Heaven is here...Do we hear?

Yesterday felt like an earthquake with the murder of God... 

And now... the deafening silence of Saturday...

The sound of Saturday's silence is the rumbling of love. A love bursting from the seams... waiting for Sunday's explosion.

But until then, the silence is powerful. The fear palpable. The angst overwhelming. And yet, in the midst of the silence, the tomb is calling out -- do you hear?

Today - as it always has - humanity is crying out for the hope of the empty tomb. And this year, the church needs to celebrate with bold-faced print, heart-filled streams, and tenacious prayers, heaven's hope.

That is, the Church needs to make clear the Kingdom of heaven is here... Do we hear?

What if today we “trust in the name of the Lord” so that we might “rise and stand upright?” What if today we who love the Lord, “shout for joy” by rising and standing upright by praying for the world today? (Ps20) 

What if the prayers of our heart were filled with the blood drops of Jesus?

What if we filled the silence (isolation) with the sound of our prayers?

As long as we live we should pray and pray unceasingly. Today is a gift from God for in His silence He speaks boldly, asking us, how will we respond to the actions of Christ? 

Will we step into the beautiful paradox that erupts from the cross? Will we step into the silence with the powerful and joyful noise of our prayers? Will we be the prayer song for the world to hear?

Eruption of Thanksgiving...

To give thanks insinuates something to be thankful for; it points to something beyond ourselves that has impacted our lives in such a way that our response is one of gratitude and praise.

Today many of us will find a multitude of “items” or “people” who fit this bill, and truth be told, many of us do have a plethora of things and/or people for which we are thankful.

But what if we stopped and took a moment... What if in the midst of all the food, football and fellowship we are missing the deeper, underlying foundation of thankfulness?

I wonder for those who bear the mark of Jesus - for those who call themselves followers of The Way, how many will illumine the cross on this day?

It is the cross where thanksgiving is found…it is where thanksgiving erupts.

As soon as we gaze upon the cross our hearts, our eyes are taken to the scene of the manager hidden away in the dusty, dirty, dark crevasse of a mountainside. Yes, thanksgiving is found from the cradle to the cross for it is here that we find the One who is the ultimate giving of thanks…Jesus Christ.

For God so loved the world that He gave… Our giving of thanks is the direct result of being given Love. That is, we must always remember that hanging on the cross is the One born in the manger—not just any baby, but the One who was with God, the One who is God, the One who is with us...The One who is Love...

Might some time today we give pause to the majesty of the cross? Might we stop to thank the One who gave of Himself so that we might receive the truth of ourselves? Might we take a moment and enter the drama of salvation so as to become the faithful performance of love?

Let your celebrations be magnificent this day! Stand, dance, shout for joy! And in your moments of bliss don't forget the One who is thankful for you! Amen Jesus!

So Close No Matter How Far

The band Metallica writes:

So close no matter how far

Couldn't be much more from the heart

Forever trusting who we are

No nothing else matters

 

Never opened myself this way

Life is ours, we live it our way

All these words I don't just say

And nothing else matters

This is how so many people live their lives – focused on self such that their trust is in who they are, living life their way, because in the end, “nothing else matters.”

The drama of life - what does it have to say about a life focused solely on self? What would this look like? A nation of self-possessed people...Chaos and confusion or comfort and compassion?

The Bible says that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will not only be satisfied, but they will also be blessed (cf. Matt 5.6). In fact, Jesus goes on to tell us not to store up treasures on earth but to store up for ourselves treasures in heaven. He then makes this most audacious claim: where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (cf. Matt 6.19-21).

Oh Jesus...

Think about it, Jesus is stating that the one who hungers and thirsts for righteousness is one who has her priorities right. Let's be realistic, surely Jesus must not understand what He is saying...Or better yet, His sermon on the mount isn't meant for Americans. America is the land of the free, the land of independence. Any show of interdependence is a sign of weakness. We are meant to have our treasures here on earth and have the focus of life be on self - on myself.

This is why the message of Jesus is radical and expects nothing less than radical change. He does not ask us for anything - He asks us for everything!

The follower of Christ is one whose heart is an offense to this world because it is enveloped by and in the love of Jesus. We want nothing more than to live as Jesus because He is our treasure. For a person who hungers and thirsts for righteousness nothing else matters but the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The drama of salvation reorients the meaning of life; it re-writes the lyrics of our lives. Those who hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God are satisfied because they have stepped into Christ’s redeeming performance and now, everything, or better yet, everyone matters because nothing else but Jesus matters!

Ah the beautiful paradoxes of faith…If nothing but our Triune God matters in the treasure of our heart, then the lyrics of our song can truly sing, “forever trusting who we are” because we have realized the truth that we are created in the image of a loving God who has poured out His love into our hearts. And from this love we live life our way, which is Jesus’ way, seeking the lost and brokenhearted so that they too might hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God.

Hand Sanitizer

Sometimes my mind wanders...Sure many will interject "Squirrel," here, but that is not the case for my wanderings. In the wanderings of my mind's eye I often times wonder, what does Jesus think about His Bride today? Who are we faithful to? His way or the world's way...

I am talking about a place where truth is truth. But we must ask, do we want the messy, unsanitized version of truth? What pains me is the thought that many in the church do not want Jesus' way and life of truth because such truth disrupts as is re-directs. It challenges as it transforms. It asks us daily, "who do you say I am?"

Instead of the truth of Jesus, we want a sanitized version - a Hippy Dude that walks around in Birkenstocks telling everyone "Hey man don't worry, be happy. The future is bright with optimism."

Is the Jesus being preached anywhere near the man from Nazareth? Do we preach Jesus so to become pious or are we too pious to even preach Jesus? Is what we are handing out as authentic faith simply another form of hand sanitizer…cleaning the outside while leaving the inside still dirty? Do we seek to satisfy the masses by telling them what they want to hear? Is the church leading culture or culture leading church?

I wonder if we are missing the Truth. Instead of wondering why people are the way they are, we need to seek to understand and love them. Instead of believing that love is love, we should be showing the world what it means to be bound to the insane love of Jesus - a love that sets the prisoner free, clothes the homeless and loves the sinner. A love that shines light upon the darkness so as to give us sight. G.K. Chesterton said: 

Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.

Faith is dynamic - at least the Christian faith is because the God of Christianity is dynamic. Through the action of revelation, God - in Christ, through the Spirit - takes life, and as theologian Karl Barth illumines, 

sets it into crisis, shaking its false foundations, and bringing to bear upon it the very Goodness of God.

Through such a shaking, our faith and our theological endeavors can begin to understand the confrontation between Creator and creature; an inter-action whereby the creature is confronted by the mystery comparable only to the impenetrable darkness of death, in which God veils Himself precisely when He unveils, announces, and reveals to the human Himself and the crazy intensity of His love. Such love is what breaks the chains of oppression, shatters the power of death and breaks down the walls of division. This is the reality of Jesus' messy, unsanitized crazy insane love - a love that makes right what the darkness has disjointed, makes beautiful what sin has defiled. This is the insane love the world is in need of! 

What the world does not need is for the church to follow its lead. Nor does the world need more rhetoric and reasons it is wrong- what the world needs is more Jesus and more Love. What are you doing to give the world what it needs?

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?