Pete's Ponderings

Heaven is for Real for Her

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 11 May 2014 19:00:00 +0000

Streets of gold. A mansion - or at least a room in a mansion. Angels playing harps singing songs of worship to God. These are some images we sometimes have of heaven. What will it be like? There is a song called "I Can Only Imagine" which speaks to the fact that it is impossible to know what the experience of being in heaven might be like.

But we do have a solid clue about some of the themes of heaven thanks to the witness of the Bible. We have a lot of examples of God breaking into human history - the life and ministry of Jesus being one massive incarnation that has changed lives and kept millions talking up to now. Perhaps if we consider what it meant for people when God broke into their lives on this side of heaven, we'll have an idea of what things to expect on the other side of life.

She woke up to another day of isolation surrounded by community. She knew she was not welcome with her peers. She knew she was lucky to have a roof over her head, though the rent was greater isolation – what kind of relationship did she have with the man-not-her-husband, anyway? She waited until the heat of the day to fetch water – she’d be all alone at that time, but maybe that was better than feeling the cold shoulder had she gone with the other women earlier that morning. She was surprised to find a stranger at the well. More surprised when his accent betrayed his home – he was not a Samarian. Soon his words indicated that he was a learned man. Later, she would be the first to hear that he was the anointed one God was working through to redeem her people – and his people. That day was a new beginning for her. She was valued. She was not rebuked. She was encouraged. She was welcomed. She was empowered. Heaven was for real that day, and it was for her.

She was awakened, once again, by her pain. Sever cramping and ceaseless bleeding gave her another restless night. Everybody knew her. Everybody pitied her. Everybody wondered what it meant that God had perhaps afflicted her with her years’ long condition. Everybody also wondered what it meant that God had not heard her prayer for healing. She heard he was coming into town – she could see the crowd coming her way. Literally having nothing to lose, she put herself in his path. As he passed, she reached out to touch the edge of his robe, remembering an old scripture that suggested there might be healing there. She made contact, and everything stopped. Her cramping. Her bleeding. Her despair. And her healer. He inquired about who touched him – how could he know? How could he not know? Fearing the worst, she identified herself and braced for a rebuke. Instead, the one through whom God was so powerfully at work commended her for her faith and blessed her in front of everyone. Heaven was for real that day, and it was for her.

She didn’t want to wake up that day. She felt dirty and despised. She was right. She knew what she was doing was wrong, and yet she didn’t see a way out. Not anymore. She was beyond redemption. Her adulterous choices were known in her community. Publicly, everyone looked down on her. Privately, men looked her way when they could afford their indiscretion. And so she got up, put herself together, and made her way through the streets to a room where she would meet him – had she been with him before? As she passionlessly went through the motions yet again, she was immediately sobered by men rushing in through the door. Before she knew it she was being pushed through the streets in nothing but a sheet. After a short walk, she found herself thrust to the feet of Jesus where he was teaching. The religious leaders were using her as a pawn in a power struggle – why would they care to treat her with dignity and respect? Jesus responded to the chess masters, “You who are sinless among you, cast the first stone.” Slowly and surely, everyone left. They were alone together. But this man would not require her to perform as she had so many times before. This man spoke forgiveness long before she could even begin to dream of asking for it. He told her to change her life. This was one of those near-death experiences that serves to wake a person up. For her, it was an invitation to a new chapter. She would have to live with her decisions and the public scorn – maybe for a very long time. But she found out that day that God has not given up on her. God had given her a new day through this exchange with Jesus. Heaven was for real that day, and it was for her.

She didn’t wake up that day before dawn because she never fell asleep. She, along with a few other women, arose with grief-stricken hearts and swollen eyes. She made her way with the others to the tomb where her son had been laid. With every step she retraced their life together. From the miraculous kicks within her womb, to prophetic words at his dedication; from fear of losing him at a young age, to finding him in his Father’s house. His miracles. His teaching. His lifestyle. his ministry. His compassion. His boldness. His tenderness. His love. His grace. God working in him and through him from the beginning. Where was God now? What did her son’s death mean? What did it mean about how God felt about him? About her? In a weary stupor she arrived at the tomb. Immediately, she was awash in confusion. Why is the stone rolled away? Where is her son? Angels spoke nonsensical words. Filled with fear, she and the others headed back to the disciples, passing him along the way. It was him! God had not forgotten him. Or her. Death had lost its sting. God gave beauty for ashes, strength for fear, gladness for mourning, peace for despair. Heaven was for real that day, and it was for her.

May you be encouraged today as you read about what a taste of heaven on earth meant for the women described here. And may you realize that heaven is for real for you, too. Now, growing into eternity.

Let's Get the Hell Out of Here!

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 04 May 2014 19:00:00 +0000

Over the last couple of weeks, many people have become very familiar with the name Donald Sterling. The owner of the LA Clippers basketball team became even more infamous than before when his very public mistress released recordings of phone conversations that revealed strong racial prejudice on his part. Investigation into Sterling’s past indicates that this was hardly news to those who had done business with him. Some of his comments from other dealings indicate that he had such strong opinions about people of other skin tones that he refused to rent apartment space to them, for which he was sued. Sterling’s, of course, is just the latest high profile case where racial prejudice has surfaced.

Last week, I taught about the development of the idea of life after death. Remember that our Jewish ancestors in our faith didn’t start with a strong idea about heaven. The official position from the religious leadership was that when a person dies, that’s pretty much it. Only over time, due to the influence of surrounding thoughts on afterlife and their own challenges in history did “heaven” emerge. It was clear God was not going to bring justice in anybody’s present lifetime, so surely God would bring it in the next. And since it may be some time before that final reckoning takes place, the idea developed of an interim state in the afterlife where people would wait in death. Where they waited was determined by how they lived their life, and was directly related to how God would handle them on Judgment Day.

That’s when a whole new kind of fear began to develop: will I burn forever if I mess up in this life?

Fear of Eternal Torture. Some call it “turn or burn” preaching. The gist of the talk is this: repent (turn from) your sin to God (confess), ask God for forgiveness, and pledge your life to following Jesus, or when you die you will find yourself being locked out of heaven and cast down to the pit of hell, where you will spend all of eternity suffering for the sins you committed during your mortal life. Sorry!

In some circles, this is the primary message of the Christian faith communicated and heard. Get saved from hell – make it to heaven is the “Good News”. Millions of people have been so convinced that this message is accurate that they have confessed, turned, and pledged allegiance to God to ensure their everlasting destiny. But as more access to information and dialogue have become available, it is safe to say that many more millions have rejected this way of thought, and unwittingly have written Christianity off – and perhaps religion as a whole, too. Statistically, church traditions that are founded on a turn or burn platform have been declining, while the number of people who are not affiliating with any religion is on the rise. There is something about the turn or burn message that is not making sense to a lot of people. And yet the question and the issue loom – what if all the awful things heard about hell is true? If it is, it’s terrifying.

Hell is so terrifying that no other concern garners any attention when it is on the table. What other problem can possibly compare to spending the afterlife in the wrong place? This fear of eternal torture is pretty compelling, and is why it dominated and in many ways took over the Christian faith for so many for so long.
But just like racial prejudice is really an issue of fear based on ignorance that education can alleviate, so our fear of hell can be assuaged similarly. While I believe this issue is more emotional than intellectual, at least looking at hell from an academic perspective may clear the blockage so we can then deal with it emotionally. Like so many other things, knowing what you’re dealing with helps you deal with it. So, how in the hell did we get hell?

There are a few hells in the Bible, by the way. There’s the most frequently used hell stemming from the Greek root word Gehenna (Hebrew: Hinnom). Gehenna/Hinnom refers to a valley outside the walls of Jerusalem that became forever defiled during King Josiah’s reign (2 Kings 22-23), and was promptly turned into the city dump and burial place for the poorest of the poor. It was a place of weeping (mourners) and gnashing of teeth (dogs battling for food). All but a couple of the times Jesus is quoted as talking about hell used this one – a literal place all the people knew about. The other prominent word is the Hebrew Sheol (Greek: Hades). Both meant the place of the dead. We would simply call it the grave, perhaps, but the ancients viewed it as a place where a person’s “shade” went after death. In that place there is not consciousness about anything – the breath of God has been rescinded, leaving a person lifeless. During the few hundred years prior to Jesus’ birth, the concept of hell was born – nobody during the history of any of the stories in the Old Testament had a concept of hell. It developed out of need to figure out how God would mete out justice; since it wasn’t happening in the present, it must happen after death. By the time Jesus was doing his ministry, people believed that upon death, one’s soul was directed to one of four chambers. Two chambers for good and great people where you were comfortable or really comfortable, or two chambers for bad and worse people where you were hot, thirsty, and miserable or extremely miserable. Where you resided until God’s final judgment was determined by how you lived your life. There is an example of this in a parable Jesus told about a rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-25) – the impoverished Lazarus finds himself in a good place after death, while the rich jerk who wouldn’t care for him wound up in the more torturous accommodations. Centuries after Jesus’ ministry, popular ideas from Dante’s Inferno developed, and have stuck up until today. But are we to take their conjuring as insight from God or biased imagination? Are we to live in fear based on the way they saw the world in the first century?

Hermeneutics. This is a $20 word that refers to the process we undergo to understand and apply a biblical text to our contemporary context. Everybody has an approach, even if they can't describe it. I first want to understand the terms being used. Then I want to understand what the original context meant by those terms. I also want to know what biases may have existed when the scriptures were written, because I am certain that while God wants us to learn the principles that lead the whole world to shalom, I am very confident that God does not want us to adopt the biases of a world that is no longer relevant to our own. I study the Bible as a primary source for my understanding of God. But I do not believe that God dictated the words in the Bible. I believe the authors sought the help of the Spirit of God as they did their work, but I do not believe God overstepped by wiping out their worldview. This is a very good thing, by the way, because it gives us the opportunity to see over the full development of the entire Bible what ideas about God were resonating across time, and what concerns were clearly influenced by their specific historical context.

This may rub you the wrong way, especially if you’ve been accustomed to a view of the Bible as so God-breathed that every jot and tittle is from heaven above. To intentionally dismiss parts of the Bible as irrelevant may appear to be heretical. I understand that objection. But here’s the thing: what I am stating is simply the unspoken practice of the most ardent biblical literalists. Those who declare themselves purists in this regard are in denial of the countless ways they fail to take the Bible seriously, let alone literally. Let’s just be honest about this reality. I’m simply stating that I am doing it thoughtfully, prayerfully, and intentionally, so that I can glean out what appears to be the most God-breathed stuff while respectfully setting aside those parts that are, to me, clearly connected to their historical context. Yes, it appears to be a slippery slope. But we’re all on it together in various ways. The great Jewish theologians of old and Jesus and Paul were well aware of this approach and practiced it well – we are on good company, historically.

With that said, I am confident that the first century Christians had a heightened apocalyptic hope: they were sure God would redeem Israel tomorrow, if not tonight. When that happened, their enemies would experience the judgment they deserved while the faithful would enjoy God's favor, forever. I think we need to place our hope in God. But I think we need to wake up to the reality that our first century forebears were wrong. God was not going to enact final redemption in the way they thought. For me, that includes how they thought about punishment in the afterlife. I am not confident that eternal punishment for mortal sins makes sense in light of who Jesus was and how he taught and lived. I am not confident that a traditional understanding of the return or Christ, where He comes riding on the clouds to kick some butt is how it will play out. I think that's how the first century hoped it would go. But that seems incongruent with God's megatheme of redemption, especially as evidenced in the life of Jesus. I think there is something better that fits better with Jesus.

Quick aside: I know there are a great many authors who have put together deep thoughts about how this all works together theologically, where a loving God can somehow sign off on this. But I challenge the approach of those works, because they assume the reality of hell that has dominated Christian thought since Nicea, which I think is a mistake. If you want to maintain your belief in that kind of hell, that’s your choice, and I can suggest authors to help you learn the theological gymnastics required to accommodate such belief. C.S. Lewis is a good place to start.

I do not fear hell in the afterlife because I don’t think it exists the way we have popularly interpreted the depiction from the first century. I would not suggest to anyone that they approach relationship with God based on that kind of fear, either. That’s not a relationship – that’s a forced marriage. I don’t think that does God justice. There are too many other passages that speak of the overwhelming, reconciling love of God for all people and even all things for us to also maintain the notion that God will hate the majority of people enough perpetuate their suffering forever.

Which leads to another fear – not about our damnation, but about people we think should be damned. If hell doesn’t exist in the popular view, will justice ever be served?

Fear of Eternal Injustice. A number of years ago I asked the congregation to consider who they might meet in heaven. Naturally, their families topped the list, along with Mother Theresa and all the heroes of the Bible. Some even dared to suggest Gandhi. I suggested Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Osama bin Laden. People laughed. But I wasn’t kidding. And that troubled some folks. We want to know that justice will be served somehow, some way, someday, because it sure isn’t here and now. People seem to get off the hook a lot. If God is truly just, will everybody be welcomed into heaven? Is it possible to that there is a way in which God can deliver justice without our popular notion of hell, or the primitive concept from the past?
Lake of Fire. Beyond the trash dump Gehenna, other images about a place of fire and brimstone come from the Bible’s Book of Revelation. On the surface, it reads as if the author was on an acid trip that went south. Really weird images that don’t make much sense to us today. That’s because it was written at and for another time, when all of the imagery made complete sense. John’s audience (the author of Revelation) knew what he was saying, and knew that most of what he said had already taken place in their recent history. But one thing that stuck was the picture of a lake of fire where all things bad are thrown, where they remain forever. Ouch!

Of course, this recalls Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Remember? A new Terminator is sent from the future to kill off John Connor so he can’t father a revolution. The Governator saves the day by sacrificing himself as he throws the liquid metal shape-shifter into an enormous vat of molten steel. We all breathed a sigh of relief when this impossible foe finally stopped coming up for air in the vat. The enemy was destroyed, the evil gone. I think that’s the hope that is conveyed about life after death – none of the evil stuff goes forward. Hitler leaves his fascism behind, along with the gas chambers and hatred he embodied. All that was not of God in Hitler is done forever. Jeffrey Dahmer doesn’t get to take any of his murder weapons through the gate, now does he take any of the darkness that loomed within. All that was not of God is done forever. But is there anything if God in them that might remain?

Paul, the early Christian missionary, wrote a letter to a community in ancient Corinth that is in the Bible. In it he talks mentions that we will be held accountable for how we lived. What we do with our lives will be seen for what it’s worth – some of us will build with ideas and concepts straight from heaven – metaphorical gold and priceless gemstones. Others of us will build our lives on stuff that is not born of God or heaven, the stuff that hurts ourselves and others – straw and stubble. Paul says that when we die, it’s like we go through a refiner’s fire, and all that is not of God is stripped away. For some, the refining will reveal the beauty of God. For others, nothing will be left but, perhaps, the smallest fraction of their soul that was never allowed to develop. Paul says they both survive the refiner’s fire. Paul believed that what Christ did served to give us hope in the completeness of the grace and love of God. This fits. And it is good news.

If we’re honest with ourselves, we might admit that we really want retribution meted out on the people we think deserve it. But we generally view ourselves pretty favorably in comparison. If we really want equal justice across the board, it means we’ll experience the refiner’s fire like everybody else.

What do we want to happen in terms of justice, anyway? At the end of the day, I think we want the bad stuff to stop, and the victims of bad stuff to be restored. Jesus forgives the sin of an adulterous woman, a paralytic, and others before he was asked for it. And then he commended them to new life. Why should we think it would be any different when life is over? Justice prevails in the end, but a better justice than we can conjure. A true justice that restores even the most broken to new life.

Before I get to a final, perhaps most important fear related to hell, I am reminded of a conversation a pastor friend of mine told me about. A woman he had just met, who knew he was a pastor, decided to break the ice with him by asking, “So, am I going to hell?”
“Why would you ever think that?” my friend wondered.
“Well, that seems to be what I’ve been told. I don’t go to church, I do stuff I’m told ticks God off - why would God let me into heaven?”
He asked her, “Have you ever experienced a moment when you knew you were loved unconditionally?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“The Bible says that God is so full of love that God is love, and that love comes from God. The love you experienced originated from God. It is that God that you are trusting to do the right thing.”

He told me that she went silent and tears welled up in her eyes.

The One you are going to face loves you endlessly – more than you can possibly love yourself. It is this Good, Loving Creator who you will face. So, have hope!

There is still the need to talk about a final fear of hell.

Fear of Fueling Hell Here and Now. Another friend of mine visited Furaha Community Centre in the slums outside Nairobi, Kenya, where we feed orphans every school day. After walking through the slum and taking everything in – the filth, the hopelessness, the stench – he looked at another of my friends and said, “There is only one word to describe this situation: F@#%!” He is a pastor. We generally reserve such words for only the most rare, special occasions. Having been there, I think his use was appropriate! He went on to talk about how we as a human race created this, and it is up to us to do whatever we can to fix it. He is right. The quicker we catch on to the fact that we, collectively, have created the mess we find ourselves in, the quicker we just might be to repent. And the quicker we are to repent, the more open we may be to learn from Jesus how to live differently so that more of the life God has for us is experienced by more and more of God’s children.

The system that gave birth to Donald Sterling’s racism wasn’t created by him – we collectively allowed it, and in doing so have perpetuated racism’s hell.. Extreme poverty is a living hell that the human race created. Violence in all of its form – be it rape, racism, economic injustice, theft, murder, sexual exploitation, human trafficking, war – everything you can think of that does not fit into heaven – we as a human race created it. Maybe you didn’t wake up last Monday with an fiendish laugh accompanying your plans to ruin the world, but when we don’t think and act in the ways of God, the ways of Hebrew Shalom, the ways of Jesus’ Eternal Life present, the ways of Love, we perpetuate it. Knowing what exists and calling it out is good – acknowledgement always seems to be step one in the process of change. But simply calling it out won’t cut it, and may just end up turning us into a different version of the hateful sandwich board guy who lists out all the people who are going to be judged by God. If you want the hell on earth to stop, you need to do your part in not sowing into it. Watch your attitude, for starters. If you find yourself calling people out pretty easily, you are probably coming off as a judge. That’s why I asked you to pray for your daily dozen, that God would bless the people around you and that you would get an opportunity to love and serve them. Be Jesus where you are with the ones you’re with. That is a powerful step toward defeating the hell around us.

Of course, we are involved in a whole lot of stuff at CrossWalk to address some hell on earth where we can. When you support the church, you support everything we stand for. You stand for teaching people a new way to live and believe. You support the ways we reach out to the community. You support the recovery that happens in these walls for hundreds of people every day. You support providing safe shelter women and their children in Tijuana who have suffered abuse at the hands of men. You provide food for orphans in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, and in so doing, you have giving them a literal future and the real potential for transforming their slum into a city.

In doing what you can individually, and together what we can do corporately, you are making a grand statement: “Let’s get the hell out of here!” What we sometimes use as an expression to leave an uncomfortable setting, we as Jesus followers hear it as a rally cry to take care of the business our species has created. Who better to do this than the ones who claim to follow the teachings of the one who did it more than any other before or since?

So, perhaps in addition to your morning declaration that you choose to walk with God, and in addition to praying that God blesses your daily dozen and moves you to opportunities for love and serve, maybe you should proclaim, “Let’s get the hell out of here!” Amen.

