Ritual and roots bring relationship off the edge of frivolity. Ritual and roots are relationships with trajectory. They give substance and meaning to our relationship; they are the heart and soul of claiming our true identity as a beloved people of God through Jesus.

I picked up this book in hopes for a simple guidance from a trusted source. Like he mentioned of students in a letter to Karl Barth, Bonhoeffer said, “The kind of questions serious young theologians put to us are: ‘How can I learn to pray? How can I learn to read the Bible? Either we can help them do this, or we can’t help them at all.’”

I felt like a young student of Bonhoeffer as I read along, eating up his simple answers.

The little section I resonated most with was written like a short catechism in question and answer.

1.) Why do I meditate?

Because I am a Christian.

Because I am a preacher of the word. I cannot expound on the Scripture for others if I do not let it speak daily to me.

Because I need a firm discipline of prayer. … Prayer is not a free will offering to God; it is an obligatory service, something which he requires. We are not free to engage in it according to our own wishes.

Because I need help against the ungodly haste and unrest which threaten my work as a pastor.

2.) What do I want from my meditation?

We want to meet Christ in his word. We turn to the text in our desire to hear what it is that he wants to give us and teach us today through his Word. Meet him first in the day before you meet other people. Every morning lay upon him everything that preoccupies you and weighs you down, before new burdens are laid upon you. Ask yourself what still hinders you from following him completely and let him take charge of that, before new hindrances are placed in your way.

His fellowship, his help, his guidance for the day through his Word – that is the goal.

3.) How shall I meditate?

[Meditating on Scripture is preferable to free meditation.]

Just as you would not dissect and analyze the word spoken by someone dear to you, but would accept it just as it was said, so you should accept the Word of Scripture and ponder it in your heart as Mary did. Do not look for new thoughts and interconnections in the text as you would a sermon! Do not ask how you should tell it to others, but ask what it tells you! Then ponder this word in your heart at length, until it is entirely within you and has taken possession of you.

This is not the place for the Greek New Testament, but for the familiar Luther text.

We begin our meditations with the prayer for the Holy Spirit, asking for proper concentration for ourselves and for all who we know are also meditating. Then we turn to the text. At the close of the meditation we want to be truly able to say a prayer of thanksgiving from a heart that is full.

What text, and how long should the text be? 10-15 verses and meditate on it over a period of a week. Whatever you do, don’t take the sermon text for the next Sunday!

The time of meditation is in the morning before the beginning of our work. A half hour is the minimum amount of time which a proper meditation requires. It is, of course, necessary that there be complete quiet, and that we intend to allow nothing to divert us, no matter how important it may seem.

4.) How do we overcome the problems of meditation?

The first rule is to not become impatient with yourself. Just sit down again every day and wait very patiently. Incorporate thoughts that come at you into your prayer later on; connect them to the text.

Read the same passage again and again, write down your thoughts, learn the verse by heart. …recognize the danger of fleeing once again from meditation to Bible scholarship and the like. Behind all our uncertainties and needs stands our great need to pray…

On Morning Prayer in Community

Before our daily bread should be the daily Word.

…an hour of quiet time and common devotion.

Although we are often not “in the mood” for it, such devotion is an obligatory serve to the One who desires our praises and prayers, and who will not otherwise bless our day but through His Word and our prayers.

…Grounded in the Scripture, we learn to speak to God in the language which God has spoken to us. We learn to speak to God as the child speaks to its mother.

…Above all, we should read the Psalms together. Then a not-too-modest portion of the Old and New Testaments should be read in series. The songs of the Church will place us in the great congregation of the present and the past. The prayer which one person speaks for the whole fellowship will bring the common concerns of the little congregation before God.

