied people—at least from being a God-storied people. The way we story our lives today makes us the central character—it’s all about me, or at best, it’s all about us (our localized group). Beyond myself as an individual (or my immediate social group), I am not concerned with seeing life as more than what I can do today or tomorrow. It is as if the story by which we are choosing to live began at our birth and is being written with each breath. Sure, it is important to see some significance in our lives (we all want to “make a difference”). But in these kinds of stories, I’m still the main character—it’s still all about me, or us.
The Story we are supposed to be living by, however, places God firmly at the center. You and I have our parts to play, but they are bit parts—it’s not about me. That is not to say you and I are unimportant in God’s story. It is only to say that we don’t have the lead role—so let’s get over it.
Okay, now the story idea is getting in the way. What am I suggesting? I am suggesting that you and I, as disciples of Jesus, must re-attach ourselves to the overarching explanation of life that is laid out in the complex, multi-faceted, diversely integrated, beautiful story of God and his people. If we may appropriate an ancient text to our situation today, would it not be appropriate to apply ourselves to the eleventh and twelfth chapters of the letter to the Hebrews?
There the author goes back through the whole story of Israel and shows how it was all pointing forward to what God was going to do through the Messiah. The people, therefore, were to respond by ordering their lives by the reality that the Messiah had come and he was Jesus of Nazareth. All around them, the author argues, are the storied lives of their ancestors pointing to Jesus—and they risk destruction if they attach themselves to some other story. Shake of those other stories, he says, and attach yourself to God’s story told in the person of Jesus.
You and I place ourselves in the gravest of dangers when we attach ourselves to some other story and forget the story that is supposed to shape us. The call for us is to go back and re-attach ourselves to God’s story—not a contemporary and partial version of it, not choice selected fragments of it, not slick and palatable but truncated portrayals of it, not even systematized, boxed-up, ready-to-ship explanations of it. We need the whole, life-consuming, life-demanding, life-giving story of God and his kingdom come to creation.
We’ve lost our sense of story. We have tried to write our own. We’ve allowed our consumerist, individualist culture’s stories to shape us. We are lost, confused, adrift. How do we reattach ourselves to God’s story? We remember by re-telling and re-hearing the story, and ordering our lives by the central figure in that story. We rethink our pursuits of the ‘un-stories’ of today, and go back to place our lives beneath the story that starts with, “In the beginning…”
Three prayers from Sunday night's liturgy...
O Lord, you have taught us that we are to remember all your directions for life and not to forget that we are your people. Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts a hunger to live in Your story; to apply our lives to Your plan to free the whole world from the power of sin and death. Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
O Lord, Forgive us for forgetting. We confess that we have tried to write our own stories. We have tried to make a name for ourselves. We have, in our actions and in our thoughts, forgotten You. We have thought only of ourselves. We have not considered all Your benefits. We have forgotten that You have delivered us. Lord, have mercy. Amen.
Lord Jesus Christ, by your broken body you gave us life and rescued us from our captivity to the power of sin. You, O Bread of Life, delivered us from our slavery by your death. By your blood, poured out on the cross, you established a new covenant with your people. As we have shared in this bread and this cup, we proclaim our confidence that you have made the way for us to return to God and God to us. You are our hope and our salvation. To you be all glory and honor and power and thanks. Amen.
O Lord, you have taught us that we are to remember all your directions for life and not to forget that we are your people. Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts a hunger to live in Your story; to apply our lives to Your plan to free the whole world from the power of sin and death. Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
O Lord, Forgive us for forgetting. We confess that we have tried to write our own stories. We have tried to make a name for ourselves. We have, in our actions and in our thoughts, forgotten You. We have thought only of ourselves. We have not considered all Your benefits. We have forgotten that You have delivered us. Lord, have mercy. Amen.
Lord Jesus Christ, by your broken body you gave us life and rescued us from our captivity to the power of sin. You, O Bread of Life, delivered us from our slavery by your death. By your blood, poured out on the cross, you established a new covenant with your people. As we have shared in this bread and this cup, we proclaim our confidence that you have made the way for us to return to God and God to us. You are our hope and our salvation. To you be all glory and honor and power and thanks. Amen.