Heaven is for Real, Part 1: Heaven Before Heaven…

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 19:00:00 +0000

Can you help me out real quick? Could you tell me how to get to Stockton, CA? How many of you would advise taking I-80 E to I-5 S? How many would encourage taking I-680 S to I-580 E? How many think the best route is I-80 E to CA 12 E to I-5 S? There are other ways, too, but you might say these are the quickest routes, right? But you would be wrong.

The assumption is that I am asking directions from Napa, CA to Stockton. But what if I am traveling from Monterey Bay? Or Lake Tahoe? Or Yosemite? Even then, you would want to know exactly where the journey begins before you can even think of giving a helpful answer.

Where we begin makes all the difference. Even (or especially) when it comes to our faith.

To think that we have just come up with an idea of heaven all by ourselves is about as arrogant and uninformed as possible. The truth is that even if we claim to have a biblical foundation for our concept of heaven, that still doesn’t do much for us, because the understanding of afterlife shifted through the centuries, based on some direct revelation from God, great dialogue around the campfire, views from the surrounding cultures, and new discoveries. So, even as we may claim to have a biblical view of the world, we need to be aware that different phases of the Bible’s history reveal differing views of the world! In this series, I intend to uncover what various biblical writers thought about death and what comes next, and what influenced their belief. But before I share some of the insights from my digging, I need you to dig a bit…

What do you think heaven is like? Who is there? Who isn’t there? What is there? What isn’t there?

Why does death exist? Why do people die? Why do people die “before their time”? Jewish thought on death was that as mortal beings, we humans die. When we die, the animating breath of God returns to God, and that’s it. The goal for living is to live as long and successfully as possible, to leave behind a legacy of children, and to die with dignity (which included a proper burial. So, for most, death is normal and natural – it just is. But what about people whose lives have been cut sort? Or who leave no offspring (especially male) to carry forth the family line? Or upon death, no proper burial? How does a person reconcile that? In antiquity, it was believed that such things were signs of God’s judgment. For the most part, our ancient Jewish ancestors in faith didn’t think of literal physical death as much as they did a more metaphorical death. Being estranged from God, or from the land God has given them, or from cultic practices constituted an experiential death while remaining physically alive.

Other cultures, however, believed differently. Recall that Judaism set themselves in part by their monotheism –they believed there to be only one God – while nearly every other culture around them were polytheistic. Other cultures believed that the gods were responsible for the death of human beings, sometimes with little or no regard for whether or not a person’s life should end based on any action (or inaction) on the part of the human. Humans were unimportant pawns to be tolerated and toyed with – nothing like the view from Israel which believed human beings to be God’s crowing achievement in creation because we are made in God’s likeness.

Ancient Jews believed that when a person died, they went to Sheol – the place of the dead, underneath the ground. This dark and dusty place is where all dead people reside, with no semblance of their former lives, and no communication with God. The inhabitants are mere shadows or shades of their former selves, and stay that way. It was not viewed as a place of torment or judgment. It was, as we might think, the grave. Furthermore, there were two stories of persons who avoided death – Enoch and Elijah – both due to their righteousness. They ascended to heaven, escaping Sheol. Three resurrection stories also appear in the Old Testament, but they are more about healing and the power of God over death than a statement about things to come.

Other cultures had a different view, however. Hades – the Greek counterpart to Sheol – was an expansive underworld space where the dead were not fully dead yet, and needed to be sustained by their family lest they die completely. When the dead were buried or entombed, provisions were made to enable family members to deliver food and drink through a shaft to keep them going. Sometimes Jewish folks picked up on the rituals and integrated them into their way of believing. It was common enough that it received condemnation from a prophet or two, and rules were set in place to separate men and women during times of honoring the dead as drunkenness was common, which had a way of leading to some inappropriate and unfortunate behavior…

All of this is interesting – to me, at least. But there may be more important questions about heaven than simply what did the ancients think.

Why do we want heaven to exist? Have you ever asked yourself that question?
My guess is your answer be be along the following lines:

We want to know that it’s not over when this life is over.
We want to be rewarded for being faithful.
We want other to receive their punishment: the Hitlers of the world, pedophiles, Dodger fans, etc.
We want peace.
We want to reunite with loved ones who have gone before us.
We want to know God fully.
We want to be able to express gratitude to God for everything.

Did I miss anything?

The reason I wonder why we want heaven is because our ancestors in the faith didn’t really formalize their thoughts on heaven until they had really been given a major kick in the gut. Judaism was being Hellenized – giving the Greek treatment – which was anathema to the Jews. They tried to revolt, and enjoyed a brief season of victory. But then they were squashed once more. They realized that they weren’t going to see God resurrect the nation of Israel in their lifetime, so they began hoping that God would save the faithful in the afterlife, and mete out justice toward the enemies of the Jews then and there as well. The reality is that we don’t see much thought about heaven until approximately 150 years before Jesus was born. Desperation gave way to heavenly hope.

So, I wonder, do we hope for heaven because of our sense of struggle, anguish and failure here and now?
And, on the darker side of things, could our hopes – especially when it comes to our version of justice – give us motive to nurture hatred now toward perceived enemies of God?

Here’s what I mean. If we are just sure that gay people and the people who stand up for gay rights in our nation are enemies of God, and we are waiting for them to get theirs when death comes, could it be that we might then justify ungraceful behavior toward them in the meantime? Pick your own group here. Maybe for you its drug dealers, or adulterers, or greedy corporate CEO’s, or politicians, or Muslims, or Dodger fans. Some day, they’ll get theirs. Until then, we’ll keep the fires burning. We will justify our hatred with heaven itself, and draw strength from our future hope as well. Coming to grips with our motive for wanting heaven is critical for our life experience now, and our hope to come. Like knowing where you are starting from en route to Stockton is important, so is knowing your motive for wanting heaven after death.

Me and adulterers. Time for telling an ugly story on myself. I used to think that adulterous men should be castrated. I know – pretty graceful. But then I read a book on marriage that opened my eyes. There are some men (and women) who are predators, looking to hook up to address whatever pain is going on beneath their surface. For the most part, though, people cheat not because they are villains, but because they are hurting. Once I realized this, my eyes changed. Adultery is still awful stuff, causing pain that is long lasting and often devastating to a marriage. But how do I condemn someone who is acting out of their pain? I wonder, if we could see the pain of people that caused their weirdness, would it change everything? Would we be immediately more understanding and graceful? I think so.

The reality, however, is that we will have as much to be forgiven as those we love to hate. We just can’t see it. We will all be shocked about how wrong we are, and how immense God really is. So, until we find ourselves face to face with God, I say we are better off living justly, loving mercy, and waling humbly with God (Micah 6:8). Looks a lot like Jesus to me, which is who I want to be.

Resurrection. Really.

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 20 Apr 2014 19:00:00 +0000

What does the resurrection of Jesus mean to you?

The resurrection of Christ doesn’t have just one thing to teach us – it is rich with many layers of meaning. It served to validate for the earliest Jesus followers that the God who had been so clearly at work in Jesus’ life did not abandon him at the crucifixion and entombment. This turned the ragtag Jesus followers from momentary cowardice to courage literally overnight. And, of course, seeing a guy who was dead-now-resurrected can certainly give someone hope in the life to come, which it certainly did and still does. There is a movie that just came out this week called Heaven is for Real – a story about a little boy who had a profound experience of life after death and lived to tell about it. The kind of hopeful conversation it has generated tells us that people long to have confidence that there is life after life. The resurrection certainly provides that. Aside: I will be teaching a series beginning April 27 called Heaven is for Real? We’ll cover all sorts of stuff, including how the concept of heaven developed, hell, metaphors of heaven, what others say, etc.

I have no doubt that the earliest followers of Jesus experienced his resurrection. While there is mystery about exactly what happened, what did take place made such a difference that we are still talking about Jesus even though countless other “messiah” type communities from the first century died out quickly. The biblical account of Jesus’ resurrection is robust. Take a look for yourself at these encounters people had with Jesus after he was no longer in the tomb:

Jesus appears on numerous occasions to a range of people. (Mark 16:9-20)
Jesus’ mother, Mary, Mary Magdalene, and another woman, Salome encounter the risen Jesus. (Matthew 28:8-10; John 20:1-18)
Two disciples meet Jesus on their way to the village of Emmaus. (Luke 24:13-35)
Jesus appears to the disciples, where he ate with them. (Luke 24:36-49; John 20:19-23)
The disciple, Thomas, doubts the resurrection until he touches Jesus for himself (John 20:24-29)
The disciples see Jesus on a mountaintop in Galilee and were commissioned by him to spread the Good News. (Matthew 28-16-20)
The disciples, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. (John 21:1-25)
500+ people see Jesus weeks after Easter (1 Corinthians 15:1-11)
Jesus appears to the disciples for forty days, and then ascends into heaven. (Acts 1:1-11)
Jesus appears to Saul (who changed his name to Paul) as a blinding light (Acts 9:19)
Jesus appears to John while exiled on the island of Patmos (Revelation 1:1-20)

Having confidence that resurrection happened for Jesus is very important, even if you still have questions about what exactly it looked like (that will never be fully resolved on this side of life). You’ve heard the expression “mind over matter”, well, it turns out that our mindset really does matter, even when it comes to milkshakes (watch Milkshake Experiment). If our mindset impacts our body chemistry when it comes to something as trivial as a milkshake, how much more might our mindset impact our physiology on much more important things, like hearing, seeing, sensing God?

Paul’s life wasn’t radically changed because he had an intellectual appreciation for the historical reality of the resurrection of Christ. His life was completely transformed because he experienced the resurrected Christ along with all of his education on theological stuff.

In the book of acts, he regularly speaks about God leading him to do this or that. A dynamic relationship of God is what made life fundamentally better and richer. His obsession was to help people discover the same thing he had. He couldn’t help himself. This new way of being was a learned process that helped him be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it id with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength (Philippians 4:11-13, NLT). Paul speaks here of an active experience – THROUGH Christ who GIVES him strength. Resurrected Christ realized in his everyday experience.

Broaden this out a step, and what we’re really talking about is an active relationship with God. What Christ does for us is put a face on it, a voice to it, teachings that help us get it, an example to follow.

The way to experience the reality of the resurrection of Christ is to learn to be present to God at all times, in all circumstances. This way of being is very natural, but doesn’t come naturally because we have been conditioned by the world we live in to adopt a different way which competes all the time for our allegiance. This is a human condition issue that deafens our ears, blinds our eyes, hardens our hearts, clouds our minds, and incapacitates our hands and feet to be fully open to the abundant, overwhelming presence of God that we miss most of the time.

Getting back to the very natural-yet-feels-unnatural way of being that Jesus taught and embodied is not a quick process. There are new behaviors to learn. Old habits to break. New muscles to train and develop. Noise that takes time to silence. And, while it is not easy, the beautiful truth is that we can invest our lifetime growing in it, loving it, and still have room for more discovery and depth.

For now, I have just a few simply concepts that I want to invite you to embrace. I offer no money back guarantee, but I do believe these will help you realize the resurrection of Christ in your life instead of just holding it as an interesting intellectual pursuit.

I choose to walk with God today. Jesus’ brother, James, told his audience, “Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world” (James 4:8, NLT). Centuries ago, James knew that life is lived in a tension between being conformed to this world’s pattern or that of God. Start your day by simply saying “I choose to walk with God today.” Write it out and put it on your bathroom mirror, your car’s dashboard, your cell phone case, your popcorn popper. The point is to keep this at the forefront of your attention, because if you don’t, you won’t. You will begin to experience Christ resurrected more and more if you first choose to live in the reality of God’s active presence around you all the time.

Pray for your “Dozen”. At any given time, you likely interact with somewhere between 8-15 people on a very regular basis. For a season, those “dozen” share your breathing space. Some are family members, some are coworkers, some are store clerks you’ve gotten to know, some are friends, some are fellow parents you know through your kids’ activities. I am asking you to literally write down their names and pray for them every day, asking God to bless them with God’s love, and for the awareness to see an opportunity to love or serve them somehow. That’s it. No agenda to come to church or sign on the dotted line for Jesus for their afterlife insurance. Just pray for them to be blessed by God, and to give you the awareness to love or serve them should the opportunity arise. James said, “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results” (James 5:16, NLT). When you pray for them, it is impossible to know how the Spirit of God responds to it – but it is undoubtedly good. And what it will do to you is incredible. As the legendary pastor Oswald Chambers wrote, “It is not so true that "prayer changes things" as that prayer changes me and I change things. God has so constituted things that prayer on the basis of Redemption alters the way in which a man looks at things. Prayer is not a question of altering things externally, but of working wonders in a man’s disposition.” Prayer will have an impact on your dozen, but the biggest impact will show up in you – openness to love and serve, empathy toward those around you, and an increasing capacity to hear God speak to you. You will have an increased experience of Christ alive as you feel led to conversations, to serve, to help, to love, to forgive, to be thankful, to sow joy – the list is endless and endlessly beautiful.

Don’t be stupid. In a recent book by Stanley Bing, the pen name of an executive with CBS on learning the essentials of an MBA without the classroom experience or tuition, he noted the importance of not being stupid. Or at least not appearing to be stupid. “Stupid people may in fact become successful, but people who appear stupid generally do not.” He was then asked if he had ever done something really stupid. He then recounted a time early in his career when his boss would occasionally have a cocktail party with his staff. Bing learned that there was such a thing as “free scotch” at such events, and helped himself a little too much on one occasion. Pretty well impaired, he went up to the boss, gave him a hug, and said, “This is a f#$%ing great party!” At which his gracious boos simply said, it’s time for you to go home…. Bing spent an entire chapter just talking about not being stupid, which means we must have a tendency toward being somewhat stupid without being checked! If you do not spend any time learning more about the way of Jesus, there is a good chance you are going to do something stupid while thinking you may be perfectly Christian about it. There is no shortage of people who identify themselves as Christians who spend little or no time learning what that means who do lots of stupid things that don’t match up with Jesus at all. Their language is totally unclassy. Some are so greedy that they manage to consume almost all of their personal resources, leaving barely a scrap for the most desperate people in the world. The danger of not continuing to learn about the depth of God – which is found in the Way of Jesus – is that we will simply become only slightly improved versions of ourselves instead of the transformed version God has in mind, where we become more and more our True Selves as Paul did, who put away childish things and opted instead for love.

All of this is related to realizing the resurrected Christ in a daily way. Think of it like building a house with your life. In one version, where you don’t really allow much room for God to inform you, you end up with a shack, more or less. But in the other, you end up with a masterpiece. Paul says is this way to the Corinthian church: Anyone who builds on that foundation [of Christ] may use a variety of materials—gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person’s work has any value. If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames (1 Corinthians 3:12-15, NLT). Go for the gold, silver and jewels! Why wouldn’t you?

Killing Jesus: Which Jesus? How Much of Jesus?

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 13 Apr 2014 19:00:00 +0000

Rembrandt painted himself into his “The Raising of the Cross”. Because Jesus’ crucifixion is so often seen as exclusively an act of substitutionary atonement, many people see themselves as responsible for killing Jesus because they are sinners, and Jesus died for them. I wonder if there is another way to think about our role in killing Jesus, however, that might be less atonement-based and much more practical?

What does my wife’s favorite Disneyland ride, Splash Mountain, and Academy Award-winning movie Fletch Lives have in common? They both feature a song written and performed in ignorant innocence in the late 1940’s from a Disney film that actually did win an Academy Award for best song – Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. But you cannot find Song of the South for sale at any Disney store or resort. They pulled it out of the market because of it’s racist overtones.

Most likely, when people were creating the film, they had no intention of such a thing. In their time, in their culture, they just told the story in a creative, entertaining way. While we can applaud Disney for pulling the film from the market, it’s easy-ish to excuse an innocent foul of a previous generation. How would we feel about Disney, however, if they were fully aware of the racist language and deliberately and strategically created the film the way they did to actually knowing they were making such racist statements? We’d likely be less tolerant.

Disney didn’t do that with Song of the South. But the Gospel writers may have done that with Jesus’ story. What if their fingerprints impacted much more than their world? What if it has significantly impacted ours?

The stories of Jesus’ life and teachings certainly were in circulation during and after his life – up until today! But the written collection we most often use – the Bible – didn’t get compiled until at least 30 years after Jesus’ death. There is debate regarding when, exactly, the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) were finally in print. Probably the earliest date for Mark – the first biblical Gospel to come together – is the early 60’s CE. Some place the date toward the end of the first century, with Matthew and Luke coming after it, and John some years later. What we generally don’t appreciate from our vantage point is what was happening in Israel in the 60’s. In short, the Jewish people had reached their boiling point. As they had done in the past, they repeated – they rose up and let their voice be heard, eventually taking Jerusalem back into their control. Rome responded. They showed up with plenty of troops, surrounded the city, and waited. The people inside the walls began to starve. Some were released, only to be publicly slain while the Jews behind the city watched in terror as their loved ones were left to rot outside the walls. Then, in 70 CE, the Roman Empire retook Jerusalem. This time, however, they made sure the Jewish people wouldn’t recapture it – they completely destroyed the city and the people in it. There was no Jerusalem to retake.

By the time the Gospels were written, the early church was increasingly non-Jewish. By the end of the first century, there were hardly any Jewish Christians among their number. Paul’s influence in beginning new faith communities was powerful among the Gentiles, while most Jewish followers were sticking with Judaism. James, the brother of Jesus, resided in Jerusalem until he himself was killed. He was highly respected by the Jewish authorities, as he was committed to honoring Jewish practices. He was likely the most powerful figure in the early church until he died. But once he was killed, and as Roman intolerance of Judaism grew, the church very naturally distanced itself from the mother ship. Jewish authorities had thrown the Christians under the bus in myriad ways since Jesus walked the earth. As tensions grew between Rome and Jewish people, the Christians – with little allegiance to Jerusalem – returned the favor. As the story of Jesus’ life was put together in what we call the Gospels, a clear bias against Jews emerged. The Christians did not want to be associated with Judaism because they were offended by the persecution they received, and because Rome identified them as an enemy to eliminate. Want to stay alive? Distance yourself from the enemy!

The Bible has a mystique about it. Many Christians have become comfortable with the idea that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. The idea is this: God may not have put pen to paper, literally, but the Spirit’s work was so strong that when the sacred text is read, it should be received as God’s direct word. In short, then, even though we may say that human beings were the ones holding the pen on the parchment, practically speaking, God wrote the Bible. This, however, is not how Jesus would have thought about the Hebrew scriptures. Our insistence on a soft dictation from God is a new idea that would not be affirmed by the very founders of our faith. The authors of the 66 books making up our Bible were more interested in theology than history. It’s not that they cared nothing for historical accuracy – it’s just that they believed that theological clarity was primary. They were comfortable shaping the story’s details to suit their theological goals – which was normal for that time in history, and in some instances still is today. This is extremely difficult for modern readers to understand, appreciate, and embrace. Yet, shockingly, this is not new information. Even scholars from conservative traditions know that the Bible reflects the bias of the author – their worldview – and shapes the details of the story they tell accordingly. This does not mean that the Bible is now to be rendered unreliable since the historical accuracy needs to be questioned. Actually, the Bible gains strength, credibility, and authority when we allow it to speak from it’s own time instead of treating it with kid gloves because we might offend God.

Note: what follows may flip you out, especially if you grew up in a church that essentially teaches the dictation idea (expressed in various ways). As you experience cognitive dissonance, I ask you: is it because of your bias to read the Bible as God’s Word or because those who study these things way more than we do(who love and follow God via the teachings of Jesus) are wrong?

