Teach us to be Rulers

God of love and humility, teach us to be rulers.

You created us to be priests, yes, and even rulers of the creation you have made--rulers to reflect your image into the world and priests to articulate the praise of your creation and reflect it back to you. But we cannot grasp what it really means to be priests as long as our concept of ruling is still so corrupted by the world's imperial patterns. So teach us to rule as you rule.

Teach us to rule by way of sacrifice, offering ourselves to the world as servants. Teach us to rule by way of forgiveness, loving our enemies and humbly refusing to hold their sins against them. Teach us to rule from a position of suffering, taking up the cross of goodness as a response to evil. And may we rule from a position of obedience, recognizing that yours is power and the glory forever. Amen.

Take Up...

After calling the crowd together with his disciples, Jesus said to them, “All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. All who want to save their lives will lose them. But all who lose their lives because of me and because of the good news will save them. (Mark 8:34-35)

God of comfort and grace, you have called and invited me to take up my cross and follow you. How complicated I have made this. And, indeed, it is complicated. But it is also simple. When you ask me to take up my cross and follow you, if I simply do it, I learn what it means. After just a few steps in pursuit of you I quickly discover that the cross on your back doesn't really belong to you. The cross you carry is actually mine. A few more steps and I discover that I don't need to carry a thing. But you have called and invited me to take up my cross anyway. How odd!

If I am to take up my cross in the same way you did, then I discover that my cross is actually someone else's. You have invited me to share in your sacrificial generosity and pour out my life to give life to others. If I am going to follow you, I need to do it for the sake of others, not for my own sake. You took up my cross to give me life, may I take up the cross as well to give life to the people around me, even my enemies. May I offer myself, my hands, my feet, my soul to be a response to the cries for help that have reached your ears. Help me see where I might take up the cross and bear the pain of another to discover the joy of your resurrection.

Taking on pain to discover joy?! Another oddity of the Christian life! But again, as I do it, I discover what it means. Simplify this whole thing for me, O God. Let me simply follow and fill in the details along the way. Amen.

Psalmist's Cry

I just finished reading and watching Psalmist's Cry by Walter Brueggemann with Steve Frost--a five-week small group study on "embracing lament" (appropriate for Lent, I'd say) with video sessions featuring Walter and his thoughts. The video series was great overall, and I'm sure it would spark some great conversations. You might have to be a geek like me to truly appreciate it. The purpose of the videos is obviously not entertainment but the intellectual stimulation is off the charts!

In one video/chapter, Brueggemann said something I found somewhat shocking... but true. He said, "Praise hymns are so bloodless and innocuous. I think they're exercises in denial." He does go on to say, "...eventually you get to praise, but as you know, in the book of Psalms, you do the lament and then...you come to praise, but you don't start there. You never start there." For the conventional thinker, he says, this whole concept "feels like blasphemy." And I'm sure that there are those who'd readily label it as such or at least claim that he's overstating the point. Well, he may be overstating the point but he's hit the nail on the head as far as I'm concerned.

In many of our churches, we have praise and guilt but we rarely treat ourselves to any true lament. We move forward in our praise in such denial so that we shape ourselves and our theology in such a way that pain no longer fits, suffering cannot be acknowledged, and our faith is flattened beneath the weight of certitude and absolutism. The sharp edges of the gospel are dulled and we essentially construct a faith that is "not of this world" in all the wrong ways. It's not real. It doesn't hold any relevance in regards to our very real pain. It has not the capacity to penetrate our situations. Brueggemann says, "until the hurt or the pain is made available to people, then we can just go on our way with denial, and everything is just fine." Sure we confess our sins, surface our guilt, but we need the kind of confession that really makes our hurt and pain available to us. Brueggemann said it like this, "my gripe... is you always begin with a confession of sin. Most of these lament songs [in the Psalter] there's nothing about guilt in them: 'You're not going to pin this on me.' So I think the pastoral work has to do with entitling and empowering people to make a case in the presence of God for the legitimacy of their own life."