[Quotes, some modified and shortened, but meaning retained, are taken from Meditating on the Word by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 29-41]

Often, competence sounds like the master of many elements and the ability to merge them together into one practice (like a doctor’s ability to know many cures). In spiritual theology, the adverse seems true: competence in spirituality is the mastery of one necessary thing (Luke 10) in order to enter into the many elements of life with the single necessity at the front of one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Simply put: competence in the spiritual life is the capacity for a free flowing love of God expressed in prayer and work (or interaction with others and creation). Competence comes as being set free from the rule of anxiety, judgement of others, empty speaking, and other expressions of dead-living.

How do you nurture competence in spiritual theology?

Nurturing true life will always start with Jesus. Our first step in nurturing is to know Jesus; to live, we pursue the person of Jesus as the Gospels introduce him.

The slow introduction to Jesus will find us receiving an invitation to, “Come and follow.” Through obedience (the life lived by grace through faith in the person and works of Jesus), we will find ourselves entering the practice of willing (or seeing) only one necessary thing, which is the true reign and presence of our loving Father who intends to make all things new.

This awakening, which is nurtured only when we’re walking with Jesus and in the likeness of Jesus, will reveal to us our degree of “competence,” or rather, the degree that we truly are awake to the presence and reign of God in the present moment.

What is it about David Platt’s writing that allows him to turn, the “Pick up your cross and follow me,” of Jesus’ teachings into a national best seller? (I’m suspicious…) Or, to play the cynic, does he lure people in with an intriguing, difficult message and then deflate the call to follow, or completely toss the message aside?

Kudos to David Platt for sparking a healthy critique of the church; moderate examination is always a sign of health. One thing Follow Me strongly accomplished was encouraging the question, “Is my experience of Christianity the full picture of what Jesus brings?”

Follow Me amplifies this healthy critique from Platt’s earlier nationally resonant book, Radical. In Follow Me, Platt writes to reveal the who and how of “radical” Christian living.

In my reading, I discovered three healthy things and four unhealthy things from Follow Me.

• Follow Me brings the question: “Isn’t there supposed to be more than reading my Bible, going to church, and talking to people about Jesus? Jesus seems to ask more…”

• Platt spells out the reality and origin of God causing new life to take root within us (p. 18); he illustrates that people who come face to face with Jesus do experience change and their lives are called into something different from their surroundings. This is the sanctifying work of grace.

• Follow Me spells out the necessity of repentance and grace in our world (p.20), even though I think he missed the mark that God isn’t out to do something impressive or worthy of glory, but rather that it’s simply God’s nature to dive head-first into the brokenness (theology of Glory vs theology of the cross).

Side Note:

On the point of grace, when writing about the end-goal of grace, I believe Platt misses that grace isn’t about getting us to heaven, but about God bringing his justice into our world to make all things new, including you and me.

“If you and I know and believe that Jesus came to save us from hell for heaven, then we have no choice but to spend our lives on earth making that salvation known.” (p.87)

[There's no doubt that all who rely by grace through faith on the person of Jesus will forever and for always be in the loving presence of God; but there's also no biblical doubt that the goal isn't to "get out" of earth but rather enflesh God's work of justice and mercy as we work and pray, "Your kingdom come…"]

Here are the elements of Follow Me that I felt missed the mark:

• For a book about following Jesus, there was very little Jesus of the Gospels; Platt provided little Gospel narrative clarity on who you were going to follow, and what it looks like from a Gospels-perspective to follow. Readers were inundated with the necessity substitutionary atonement theory and the old evangelical adage: “Because Jesus did that, you should just follow, just follow.”

• Follow Me had no connection of Jesus or discipleship to the present reign of God (which Mark’s Gospel explicitly states is “the Gospel”, Mark 1:15). As I wrote above, Platt’s starting point is a handful of preconceived doctrines (albeit biblical) rather than a biblical, Gospel narrative. He uses doctrinal bullet points rather than the story of Jesus to try to speak about discipleship.

• There was very little direction for ordinary discipleship; Platt’s litter of extraordinary missionary stories was deflating and felt grandiose (almost boastful). Plus, such adventures are markedly different than incarnational moving in with a people to share in the Gospel as a way of life, rather than the Gospel as a package to deliver.