The stories about Jesus’ last day when he went through the process that led him to crucifixion is an excellent case study on this theology-trumps-history phenomenon. Remember that Pilate – who was in charge of the region we know as Israel – was infamous for not caring about the indigenous people of the land he governed. He crucified those he deemed guilty of insurrection without much thought at all, let alone a trial. From a purely historical perspective, it would be extremely unlikely that Pilate gave a hoot about Jesus, or that he gave any time or consideration to Jesus at all. It is also questionable whether or not the Jewish leadership would have been so lax in their own process – which they treated with great respect – let alone some of the words that came out of their mouths during the trial. Read the texts for yourselves, of course, but ask yourself if some of the details are reasonable. What is incredibly likely is that an anti-Judaism bias is appearing in the text, on purpose, because the early Christians were distancing themselves from their Jewish roots because of a lack of association with Judaism among non-Jewish Christians, Roman opposition to Jews, and no practical reason to remain connected to Judaism.

So what? If the early authors wanted to distance themselves from the Jewish mother ship, why did it matter, and why does it matter now? Or, if what we read is historical fact, why does it matter now?

What may have begun as common sense for a new faith movement turned into something much worse over time as people read and reread the Gospels. Especially if they were not wondering about the historical context that shaped the authors’ perspective. What began as anti-Judaism easily and quickly turned to anti-Semitism (a relatively new term that singles out the race from the religion). Centuries later, Jewish people would be beaten during services that remembered Jesus’ torture and death. In 1096, as part of what became the First Crusade, Jewish people by the thousands were killed in the Rhineland Massacre. When the Black Plague hit the world, one popular theory held that Jewish people poisoned the wells. In the colony called New Amsterdam, Governor Peter Stuyvesant wrote to the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch West India Company in 1654 that he hoped that "the deceitful race, — such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ, — be not allowed to further infect and trouble this new colony.“ He referred to Jews as a "repugnant race" and "usurers", and was concerned that "Jewish settlers should not be granted the same liberties enjoyed by Jews in Holland, lest members of other persecuted minority groups, such as Roman Catholics, be attracted to the colony.“ He was Christian, from the Dutch Reformed tradition. And, of course, you’ve probably heard about the holocaust. Today, roughly 15% of “more educated” people in the United States hold Anti-Semitic views, while approximately 30% hold such views among those less educated. Ignorance kills, and would have killed Jesus…

Sometimes what seems like a minor academic issue can lead even to genocide.

Could there be aspects of our faith that actually lead you to destructive biases? Could we be holding onto some stuff – out of ignorance – that is not at all what Jesus would affirm? The only way you can know is to pursue understanding with the help of others – academics as well as peers.

Wondering about the story of Jesus and all that was happening beneath the surface is more than intellectual fun. This venture really is about coming to grips with what we believe at our core and why. Only through asking and answering the questions posed here (and many more) can we get to a place where we can shape our faith more or less free from the biases of our past. A faith that is truly reasonable, holds up to common sense and academic scrutiny, and yet still has plenty of room for the mystery of God. It is a faith that affirms what James believed about his brother Jesus, as well as the out-of-the-box insights from Paul, who didn’t know Jesus – only the resurrected Christ. It is a faith that follows the ethic of Jesus that seeks to save the whole world, respecting the theological heritage which informed him (Judaism!), yet having plenty of room for the mystery of the Spirit of God to work wonders in our midst. This matters to the world we are trying to restore. It matters to your very individual life.

James Brown put “funk” on the musical map. Recently, my kids’ high school jazz band were competing in a Jazz Festival in Reno, NV. One of the songs they played was in the “funk” genre. When one of the professional musicians debriefed their performance with them, he asked them who they were listening to. He pushed them to listen to artists who helped shape the genre of the music they play. In their case, they needed to listen to James Brown in order to play funk well. He went on to say that if we don’t understand the root, we’ll come off as fake, imposters, posers playing the notes but lacking soul.

When we simply try to put on Jesus without really giving our faith serious thought, we come off like posers. People listening and watching hear the notes, but something is missing. If we want to be faithful to the teachings of Jesus, we have to know Jesus, which requires time like any other relationship. And if we should dare follow him as redemptive agents in the world, we must get out “funk” on, less we be written off as uninformed posers. Amen.

Killing Jesus: Whodunnit? Whoduzzit?

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 19:00:00 +0000

Every American who was old enough to be aware of the world around them can tell you where they were when the World Trade Center Towers, the Pentagon, and the White House (almost) were attacked on September 11, 2001. The same can be said of when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. When Pearl Harbor was attacked. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. These are huge stories that have shaped our national history and and are stuck in our collective memory. Each of these stories have generated a ton of historical commentary. Books and movies have been born out of our desire to understand what took place. Conspiracy theories abound for each.

But no event has created more dialogue around the world than the death of Jesus of Nazareth. Why did he die? Who was responsible for his death? Who cares?

This first part of a two part series will give us the basic, plain reading of the text to help us identify and consider who was responsible for Jesus’ death. As you read, keep in mind where we’re headed – if this story is simply an historical account, maybe we’ve missed something. So, let’s get started…

Pilate Killed Jesus? If you hailed from Jesus’ home region – Judea – and had lived very long at all, you would have had a keen awareness of how the Roman authorities treat self-proclaimed messiahs. in short, as soon as a person made such a claim, his days were numbered. Pilate couldn’t have cared less about the people of Judea – a backwater within a backwater part of the world he loathed. He didn’t want to rule there, and he let his genuine anti-Semitism be heard loud and clear. When we who have grown up with the Bible generally think about the scene where Jesus died on the cross on the hill called Golgotha, we picture a hill that maybe had a rock formation that sort of looked like a skull, and the paintings give us three crosses upon it, because that’s apparently how the Gospels depict it. When I visited Israel years ago, one of the popular tourist stops is a spot that has a tomb like the one Jesus used, and a hill that sure seems like Golgotha. But the thing the tourists forget quickly is that the company who created the space in now way suggests that this was the actual setting. The tomb is like the tomb of Jesus. The hill may have been like Golgotha. But they say out loud and in print that this was not the spot. But tourists forget such things. The reality? Pilate was infamous for his use of crucifixion – he was eventually recalled from Jerusalem to answer for his brutality. While we think of three crosses on that hill, those may have simply been the three that day - or even hour – that were put propped up. Three crosses among hundreds that were also there, holding up people barely alive to almost completely decomposed. The place was called Golgotha not because the rock formations resembled a skull, but because there were likely hundreds and hundreds of actual skulls laying around from the hundreds and hundreds of people died there. All of this done at the hand of Pilate to send a clear message to a zealous people with apocalyptic fever: try to rise up against Rome, and this will be your fate. For the vast majority of people who heard the news of Jesus’ death, their immediate guess would be that Pilate made the call without giving it a second thought. Jesus was simply the latest zealot to come along to cause trouble. Pilate is responsible.

The Jews Killed Jesus? If you were Jewish and grew up anywhere in Israel (except Jerusalem) between 150 BCE and 40 CE, you would have likely had a strong opinion of the people at the top of the Jewish food chain. And it would not be a favorable one. The Jewish leaders who ran the work of the Temple were aristocratic Jews. They were given power and prestige from the Roman authorities. So long as they kept the Jewish people from getting out of control, Rome was happy. They had audience with Roman officials, and they had the power of Rome on their side if needed to keep peace. As often happens to this day, they got used to creature comforts, which only led to an increased appetite for luxury. A residence for one of these priests was recently unearthed within Jerusalem’s city walls. It was roughly 2,000 square feet – a nice sized home by contemporary measure, and a palace in the time of Jesus. They were known for wearing Gucci robes and for driving Italian sports-coup camels. They lived large. How did they afford such a lavish lifestyle? By demanding higher and higher Temple taxes from the Jews who depended on them to help them stay in the good graces of God. The people figured out what was going on, and were hardly pleased. It was bad enough that Rome came down hard on them. But then to have the people abuse you who are supposed to represent you before God – as well as your oppressor – well, that was too much. So, when people heard about some of Jesus’ antics – his blatant disregard for the Jewish authorities, disrupting the money changer tables outside the Temple, and making a mockery of them in public – it would have been reasonable for them to assume that while Pilate signed the edict condemning Jesus to death, the High Priest gave him the pen. The Jews are responsible.

Judas Killed Jesus? But, of course, how could the Roman or Jewish authorities find the slippery Jesus – under cover of night, no less! – without help from the inside? Judas Iscariot – a zealot who longed to see Rome get their due along with the High Priest – disappointed in the lack of zeal (by his definition) in Jesus, decided to at least profit before he put his hope in the next messiah to emerge. So, he met with the Temple folks and, for a handsome sum, decided to sell Jesus out. So, even though Pilate signed the edict with the pen given him by the High Priest, if it were not for Judas, there would be no Jesus to indict. Judas, even if indirectly, killed Jesus.

Jesus Killed Jesus? On the other hand, it sure seemed like Jesus knew things were going to end up the way they did. He had in mind the timing of the whole thing, it appears, and even moved in ways to insure that he did not land in court before it was time. He knew the very real risk of publicly challenging Rome with the titles he chose, and his anger toward the Jewish leaders was as obvious as could be. Nobody would call it suicidal, but he certainly knew what he was headed toward – the disciples tried to warn him, even. Jesus is responsible for his own death.

God Killed Jesus? Jesus, however, was called by others the Son of God. Even secular historians note that Jesus was a well known miracle worker in his day – acts that displayed God’s work in and through him. Jesus himself spoke of doing his Father’s will, even pleading for a change of heart the very night he was arrested. The first century Christians began viewing the whole thing as God’s will from the very beginning – Jesus Christ came to die for sinners, for redemption, to do forevermore what the Temple only attempted to do – a final substitutionary sacrifice for all time. Sure, Pilate, the High Priest, Judas, and obviously Jesus were key players, but this was all orchestrated by God from the beginning of time. If God is in control of anything, then you can be sure God controlled this. God sent Jesus to die. God killed Jesus.

Is this still relevant today? You bet it is. The conversation still continues because the life and death of Jesus tells a story that is still unfolding. This is a relevant story because it gives us a picture of ourselves, about human nature. If you are human, there is good news and bad news here…

Bad News. Jesus got killed because he challenged everyone and everything, even if gracefully. He challenged the political system, the religious system, and the personal opinions about each to an individual. And he still does. Jesus was not a Republican or a Democratic or a Libertarian or Green Party or a Socialist or a Communist or whatever other system suits your fancy. But be sure – if you listened to him long enough then, or pay attention to him long enough now, you will be offended by him. Jesus’ message inherently challenges our way of thinking about everything. Including, of course your political preferences. And, of course, your theology and corresponding praxis. As Donald Miller noted in one of his books, there’s about a million-to-one chance we’ve got things figured out right about God. I think we have a better shot at a perfect March Madness bracket than figuring God out – maybe Buffett could create some sort of lottery for that? All I’m saying is that holding on too tightly to our current biblical interpretation and holy cows of various kinds will likely find us frustrated by Jesus. It’s not that we shouldn’t have political or theological ideas. It’s just that we must be aware of our Judas tendencies. If we hold to the traditional rendering of Judas, we discover the very bad news that we have the capacity to kill Jesus out of our lack of following him. We do it with our lips, just like Judas. Any Facebook posts you’d like to retract, for instance? We do it with our wallets, just like Judas – enjoying more than we should for ourselves to the chagrin of those who need help around us. We do it with our hands and feet, just like Judas. His life choices led others to crucify Jesus rather than embrace him with love. Why is it that so many people caricaturize Christians as jerks? Could it be that we’ve collectively earned the reputation, and not because of religious persecution? More bad news: Jesus had a tendency to go places his disciples did not want to go. They were uncomfortable following Jesus. Comfort didn’t seem to be a pressing need for Jesus, and that has not changed. And, of course, the bigger bad news may be about God: God is up to something epic in the world today which is inherently very good, but will be experienced as very bad so long as we have chosen some lesser God to follow – money, comfort, popularity, prestige – the list is endless. So long as THE God is not your God, this is all bad news.

Good News. If, however, you choose God progressively throughout your life, there is very good news to be had. God is bigger than our politics, and offers so much more hope than campaign promises or commentator critique. If you are sick and tired of politics, here’s good news: so is God. In following God you rise above party lines to a higher calling that has no need for character assassination and still values people and fairness. If you choose God fully, you realize that God is bigger than one doctrine and cannot ever be fully figured out by humanity. God’s ways are higher and better. There is no room for us to judge others into religious submission because God’s love is big enough to woo people to wholeness. If you seek God progressively you who see Judas in the mirror even have good news, for God is big enough to forgive even those who blatantly choose to bring God down. Peter and Judas both struggled with tremendous guilt that night. One chose to keep walking away from a God who loved him, while the other trusted in the grace he had heard and seen and was restored. There’s good news for you who choose to follow Jesus, too. His ways may be tough, taking you into regions you might otherwise avoid, but the result is oh so good. Following Jesus will lead you to seeing people’s lives changed from worse to better. You will get a front row seat to view redemption before your eyes. Wounds healed. Freedom from the old chains now loosened. Eyes that see again. Ears that are hearing the beautiful sounds of life that once were deaf. The list is endless. And there is good news, of course, placing our trust – progressively – in God. The One who is the very source of our being and breath does work in mysterious ways, but they are working toward something extraordinarily wonderful and beautiful. We can trust it.

So, who killed Jesus? Well, maybe that’s not the most important question. Maybe the better question is, how are we letting Jesus live today?

Next week: What do we do with serious academic challenges to the historical accuracy of the last days of Jesus’ life? Jesus still gets crucified, but what’s happening beneath the surface that might help us see the Jesus movement with greater clarity and may even challenge us to think differently about our heritage?

Just Beans

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 22:46:00 +0000

I need your help. A school of orphans in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya won't eat - and won't have a future - unless somebody helps. I've met them and their leaders. I've been helping them for years. I'm asking for your help now. Below is my story and theirs, and hopefully yours, too.

In 2008, in preparation for my first trip to the slum of Huruma outside Nairobi, Kenya, I challenged myself to radically alter my diet for the period between Ash Wednesday and Easter known as Lent. I wanted to get a literal taste of what extreme poverty was like for the kids I would soon visit at Furaha Community Center, the school for orphans that needed help funding a lunch program - the only meal most of these kids eat on school days. So, every day, for 48 days straight, I limited myself to eating just one can of beans a day. That's it. Since I live near Costco, I just bought a case of Garbanzo and a case of Black beans, and I was all set.

The first few weeks went pretty smoothly. I lost about 30 pounds. But the last two weeks or so was shocking. I no longer had much body fat to burn. I was weak. I was dizzy when I stood up very fast. My thinking got cloudy. I talked more slowly. I got my taste - just a nibble, really - of what extreme poverty is like, and it was nauseating.

When I visited Furaha Community Center, a school assembly was there to welcome our team. Roughly 500 orphans packed into a small enclosure in the middle of the slum. They were incredibly well behaved - hardly a peep out of them. How did the teachers foster such good manners? They didn't. The reason the kids were quiet was because they literally didn't have the energy to be anything else. They were too hungry to act like kids.

Hunger made it nearly impossible to learn effectively. Many children would leave the school at lunch break and not return. They didn't get lunch at home, of course, and they were too tired to come back. Their bodies and brains weren't developing at the right pace, and it showed in every way - the color of their eyes, the look and feel of their skin and hair, and their academic scores.

I returned from my trip and shared what I discovered with my congregation in Napa, CA: CrossWalk Community Church. I am proud to tell you that they rose to the occasion. We immediately began funding a school lunch program for those 500 kids!

In 2012 I returned to Furaha. An assembly was held to welcome us - over 500 children in the same enclosure in the middle of the slum. But there was an enormous difference. Eyes were white. Skin was soft and beautiful. Hair was full. And there was NOISE! Lots of joyful sounds of kids laughing and chatting and singing and cheering - as it should be - because they had the calories to be kids. Academic scores rose to some of the highest in all of Kenya because their brains could focus on their studies.

The beans and rice we provide are not simply a way to avoid starvation. Beans and rice provide hope. Hope for health. Hope for an education that sticks. Hope to one day work to transform the slum into a city. It's not just about beans. Its about hope and real transformation.

This Lent, I am asking for help. One of my meals each day is rice and beans similar to what our orphans eat. But if I don't raise money for that daily meal, I don't eat. $10 a day feeds me, and literally feeds them. If I don't eat, it means they might not, either. All proceeds go toward feeding the kids - none of it actually goes to my food budget!

Can you spare $10? Or $20? Or $50? $100? $500? When I visit them this June, I will tell them of your generosity!

Please contribute by clicking here, and selecting Africa/Nairobi along with your other information. It's tax deductible since it flows through my church. Or you can send a check to the address below with a memo to Africa/Nairobi. 100% goes to the feeding program. #Fastforfuraha

Thank you for your support!

CrossWalk Community Church

2590 First St.

Napa, CA 94558

(707) 226-1812

www.CrossWalkNapa.org

How To Be Rich: Side Effects

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 09 Mar 2014 19:00:00 +0000

Rich people live in denial. They won’t admit they’re rich. No matter how much you have, there’s always someone who has more. But if you earn $37,000 a year, you are in the top 4% of wage earners in the world. If you earn $48,000, you are in the top 1% of wage earners in the world. Most of us are rich. And one of the dangers of being rich is discontentment. The more you have, the more you want. Wealth has side effects. If you’re rich, you’re at risk. How do we avoid the pitfalls of wealth?

Watch the video before thinking about the questions.

Stuff to think about…

How do you define “rich”? How much money does someone have to make in order to be considered wealthy?
When it comes to money and finances, what are your hopes, dreams, and goals?
In the video, Andy asked the question, “How much money would you need to secure you future against all imaginable eventualities?” What went through your mind?
Which if these statements creates more anxiety in you: “There is no God” or “There is no money”? Why?
Read 1 Timothy 6:17 together as a group. How does this passage challenge your assumptions about wealth?
Why do you think that Paul commands those who are rich not to be arrogant?
Wealth and God will always be in competition for your heart. How can you prevent your heart from migrating from God?

How To Be Rich: Congratulations

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 02 Mar 2014 20:00:00 +0000

Watch the full video of session one of How To be Rich here.

How To Be Rich Series Bible Verses

Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.

– 1 Timothy 6:17–18

Stuff to think about…

1. When Andy Stanley says “if you make $48,000 or more a year, you are in the top 1 percent of wage earners in the world,” how does that make you feel? Do you agree or disagree? Why?

2. Why do people confuse being rich with feeling rich?

3. Describe a time when you noticed that the more that you had, the more you wanted. When you feed and appetite, what happens to it? Why?

4. In the video, Andy says “wealth can become a substitute for God.” Do you believe that your hope could migrate from dependency on God to dependency on money? Why or why not?

5. Read 1 Timothy 6:17-19. Do you tend to think of Christians and the church as being generous? Why or why not?

6. How could being generous to others change people’s perceptions of Christians and the church?

7. Why do we hesitate to give to others even though we have more than we need?

8. What can you do this week to be rich toward others?

Does our generosity make a difference? Does it do any good? God didn’t pour out his love for us because it would “work.” Look at us. It still hasn’t completely worked. We’re still a mess.

We aren’t doing Be Rich because it will “work.” We aren’t doing it expecting anything in return. We’re doing it because in some small way it reflects what God did for us. So let’s Be Rich. Let’s do more and give more than ever before.