Lament has a healing effect. Indeed, it has the effect of unlocking the power and the sharpness of the gospel to penetrate our real life and be for us a healing and liberating force. As Tom Wright puts it, "I am convinced that when we bring our griefs and sorrows within the story of God's own grief and sorrow, and allow them to be held there, God is able to bring healing to us and new possibilities to our lives." This is why the season of Lent is so profoundly important and so extremely timely for the Church. In America, we have become a church of denial, a church of bloodless praise and arbitrary guilt. What we need is a season of honesty, to come into touch with our own suffering and pain so that we might speak prophetically into our real situation and offer a light of hope.

"Fearfully"... sure... but "wonderfully"?

"Dear God, we confess hat often we find your unrelenting presence tiresome. It is so hard to live seemingly caught between what it seems you want us to be and what we know we are. Help us to realize that our very pretensions of unworthiness are unworthy. Make us glad to be your people, gathered into your church, celebrating the victory that is ours..." (Stanley Hauerwas)

I am, I trust, "fearfully and wonderfully" made... whatever that means. I suppose that sometimes it's much easier to relate to the "fearfully" part. Life is so tragically fragile and so incredibly dangerous. It's weight can be much to bear and I suppose that's really what "fearfully" means; the weight of my creation is heavy, it's multifaceted, it's deep. It's not to be taken for granted nor taken lightly. It's fearful. That's often the place I stand. I stand in that fear and it's hard to look beyond it. That is what I know that I am.

But then there's the other part. Am I really "wonderfully made"? Am I really this great and wonderful and marvelous creation? 'Cause I just don't see it. But there I go again... with my "pretensions of unworthiness," assuming that I am something less than what you say I am.

Truly, Lord, make me glad to be yours. Make me glad to embrace my wonderfulness, the beauty of who I am. May the fearfulness of my creation ever be qualified by the wonderfulness of it. I am created in your image. May I never be an insult. May I celebrate the victory that is mine in you. Amen.

Finished

"All the ends of the earth will remember and return to the Lord. All the families from all the nations will worship you because the kingdom belongs to the Lord and he rules the nations. All prosperous people on earth will eat and worship. All those who go down to the dust will kneel in front of him, even those who are barely alive. There will be descendants who serve him, a generation that will be told about the Lord. They will tell people yet to be born about his righteousness— that he has finished it." Psalm 22: 27-31


"When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit." -John 19:30

Holy God, truly you have finished it! Why am I so busy? why and I so overwhelmed? I cannot repeat the work you have accomplished. I cannot gain for myself anything that you have not already given me. It is finished! You have saved me. I can earn nothing for myself from my work, so working for my own gain must be silly and empty and utterly pointless. But that's what I do all day. That's why all of this time and energy has been spent. That's why I am spilling my blood out. It's all vanity. It's all futile. Working for my own benefit is like pouring water back into the sea for all my work flows to and from the vastness of what you have already accomplished for me.

So if not for me, for whom then shall I work?  Should I sit and do nothing? Of course not! What kind of a response would that be to such a great gift!? Of course I should celebrate and my work should be a celebration. For whom should I work if not for you, God? Since I cannot earn anything for myself, I might as well serve you and I might as well serve others from the wealth of generosity I have received from you.What other response would be appropriate? So I will continue to work. I will continue to sweat and bleed, but no longer for my own benefit. The blood I pour from my veins will be for the sake of others. My work will be for the benefit of the people you love, the ones who cry out. I will shape my character and my ambition to be a reflection of what you alone have accomplished. All my work will be for you, God--my response to your love so generously lavished on me.

In the name of the one who was and is and is to come. Amen.

The Rhythm of the Seasons

Each year at our church, during the two major church seasons of Lent (leading up to Easter) and Advent (leading up to Christmas), we encourage people to read a devotional each day and we pass out the same one to everyone in the church. At the beginning of the season, we give them a devotional book designed to take you through the season and help prepare you for the climactic and culminating holiday (Easter or Christmas). Its our way of trying to be intentional about the season so that it doesn't just pass us by, so that we'll be shaped by intentionally engaging in the reality of the gospel, so that we'll come away from the manger or out of the tomb as changed and renewed people... every year.

