The “tude” of Righteousness

The News: what craziness this thing we call life is all about. Or maybe this is just the script we are attempting to write on our own?

Whenever I read the news I seem to ask myself: "Self (I like talking to myself, because I always have an attentive audience :0) what the heck does it mean to say I worship a Just God? Like Pilate I wonder what is truth, what is justice?" On Monday of this week, (Jan 21) the paradox of life could not have been more apparent: America inaugurates its first Black President for his second term and on the day this nation stops to celebrate the life a civil rights pioneer, the POTUS uses the very bible of the Rev Martin Luther King Jr to be sworn in by; on this day, a 15 year old boy kills 3 siblings and his parents; on this day 37 hostages are killed in Algeria; on this day the POTUS hails civil rights for "all" people - black, white, gay, straight - moving the discussion on to the road less traveled thus far; on this day the S&P 500 and Dow Jones both finished in the green (with earnings) while nearly 1.3 billion people got by on less than $1 for the day (hardly a gain); on this day millions went about life with hardly a thought of the "other"; on this day, I wonder what Jesus thinks about our nation, His church, me and my role in His drama of salvation?

So often I remain blind to the reality of the action on the world's stage. I become bent on the "tude" of self as opposed to the "tude" of the Savior (cf. Phil 2). The injustice I appear to face always has a way of eventually making me aware of the lack of justice all over the world. Bummer that I am so often blind to injustice until it lands smack on my doorstep! I live just as Alice in Chains song "Man in the box" sings:

I'm the man in the box
Buried in my crap
Won't you come and save me, save me

Lord, would you open my heart, my eyes, my ears so that I would be one who "hungers and thirsts for righteousness" (cf. Matt 5.5-10) so that I might be one who seeks to be a peacemaker thereby helping "justice roll down like a river, and righteousness, like a never-ending stream" (Amos 5.24).

In reading through the Beatitudes, I was awakened to how so often the Lord uses the so called "injustices" in my life to re-orientate my focus back to Him. There are real injustices that I neglect because I don't want to be inconvenienced by them, be challenged by them, or what's worse I don't want them to destroy my own comfort because in the end I am nothing more than self-focused. This is how Eugene Peterson translates Habakkuk 2.4: "Look at the man, bloated by self-importance--full of himself but soul-empty. But the person in right standing before God through loyal and steady believing is fully alive, really alive." Most of us understand or have heard this verse as "the just or righteous will live by faith."

A study of the four times this verse appears in the Bible sheds light on the attitude or the "tude" of the righteous. We have a choice in how we respond to life, the question we have to ask ourselves is what foundation will we build our responses on and from?

Helen Keller wrote:

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

For those who call themselves a follower of Christ, our character and our response to life is in light of His response to us, and this is not always easy nor does it often times lack pain and suffering, but we are called to respond to life as our Savior did, with joy and praise! We who follow the Crucified King are called to live out His insane love through actions that the world will see as being nothing more than pure insanity (cf. John 10.20). We are called to participate in His Eucharistic (self-giving) performance by and through our own self-giving (Eucharistic) performances. So as the author of Hebrews writes, "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Heb 12.2). Let us live out the "tude" of righteousness as we live out the insane love of Jesus...

Dude Jesus you rock my world everyday! Thank you!

Are you elevating the "Ought" of humanity?

I find it hard to show mercy when I feel as though I have been wronged, what about you? I wonder how God feels? This coming Monday (Jan 21) we will celebrate a brilliant character in God's drama; a man who reminds us of the beauty of grace and mercy in the midst of pursuing peace and justice.

Yesterday (Jan 15) marked what would have been the 84th birthday of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. And while King was a man in search of justice and peace, most importantly, he was in search of the man from Nazareth - the Prince of Peace, the Crucified King.