Grace: Both End & Means

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 23 Feb 2014 20:00:00 +0000

In the last video segment from the Animate: Bible series, we heard from Jay Bakker. His experience growing up as a high profile preacher’s kid in a very conservative tradition was challenging, to say the least. But what captured his heart and life, what was strong enough to compensate for all the baggage of his upbringing, was grace. Grace is inherently compelling, provocative, and certainly counter-intuitive and counter-cultural. And yet it is what captivated Jay and countless others to become fully devoted followers of Jesus in their pursuit of God.

After Jesus turned legalistic thinking on its head (Matthew 5:21-27), he then pushed his audience off a cliff with outrageous statements regarding how to deal with those who inflict harm in various ways (Matthew 5:38-48):

³⁸“You have heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ ³⁹But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also. ⁴⁰If you are sued in court and your shirt is taken from you, give your coat, too. ⁴¹If a soldier demands that you carry his gear for a mile, carry it two miles. ⁴²Give to those who ask, and don’t turn away from those who want to borrow.

⁴³“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. ⁴⁴But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! ⁴⁵In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. ⁴⁶If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. ⁴⁷If you are kind only to your friends,^[e] how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. ⁴⁸But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.

After reading what Jesus said, it is obvious that Jesus never spent recess on a playground, because his ideas certainly did not come from there. I remember goofing off before gym class in Middle School, and a good friend and I were shadow boxing. My shadow got a little too close, however, and I accidentally popped him square in the nose. Apparently, my friend Stephen was unfamiliar with Jesus’ words, because he began chasing me all over the gym to pay me back. I managed to avoid retribution for a full hour. I began to think that the truth started to sink: it was an accident – why would I want to hit my good friend? So, at the end of class, we were all getting ready to leave class. He calmly walked over to me, and just as I was starting to apologize once again, he decked me. “We’re even,” he said. And that was that.

My incident with Stephen happens in myriad forms all the time, everywhere. From snarky sparring with friends to biting jabs between spouses; total strangers pushing each others’ buttons, escalating conflict to the point of homicide over movie popcorn or loud music; nations launching all out assaults on others nations – or even their own citizens – causing casualties by the thousands. I was behind a truck the other day with this bumper sticker:

Maybe Jesus needed to read that bumper sticker before he offered his advice. Could it be that Jesus was wrong? Probably not.

In truth, war didn’t end slavery, fascism, Nazism, or communism. These centers of conflict, and the violence they perpetuated ended with treaties that were signed by leaders representing opposing sides. Essentially, when enough blood was shed, when enough children were orphaned, when enough sons and daughters perished, when one side finally cried “Uncle”, the game was over and an agreement was reached. To recap: there was conflict, both sides decided to continually up the ante, lots of violence ensued, and then papers were signed. Why didn’t people just move from conflict straight to treaty? Why not save millions of lives and the billions of dollars weaponry costs? Because that’s not how the playground works. The playground demands justice. And until justice is served, those on the playground will not be satisfied. If Stephen had hit me twice instead of just once, maybe I would have hit him back to make it even, which he may have interpreted as unjust, which of course would have led to Samurai swords and flame throwers…

Jesus was fully aware of the rules of the playground. His instruction, however, was not for children who wanted to remain childlike. The wisdom he shared was for people who dreamed of a world where the ways of God permeated so much that there would be peace. Jesus wasn’t telling uninterested passersby something they had no time for. He was offering the path to the life we all really want to those who would be able to hear it, and to the courageous few who could actually act on it.

Jesus was saying, in effect, that when evil is done to us, stop it by ending the cycle of violence by choosing not to retaliate. When someone slaps you in the face – literally or metaphorically – turn the other cheek. To turn the other cheek means, of course, that you are squaring yourself up to the person who just hit you, looking them in the eye as an equal, and by not swinging back, letting them know you refuse to play by the rules of the playground. When the law calls for you to give your shirt, give your coat, too. When you’re required to carry a load one mile, go two. When asked for help, give it. Each of these statements by Jesus challenged the normal way of being for people in antiquity, and now as well.

Then Jesus puts the final nail in the coffin with his remark on enemies: love them instead of hating them. Love the terrorist, the rapist, the murderer, the pedophile, drug dealer, the addict, the pimp, the prostitute, the gang-banger, the dictator, the greedy CEO, the power-driven politician, the adulterer pastor, the jerk who cuts you off in traffic, the Dodger fan, etc. This was way more than his audience ever expected – then and now. Why would he say such a thing? Because it actually works. The childish, playground rules approach is hurtful, harmful, inefficient, and ends in the humble place Jesus is saying we should begin. But we must have ears to hear this. We must have open minds to accept this. And we must have soft hearts to live this.

I guess Jesus did know a thing or two about this nonviolent approach to handling conflict. Of course, he wasn’t alone. In our memory, Martin Luther King, Jr., led the Civil Rights movement with the condition that his followers would be nonviolent even when treated with gross inhumanity. More recently, an Amish community chose to react with radical hospitality toward the family of a gunman who shot and killed their children who were attending school. Any time I hear of such an act of forgiveness, I hear myself saying “WOW!” This is simply because I find it to be a rare occurrence, and utterly Jesus and exceptionally beautiful and inherently inspiring.

Donald Hagner, in his volume on Matthew in Word Biblical Commentary notes:

… the true disciple does more than is expected. He or she is free from society’s low standards of expectation, being subject only to the will of the Father. The conduct of the disciple is filled with surprise for those who experience it. This element of surprise relates closely to and reflects the grace that is central to the gospel. It is the unworthy who have experienced the good things of the kingdom; and as they have experienced the surprise of unexpected grace, so they act in a similar manner toward the undeserving among them… Kingdom ethics demands not mechanical compliance to rules but a lifestyle governed by the free grace of God.

We are not called to be doormats. We are called to great strength. To rise after being beaten and look into the eyes of our assailant and say “no more” takes the indwelling power of God – at least for me. But this way of Jesus is really the way of God that leads to the deep shalom-peace-wholeness-holiness-harmony every person longs for. If we want to see God do that, we need to do what Jesus calls us to do, and, in fact, do what Jesus did. Remember, Jesus follower, that Jesus was the one this passage and early hymn was written about (Philippians 2:1-11):

Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love? Any fellowship together in the Spirit? Are your hearts tender and compassionate? ²Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose.

³Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. ⁴Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.
⁵You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

⁶Though he was God,
he did not think of equality with God
as something to cling to.
⁷Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
he took the humble position of a slave
and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,
⁸ he humbled himself in obedience to God
and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

⁹Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor
and gave him the name above all other names,
¹⁰that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Grace is what brought us into and sustains us in relationship with God. Grace is what we will find at the end of our days. Grace is the means to get there, well, gracefully.

So, the net time you have to deal with an evil act, or a slap on the face, or have to give someone the shirt off your back, or carry a load, or asked for help, or address your enemies, remember the words of Jesus. Pray for insight and strength. And may you end the childish, playground rules of engagement as you choose the counter-intuitive, countercultural, world-transforming means and end of grace.

Olympic Christians

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 16 Feb 2014 20:00:00 +0000

Jeremy Abbott did not win a medal for his skating in the men’s competition. He didn’t come close, actually. But he will be remembered by all who watched him perform for being a true Olympian skater. Early in his routine during the short program, he fell so hard it caused a mild earthquake in the Black Sea. He laid there against the wall of the rink, motionless, for what seemed like an eternity. Then he rose, a little disoriented, and began to skate. The crowd erupted in cheers and applause, which energized him to finish his routine with great strength. The focus after this routine was not on what he didn’t do – win a medal – it was on who he was: a great athlete who finished what he came to do.

When Jesus hit the scene in the first century, he gain renown for many things – his teaching was inspired, his miracles were empowered, and his company was ordinary. During one of his most famous teachings, he took some liberties with his handling of sacred text. For the most part, when a rabbi or Jewish scholar would give an interpretation of the ancient Jewish law, they would quote someone from the past to strengthen their position. What right would they have to give insight to a new audience?

When Jesus spoke about the law, however, he did so with personal authority and conviction, which would have raised eyebrows and focused attention on what he was saying. What he said was profound because it drove right to the heart of Jewish thinking regarding ethics. He moved the dialogue beyond simple do’s and don’ts to examining our interior life and innermost motivations.

At the time of his ministry, a lot of focus was given to living to the letter of the law. The Sadducees – the dominant group that held leadership in Jesus’ day, was invested living righteous lives. And they were quick to alert anyone who wasn’t. Their attention to detail clearly defined where the line was separating sin from non-sin. But their efforts left a lot to be desired, and a lot of people judged unjustly. This is why Jesus got in trouble for healing on the Sabbath, and for his disciples picking a few heads of grain on the Sabbath as well – the line regarding working on the Sabbath had been drawn, and he crossed it. Same reason why he got in trouble for keeping company with tax collectors, prostitutes, Samaritans, and lepers – he couldn’t help but cross the line. Not because he was rebelling against the law, but because he understood the heart of the law differently than his contemporaries. Jesus was after the Spirit of the law – the heart of what God is all about – more than the letter of the law.

A grave mistake, then, would be to interpret Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5:21-37 as being even more narrow than his already hyper-conservative contemporaries. At first glance, a reader might conclude that if you have ever been angry, called someone an idiot, cursed someone, held a grudge against someone, sued someone, had lustful thoughts, done anything devious with your hands, divorced your spouse, or made a vow, you just might find yourself burning in hell. Isn’t that good news?

While this interpretation has been used to get people in line out of fear of God’s wrath, I think it completely misses the point Jesus was trying to make. He wasn’t trying to raise the bar, he was redirecting the focus of our morality, of the ethics involved in following Jesus. Defining sin is a secondary concern for a Jesus follower. Our primary interest is in growing in our relationship with God. Instead of debating if Chardonnay is any more or less sinful than Cabernet, we should be asking ourselves how our relationship with God or with others is impacted by our life choices.

If you are looking for a list of do’s and don’ts to make sure you are on God’s good side so that one day God will let you into heaven, I am sure you will find churches to support you in your effort to do so. We can always find people to gather with and determine who is wrong while we – who are right – pass judgment on them. If all you want is a simple contract with God to give you eternal security, you’ve got it. You can certainly make a case with scripture to do just that.

But if that’s your goal, you have stopped following Jesus. Because Jesus is one who continually pursues God at every stage of life, and invites the Spirit of God to examine, enlighten, and inspire every corner of our lives. God is about redemptive relationships with those who want it. God’s Spirit constantly flows toward shalom, salvation, saving those who are lost.

Maybe that’s why our rebellious, radical Jesus said that the way to fulfill the law isn’t in trying to define it to the nth degree, but to rather spend our time loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves. Maybe it’s this insight that led Augustine to say such a bold thing as this: Love God, and do as you please.

Being an Olympic Christian isn’t about the medals, it’s about living out who we are and who we can be. May you find yourself finishing what you started even after you’ve fallen and hit the wall. And may you hear the crowd roar, inspired by your devotion to keep moving forward with your God.

Salty

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 09 Feb 2014 20:00:00 +0000

Helen Spires is 97 years old. I went to see her in the hospital this week. I am here to report to you that she is quite… salty. Even from her bed, she encourages those she encounters more than they encourage her. She shares her hope in God with anybody who dares to listen. She is in pain, yet she thanks God for every moment of her life. Her health is not good, but she holds fast to a very real hope that this life is not the end, and what is to come is glorious. She has learned to see out her window and behold the majesty of creation, and she finds herself immersed and embraced and inhabited by her Creator.

I’m telling you: she’s salty.

Remember those hot air popcorn poppers that saved our lives by eliminating hot oil from the process of making a delicious snack? Does anybody use those anymore? My hunch is that sales of those units plummeted, primarily because the appliance robbed the popcorn of taste. The popped corn would get so dry that it wouldn’t hold salt. So you were left with plain corn. Maybe better for you, but who wants it? The popcorn those make is so bad, Goodwill has stopped accepting them as donations. The CIA has even been reported to sending these poppers as Christmas gifts to Al Qaeda headquarters as a counter-terror initiative, and has been known to make prisoners eat the stuff during interrogations to gather sensitive information. By the way, the CIA neither confirms or denies these allegations (as far as I know).

Last week I went home after church and heated up some chicken noodle soup. It was a rainy day, so I was looking forward to it. But this soup was the Healthy Choice brand. Technically, it contained broth, chunks of chicken, and noodles. But I was remembering another brand I had made earlier that week for my wife as she fought the flu. And I remembered with even greater fondness homemade soup by a saint in my church, who also supplied decadent sour cream biscuits. As soon as I took a bit of the Healthy Choice, I knew it was going to be a really disappointing lunch. Any guess what was missing?

When we think of salt, we think of a seasoning. In the right amount, it makes popcorn pop with taste and soup soar to a new level. We were with friends a few years back for dinner. They were experimenting with different types of salt. We just stared in ignorance at what they were saying. So, they brought out four different salts for us to try. Plain old iodized Morton’s, some sea salt, some rock salt from somewhere in the Middle East, and what they called “crack” salt. We tasted a pinch of each, and much to our surprise we discovered that the taste was different with each one. And we didn’t need to wonder why they called the last one “crack salt” – it was laced with black truffles. OMG. That’s some tasty stuff.

If you reside in the Midwest, especially this winter, you know salt provides another use: it melts ice on roads, sidewalks, and driveways. It also has this other property that managed to eat away the fenders of my first car in Michigan.

Salt in Jesus’ day brought seasoning to mind, for sure, but it was also used as a preservative, for purification, and for fertilizing. It was used for wages and trade as well. And, because of its lasting qualities, it was viewed as a metaphor for wisdom, for sacrifice, covenants, and morality. So, when Jesus told the disciples that they were the salt of the earth, it was a significant statement with great depth (Matthew 5:13-20).

Being the salt of the earth meant that in some way they were to add flavor, preserve, purify, and fertilize the world. That somehow what they were learning from Jesus was going to bring wisdom that would inform how they thought about sacrifice, covenants, and morality. And the pressure was on, it seems, as Jesus essentially commanded that the disciples’ righteousness had to be better than the Pharisees, who were known for living nearly blameless lives – they prided themselves for it.

So what do we get out of Jesus’ instruction here? Is this merely the command of a dictator or is there something for us in his words? We all bring a “what’s in this for me” mentality, so, what is it? We need to be careful with all this saltiness business, right? Or wasn’t Jesus aware of the risks of a high sodium lifestyle?

First, let’s cover the righteousness better than the Pharisees comment. In fact, nobody was more interested in living by the letter of the law than were the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. They were well known for their strict attention to obeying the letter of the law, which was why they had problems with Jesus. It wasn’t that Jesus didn’t care about the Law of Moses so much as he seemed to care more about something else – the spirit of the Law. He was more interested in wondering about the intent behind the Law – which was to foster a healthy relationship with each other and God and the whole world. The Pharisees, according to the witness of the Gospel writers, missed the forest for the trees, as it were, in their legalistic approach to living the law. So we are not called to be better legalists. We are called to discover and live out the spirit of God in the instruction we have been given. We are called to boldly live out our relationship with God, other people, and the world, which will in turn act as salt in all of its wonderful qualities.

In short, following in the footsteps of Jesus leads to a radically different kind of life that truly impacts the world for the better. Gives it flavor. Acts as a preservative for what needs preserving. Purifies what needs to be cleaned up. And serves to promote growth as a nutrient.

So, what does this look like?

You don’t know Bill Moreland. But you wish you did. He’s salty. Not like the proverbial sailor who can’t get through a sentence without dropping an F-bomb, but salty like Jesus. I’ve known Bill for almost 20 years now. I was his pastor when I served a church in northern Illinois. I spoke to him recently, and got salted.

Bill and his wife, Oneida, were farmers before they retired. They grew up in the faith, and are an example of people who chose to follow Jesus proactively instead of reactively. In other words, their decision to follow Jesus was not due to horrible decisions that finally caught up with them once they hit rock bottom. Their decision to devote their lives to living in the way of Jesus was based on clear thinking and common sense – why wouldn’t they follow Jesus? What possible reason could they come up with to choose a lesser way? So they committed early in life, and stuck to it.

Be certain of this: they met many challenges along the way. But as they did, they just kept moving forward, salting everything and everyone with their faith along the way. And they served where they could, while they worked the farm, and after they retired. They were quick to help anybody who needed it. They would come by the church and dedicate themselves to deep cleaning the bathrooms when they needed it. Bill could fix anything. Farmers have to be able to do that. They were wonderfully hospitable, too, inviting people to their home for a meal. When you were with them, you were family.

Bill told me that he went to the doctor and was told that he had prostate cancer that had spread into his hip, and also to his pancreas. Pancreatic cancer is lethal and painful and fast. Bill was told he had eleven months to live. He went the Mayo Clinic for a second opinion and they concurred. But Bill’s faith wasn’t shaken. He told his doctor, “I’m going to live every day I have.” His salt was still salty. Given his prognosis and his age, he decided not to pursue aggressive treatment.

Months went by, and Bill did not experience any pain, which is weird for someone with pancreatic cancer. Then, fifteen months into his death sentence, having lived longer than expected already, he was helping down at the church during a clean-up day when all of a sudden he experienced pain that doubled him over. He just told some folks that he needed to go home and rest. But John Albrecht, a younger guy in the church who had experienced the power of prayer, helped him to the pastor’s office where he and a few others prayed for him. The pain left.

A couple of years later, Bill went to the doctor for a check-up. His doctor had retired, and his new doctor came and told him there was a mistake in his file. Apparently, somebody thought Bill had pancreatic cancer, which was obviously wrong since Bill was still alive. Bill explained to him that it was no mistake. He had a second opinion to confirm it. He told the doctor plainly that God had healed him, but not for his sake, but rather his wife’s.

“You mean to tell me that God didn’t heal you for you, but for somebody else?”

“That’s right, Doc.”

A few years after he was told he wouldn’t live another year, Oneida started to show signs of dementia. When I spoke to Bill this week, she was still struggling with it, but, as he told me, “she is as beautiful as ever. We’ve been married 65 years and never had a quarrel. God gave me Oneida – who else could live with me that long? I was healed so that I could serve her.”

Don’t get distracted by the small miracle of cancer being healed. Be blown away by the miracle of saltiness that still pours out from this 88 year old man and his 87 year old wife. Wherever Bill and Oneida walk, life tastes better for everyone. The sacred way of Jesus is preserved. People are made more whole. And the world grows brighter. This is the kind of salt to which Jesus referred.

How is your sodium level? Do you realize that when we walk with Jesus, life comes on line not just for us, but for everyone we touch? How is your sodium level? Are you salty? How seasoned are your most significant relationships? How salty is your relationship with your children? Your coworkers? The people you meet while waiting in line? Strangers who need your help?

May you choose the way of Jesus and find yourself continually covered with salt. May you choose to shake yourself all over the place. May you have the capacity to see the beauty that results when you do – a more beautiful experience of life for you, and a more lovely life experience for everyone your life touches, too.

Groundhog Day, Again?

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 02 Feb 2014 20:00:00 +0000

Phil Connor dreaded the annual event. He and his crew headed to the sleepy, small town where a few thousand people gathered together to let an animal out of its cage, only to see how quickly it would return. The animal in question? A groundhog – god of determining when winter passes into spring.

But this would not be an ordinary Groundhog Day for Phil Connor. He would soon discover that this day would be set on auto repeat – at least for him – and he would be stuck on it until he figured out how to grow out of it. What started out as horror turned into opportunity. He realized he would not suffer the consequences of his actions the next day, so he went wild. Ate whatever he wanted. Punched whoever he wanted. Slept with whoever he wanted. Died however he wanted. Only to wake up the next morning on the same day, with all the experiences in his memory. Sounds kinda cool, right? In control of your destiny – and at least the daily experience of everybody you meet, too. God like.