It seems that just about every devotional we use is from Henri Nouwen (never a bad choice), but this season of Lent we're using one called From Death To Life by Dr. Rich Bimler. As is appropriate for Lent, Bimler allows for an honest acknowledgment of our dependence and depravity while also allowing for a resurrection "moment" to sort of whisper from the horizon of our reflection. Pretty good stuff if you ask me.

I love that the church calendar provides us with such an amazing theological template for ministry. If we followed the church calendar, at least with Lent and Advent, and if we did it with real intentionality every year, surely we'd have the most important elements of the Christian faith internalized and surely we'd be shaped by the realities of incarnation and resurrection. After all, if we understand incarnation and resurrection, everything else is just commentary. Yet I have heard whispers of anxiety in so many evangelical churches, especially in the youth ministry world--anxiety over whether or not our curriculum is covering the most important stuff. What if, rather than searching for multi-year curricula to get students from sixth grade to college without them missing any topic, instead of trying to frantically teach them everything they could know before they go to be corrupted by the world and eventually adulthood, what if we simply taught them these basic and fundamental rhythms of the seasons? What if, rather than shot-gunning as much Jesus-infused information and as many topics as we can at our students, we just walked with them through the Advent anticipation of the incarnation, learning along the way the implications of God becoming flesh and blood and actually entering our experience, engaging in our lives? What if we walked them through the season of Lent to reflect on our dependence and depravity, to see what happens when we connect our stories of grief with Jesus' story of suffering and to discover resurrection around the corner? If a student, for six years, walked that rhythm in fresh and creative ways every year, reflecting upon the commentary along the way, with the guidance of loving mentors, would it not shape them and transform them? What sort of people would we be sending from our churches to colleges and/or the workforce?

It's too bad that evangelicals are so haphazard about Lent and Advent. They mention it, I'm sure, but so few actually engage in a real experience of it. Few churches in the evangelical tradition actually tailor their teaching and worship to the template provided in the church calendar (I recall having to explain what "Ash Wednesday" is to a man who had been in ministry for years). It's too bad because evangelicals are so good at being intentional in their teaching and worship. They're so good at being transformational because that's just their approach to ministry. They want to change lives! I'm afraid that my own tradition, the mainline tradition, is not as good at transformation and intentionality. Too often our approach has nothing to do with transformation, "come just as you are... and stay that way." Our youth groups don't as often enjoy the leadership of paid and focused Youth Pastors and our teaching in the "big church" is often less connectional to youth. And yet we're the ones (of the two) who actually engage the seasons. Perhaps we need the manliners and evangelicals to learn from each other here. Perhaps mainliners could learn a bit about approach to ministry in regards to teaching and connectionality, and evangelicals could learn a bit about rhythm and focus in regards to the calendar.

This Lent season, what are you doing to engage intentionally in the suffering of Jesus? What are you doing to connect your story to his? What are you doing so that when resurrection comes, you'll be able to come to life and walk from the tomb transformed and renewed with Jesus? 

...from whom all blessings flow

God from whom all blessings flow, we are so easily fooled into thinking that our blessings could come from anywhere or anyone else. We mistake our blessing for the product of our own hand, our own hard work. We think it comes from some economic system or from the obligation of one to another. In our hearts we have become dependent on the spirit of an institution or the ideology of a nation when, in fact, we are only ever dependent on you for everything. The world and its empires have nothing to offer. It's treasure will rust and rot away. Everything belongs to you and everything we have is truly the product of your generosity.

We are surrounded by the counterfeit version of blessing. We are surrounded by false economic value systems. Any treasure we store in these systems will return to the dust. But when we store our treasure in heaven, when we invest in you, when we reconfigure our values according to the vision of a renewed and restored world, our treasure will be the eternal inheritance of your kingdom.