• Platt concludes Follow Me by inviting the reader into a very personal, though personally shared with others who are also on their personal faith journey, “following” program of: reading your Bible more, going to church more, and evangelizing more, with an ending caveat to encourage others to be disciples (of which Platt focuses little attention in his book).

Platt’s conclusion, by my deduction, is that when people ask the above, “Isn’t there more…” he says, “No, not really.”

But can you blame him? He’s excelled at drawing people into a large megachurch in Alabama; what Platt does well is getting people to do the normal church thing. Why would he want to critique that legacy and impressive success (by some standards) and say, “I think we’ve missed something…” There’s a lot of risk for him in that.

My final thoughts:

Platt does provide the gift of a great question in Follow Me as he invites people to entertain the thought that discipleship is missing in a lot of the church today. But, I don’t feel Platt’s answers take us in the best direction; while his examples are helpful and sentimental at times, I don’t think we can provide a healthy path of Christian discipleship if our noses aren’t buried in the Gospel stories and from that experience asking with people in our community, “How do we live this life that Jesus came to bring?” …all this of course starts with the gracious embrace of God, which is what Platt tried hard to underscore.

My feel is that this book only makes sense for a comfortable audience who knows little of brokenness on the systemic level and who is numb to identity behind the national capital system and this is sent searching for a greater brand for fulfillment. You don’t read this book in an inner city church for a church study, you’d be ashamed to bring it up, mostly because Platt all but ignores the “good news” of God’s gracious justice which intends to restore all things.

Finally, discipleship and dying to self from Platt felt like a self makeover and augmentation as Platt writes not about the loss of self but the enlargement of self as self discovers through Platt’s book how to become part of the greatness and find fulfillment in the completion of self.

So, where would I point you if I wouldn’t recommend Follow Me?

• Read the Four Gospels
• Read Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship (I’m baffled at how Platt wrote a modern book on discipleship with only one mention to Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship)
• Read Dallas Willard’s The Great Omission or The Divine Conspiracy.
• Read this hidden treasure with the same title as Platt’s book: Follow Me by Luke Kammrath.

The black and white film
projected
on the portable building’s
white tin wall
as we swam in
the delightful sea of diversity.
Languages waved;
my soul heard
that silence is best
with a stranger’s smile.

Carmella, Arturo’s mom, was at the school when Jude and I arrived; she was holding Selena and later asked me to keep an eye on Arturo during the trip. I say I will. She walks over to Arturo and he gives his mother and baby sister a kiss.

The bus ride:
Jude was nervous and teared up when I didn’t get on the bus with him right away; he had his heart set on us riding together. His emotion is free flowing, and that’s a gift, though I hope it doesn’t cause him pain later.

Jude and I eventually sit together and smile at one another as I hold his hand.

The zoo is packed with preschool students and families. Our group, led by Jude’s teachers Karen, Julie, and Debbie, sticks close together as we adventure toward “Africa.” We had our hearts set on the lions who were sleeping on rocks when we got there. As they say, the journey is made by walking.

Arturo enjoyed climbing on top of things and saying, “Uude, come here! A picture,” as I got my phone ready to snap. The peace sign is a favorite of Arturo’s.

I ended up as the pack leader, occasionally talking with Essence’s mother who pushed Essence in a stroller and Leo’s mother who pushed him in a stroller too. Essence and Leo (pronounced “Ley-Oh”) are the ones slated to inherit the earth in Jude’s class.

Essence is a beautiful, smiley African American girl who loves it when her class friends come make her smile (a favorite activity of Jude). Essence can walk, sort of, but her little walk, though confident, is unstable; she nonchalantly misses chairs and plops on the ground with the quick, recoiled determination to make that chair work for her.