In short order, however, the opportunity turned into agony. He could not get off the train, no matter how hard he tried.

The movie strikes a chord here. I’ve come across many people who feel like they are just living the same day over and over and over again. Their basic needs are met. They have a lot of stuff they want. And yet they are bored. They don’t look forward to the next day – what’s the point, anyway?

Some people have the same experience when it comes to their faith. They’ve been going through the same motions for a long time, and each day brings the same experience of dullness. After a while, it’s pretty easy to throw in the towel, or at least stop trying.

The Bible bears witness to the fact that this phenomena occurred throughout its history, which implies to me that this is a human condition issue. We struggle with the monotony of the daily routine repeating itself ad infinitum. And yet there are many occasions where people break through to a new understanding of life and God.

King David, for instance, is credited with writing Psalm 15, which asks and answers the question of who has access to God? He seems to speak from experience, indicating that those who essentially align themselves with what is sensed to be God’s character have access to intimacy with God.

Hundreds of years later, the prophet Micah witnessed the crumbling of the nation of Israel, and tried to call her back. Israel was apparently thinking that they needed to do something more to wins God’s favor and redemption – greater acts of worship, bloodier sacrifices, etc. But that’s never been what God is really up for. God – at least as witnessed in the Bible – seems to be much more interested in a relationship with humanity than BBQ’ing more lambs, goats, and bulls. Micah, as if speaking for God, says it plainly: do what is right, love mercy, and walk humbly with God (Micah 6:1-8). These are the things that align us with the Almighty and pull us out of our routine misery.

Jesus pipes in as well, hundreds of years after Micah’s input. Speaking to a crown of severely poor people who had no hope of overcoming their Roman oppressor, he spoke of an alignment that seemed to favor his audience. Apparently, God comes close to those who are poor, are in mourning, are humble; those who long for justice and righteousness, are merciful, are pure in heart, are peacemakers, are persecuted for the sake of God (Matthew 5:1-12). Why would these people sense God’s blessing? Because they are more likely to be aligned with God by virtue of their difficult circumstances. Extreme poverty and sorrow have a way of stripping people of the prideful, self-centered arrogance that causes us deny our need of God for anything at all.

After some unknown period of time, Phil Connor got bored with his vain pursuits. His attention went from basically shallow pursuits to deeper passions. He shifted from being satisfied with essentially anonymous sex to desiring love. He moved from fun and games to saving people from harm. He began to become a better, more humane Phil. A Phil that was hiding beneath his very normal and self-serving pursuits.

Early in the story, Phil had no problem flaunting his ego wherever he wanted without concern for others. Most of the recipients of his self-absorption let him know that he was a serious jerk, including the woman he would eventually fall in love with. But at that stage, concern for others who could not further his personal agenda seemed a fruitless pursuit. Why care what other people think? What business is that of his?

The Apostle Paul recognized this same attitude at work when he wrote the church in Corinth somewhere around 55 CE. Probably from personal experience with audiences he addressed, he discovered that the way that Jesus taught – and especially the way he died – was absolute foolishness to those who were wrapped up in the world around them. The way of Jesus was founded on the same principles that Micah spoke of and David proclaimed. A way of being and living that sought alignment with God, the very source of life itself. A way which requires those who trek upon it to be humble, to look out for those who suffer, and to live in mercy. These are the ways of being that fosters an intimate relationship with God because this way of being is the way God chooses to be. To quote Henry Blackaby of Experiencing God renown, we experience God when we go where God is already at work. God is at work where redemption is needed, where mercy is required, where love is longed for.

When Phil pursued his True Self (thank you, Thomas Merton), he blossomed. He became who he was created to be, and he thrived. He became a joy to all who knew him instead of a pain in the neck. He learned to love and be loved. When he did, he fell asleep, only to wake up to a truly new day.

I think everybody is up for a new day. I think we have good news in these texts, because they point us in the right direction. They encourage us from the perspective of a thousand years of history and different voices. These witnesses tell us to go deep and close to the God who redeems, who gives rest, who loves, who made us to be more than people of drab routine.

So cherish and pursue this news, and embark on the path that invites you to move toward God and toward the person you were really made to be. There are markers along the way. There are vistas that let you know you’re still on the path. They include moments of personal sacrifice, seasons of extraordinary beauty, stretches of personal mountains to climb and dark caverns to examine. And they all generate the same kind of God fruit that Paul spoke of: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self-control. May you get off your respective Groundhog Day repetition, and find yourself more alive than you have yet been.

To See Again

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 05 Jan 2014 20:00:00 +0000

Jay Freireich overcame tremendous personal adversity as a child and young man, and then went on to face one of the most horrific nightmares faced by children: leukemia. Because of Freireich’s work, over 90% of children who combat leukemia win. You can hear a bit about him by watching this video.

Bart, son of Tim, didn’t begin his life blind (Mark 10:46-52). We don’t know what happened to him, except that when we discover him, he has been blind for some time, and has resorted to begging somewhere near the entrance to Jericho. We do know a little bit about how people interpreted blindness in the first century, however. Popular belief held that God was intimately involved in every detail of a person’s life as a causal agent. In other words, if Bart went blind, God not only knew about it – God caused it. And, the thinking continues, since God is just, Bart must have done something to deserve such a horrible fate. Bart sinned; God punished. The people believed it, and after awhile, I think Bart probably believed it, too.

I don’t know a lot about Bart, son of Tim, but I do not a lot about Pete, son of Bob. And even though I don’t see well without correction, I am not physically blind. But I am fully aware that I have made mistakes, and that those mistakes have caught up with me throughout my life. At times in my life, I began to lose sight of who I am. I began focusing on what my sin was saying about me. I also let the sin of others who influenced me define me, too. As human beings, we do this to ourselves. We define ourselves by the color of our skin, our ethnic heritage, our geographical home, our size, our attractiveness based on cultural norms, our grades, our zip code, our parents, our bank account, our portfolio, our level of education, our marital success or failure, the number of children we have, our children’s success or failure, etc. None of these things are really who we are. They only tell a story about the life we’ve lived. yet we identify ourselves by these indicators, don’t we? So much so, I believe, that we become blinded by such measures and labels. We lose sight of who we really are as human beings created in the image of God, which implies incredible creative power, strength, and hope. Bart was physically blind, but I bet he was blind like you and I can be blind, too, losing sight of who he really was.

I once listened to a story on the radio about a man who developed a condition that slowly took away his vision. He chronicled the experience in his journal, and then relayed his journey long after he lost his sight. Of course, we can imagine some of what he went through – all the fears associated with losing one’s capacity to see. What surprised me, however, was that once his sight was totally gone and all he saw was darkness, he began to forget what things looked like. He couldn’t really remember colors. He eventually forgot what even those closest to him looked like, including himself. We can become so distracted by how we were raised, or that thing that happened to us, or that choice we made, etc., that we just can’t remember who we are anymore. Bart was like that, I bet. Nothing more than a guy punished by a God for sin. A cautionary tale for parents to use to instruct their children about the dangers of poor choices, sitting outside Jericho every day, begging. Blind in every respect.

We learn from the text that when Bart and Jesus have their encounter, it was as Jesus was leaving Jericho. That likely meant that Jesus and the gang had been in Jericho for a few days at least. Bart probably didn’t know anything about Jesus on day one, but if Jesus did his normal routine of teaching and healing, odds are good there was a lot of chatter about it, and that Bart had heard about it. My guess is he had a few days to think about what Jesus’ healing meant, and what it could potentially mean for him. I wonder if he began to have hope – something he likely hadn’t experienced for a very long time. My guess, given how the story unfolded, is that he absolutely got his hopes up, and that he began to regain his courage – and even some of his insight about God and himself – as their encounter drew closer.

The scene: Bart was begging as per usual. He heard a crowd pass him by, and he realized pretty quickly that Jesus was in the center of it. He knew it was now or never. So he called out Jesus’ name and asked for help. Certainly, even if Jesus came to Jericho as a nobody, when he left, he was a very big somebody. Everybody knows that somebodies generally don’t respond to nobodies. The text tells us that the cord – everybody – told him to pipe down – he was embarrassing himself! So, naturally, Blind Bart yelled at the top of his lungs: Jesus, have mercy on me, now! Can you imagine for a moment the courage it took Bart to act against everything everyone had told him, and what he had been telling himself for so long? Incredible! I wonder if we have the guts or hope enough to yell at the top of our lungs for God to hear us? I wonder who that kind of passion is really for – the yeller or the hearer? I think the yeller benefits more. When we are so passionately behind our call to God, it means we really, really want to see things change. Our desperation communicates to ourselves that we are, well, desperate.

Jay Freireich didn’t just casually and quietly defeat leukemia. Malcolm Gladwell speaks of his heroics in his latest book, David and Goliath, where he recounts how much Freireich was challenged by his colleagues when he began his platelets procedure. But it got worse when he began making chemo cocktails, mixing four drugs together instead of administering one at a time. Other doctors were sure it would kill the young patients. In truth, some did die. But they would have died anyway. Freireich knew that life was on the line and risked everything to find a way to combat this child killer. While it may seem coldhearted, he knew that if he didn’t try, kids would die within days anyway – why not try something that may help? Because he courageously acted on his hope, a treatment was found that has led to a cure.

Bart knew his life was on the line. The life he was made to live was being jeopardized. His identity and hope were at stake. What did he have to lose by screaming for help at the top of his lungs?

Once Bart made the big scene, everybody was indignant – what a blemish on Jericho’s impression on Jesus – they can’t keep their nobodies quiet. But Jesus isn’t just anybody. And he wasn’t the normal somebody. He stopped. And then he invited a new somebody – Bart – to come to him. Jesus asked him what he wanted – more for Bart than Jesus, I think. Jesus didn’t do anything except to say that his faith made him well. Bart could see again. His passionate move paid off.

I don’t think Bart was successful because his cries were loud enough to reach heaven. I think he was successful because his passionate, courageous act broke through all the things that kept him from seeing in the first place. The visual noise of his peers, his own doubts, his primitive theology, etc. He realized what he was missing, and called out for help.

Is your life what you envisioned? Are you consumed and motivated by the life God has given you, or the one you have settled for based on everything else? Do you realize that now, right now, you have the option to get your sight back? Now, right now, you have the opportunity to live fully by the Spirit’s script, which is always really, really good. You can, if you choose, begin living more and more by what you have been called to live rather than what you’ve settle for.

It won’t be easy. There will be opposition. From those around you. And from within. But life – your life – is on the line. Are you ready to see again?

False Hope

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 15 Dec 2013 19:58:00 +0000

Are you a Christian? What makes you say so?

Many people who identify themselves as Christian say so because it’s their religious preference based mostly on their place of birth. Born in a country where Christianity dominates the religious landscape, it’s the easiest option. Some are born into a more religious family, and therefore simply adopt the family faith. Others remember coming to a decision at some point when they went through some sort of a process of discovery that led them to make a profession of faith that they believe in God understood through the lens of Christianity. Some remember choosing Christ as a personal savior. All of these things lead people to declare themselves Christian.

When Jesus was about to make his entrance on the world with his ministry, Christianity didn’t exist. Judaism, however, did. Jesus was Jewish, as was his cousin, John the Baptist. John saw himself as a precursor to Jesus, and his ministry was to prepare people for Jesus’ work to come. Lots of people in their neck of the woods were hoping for God to send a messiah – one anointed by God – to deliver them from Roman oppression. A few self-proclaimed messiahs popped up before and after Jesus performed his ministry in the world. The apocalyptic hope they all had included God rewriting the script humanity had penned. Judgment would come on those who were enemies of God, and salvation in all its fullness would come for the Jewish people.

John, in his preaching, certainly asked his audience in a variety of ways, are you Jewish?
Most would say yes. They were born in the Jewish homeland, to Jewish parents. They went through the paces that kids went through back then to discover the tenets of their faith. They professed their faith. Of course they were Jewish. Right?

Take a moment and read Luke 3:7-17.

John obviously missed the course on speech writing, right? Insulting your audience is generally a bad way to begin a speech… What was John getting at?

Short and simple, John was telling his self-proclaimed Jewish audience that they weren’t as Jewish as they thought. Their DNA, their family ties, even their childhood profession really amounted to nothing. God was about to deliver something new and big, and those who thought they were going to be on the winning side were about to be swallowed up in a consuming fire. Their hope based on their religious affiliation was false. John was challenging a human tendency that we face today: is faith about having the right belief?

John was telling his listeners that they were missing the point. The rabbis of their day would study the Law, and use it to interpret who should receive grace and mercy. This approach lent itself to interpreting the scriptures to suit their own worldview, biases, preferences, and prejudice. They were known for determining who was in and who was out. This way of thinking was not really what the Jewish faith was all about, however. What was being perpetuated was rule following as a means to keep God appeased. It was a way of earning God’s favor. And it was fundamentally off point.

Jesus would continue this line of thinking, turbo-charged. It was not that the Law was wrong, but that the rabbis reversed the process, which was causing lots of problems. The way Jesus taught was that grace and mercy were the lens through which we interpret the Law, not the other way around. One way sees people’s neediness as a sign of their sin and justification of their plight and therefore a means of rationalizing our lack of support, stinginess, apathy, and even disgust. The other way sees helping people in need as in sync with the heartbeat of God, which forces a different rendering of the Law. One starts with the Law, the other starts with a merciful spirit. The Apostle Paul would later say that the Law leads to death, while the spirit leads to life.

John was livid with some in his audience who were resting on their laurels of right belief while people around them suffered as they looked the other way. John was basically saying that they weren’t Jewish at all – at least not the kind of Jewish that would have any saving effect on them. If they wanted to be saved, they needed to be Jewish, not just give intellectual ascent to Jewish theology. Furthermore, the action he called for, while at first glance seemed easy enough, actually forced a break in his audience’s belief system. John’s demand required a level of sacrifice that forced people to come to grips with who they really were and what they were really all about. The Jewish label was worthless. What mattered was how Jewish they were. For regular people, this meant that if they had an extra coat when someone around them needed a coat, they had to give it up – because that’s what being Jewish, being in sync with the heartbeat of God was all about. For tax collectors who had purchased the right to gouge people for whatever they could get, it meant they scaled back their lifestyle to accommodate fair taxation. For the soldiers who enforced that taxation who had been known to use their position to beat money out of people to line their own pockets well beyond the salary they agreed to. Being Jewish required them to stop such things and live with integrity. Each and every demand required a significant level of sacrifice. A level that challenges comfort. A level that pushes a person toward deep thought.

I used to have a fairly callous attitude toward “idiots” who didn’t take faith at all seriously. They were offending God, missing the point of life, and making the world a worse place, not better. My distance from them allowed me to judge them easily. That didn’t change until I lived enough to become an idiot myself. After I lived like those idiots for some time, and realized that my decisions were based on my brokenness more than anything else, I didn’t see them as idiots anymore. I saw them as people really struggling with life. I related to them, and I began caring about them. The longer I live, the more I relate to different kinds of people. When I struggled years ago feeling like a failure and the depression that brings, it helped me relate to those who struggle with the same. When I had a serious back problem a few years ago, I related to people with chronic pain in ways I never could have imagined. All of this relating to people’s situation resulted in greater compassion.

John, and Jesus after him, were shouting as loud as they could to stop looking at people from a distance and come close, understand and relate, and respond in sync with God. That’s being Jewish. That kind of Jewishness offers real hope, because it is founded on relationship with God, not simply rule following.
When the fire of judgment comes, it is welcomed by those who seek to be in sync with God, for it means that all of our personal chaff – the sin that hinders and entangles us – will be burned off, making us more pure, more able to be in relationship with God. We long to get rid of these old clothes and put on heavenly clothes, as Paul stated. For those who don’t really want to be burdened by relationship with God – just let me follow the rules – the fire of judgment is pure hell, because all that we cling to that is not of God gets fried. We don’t really want God or the God-honoring parts – we cherish the stuff that helps us be isolated and comfortable. Our greed, our selfishness, our convenient worldviews that prop us up in opposition to whoever we deem our enemies – we identify ourselves with it all. But since those things are out of sync with the heart of God, it’s toast. In this line of thinking, judgment and grace are two sides of the same coin, both are parts of the same refiner’s fire which is here and coming.

The fire is always burning, and we feel it all the time, really. It melts away areas we are grateful for, yet scorches where we are defiant. We can all tell stories about this reality that has been in play throughout our lives.

So, are you a Christian? Do you know what I am asking? Are you truly a little Christ – the literal meaning of Christian? Or are you banking on the false hope provided by being born in a land where Christianity is the prevailing religion, or into a religious family, or lip service uttered at some point? Do you get that these do not deliver anything at all? That banking on this false hope just makes the flames hotter and higher? Are you truly born again into a new way of being in relationship with God and in a graceful relationship with the world?

Are you a Christian? Do those in myriad form of need sharing life with you on this planet think you are a Christian? Do your actions speak of a close relationship with God which in turn takes you into relationship with those who struggle which in turns leads you to compassion akin to that found in the very nature of God?

Prepare the Way

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 08 Dec 2013 20:00:00 +0000

Advent is about preparation. Preparing ourselves for a special Guest who is entering the world. Our preparation is a relational thing. When we prepare, something happens to us, something is set up in our future, and something is communicated to the one we are preparing for. Have you considered what Guest is coming, what preparations might be helpful, and what preparing might do for you, your Guest, and your world?

What time is it in your world? It was May 18, 1997. Anybody excited yet? Do you remember that day? Tell me about your experience on May 18, 1997. It was a life-changing day for me (and by extension, for you who read this as well). But simply giving you the date doesn’t help you much, does it? Let’s try again…

It was a dark and stormy night in the small town of Princeton, Illinois. Literally. My very pregnant wife and I were getting ready to spend a tense evening in our basement, where we would wait out the storm. We were listening to the radio for the latest reports. A tornado was seen touching down just West of town. As the center of the storm approached this Normal-Rockwell-like county seat in Northern Illinois, the threatening tornado’s menacing tail in the sky hopped over town to the East. Being so close to the eye of the storm, the entire region experienced a sudden, major drop in barometric pressure. This drop is related to why windows blow out in times of tornadoes – the pressure inside homes literally explodes houses at their most vulnerable points. We would not have been aware of this drop were it not for the presence of water on our floor. Technically, it was the fluid inside my wife’s body that was serving to protect my child. Her “water” broke. We were only 7 ½ months into a 9 month term. Not good. When you hear the details of my May 18, 1997, your experience of the day changes, doesn’t it?

Luke, a medical doctor in his day, begins the story of Jesus’ adult life with enough specificity for folks a generation later (and later and later) to emotionally identify with the timing of Jesus’ entrance into his adult ministry. It wasn’t just, for instance, April 4, 30 AD. It was when Tiberius was emperor. When Pontius Pilate ruled over Judea. When Herod Antipas – that creepy snake – ruled over Jesus’ home region. It was when Annas – or should we say Caiaphas? – was high priest, ruling over Judaism itself. It was a time of despair. Being oppressed by the Romans was bad enough. Being oppressed by those who claimed to hold sway over your relationship with God was even worse. The overwhelming majority of people were very poor, while those who held power – in politics, the military, or in the religious system – enjoyed luxury at the expense of those they ruled. You struggle to scrape up enough food to eat in your thread-bare clothes while you hear reports of lavish parties for a very select group who are dressed really well and who are overfed. How do you think the majority of people felt about their situation in 30 AD?