Lord, help us store our treasure in heaven. In the knowledge that everything comes from you and that all of it is a gift, may we be liberated and empowered to give it all away. May our reward be the benefit and renewal of the people you love to the glory of your name. Amen.

Your Story, Our Story

Lord of life giving hope, in you we are free to offer our honest grief and to be open with you about the realities of our ongoing suffering. When we are honest in our grief and when we allow our stories of pain and suffering to be caught up in and connected with your story of pain and suffering, your story becomes our story and your end becomes our end. When we can only sing lament, you finish our songs with triumph. Your grief does not end in failure. No matter what kind of death we experience, no matter what failure may apparently overwhelm us, when our stories are caught up in yours, our stories always end in resurrection.

God, I just can't see the way out of this storm. But you do see it. You do know the end. Help me to put my trust in you. Help me to connect my story to yours. Help me to interpret my own experience through the lens of your experience. Defeat the monster inside of me, put to death the lies that have infiltrated my identity. Purify me and give me a new heart. Put your heart in my chest and let it beat for you. May I endure your suffering so that I might share in your resurrection. In the name of your crucified and glorified son, Jesus. Amen.

God's Character in a Word

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the Character of God. I wouldn't necessarily categorize it as such, but that's really what it is. I've been thinking about what God is like... or, perhaps more appropriately, how we people should think about God. You see, figuring out what God is like is not about objective knowledge. It's not like a science project where we are just looking for answers. When it comes to God, answers are a joke anyway... as if any answers we find would even scratch the surface. God is not here for our examination. No. We will never figure God out.

But discerning and exploring God's character is an important endeavor, profoundly so, for a whole other reason despite its apparent futility. How we discern God will shape how we see and determine our actions and our own ethical decisions. If we see God as an authoritarian, we'll likely conduct ourselves as such. This is profoundly important for Christian ethical reflection because Christians are, by definition, people who are trying to be like God. Perhaps that is what makes Christians so dangerous, in good ways as well as bad. Our actions are in direct correlation with our understanding of God. The worst atrocities committed by Christians are the product of a warped and twisted conception of God. A.W. Tozer was quoted for saying, "what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us." The good news here is that God refuses to conform to our perversions of God.

When I read the scripture, the chief concept that jumps off the page is the concept of love. One of the authors of the bible goes as far as to say, "God is love." It's consistent throughout. Jesus summed up the law by it, his "new law" was defined by it. Wherever other characteristics are disclosed, they are always subject to this primary presupposition--love. God's love is the beginning and the end. Out of love, God created us. Out of Love, God saves us, and out of love God sustains and renews us. Love, love, love. Where we see justice and judgement, it is the product of love and its goal is love. Where we see that God is patient, compassionate, immanent, righteous, authoritative, etc.--all of it is a manifestation of love motivated by love. Therefore, however we discern the character of God, love is the only healthy starting point and, as such, it is our best chance at displaying in ourselves anything close to an accurate reflection of God's image in our dealings with one another and with the world. It is a mistake to place love on one side or another of the spectrum of God's character. Love transcends everything about God. God is love.

God's character is, in a word, love.

Your World

Lord of all creation, you are the king of the new heaven and new earth. Your kingdom has come, your kingdom is coming... a world where power and coercion are distant memories; and poverty and oppression are unknown. Your world transforms tools for destruction into tools for healing. Your world is a world where music and beauty have replaced rhetoric and propaganda. Tears are replaced by laughter. The stomachs of the hungry are filled and the wounds of the afflicted are healed.

Thank you, God, that in your love for us, you refuse for your world to be anywhere other than in our world, to be anything other than the very place we call home. Your world is for the healing of this world for this is your world. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Even now, your world is invading and penetrating our world. In Christ, your world has already come. Your future has crashed into our present.

Let us live today according to the law and truth of your world which has already been initiated and which has already penetrated the world of history through the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. With our hearts in your world, we live in this one. May our hands participate with the conviction of our hearts. Amen.