Sunday, February 16, 2003
Tuesday, February 11, 2003
I’m really sick of people trying to get out of life—well, specifically Christians trying to get out of life.
Maybe you’re the type, and if you are, I’m sorry, but I’m sick of ...well, not you , just the mindset. What mindset? I’m sick of the mindset that looks forward to getting this life over with so we can go to heaven where we won’t have to deal with the people, the problems, and the problemed people around us.
You know the thinking that goes like: “I can’t wait for the rapture.” “He’s gonna toot and I’m gonna scoot.” “This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through.”
There has been a really strong and seductive teaching going around the church today that says this life is not important—that the only thing that matters is that you “make a decision for Jesus so you can be sure you go to heaven when you die.”
The way it comes off to me is that we are supposed to believe Jesus is our ticket to heaven and in the mean time, we’re just supposed to kind of get along, suffer through life, and look forward to the party that will start when we “die and go to heaven.” Oh, and by the way, for all you sorry saps who don't agree with us, well, you'll be sorry some day when grasshoppers with scorpion tails are making you wish you were never born!
Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but I would dare to suggest that most American Christians think something very similar to that. I am suggesting that it is a disastrous dualism that has led Christians into an escapist mentality. It is a deception, a lie, a partial-truth-turned-sour.
I suggest that it is not a benign lie, but rather that it is a deception that is particularly destructive. Here's how...
It destroys our sense of responsibility for our lives here and now. I think many Christians are leaning on a partial understanding of grace. It is the very thing Paul warned people about in his letter to the Romans— 6:1What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
If the only thing that matters to a person is what happens to them after they die, they have not yet begun to truly live. What Christians in America need to get into their thinking is that eternal life begins here and now, not after we die. We are to live a qualitatively new kind of life here and now precisely because we have, in Christ, begun to truly live.
But if you’re thinking that eternal life starts after you die, then it becomes less important what you do before then.
It destroys our sense of responsibility for our world. If this world is not my home, what do I care if the whole thing goes to hell? I believe a very dangerous dualism has crept into the church in America, and it says that this world is bad and heaven is good, so it’s “tough luck world, we’re going to heaven.”
This kind of thinking allows us to ignore our collective failure as stewards of creation. It allows Christians to ignore the plight of non-Christians who are suffering, starving, and dying.
It creates a practical apathy among a people who are supposed to reflect the image of a good and compassionate God to the whole world—creatures and creation. If “we’re just a passin’ through,” what would compel us to care for people who may never know the God of Abraham, let alone species of plants and animals we may never know of? The world becomes disposable. "Use it, abuse it, who cares? It's all getting recycled in the end anyway, right?"
Well, what if the Christian life is about this life; here and now? What if God doesn’t want us to just sit around and wait for Jesus to show up, but to cooperate with him in seeing his will done on earth (here and now) as it is in heaven? What if our desire is not supposed to be getting off earth and going to heaven, but rather to live on earth as citizens of heaven—thereby bringing heaven to earth?
That seems to me to be more in line with the Scriptures. David wrote, “I am confident that I will see the goodness of YHWH while I am here in the land of the living.”
The consistent hope throughout the Scriptures is that God’s people would see the goodness of YHWH in this life. The assumption throughout the Psalms is not that God is going to sort things out one billion years from now, but that God is presently active in putting the world to right. We may not be able to see it or recognize it as such from our perspective, but the consistent assumption in the Scriptures is that God is right now, in the land of the living, at work putting things to right.
What I am suggesting is that some parts of popular Christian teaching assume that God is kind of sitting back and doing nothing--just kind of waiting until some time when things bad enough and God will say, “Enough!” and then act terribly and decisively.
But I believe that God is not just kind of sitting back and waiting. I believe God is presently active in this world working to put things to right. And further, I believe God is calling his people to get out of their easy chairs, roll up their sleeves and cooperate with what he’s doing.