What time is it for you, today? If you were to write autobiographically about this season in your history, what keywords would you include, and what hints would you give the reader about the state of your being? How would you describe this time in world history that would help the future readers understand your context? Hint: unless and until we come to grips with our “time”, we will not really appreciate what time it is, and what time may come.

Times are changing. We humans do an interesting thing when we feel like we can’t take it anymore, especially if we’ve tried by our own power to change our situation. We look to God to take care of business. We pray harder. We give of ourselves more. We try to determine who is with God and who is not to make sure we are on the right side. We do what we can to make room for God. We look for those who can speak to us and for us about what we hope will come.

John the Baptist, we learn from other Gospels, was just the kind of person for the job. The way he dressed and acted spoke to Jews and non-Jews alike. For Jews, he resembled the prophet Elijah in his choice of clothing – camel skin, leather belt, eating whatever food he could get for free from the land (locusts and wild honey: good protein, sweet, and a nice crunchy mouth-feel…). Looking like a prophet, Jewish people wanting more came to hear what he had to say. For non-Jews, he looked like a Stoic – a wild man dressed to make a statement of contrast to the power structures of the day. By choosing to look and live extremely poor, John was challenging those who claimed to be in control who ignored the plight of the masses around them. He didn't go to the Temple (center of Jewish power) for an audience, either. John came from the wilderness in prophetic fashion, and chose to preach where the people lived, breathed, and traveled.

Luke set the stage before he gave us John’s words by tying what was about to unfold to a prophecy (Isaiah 40) given for a similar context hundreds of years beforehand that still resonated and applied to that time: prepare the way for the Lord’s coming! Clear the path! Make the way easy and straight! Then God’s glory will shine all the more brightly! When this took place, apocalyptic hope was fever-pitch. They were anticipating God’s coming at any moment. Luke’s reference to Isaiah’s words were timely in their original context, in John’s and Jesus’ context, and still today. The new day is coming, so get ready!

The power of preparation. The words of Isaiah and John both passionately communicated two things. First, God was going to show up and redeem the awful situation in which people lived. Second, that preparation was necessary in light of what was coming. The first part is easy and wonderful news that people of all times and places like and understand (even if they don’t fully realize that implications of God’s coming). It’s the preparation part, I think, that gets lost on us in our present time. I think it’s hard to think about preparing when we know the story already: Jesus came. We know way more than John’s original audience. Why prepare? Why not just celebrate it for a couple of months instead of waiting for Christmas Eve? I also think it is hard for us to appreciate this aspect of the story because we don’t like waiting in our culture. We want God to redeem everything yesterday. But there is great power in preparation. This is why knowing the time in which we live is so critical. When we understand our time, we are clear on what we long for. When we’re clear on what we long for, we gain clarity on what to prepare for.

My wife’s parents are coming for a visit in a week. In spite of whatever in-law jokes I’ve made, their visit is always one I look forward to. They are wonderful people who I dearly love and highly respect. But before they get here, we have to prepare for their coming. Of course, we will clean and clean and clean. I also will need to change out our leaky garbage disposal before they come. I need to finish a small drywall project with knockdown and paint. We might even move forward on the next leg of some remodeling we’re doing at our house if we can squeeze it in. All of this in preparation for their coming. Stuff we would do anyway at some point, but now, because of their arrival in just a matter of days, we have urgency.

Truth be told, if we don’t get the repairs done before they arrive, they won’t really care. They are not coming out to behold our new garbage disposal. And, I would venture so far to say that if we chose to do absolutely nothing in terms of cleaning or getting a room ready for them, they may be surprised, but no less eager to be with us. In light of these truths, should we bother preparing for their coming? It's a ton of work - huge downside. Is it worth the trouble? What’s the upside?

Preparation saves time. A very practical reason for moving forward with our preparations simply has to do with time. We don’t get to see Lee and Carolyn very much. We know we will have less than two weeks with them this visit. We want to make the most of that time. Spending a day when they are already here cleaning and getting a room ready would be a terrible waste of those hours we would much rather enjoy simply being together. We prepare for the sake of the time we want to have with them.

Is it much different in terms of our looking forward to Christmas, the dawn of Jesus’ entrance into human history, or John’s time along the Jordan, heralding the coming of Christ’s work in the world? If we hope for that dawn to come, for Christ to come visit us more powerfully, for the incarnation to be all the more significant, what preparations could we do so that we don’t have to spend those moments upon God’s arrival in our time? Just like the list of things we need to clean and repairs that we hope to make, there are things in my life that I want to clean up. There are roads in my life that need to be straightened out. There are sections that need to be leveled. Stuff I know I need to do but put off for another day because I don’t sense the urgency of Christ’s coming. It’s not like he’s coming next week, I tell myself. So, I will not replace childish ways of thinking with new, more adult constructs, even though my childish ways are leaking all over the place. I will put off repairing that relationship that I’ve known has unfinished business for some time. I will not clean up areas of my life that I know are not hospitable for Christ. Because I can wait, right?

The reality is that I don’t want to waste time that Christ could be using to take our relationship deeper. I don’t want to miss out on God’s insight for my life and my living because my toilet scrubbing distracted me. I want to be ready for what God has for me. Preparation creates that readiness, and helps my walk with God to be more efficient because we don't have to keep going over the same issues time after time.

Jesus spoke of the need to be ready in multiple parables. The ones who were prepared enjoyed the reward it brings, while those who disregarded such things were left severely wanting.

What do you know you need to be doing right now so that you won’t waste time when Christ comes calling?

Preparation communicates respect. My in-laws would certainly be gracious even if we didn’t prepare our home for their arrival, especially if their visit was prompted by an urgent situation. This trip, however, has been long in the making, and we want to communicate to them love and respect. When we make sure everything is clean and working properly to the best of our ability, when we buy special food and plan fun trips for their time with us, it communicates our love and respect to them. We value them, which shows in our preparation for their coming.

Similarly, when we take time to prepare ourselves for God’s coming into our lives, we communicate love and respect. When we take pause in anticipation for God’s coming and consider what needs replacing, repairing and refreshing in our lives, we are saying that we love and respect God as evidenced in our preparation. Would God be gracious if we didn’t? Of course. Sometimes God comes into our lives in urgent situations when no preparation has been made, and God works hard to help replace what’s dead, repair what’s broken and refresh and restore wherever needed. When we are looking forward to God’s moving into our lives, however, why would we want to communicate anything except that we look forward to God’s moving in our lives with great anticipation – and preparation?

As a way of communicating love and respect to God, what replacing, repairing, and refreshing do you want to pursue in anticipation of God’s visit on your life?

Preparation changes us. Because I look forward to Lee and Carolyn’s coming, preparing for their visit may be physically taxing to a degree, but the bigger reality is that as we prepare, we simply get more excited. As I think about our time with them, my mind begins anticipating good conversation, shared moments, new discoveries, and great memories of the visit of December 2013. My interest and passion increases with my preparation.

So it is with my faith. When I anticipate and prepare for God to show up in my life, I get excited about it, I think about it, and it serves only to increase my hopeful readiness all the more. When we take time to prepare, we are changed. Changed as we replace, repair, and refresh. Changed as we dream about what God might do next in our lives. Changed as we consider what we might do next with God.

In anticipation of the reality that God comes, what are you looking forward to? How is your preparation for God’s coming affecting you?

From darkness into light. That dark and stormy night, by the way, was followed by the dawn of a new day. My son was born incredibly healthy as far as premature babies are measured. Our hearts were enlarged with a new level of love we could not have anticipated – a love only a baby can bring. We were as ready as we could be, and yet discovered quickly how truly unprepared we were as soon as we got home. It was a new day, a new beginning, with new things to think about and new ways to live. It was Christmas on May 19, 1997, and our lives have been better ever since.

This Week’s Prayer (Terra Pennington)

Mighty God,

Our preparer who establishes the way to come,

you have not left us hopeless.

We confess our hearts are cluttered.

We are impatient and distracted.

We fill our ears with the sounds

from a busy world.

We cannot hear you cry out to us:

“A new world is coming,

a new way is coming,

prepare your hearts,

your salvation draws near!”

Help us unclutter

our hearts and minds,

hear you in whirlwind and in whisper.

Change us into advent people,

who wait with great joy,

setting all other things aside

to welcome you into the world.

This Weeks Text | Luke 3:1-6 (New Living Translation)

It was now the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, the Roman emperor. Pontius Pilate was governor over Judea; Herod Antipas was ruler over Galilee; his brother Philip was ruler over Iturea and Traconitis; Lysanias was ruler over Abilene. ²Annas and Caiaphas were the high priests. At this time a message from God came to John son of Zechariah, who was living in the wilderness. ³Then John went from place to place on both sides of the Jordan River, preaching that people should be baptized to show that they had repented of their sins and turned to God to be forgiven. ⁴Isaiah had spoken of John when he said,

“He is a voice shouting in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord’s coming!
Clear the road for him!
⁵The valleys will be filled,
and the mountains and hills made level.
The curves will be straightened,
and the rough places made smooth.
⁶And then all people will see
the salvation sent from God.’”

Solomon

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 17 Nov 2013 22:20:00 +0000

How did Solomon go from wise one to womanizer?

Solomon, King David’s twelfth son, succeeded him. In a dream, God offered to grant Solomon anything he asked. He should have asked for more wishes… Instead, he asked for wisdom. God was pleased, and communicated that some bonuses were coming his way as a reward: riches, success, and fame. He was known for all of these things according to what we have in the biblical record – the only historical document recounting anything of Solomon’s reign.

Solomon is credited with writing many of the wise saying in the Bible’s book of Proverbs. There are some great truths in those lines, and some pretty funny stuff, too. “As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool returns to his folly.” And some great zingers about marriage that I won’t repeat in order to safeguard peace at home…

Two things stick with me about Solomon. First, his insight regarding what’s worth pursuing in life, and second, the irony of his foolish shortsightedness regarding what might happen if he lost track of his faith.

In the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon laments the apparent lack of meaning in life. Recall that Solomon had wealth, fame, power, plenty of pleasure, and a long, peaceful reign. His incredibly ornate palace, which was as nice if not nicer than the over-the-top Temple he constructed (sparing no expense) would put him on the old show Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Yet his advice, after thinking deeply about life and its many vain pursuits, was quite simple: eat, drink, and be merry.

His words troubled me for many years. How shallow! Is that all you’ve got to say, Oh Wise One? That’s pathetic! His advice seemed no different than what any self-serving Westerner might say. Where’s the compassion for the downtrodden, or passionate pursuit of justice for the oppressed? Where’s the let’s change the world kind of stuff like Jesus said? His advice just seemed so superficial and light.

After having lived now for a touch over 30 years, however, I agree with Solomon.

I used to be caught up in the epic battle put forth by Evangelical Christianity: we need to save souls from an eternity in hell. Pretty compelling cause. Lots of emotion. Sounds biblical. But that went away when I discovered that the depth of the salvation proclaimed by Jesus was much bigger than what Evangelicalism was peddling. For a while, I wondered what this who faith thing is about, if not the epic struggle to get more signed up for Jesus. But when I reflected more and more on what Solomon was getting at, the more I resonated with the depth of what he was saying. Eat, drink, and be merry. Hmmm.

What do you think? Shallow?

The reason I began liking it more and more wasn’t because I was giving up. Quite the contrary. I find it incredibly compelling. What Solomon is essentially saying about defining the meaning of life is this: enjoy it. Make the most of it. See what you can do with the years you have to really live life the way it was meant to be lived.

At first glance, this seems to give license to all manner of hedonism – live it up without a care for anyone else – the world revolves around you. But that’s not true. Riches really don’t bring happiness – that’s a factual statistic. Power doesn’t, either. Promiscuity may be a kick for a moment, but leaves a hole in its wake. Being drunk or stoned might relieve some pain for a night, but there’s hell to pay in the morning.

The wisdom of Solomon here is found by going after a deeper question: what way of living really leads to life to the fullest, if not self-centered, hedonistic pursuits?

Looking back through the lens of Jesus, who said that following him would lead to abundant life, I got my answer, and I believe I have experienced it to some degree. The way of Jesus is a way to life lived with God. It is a way that is filled with deep meaning, great fulfillment, and considerable sacrifice. The way of Jesus puts others before self, always yields to God, and is comfortable with taking a hit for the greater good. It is about as opposite of hedonism as a way could be. It is a completely different approach to seeking life at its best, and it works.

That’s where Solomon’s wisdom ran short. He was so infatuated with so many other pursuits, and so many other women, that he lost touch with the woman he raved about in his writings. Wisdom itself was a woman to be courted, to be romanced, to be honored. It turns out that Jesus was thinking the same thing, because the Holy Spirit that he said would guide and direct his followers was the help-mete found in the Old Testament, the same gender as Eve. Wisdom, and the Holy Spirit herself, is a feminine presence to behold and to obey.

What kept Solomon from staying faithful to his first love? Probably the same thing that keeps us from faithfulness, too. We get distracted. Blindsided. Or maybe sometimes just apathy. It makes sense that if we want to have a good life; we need to put ourselves first, so we do. We listen to our instincts, to voices that affirm our egocentrism, our inalienable rights, voices that drown out calls for sacrifice. We don’t notice it at first, but over time God’s voice seems whisper quiet. Not because we have emulated Elijah in our quest for God’s presence, but because we have removed ourselves from the presence of God, and can scarcely recognize God’s voice anymore.

Solomon died a wealthy man in a glorious palace. But his lasting legacy was that his foolishness destroyed the foundation of the nation he led. You and I don’t led nations, but we will leave a legacy. We may die in good shape, but is that really enough? Will those who follow us be inspired to listen more closely for God’s voice to speak? Will those who witness us be compelled to believe that Jesus’ way works because they have seen its truth work in us?

May you eat, drink, and be merry! May you seek the fullness of life from the giver of life! May you seek the Holy Spirit as a the treasure she is, and find yourself enamored with her beauty, and compelled to do all you can to court her, the Breath of Life, and find yourself alive again.

David

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 10 Nov 2013 20:00:00 +0000

We are uniquely made to live abundantly. The question is, are we being ourselves, living the way we were are made to live in our pursuit of life? Or are we trying to be someone else, playing according to how others have defined the game of life?

The story of David and Goliath is known universally (in the Western world, at least) as one of the most legendary underdog victory stories. The story is applied to battles, politics, sports, medicine: any instance when incredible odds are overcome, the David and Goliath reference is applied. Hearing the story inspires us to become more brave. After all, wasn’t David’s victory secured because of his faith-based bravery? Wasn’t it God who really won the battle for David, since the likelihood of victory was so remote?

Yes and yes. And… No and no.

Some say that this account is mostly legend – a tall tale that is more interested in promoting David than historical fact. A pretty interesting case can be made for its historical merit, however. The scene (1 Samuel 17) depicts two militaries in a stand off, each camped out above opposite sides of a valley. As a means of limiting collateral damage, Israel’s foe offered an alternative: one warrior from each side fights to the death. Winner takes all. So, Goliath – an enormous man – was presented as the champion to beat from the Philistines. He stood in the valley, taunting the Israelites to engage, using all the tricks in the book: double dog daring, calling Israelites emasculating names, and even insulting Israel’s God. Israel’s response? Fearful silence. Nobody wanted to engage Goliath in hand to hand combat – it was suicide. That’s what everybody assumed.

Malcom Gladwell notes in his recent book, David and Goliath: “What many medical experts now believe, in fact, is that Goliath had a serious medical condition. He looks and sounds like someone suffering from what is called acromegaly – a disease caused by a benign tumor of the pituitary gland. The tumor causes an overproduction of human growth hormone, which would explain Goliath’s extraordinary size. (The tallest person in history, Robert Wadlow, suffered from acromegaly. At his death, he was eight foot eleven inches, and apparently still growing. And furthermore, one of the common side effects of acromegaly is vision problems.” Goliath’s size certainly fits, but so do other details in the story. He had an attendant carrying a shield. He referred to David as “sticks” and not “stick”. Both of these details may suggest that Goliath had a vision problem. He was known for hand-to-hand combat, but he couldn’t see the broad side of a barn.

What made David think that he could handle Goliath? It may have had something to do with David’s size, which was probably average at best. David had courage, for sure. But what won the battle for him was perspective. David knew he didn’t have a chance beating Goliath in a cage fight, which he probably never considered as an option in the first place. David, unlike Israel’s king and the whole of the military, knew that the way he would experience victory was not by trying to be Goliath, but rather in being fully David. Goliath drew up terms that favored his strengths. David played the game according to his strengths: an air assault. He shed Saul’s suit of armor, gathered stones, grabbed his sling, and ran toward Goliath. He knew he was a good shot, and Goliath’s head was a nice big target. Goliath’s strength was no match for a marksman. David, like many young men of his day, knew who to use a sling. They could take out birds in flight, kill predatory animals at a distance, and likely competed with each other like people do today with their guns.

Gladwell sought insight from Eitan Hirsch, a ballistics expert with the Israeli Defense Forces, who recently did a series of calculations showing that a typical-size stone hurled by an expert slinger at a distance of thirty-five meters would have hit Goliath’s head with a velocity of thirty-four meters per second – more than enough to penetrate his skull and render him unconscious or dead. In terms of stopping power, that is equivalent to a fair-size modern handgun. “We find,” Hirsch writes, “that David could have slung and hit Goliath in little more than one second – a time so brief that Goliath would not have been able to protect himself and during which he would be stationary for all practical purposes.”

David was brave, for sure. But the reason he won the battle that day was because he lived up to who he was instead of trying to be someone he wasn’t. He capitalized on his strengths instead of being forced to play to the strengths of his competition. Strategy born from knowing who he was and what he could do won the battle that day.

Goliaths abound in our world. Individuals, communities, political parties, marketing machines, schools, churches, teams, etc., all demanding to be dealt with according to a certain set of requirements and expectations. Many of these expectations favor a select few for success, and the rest to varying levels of failure. In order to be of value, you have to look the part, act the part, abide by the rules of engagement, etc. If you lose, you’re a loser. But David didn’t approach Goliath like that. Jesus didn’t live that way, either, and called for his followers to abandon such destructive, faithless pursuits.

Jesus’ day was filled with Goliaths, just like ours. The Roman oppressors demanded compliance with their laws. The religious leaders within Judaism feared losing favor and power with Rome, and protected their position by demanding unrealistic allegiance to their interpretation of Jewish law. This generally resulted in common people feeling like losers. They just couldn’t win. And since these were representatives of God giving direction, they assumed that God thought they were losers, too.

Jesus turned all of that on it’s head, however. Constantly. Repeatedly. He affirmed people for being people, and encouraged taking an entirely different approach to life that was rooted in the confidence that God viewed them as inherently good and worthy. He encouraged people not to play by the rules of this world that hinder life at its best. So he told people to forgive others, to turn the other cheek, to be generous, to not be judging, to serve instead of seeking to be served, to sacrifice for the good of others instead of selfishly hoarding. Jesus’ presence, teaching, prayers, ministry – everything about him – was love communicating value to those who would hear it. Not performance-based value, or worth determined by anything less than God’s word at creation: you are very good.

Stuff to think about…

What measures of success have been held before you throughout your life? How have they impacted you?
When have you discovered that you were fighting a Goliath on Goliath’s terms? How did you respond?
How do you balance the tension of living in the midst of all of culture’s pressures and living in the way of Jesus? What keeps you focused?
Are there any areas of your life right now that need to be recalibrated toward Jesus’ way of thinking and being? What might that look like?
In light of this, what do you wish you could tell your younger self, assuming you could use a time machine to do such a thing? Who in your sphere today needs to hear what you would tell your younger self, since time machines are only in the beta stage?