On April 15, 1967 Dr King discussed justice and our pursuit of communal peace. As King said, "There are people who have come to see the moral imperative of equality, but who cannot yet see the moral imperative of world brotherhood. " Justice and peace are only possible when we see the other and their needs before we push our own wants and desires to the front. We have to elevate the "ought" of humanity.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it like this:

You remember one day a man came to Jesus and he raised some significant questions. Finally he got around to the question, "Who is my neighbor?" This could easily have been a very abstract question left in midair. But Jesus immediately pulled that question out of midair and placed it one a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. He talked about a certain man who fell among thieves. Three men passed; two of them on the other side. And finally another man came and helped the injured man on the ground. He is known as the Good Samaritan. Jesus says in substance that this is a great man. He was great because he could project the "I" into the "thou." He was great because he could surround the length of life with the breadth of life . . . . May it not be that the problem in the world today is that individuals as well as nations have been overly concerned with the length of their individual lives and concerns, devoid of the breadth? But there is still something to remind us that we are interdependent, that we are all somehow caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. Therefore whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a million dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than twenty-eight or thirty years, I can never be totally healthy even if I just got a good checkup at May clinic. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent.

Peace and Justice are brought about by and through our faith-filled acts. See for Dr. King, peace and justice on earth are in themselves evidence of the eternal peace which Christ on the cross establishes between God and humanity. For the Christian, therefore, a plea for justice is a plea to God himself. When the church becomes a witness to God’s performance, in Christ through the Spirit, it points beyond itself and into the communion of love. In so doing we become active participants in the revealing of and living out of the Kingdom of God here and now.

Christian love is rooted in the overflowing love of the Father, Son, and Spirit, who have poured out this very love into the hearts of the body of Christ. It is only in this love that the church finds the ability to pour itself out into the lives of the "other," bearing witness to Christ so as to bear witness to the abundance of life. In this faithful performance of love, mercy and grace, we raise the "ought" of humanity to the realm of reality. We live out the hope of tomorrow today when we elevate the other to be what they ought to be so that we can all live out the "ought" of humanity. Amen Jesus!

The Drama of Salvation

"The world is neither just nor unjust, it just is" so sings Robert Smith (lead singer of the Cure).  I wonder if Robert Smith loved Jesus and followed Him would he sing the same lyrics?

If God is just then isn't His creation just?  And if we, His creation are not just, then what does that say about God?  In Matthew 25 Jesus tells us the story commonly known as The Sheep and the Goats.  The point Jesus is trying to make is not to give us a nice warm and cozy story that we can all nod our heads to and say "yeah you know I should be kinder and nicer to everyone."  No, Matthew 25 is not meant to be simply heard, it is meant to be entered into, justice doesn't happen without us (the Church) acting.  

Jesus doesn't impose salvation as a solution; he dramatically narrates salvation into being through conversation, intimate personal relationships, compassionate responses, passionate prayer, and sacrificial living (and death).  The truth and point is, we don't walk casually away from the drama of salvation!  It should disrupt our comfort to know that people in our very lives are "goats" and will remain so if we remain silent and mute with our story of hope!  The main character of God's drama remains absent from so many as long as we remain silent.

What are you going to do today with the drama of salvation?

On the Third Day...the world changed forever

On the Third Day Jesus rose from the dead 

Why not raise awareness to one of, if not the biggest, events of history with my first blog post of the new year?!

If the Christian faith is true, that is, if through the tragic event of the cross followed by the act of resurrection and ascension, God’s only Son, Jesus, not only introduces God’s new creation, but through the Holy Spirit re-humanizes humanity, then any idea of the good, the true or the beautiful should go through the One who has changed the course and foundation of history more than any one person or event. God’s dramatic in-breaking revealed in the Bible cannot simply be observed. It requires participation. God invites all of the actors of the world’s stage to participate in the Trinitarian life of God. The elevation of the human to the beauty of its imago Trinitatis is accomplished through the performative expression of God in Christ. Thus, the beauty and profundity of God’s descent to humanity is witnessed in His elevation of the human through the ascension of the Son. As Hans Urs von Balthasar notes, "Christ, God’s greatest work of art, is in the unity of God and man the expression both of God’s absolute divinity and sovereignty and of the perfect creature."

The performance of Christ—His incarnation, life, death, and resurrection—is, according to Dorothy Sayers, “the greatest drama ever staged.” The Biblical script communicates the relational reality of faith that, as Sayers wrote, is “the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man.” If this is true, and I believe it to be, then how should God’s drama, as revealed in Christ through the Holy Spirit, influence and guide the way we are church?

Might this be the year the world witnesses the profound performance of the church of Christ as we live out the reality of the Third Day? And in so doing, change the world forever...