So let’s stop hoping we can get out this messy world to a place where there is no trouble, and start living with the expectation that we will see the goodness of YHWH while we are here in the land of the living—on this earth, here and now.
Maybe you’re the type, and if you are, I’m sorry, but I’m sick of ...well, not you , just the mindset. What mindset? I’m sick of the mindset that looks forward to getting this life over with so we can go to heaven where we won’t have to deal with the people, the problems, and the problemed people around us.
You know the thinking that goes like: “I can’t wait for the rapture.” “He’s gonna toot and I’m gonna scoot.” “This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through.”
There has been a really strong and seductive teaching going around the church today that says this life is not important—that the only thing that matters is that you “make a decision for Jesus so you can be sure you go to heaven when you die.”
The way it comes off to me is that we are supposed to believe Jesus is our ticket to heaven and in the mean time, we’re just supposed to kind of get along, suffer through life, and look forward to the party that will start when we “die and go to heaven.” Oh, and by the way, for all you sorry saps who don't agree with us, well, you'll be sorry some day when grasshoppers with scorpion tails are making you wish you were never born!
Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but I would dare to suggest that most American Christians think something very similar to that. I am suggesting that it is a disastrous dualism that has led Christians into an escapist mentality. It is a deception, a lie, a partial-truth-turned-sour.
I suggest that it is not a benign lie, but rather that it is a deception that is particularly destructive. Here's how...
It destroys our sense of responsibility for our lives here and now. I think many Christians are leaning on a partial understanding of grace. It is the very thing Paul warned people about in his letter to the Romans— 6:1What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
If the only thing that matters to a person is what happens to them after they die, they have not yet begun to truly live. What Christians in America need to get into their thinking is that eternal life begins here and now, not after we die. We are to live a qualitatively new kind of life here and now precisely because we have, in Christ, begun to truly live.
But if you’re thinking that eternal life starts after you die, then it becomes less important what you do before then.
It destroys our sense of responsibility for our world. If this world is not my home, what do I care if the whole thing goes to hell? I believe a very dangerous dualism has crept into the church in America, and it says that this world is bad and heaven is good, so it’s “tough luck world, we’re going to heaven.”
This kind of thinking allows us to ignore our collective failure as stewards of creation. It allows Christians to ignore the plight of non-Christians who are suffering, starving, and dying.
It creates a practical apathy among a people who are supposed to reflect the image of a good and compassionate God to the whole world—creatures and creation. If “we’re just a passin’ through,” what would compel us to care for people who may never know the God of Abraham, let alone species of plants and animals we may never know of? The world becomes disposable. "Use it, abuse it, who cares? It's all getting recycled in the end anyway, right?"
Well, what if the Christian life is about this life; here and now? What if God doesn’t want us to just sit around and wait for Jesus to show up, but to cooperate with him in seeing his will done on earth (here and now) as it is in heaven? What if our desire is not supposed to be getting off earth and going to heaven, but rather to live on earth as citizens of heaven—thereby bringing heaven to earth?
That seems to me to be more in line with the Scriptures. David wrote, “I am confident that I will see the goodness of YHWH while I am here in the land of the living.”
The consistent hope throughout the Scriptures is that God’s people would see the goodness of YHWH in this life. The assumption throughout the Psalms is not that God is going to sort things out one billion years from now, but that God is presently active in putting the world to right. We may not be able to see it or recognize it as such from our perspective, but the consistent assumption in the Scriptures is that God is right now, in the land of the living, at work putting things to right.
What I am suggesting is that some parts of popular Christian teaching assume that God is kind of sitting back and doing nothing--just kind of waiting until some time when things bad enough and God will say, “Enough!” and then act terribly and decisively.
But I believe that God is not just kind of sitting back and waiting. I believe God is presently active in this world working to put things to right. And further, I believe God is calling his people to get out of their easy chairs, roll up their sleeves and cooperate with what he’s doing.
So let’s stop hoping we can get out this messy world to a place where there is no trouble, and start living with the expectation that we will see the goodness of YHWH while we are here in the land of the living—on this earth, here and now.
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