This week’s corporate prayer:

Creator God, you made us all in your image, saying: “This is good.” We confess we forget this, labeling ourselves and each other as: those who fail, those who succeed; those who lose, those who win; those who are moral, those who are not; those who deserve justice, those who deserve judgment. But even still, You made us all in your image, saying: “This is good.” Help us to live as you have created us to be, not as others see us. Because it is you, the mysterious maker of the universe, who says to us: “I made you, and you are good!” – Terra Pennington

Deborah

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 20 Oct 2013 19:00:00 +0000

Surprises come unexpectedly. Duh.

But sometimes surprises happen right before our eyes and we miss them. The story of Deborah in the Bible’s book of Judges is a repository of surprises. Surprised? Surprised that there is a significant character named Deborah? Surprised there is a book in the Bible named Judges? Let me help you see the abundance of surprises in this story. And keep reading, because there is a surprise at the end you won’t want to miss.

To bring you up to this point in history, Israel had moved into the Promised Land, and Joshua – their fearless leader, had died. Judges were raised up by God to help Israel defeat her enemies. “Whenever the Lord raised up a judge over Israel, God was with that judge and rescued the people from their enemies throughout the judge’s lifetime. For the Lord took pity on his people, who were burdened by oppression and suffering” (Judges 2:18). Two judges came and went before Deborah’s story occured, and 120 years had passed.

The first surprise comes in the first verse of Judges 4: After Ehud’s death, the Israelites did evil in the Lord’s sight. This should come as a surprise. Israel had experienced peace for the last 80 years because of Judge Ehud’s leadership. Once he died, however, they ran amuck. If you are familiar with the story of Israel, however, you are not surprised, because this was their pattern – faithful for awhile, then cheat on God like an adulterous spouse. If we are honest with ourselves, we may be surprised that we follow the same pattern. A human reality.

We are surprised to learn more details – their biggest foreign threat had 900 iron chariots, while Israel had pitchforks. The Canaanites were the military super power, and Israel had the military strength of Aruba. Imagine if Arubans felt threatened by the U.S.? They’d be toast if a conflict ever broke out. So it was with Israel. Scared to death, they decided to call Home and ask for help…

Enter Deborah, the wife of Lappidoth, who was a prophet judging Israel at that time. SURPRISE! Deborah was a WOMAN! This was at a time when women were more or less property, treated more like a possession than a human being. This is incredible. Quick aside: if you spend an hour reading about all the judges, you will quickly determine that Deborah was the best judge that served in that capacity – heads and shoulders above the others. A bonus surprise that reminds us, early on, that God is not guilty of gender bias – that’s a human creation.

Next surprise: Deborah performed her role under a palm tree between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim. You are shocked, right? Of course you are, because you remember that the Ark of the Covenant that Indiana Jones found originally split its time between Bethel and Shiloh, which is where the priests were doing their thing. The priests were failing to perform their role satsfactorily, which is in part why people were seeking Deborah’s counsel. People began looking outside the church for help from God, because they weren’t getting it there… Know anybody who has ever felt that way?

Deborah then got a text message from God with military instructions. She called Barak, one of Israel’s military leaders to gather the troops to take on the Canaanites. As a man of great courage and strength, he said yes – but only if Mama Deborah went with him. Sigh. Surprise. Deborah, who would become known as the Mother of Israel, agreed to hold Barak’s hand as they went to prepare for battle. But – and here is another surprise – this would come with a price: Barak would not receive any honor from the victory. In fact, a woman would be given credit. A little self-serving for Deborah to want credit? We’ll see.

Then, another surprise: right in the middle of the story, the writer gives us what looks to be a pointless detail about some guy who was a shirt-tail relative of Moses who left the rest of the family and raised his sheep some distance away. Ever have a friend tell you a story, only to get sidetracked by a few details you care nothing about? Pretty annoying – get on with the story!

Upon hearing of the Israelite theater, Sisera, the commander of the Canaanite army, gathered his troops and all his fighter jets (iron chariots) for battle. No surprise, there.

Deborah encouraged Barak and Israel’s 10,000 troops by assuring them God was going to give them victory that very day. Surprise! The Israelites had more than their pitchforks to fight with – God was going to show up.

The next scene surprised everybody. Barak led the 10,00 Israelites to attack the Canaanite troops, when the Lord threw Sisera and all his chariots and warriors into a panic. Sisera leaped down from his chariot and escaped on foot. Then Barak chased the chariots and the enemy army, killing all of Sisera’s warriors. Not a single one was left alive. Nobody knows exactly what happened. Deborah wrote a song about the whole event (Judges 5), where she alluded to maybe a serious thunderstorm with hail, perhaps – whatever it was, everyone was surprised, and interpreted it as God’s activity on behalf of the Israelites. We are also surprised to learn – those of us who live in the nation boasting the greatest military force in the history of the world – that military might is no guarantee of indefinite dominance. We don’t really like to hear about that surprise in America, but it is true. Always has been. So perhaps that doesn’t qualify as a surprise.

Sisera was still on the run, however, and Barak and Deborah were in chase. Sisera took refuge in the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, because they had some sort of peace agreement worked out (this Heber dude is the guy mentioned in that apparently pointless aside earlier in the story). There are numerous surprises in this scene. First, wife Jael invited him into her tent. Big no-no. I don’t think she was offering any services that day – just refuge – but it was not her place to do so. In ancient times, it was the husband’s duty and honor to show hospitality to strangers. She was robbing him of his role – doing a man’s job.

Sisera was happy to find a good hiding place, went inside, and – surprise! – asked for a drink of water. This broke another social rule: the guest doesn’t ask for anything – it is the host’s job to take care of every need. This was a great offense that most certainly was not lost on the woman Jael. Instead of water, she gave Sisera a glass of warm milk and then tucked him into bed under some nice warm blankets and agreed to keep watch for Barak. What a nice surprise! What excellent service! Nighty night – see you in the morning.

Once Sisera was asleep Jael, the hostess with the mostess, thoughtfully grabbed a hammer and a tent post, and lovingly drove the massive nail through one of Sisera’s temples all the way through the other and into the ground, killing him instantly.

SURPRISE! Deborah wasn’t the one to take out Sisera after all. Jael fulfills the prophecy to Barak’s chagrin. Bonus surprise: I guess allies – especially those who sign under threat – may not be as friendly as we think.

Barak showed up and, much to his surprise, was taken to see Sisera by Jael. She’s the brave one we’re talking about, not Barak.

So what? From this story we have the opportunity to learn some things about God, life and ourselves. We learn that God can move anybody to action, bypassing cultural norms and limitations. When those anybodies do what they need to do, peace happens. I believe that is the greatest, most wonderful surprise of all. In time, God prevails. Life, Spirit, Shalom cannot be squashed despite our best efforts. This doesn’t make it all better, but it sure helps when we’re facing what seem to be terrible odds against us.

What is the final surprise? It’s a surprise just for you. You are made in the image of God and are, therefore, good, creative, inventive, powerful, and capable. While it may not be a good idea to hammer a tent stake through someone’s temple (please, please don’t do that), there are actions you can take and attitudes you can adopt that will bring more and more of God’s peace, God’s Kingdom of Shalom into the land. To do what you need to do may require doing things differently than normal. Okay. Or, perhaps you, like Deborah, have a clear sense of what God wants to do and say to someone around you. Do you have the guts to speak? Or has your gender, your level of education, your social status, your past mistakes, your skin tone, your sexual orientation, and/or the labels others have placed on you so thoroughly masked your in-the-image-of-God-ness that you can’t see yourself doing anything so bold? Surprise! You can! Ask God for clear guidance, seek counsel from others if necessary, and do what you sense God calling you to do – let God be the Judge.

May you dwell on the surprises found in Deborah’s story, and may you find yourself in God’s story doing surprising things that bring more and more of God into a world hoping you will.

Joshua

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 13 Oct 2013 19:00:00 +0000

Joshua was one of two people recorded in the Bible as having experienced being slaves in Egypt who also was allowed to enter the Promised Land. Caleb was the other. When others cowered in fear over the armies they would face in the new land, they stood faith. They were fully confident that if God was leading them, they would prevail. He had already experienced incredible acts of God before he became Israel’s new leader, replacing Moses. Under his leadership, Joshua watched as God parted the waters of the Jordan River during the rainy season. Pretty amazing. He called for people to consecrate themselves to God before attempting to take Jericho. That consecration was circumcision for all males in Israel. The fact that they subjected themselves to this says a little something about their commitment to God, and also says a lot about their trust in Joshua as God’s chosen leader. As they were sharpening their swords and working on their “shouts”, Joshua was certainly full of faith.

God was with them, for sure.

Then he had a really surprising conversation with an apparent angel – the commander of God’s army, no less! Not realizing initially that he was addressing an angel, he asked a simple question of this stranger. Are you friend or foe? Read it for yourself:

When Joshua was near the town of Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with sword in hand. Joshua went up to him and demanded, “Are you friend or foe?”
“Neither one,” he replied. “I am the commander of the Lord’s army.”
At this, Joshua fell with his face to the ground in reverence. “I am at your command,” Joshua said. “What do you want your servant to do?”
The commander of the Lord’s army replied, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did as he was told. (Joshua 5:13-15)

I don’t know about you, but if I were Joshua, I wouldn’t be comfortable with the angel’s reply to my question. Up to that point, I would have been completely confident that God was with me and my people, and therefore we would have nothing to fear. The angel’s reply, however, would change my thinking, I think, because it has now, some 3500 years later.

Historically, we human beings have always been wanting God on our side. Why do you think people started sacrificing stuff in the first place? They wanted to appease the gods. If things were going well, it was a clear indication that God was not pleased with us and needed to be won over again with more signs of our commitment. In our history, we went so far as to sacrifice our children. In modern times, our confidence that God is with us has provided a carte blanche pass to do whatever we think we need to do – damn the consequences. If a few people need to be killed for their apostasy, so be it. If a lot of people need to be killed, genocide may even be necessary. Hitler was convinced of this. In recent years, a well known conservative pastor, convinced that God is on the side of the United States, was suggesting to whoever was listening we should nuke Iran. Because God is with us, and not with them. God is on our side, not theirs.

We validate our position with the Bible itself. God called Abram to be God’s chosen, right? God’s “with-us-ness” was with Abraham’s line all the way through the end of Genesis. When we meet Moses in exodus, God displays his favoritism for God’s people and for God’s leaders, too with great acts of power. Joshua went on to defeat the enemies of Israel time and again. To this day, especially conservative Christians and Jews are certain that the Jewish people are still God’s chosen people – mess with them and you’ll eventually be toast. Because God is with them. Translated into personal experience, we can get to such a place of confidence that God favors us that we can assume that our dreams are God’s dreams, our likes are God’s likes, our opinions are God’s. Our biases,prejudices, hatred, anger, etc. – all are God’s, too, because we are God’s.

Joshua’s exchange with angel brings us to a full stop, however, because of one word: No. Many translations use the word “neither” as above, but the literal answer to Joshua’s friend or foe question was simply “no”. No? What do we do with that? The angel doesn’t qualify it, either. I’m not on your side any more than the other side. Commentators quickly skip over this nonsense, pointing out that God miraculously conquered Jericho in the very next scene.

But the “no” is deafening to me, and I love it. The angel goes on to note that the ground was holy, which required a different posture. No shoes. Humility before God.

I think we human beings have a very natural tendency to assume that the way we see the world is the right way, the true way. And, since our way of seeing things is right and true, I think we naturally assume that God probably sees things the same way, since God is the source of all things right and true. For trivial matters, this doesn’t really matter. But for things that impact the state of our planet and the health of the people who inhabit it, it matters as much as anything can matter. In a time when it feels like political polarities are normative, I see this as very dangerous. Our government in recent years has sunk to a new low, where it appears that honoring party lines is more important than finding a solution. I wonder if they are a reflection of our culture, or if they are influencing our culture to buy into their partisan ways. We all suffer when we choose to cling to our polarized position.

I get concerned over current international affairs. When we believe that we, the United States, are right and true, it is difficult to entertain dialogue with those who strongly oppose us. When we urge other countries to give just one percent of GDP to combat extreme poverty, we don’t back it up with our own sacrifice, and neither do they. People die because of our indifference, because we assume we are right, and that God is on our side.

I wonder if what God was trying to communicate to Joshua that day with his surprisingly negative response was simply that God has a much higher, more noble, and infinitely more beautiful agenda than our puny, short-sighted, usually self-indulgent dreams. It’s not that God was reneging on God’s desire to broadcast God’s hope and grace through one particular country. I think the angel was simply wanting to remind Joshua of a truth that was being talked about when Joshua went to press. A truth that the prophet Isaiah penned (Is. 55:8-9):

My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts, says the Lord. And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

If this great insight is true – and I think it is – it requires something different of me. It requires that I – we – take on a different posture toward God. And life. It requires a barefoot approach toward both. Vulnerable. Humble. Choosing to not be arrogant. Intentionally wondering how limited our view might be. Recognizing that we are inherently arrogant, which leads us to a great many mistakes.

As we who claim to follow Jesus find ourselves facing very complex problems that we can address, may we have the wherewithal to follow the advice of another prophet who would remind us to pursue justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God through the holy ground we tread.

Moses

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 17:29:00 +0000

The story of Moses and Israel’s journey together can be found in the Bible’s books of Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Numbers. Many people are familiar with Israel’s Exodus from Egypt. Not as many are familiar with the fact that, according to the story, the people who experienced all those amazing acts of God in Egypt were not allowed into the Promised Land. this included regular, everyday Jewish folk, Levites in charge of keeping the Tabernacle operations, and even Moses himself.

We live in a time when the popular theology being communicated by some of the US’ most popular TV preachers doesn’t have much room for that part of the story. A teaching heard recently by one such preacher promised his audience that if they did the right thing, God would get them a job promotion that would shame their critics. He used the story of Esther to support the promise. Of course, people want to believe this. We want it to be that simple. But Pastor Jolly Ovaltine, in various interviews, has made it clear that he doesn’t feel that God has called him to deal with those discrepancies – he is called only to talk about the good, fluffy stuff. Good for him. Really good for him, since it sells millions of books and packs stadiums with folks who want it to be just that simple.

Good news for Jolly: there’s no money-back-guarantee for his books, and if things don’t work out the way he promised, it is surely due to someone’s lack of faith somewhere. Bad theology is never to blame for false hope.

Moses was, according to the author of Numbers, the most humble man on the planet. And then he blew his top (Numbers 20:1-13). he was probably over 100 years old. He had listened to complaints from Israelites for decades. They lamented once again, and Moses let them have a piece of his mind. In the process, however, he also disobeyed God, and attempted to play God during his tirade. This was enough to disqualify him from receiving the dream. Of course, this kind of behavior doesn’t just happen – there is backstory for sure, just as there is for us when we do similarly stupid things we regret. And, like Moses, we also realize after awhile that while God may forgive us for our poor attitude and/or behavior, the consequences still remain. Broken relationships are the usual toll. Some heal up pretty quickly, others never do. This is reality. Jolly Ovaltine’s theology doesn’t fit so well. It’s not always going to be a happy ending in this life. This, again, forces us to consider what we believe, what we pray for, why we continue to have faith. These are questions the Israelites struggled with throughout their history.

What do you think? Is God worth believing in? Is faith worth the effort if we don’t get the promotion, or the clean bill of health, or healthy children, or… What does God do in the midst of our struggle, pain, failure, etc.?

I believe God still enters into the human experience. I believe God still acts. I believe God still breaks in. I believe with Jesus’ brother James that prayer is powerful and effective. And I believe that failed dreams, dashed hopes, disappointment and struggle are all parts of a normal life that do not rob God of any of God’s “Godness”. So I look for God to meet me in the midst of struggle rather than seeing the struggle as a sign of the absence of God. I look to God for strength, healing, direction for myself and everybody else. This makes me a better person. It shifts my expectations. It gives me peace when I shouldn’t be feeling peace. It keeps God close instead of at arm’s length.

Joseph

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 22 Sep 2013 19:00:00 +0000

As so often in myth and legend, the hero can achieve enlightenment only by taking an arduous path through the shadow of death. – Karen Armstrong, In the Beginning

Quick review… Abraham sensed God calling him to leave his homeland to begin a new nation and, along with it, a new way of thinking and relating to God. For the most part, Abraham gave a solid “Okay” to God’s invitations to step out in new directions. One of those moments involved nearly sacrificing his only son, Isaac, which traumatized the kid for the rest of his life. Isaac became the father of Esau and Jacob, but he made no efforts to hide the fact that he loved his hirsute son more than the future namesake of the nation of Israel. Blind to the dynamics occurring before him, he mistakenly gave his blessing (read: estate) to his slightly younger son, Jacob,who deceived his dad to acquire a future much brighter than his brother deserved. Jacob, harboring massive sibling rivalry issues, perpetuated his problems into his own family, creating a dysfunction that would be too much for even Dr. Phil. He had two wives and twelve sons between them (and their maidservants), but he loved wife Rachel more than her sister Leah, and he loved Rachel’s boys more than all the rest. The most beloved son was number 11 in the line up. His name was Joseph. You can read his story in Genesis’ chapters 37-50. Grab a cup of coffee and take an hour to enjoy the story which led to a major Broadway hit, Joseph and the Amazing TechniColor Dreamcoat.

Joseph, from day one, was given the impression from his father that he was more special than his brothers. He even had a fancy, expensive robe to prove it. His ego was huge, which was evident in his approach to his brother on various occasions. His holier-than-thou attitude caught up with him, though, and through his brothers’ malicious acts winded up a slave in Egypt. He kept focused, however, and, through a crazy series of events, wound up being VP of Egypt! Sort of. Anyhoo, his riches to rags to riches story found him living pretty high on the hog (even though he was Jewish). He got married, and had two sons, whose names indicated that his misery was over and done with – he had really, finally let go of the pain of his brothers’ mistreatment.

Joseph was a survivor who, unlike Noah and Lot, used his experience to find some measure of healing… But it is never safe to assume that we have wholly transcended past pain and resentment. – Karen Armstrong, In the Beginning

All that joy and peace got challenged one day when his brothers came to Egypt for help during the famine. They, of course, did not recognize him. But for Joseph, everything came rushing back. And even though most tend to focus on some of his actions that gave the impression that he made amends and they all lived on as one big happy family, there are not-so-subtle words and actions that let us know Joseph hadn’t evolved as much as we would have hoped. Like father, like son.

He gave God full credit for the entire saga – not even giving his brothers the benefit of having power enough to even do evil to Joseph.

He used the “God’s will” card to excuse any of his own wrongdoing, too, so that he didn’t have to own any of his junk which certainly contributed to his perilous journey.

When Daddy Jacob was on his deathbed, the ten older brothers were terrified of what Joseph might do to them – does it sound like resolution happened?

After all of this, a strange twist comes at the end of the story of beginnings. The future King of Israel – centuries from the date of Jacob’s death – would not come from Joseph’s favored lineage, but from another, surprising candidate: Judah.

Judah lived up to his family heritage. He was not a good father, and was, indeed, a scoundrel. His son died, leaving his daughter-in-law, Tamar, without any children (and thus without hope in her day). According to custom, his brother was supposed to sire a child with her for his deceased brother. But he refused. Then he died. Judah’s remaining son was not allowed to marry Tamar for fear that he might die as well, so Tamar was left out in the cold, so to speak. Tamar was quite clever, however. She put on the clothes of a prostitute and placed herself in Judah’s path, who was happy to oblige her invitation. Unfortunately, he discovered too late that he left hi wallet at home, so he had to give her some other personal effects as collateral – a signet ring, a cord, and staff. Jerk.

Three months later, Tamar is discovered to be with child, so naturally Judah called for her execution – what a whore! But then Tamar produced the ring, cord and staff. Judah could no longer deny his indiscretions. She became Judah’s wife, and bore two sons. This episode in Judah’s life, compounded by his role in Joseph’s trauma, radically transformed him. The evidence of which came when he offered to give his life in exchange for Benjamin, to keep his father from experiencing the loss of a second son, which he knew all too well. He finally had compassion for his father who probably never returned it.

Judah had been able to accept the painful truth that had torn siblings apart since the time of Cain: that love is unfair. Only when we accept this and make peace with past pain and rejection can we move positively into the future as whole human beings. Instead of allowing his own tragedies to sour and fester, Judah had used them imaginatively to heal past wounds. His own suffering enabled him to enter the inner world of the father who had wronged him. Judah had also learned from his experience with Tamar that it is only when we admit that we have been wrong that we can take full control of our lives and stop the ongoing cycle of violence, deception, and reprisal that holds us in thrall. – Karen Armstrong, In the Beginning

From Judah’s lineage with Tamar would come Perez, from whose line would eventually bring King David, and many moons later, Jesus.

Genesis is a messy story of the beginnings of the people and faith of Israel. We are left to struggle with what we see about ourselves, and about God. But at least in Judah’s case, the struggle yields benefits that reach far beyond our normal scope. Sometimes it feels like we are struggling with God as an adversary. But trusting that God has our best interests in mind, it’s more like God is struggling with us toward the same goal – shouldering some of the strain even though it may feel like God is the source. Thanks, Anne Edmunds, for that interesting insight at our group last night.

So, how is your struggle going?

Jacob and Esau

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 15 Sep 2013 19:00:00 +0000

The sense of transcendence and of the sacred dimension of life… [is] linked to the integrity of a life that has come to terms with the past and with the demands of the intractable self. – Karen Armstrong, In the Beginning

Jacob’s life would make a great movie. Great movies are great because they connect with the human experience on some level that draws us in, shows something of ourselves to us, and leaves us having to make a decision to deal with what we’ve just experienced or continue hiding in a closet.

The Bible’s book of Genesis certainly provided ongoing fodder for discussion around the campfire for families for its original audience, and it still does. But the conversation takes place in formal papers and presentations and academic books as well. Jacob’s story is no exception.

The story begins in the 25th chapter of Genesis with a whopper of an allusion: Rebekah is pregnant not just with Jacob, but with Esau as well – twins – who struggled with each other in the womb, and even as they were given birth into the world. In the ancient world, twins were a symbol of the divided self. The rest of Jacob’s story is one episode after another of his struggle to heal the pain of his past as he did his best to forge a new reality.

Struggle he did. Overcome – not so much. In truth, Jacob lived up to his name, which can be translated “deceiver” much like that of the serpent in the second creation story. The person he deceived the most, however, was himself.

Jacob felt the pain of sibling rivalry caused, in great part, by his father’s favoritism toward Esau, his hairy twin brother. Isaac, their father, made it clear who he loved more, and it was not lost on Jacob. Jacob deceived his brother, and his father, in order to gain the blessing he longed for. He technically got what he wanted – he was going to get the estate of his wealthy father. But his life shows that he went to his grave with plenty of wealth, but a lack of blessing. Unfortunately, because he didn’t really come to grips with his literal or metaphorical Esau, he – like us – perpetuated the curse of sibling rivalry to his wives and his many children. It’s really a gut-wrenching story of painful struggle, hitting very close to home for those who read it thoughtfully.

The patriarchs had to learn that no one could move forward creatively into the future without having made peace with the past. – Karen Armstrong, In the Beginning

All Jacob wanted was the blessing. Blessing is more than the simple legal transaction he got from his father. Blessing is the dream every person is born to pursue. Blessing is that sense of wholeness, peace, and integration that gives life its depth and beauty. It really doesn’t have much to do with money or status, either. Extreme poverty sucks, to be sure, but I know people stuck in extreme poverty a world away who are living in the blessed life Jacob sought but never attained.

How do we know if we are being plagued by our past? How do we know if we haven’t quite received the blessing we long for? Feel free to add to this list:

If you have recurring problems on the same theme, you’ve probably not fully addressed your Esau. If you haven’t dealt with your past, be sure of this: that it is dealing with you!
If you resemble people or behaviors from your past you once swore you never would, say hello, again, to Esau.
If you know you’re still running from your pain, thinking to yourself that avoiding it will somehow make it all better, Esau is on your shoulder.
If you’re not in touch with your inner self, don’t worry, our body sometimes reminds us that we have unfinished business. Stress manifests itself in myriad ways, from tight muscles to indigestion to hypertension to much worse. This doesn’t mean that if you have heartburn, you also have Esau – blame the chili peppers! – but we would be wise to wonder if our physical ailments might just be the outworking of our inner conflicts.
If the people we are closest to are letting us know there are serious problems, there just might be. Don’t be too quick to kill the messenger if the messenger lives with you.
What else?

Jacob had a moment of insight when he finally headed back home after two decades of camping out with his uncle, where he became extremely wealthy but simultaneously built a family who lived and breathed sibling rivalry’s torture. What started out as one guy’s problems was exponentially expanded. Denial would lead to more deception, and even death (read Dinah’s story). But he knew he had to deal with the physical Esau even if he hadn’t grasped the importance of wrestling with his inner Esau. He made amends, the boys lived in the same basic region for awhile. But ultimately, Esau would find himself leaving the place of blessing – Jacob won?

The good news is that we can be reconciled with our past should we recognize an important reality. The blessing we long for doesn’t come through escapism or denial or simply time that pretends to heal all wounds. Blessing is the fruit of struggle. Struggling with our Esau, coming home to our problems, facing our pain with the intent of healing – that’s the trail that leads to blessing.

How can you help me build on this list of methods to get us on the road to healing:

Ask the tough questions about how you interpreted and integrated your upbringing. Note: identifying is not the same as blaming. Even if you had the worst parents in the world, it’s on you to wrestle with its implications. Read How We Love (Yerkovich) if you need help seeing yourself.
Ask people you trust who are close to you to help identify how your Esau manifests itself in you: anger issues, avoidance, pleaser tendencies, etc., point to stuff beneath the surface.
Plan on a slow pace. You might become aware that you have a mountain of stuff to address. How do you ascend a mountain? One step at a time. But you can get there. And steps forward give a lot better view than where you are right now.
Expect sweat. I played a lot of sports as a kid. Soccer, football, baseball, basketball, track and field, and, for one season, wrestling. Wrestling, by far, was the most physically taxing sport I ever attempted. Imagine flexing every muscle in your body for several minutes straight, all while trying to pin your opponent while he is doing the same. Jacob’s name changed and an entire people group became identified by the name Israel – struggles with God. The struggle is what leads to the blessing. Completely counter-intuitive, yet correct. Expect sweat.
What else?

May you recognize that we all have our Esau’s to deal with. May you stop running away, pretending like denial works. May you come home, though the journey be filled with struggle, and may you find the blessing, the peace, the wholeness and healing you’ve been looking for.

Abraham: Lech lekha

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 08 Sep 2013 19:00:00 +0000

The search for blessing, the essence of life itself, involved an encounter with death and the death of meaning. – Karen Armstrong, In the Beginning: A New Interpretation

Three of the world’s largest monotheistic religions call Abraham the Father of their faith. Muslims, Jews, and Christians all lay claim to him. He is often revered as a pillar of faith – which he no doubt was – and also lifted up as an example to follow, which maybe he shouldn’t be (except that faith part). We live in a time where politicians call for us to return to family values that faith calls for. Wonderful! Just don’t look for any help from any of the characters in the Bible’s first book, Genesis!

The greatest case supporting this notion must be account of Abraham nearly sacrificing his son, Isaac, to God at God’s request. The story is ugly on so many levels. God asks Abraham to do something horrific. Abraham agrees. Isaac is bound, and experiences the person he most admires nearly commit murder against him. Note: Isaac doesn’t go home with Abraham when Abraham leaves. Would you be able to sleep now that you’ve seen this side of your daddy? A life may have been spared, but a relationship was ruined, and the emotional stability of a young man was crushed for the rest of his life. So how do we reconcile this?

We get some solace when we appreciate the context:

Child sacrifice was common in Abraham’s day, making it unfortunate but understandable for Abraham to comply.
We get a hint in the text to give us some peace that God did this to test Abraham, which gets our hopes up for a good outcome.
Similarly, Abraham is portrayed as being sure that God will provide the sacrifice, and that he won’t really have to kill Isaac.
When we realize that this was written around 600 BCE, we think differently, too, as the story acts as a reminder that Israel was not to sacrifice humans in worship of God, in contrast to other religions. This story settles that from the very beginning.

So, with some of the horror of the story addressed, the real point here and now is, how do we apply Abraham’s life story to our lives?

Abraham heard God’s call to lech lekha, get up and go, and Abraham did. He left his family and friends and familiarity in response to God’s call. This was no easy step. It was a leap of faith, which, by definition, requires leaping! Sketchy details about the future – just go! I assume that God is always calling us to get up and go regarding any number of things in our lives. What is God calling you to leave behind, even though you may not know exactly what the future holds?

As soon as Abraham arrived in Canaan, he had to flee to Egypt to survive the famine. This had to be experienced as failure. Yet he remained resolute (with a lot of cheerleading from God). How do you process what feels like failure as you attempt to walk in faith? What can you learn from Abraham’s dogged determination to stay the course of faith?

When God showed up to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham plead for leniency and grace. Where is Sodom today? Do we care enough to plead her case today, or are we quick to take a wrathful stance?

Abraham will never be nominated for Father of the Year. Before he nearly killed Isaac, he sent his first son, Ishmael, and his mother, Hagar, into the desert with a bottle of water and some saltines for survival. Hats off to Ishmael for processing that neglect better than his half-brother did. How are you doing with the people you’ve been entrusted?

Who is your Isaac? Without getting caught up in the gore of the story, we see a guy who was willing to place in God’s hands what he most cared about, and what most represented his future. In this act he faced down death itself, and trashed his ambition in favor or what God wanted to do with him. What is your Isaac? Your money? Your future? Your time? Your loves?

Lose your life for my sake and you will find it. – Jesus

Reminders from the live teach:

Appreciating Abraham…

ü He left everything for God’s new thing:

Following God is not predictable; it’s more likely to be challenging and bumpy.

ü Child sacrifice was common in his culture:

What culturally normative things do we do that one day will indict us?

ü He believed God would provide the sacrifice:

Leaps of faith require leaping.

ü God forbade human sacrifice:

We are not to worship how/what others do.

Applying Abraham today…

God continually calls everybody to get up and go (lech lekha):

ü What are we called to leave behind?

ü How do we process midstream “failure”?

ü Where is Sodom? How are we pleading her case?

ü How are we treating those entrusted to our care?

ü What/who is our Isaac?

Noah

noreply@blogger.com (Peter R Shaw) — Sun, 01 Sep 2013 19:00:00 +0000

Reverend Doctor Heretic. Last week I made a straightforward statement that I do not believe that either of the creation stories found in Genesis are historically factual. Neither do I believe that the story of Adam and Eve is historically factual. Yet at the same time I believe the stories are true – true in the sense that the original author was communicating great truth to the world in his rendering of these two stories. A natural response to this assertion from more conservative, fundamentalist-oriented friends runs along this line: Pete doesn’t believe the Bible, so we can’t believe him. Is he even Christian? A similar response comes from skeptics of the faith: I knew the Bible was just a bunch of unreliable stories…

So, let me be clear. I am a huge fan of the Bible, and believe it to be an incredible resource for understanding God, ourselves, life, the world – everything. The approach I take is simply one that is highly – and appropriately – contextualized. Some passages are meant to be read as poetry. Solomon, for instance, compared his beloved’s breasts to two fawns of a gazelle. Was he saying she had a hairy chest? TMI! We know better than to read poetry literally. The Bible is full of different genres that need to be appreciated for what they are. The book of Genesis starts with more theologically-toned passages and then moves toward more historical (yet still theological), which has to be recognized. The author’s agenda needs to be respected. The culture, the time in history, and all that influences the setting of the text needs to be examined to get the most from it. God works powerfully in this process. I believe the primary reason this truly ancient approach is so startling is not because it is new or wrong, but because it challenges the very powerful, 118 year old/young fundamentalist position that the Bible is inerrant, which itself was a reaction to post-Enlightenment fear of higher criticism perceived threat to the faith. I think we need more eyes on the text, from various fields of study, so that we might get the most complete view of what we study.

With all that said, I must now confess that while there apparently was a catastrophic flood that took place in the Ancient Near East somewhere around 2900 B.C.E., I do not think it covered the entire world – only the world they could see. I also do not believe that an ark was built to hold all of the animals of the world. I also am not certain of the historical merit of an actual person named Noah who experienced what the story communicates. And yet I believe the story is true. Not in a Greek, historical/factual sort of way, but in a Hebrew, Eastern religion kind of way. A way that provides room for Noah to be referenced by prophets, Jesus, Apostles and the writer of Hebrews without regard to historical credibility.

Competing Stories in Antiquity. If you have done much research at all, or had conversations with non-fundamentalists about Noah’s ark, you are certainly aware that the Bible’s flood story does not stand alone. Many cultures have similar stories, the most famous of which is the Epic of Gilgamesh with Utnapishtim as the human deemed worthy of salvation. Google it and read it for yourself. The Gilgamesh Epic was written far earlier than our Hebrew story of Noah and the Ark. The differences are significant. In Gilgamesh, human beings are carrying on normally – not doing anything terrible, just doing life. The gods, however, are annoyed with them because they are apparently noisy, and this was long before noise-cancelling headphones were created. What to do? Flood the earth and kill off noisy human beings, start over, and see if less noisy creatures can be created so the gods can enjoy naps whenever convenient… The gods in Gilgamesh are petty, immature, displaying bold adolescent behavior deserving of a “time out” at least. Maybe even no cell phone for a week or two for such behavior! The Hebrew writer, wanting to communicate a different understanding of God that they had experienced for a thousand years at that time, paints a very different picture. God is holy and good, but the humanity God created has gone off the deep end. So much so that the only reasonable thing to do is to start over. In the Bible’s version, humanity is the reason for the flood – not God – and God is seen as more or less innocent. There aren’t many petty gods, there is one good, just, holy God. Human beings aren’t innocent as in Gilgamesh – they have squandered their God-likeness for an unrecognizable alternative and deserve whatever they have coming. This theme is consistent in the Bible: obey God whose ways are good and things will go better for you. Go against that good way – disobey God – and it will catch up with you and bite down hard.

Genesis as Israel’s Story. Peter Enns and Jared Byas, authors of Genesis for Normal People, note that when we read this book, we need to keep in mind that its writers had an overarching theme in mind: to tell the story of Israel. The themes we see in Genesis represent Israel’s ongoing struggle with God – living up to their namesake throughout her history. Noah’s story is a dramatic story of God hitting the reset button. At the beginning of creation, there was chaos – darkness over the face of the deep with God hovering over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:2). What are we left with after the flood? Water covering everything, and God starting over. This cycle of Israel starting fresh, flourishing, then failing, then paying the price, then being redeemed by God as they endured consequences, then starting fresh once more happened over and over and over and over. And it still does with us.

God’s Wrath: Windows in Heaven? Our ancestors in the faith approached God continually, wanting to learn more and more as time passed. They expanded their understanding of God as they mulled over the stories of their heritage, sometimes agreeing together that they didn’t have a clue what a passage was about, at which point they tabled it. Sometimes they changed their position on critical issues – going against earlier interpretations of scripture – after sufficient time had passed to give the perspective they could not have had earlier. This is reflected in black and white as anyone can identify changes in “God’s Law” over time concerning women, children, and foreigners. As time passed, the law became more compassionate toward these vulnerable groups. This also happened in a massive way in the first century after the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman Empire. The Jewish faith required sacrifice to atone for sin. With the temple gone, sacrifice was no longer viable. After many games of chess, the ancient rabbis and theologians concluded that redemption’s cleansing could come from devotion to the scriptures. This was congruent with past theologically themes, but certainly was an indicator that a new form of Judaism was emerging from the old. We have the responsibility to be in dialogue with the writers of our ancient text, bringing all we know about the cosmos into play. The ancient authors would gladly have corrected themselves if they knew better. For example, the ancient world had a primitive view of weather. When a thunderstorm, tsunami, tornado, earthquake, lightning happened, etc., it was an act of the gods. I don’t believe that, do you? I think natural weather phenomena happen due to all sorts of natural variables, without manipulation or intervention from any god. So, whatever flood may have occurred, while the ancient, primitive mindset would naturally attribute it to the work of the gods, I don’t, and I don’t think they would, either, if they had all the information we have to work with. Rather than God, I think we need to take our share of responsibility about our impact on weather in light of increasingly undeniable global warming issues. By extension, I don’t attribute cancer and other diseases, traffic accidents, mental and emotional disorders, physical abnormalities, job loss, etc. to “God wanting to teach me a lesson.” I think that is a position of antiquity reaffirmed by some of Calvin’s powerful theological work hundreds of years ago given new life by fundamentalists over the last 200 years. Long sentence there to simply say I think traditional thinking has maligned God and hurt our relationship with God who is portrayed as blessing us one moment while afflicting us this next.

Campfire Talks: Righteousness Quotient. What do we do with this text now? How do we apply it to our lives? As I just noted, I don’t think we’re headed toward another flood of God’s wrath. But we may be heading toward multiple disasters of our own choosing if we don’t pay attention. Karen Armstrong, in her book In the Beginning: A New Interpretation, focuses her attention on Noah as the only one righteous enough to be saved from the flood. She wonders by what measure Noah was found to be righteous. When Noah hears of the impending doom, we do not see a righteousness witnessed in the likes of Abraham, who bartered and begged for a more lenient approach toward Sodom and Gomorrah. While there have been unsubstantiated legends told of Noah’s roaming around decrying the end of the world, the scripture itself gives no such testimony (2 Peter 2:5 says that Noah warned his culture, but that may have simply been his act of building a huge boat in the middle of a desert). Noah is held in high regard in the Bible, but I join Armstrong in her struggle at Noah’s lack of remorse before the flood came, and no apparent mourning afterward. The righteousness that makes sense to me is one that looks more like Jesus who wept at the brutality of death in its myriad forms. As a person sitting around the campfire, I think I want to ask how comfortable we are with the deadly prognosis so many in our world have been given simply by the zip code into which they were born. Is my heart broken (like God’s) at the site of extreme poverty, knowing that our beloved, Calvinism-fed Capitalism perpetuates it? Am I wrenched by the painful curse of domestic violence that carries on for generations unless someone does something about it? How wrecked am I that innocent men, women, and children died a terrible death from chemical weapons in Syria? Is my lip service response simply that we need to care for our own backyard before cleaning up someone else’s? That’s a nice deflection, since we really don’t do much to clean up our own backyard, and since we can handle both if we care enough. Do I realize that my disengagement from the world around me – looking primarily only after my own – is disengagement from God? Do I realize that when I say with my true, lived values, I am not interested in bringing redemption to the world around me, I am really saying I am not interested in God? What questions about life and faith does the Noah story stir in you?