Leo is a young Latino boy whom Jude has befriended since the start of the school year. Leo smiles a beautiful smile and warms our hearts when he talks with two sticks he holds in his hands; he sings that way too. He moves his sticks around and waves them and the people who know him know exactly what he means. I just marvel and smile.

We traveled a fast pace to and from Africa; the little legs of our troop were too excited with each new animal to notice how tired they were until they relaxed on the bus later.

Lunch time was a big favorite for the kids. I helped open bags of carrots and milk cartons. When the kids started letting plastic bags float in the wind, I ran to catch them. They discovered this could make a fun game; I could tell that in their giggles, yet I was spared the game by God’s grace; the kids just stopped letting their bags float away.

One mother and father noticed I didn’t bring a lunch. Knowing little English, she motioned to me when I wandered close their way. She pointed at a bread sack and said, “You?”

“Me?” I asked.

She pointed the bag’s opening my way and I reached in, not really sure what I was going to pull out, but soon discovering there were a bunch of sandwiches in there wrapped in napkins. They were stacked back in the bag like bread you buy from the store.

“Thanks!” I said with a smile as she opened a cooler with Orange Crush. I nodded at her husband to say thanks to him too.

This was my first sandwich with ham, jalapeño, avocado, and tomato, plus a white substance that I couldn’t tell what it was; it was round like a piece of provolone cheese but crumbly like feta. I had never had it before. The jalapeños were a hidden surprise in the sandwich that helped me appreciate the gift of the Orange Crush.

We wandered to the busses after a little more exploring after lunch. The kids were getting tired and the teachers were feeling the kid’s lowered energy. I was glad my only charge was to watch after Jude and Arturo (a request I made of Karen on Carmella’s hinted request that morning).

The kids talked about wishing they’d seen an armadillo at the zoo as we drove home. Giraffes and the hippo were nice though too.

Why wouldn’t I want my family to be in a school where you can see resurrection happen every day? Resurrection life truly comes as a constant surprise, an unexpected gift, like springtime leaves that come from nowhere.

…

*Catching Fire, Becoming Flame* is a helpful, accessible book that addresses the question of how to intentionally lay down your life for spiritual renovation. His chapters are short, the end of chapter questions go right to the heart.

The “problem” Haase address is the lack of awareness of how to engage life with God. Often we hear about forgiveness and the possibility of life with God, but we’re often left wondering how to step into it. Haase’s book is a collection of steps that one could take to practice paying attention to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit does renovation work on our souls (in the Spirit’s own good time).

The book progresses in an increasing path of attentiveness and intentionality. It starts with a basic invitation into life with God – the kind of life you work to pay attention to in order to pour into the relationship. Toward the end, the practices and questions Haase writes are along the level of a very deep relationship. I compare this to how a couple who has been married for 30 years might talk and share life as compared to kids on their third date.

The most impactful phrase I felt Haase offered was, “Without a sense of mission, godly enthusiasm fizzles into bogus piety.” (p.7) The goal, I appreciated, is to get caught up in life with God through the imitation of Christ. Instead of a “make me feel excited about my personal relationship with Jesus,” Haase directs the soul toward mission, toward being “little Christ’s” for the world around us – always assured of God’s presence and love.

*Catching Fire, Becoming Flame,* is an excellent book for small groups, spiritual friendships, and even personal prayer and journaling. Haase provides a lot to think about and appreciate. It’s also the kind of book you don’t pick up and anticipate putting fully into practice all at once; it’s more of a handbook of available ideas to enter into when needed and desired.

The sensation I began to feel was the loss of a mentor, even though he and I never had a conversation. I do remember walking beside him and saying, “Hello,” two years ago at the first “Aprentis” event in Wichita; we were waiting in the Hyatt lobby to travel to Friends University. We said a cordial, warm hello in passing with a smile. Later I held the door for him at the top of the Friends University chapel and main building staircase. We said hello again. …that was the closest I got to the man.

[That Renovare, Aprentis event in Wichita was deeply formative for me. I still carry the Benedictine short breviary I discovered there on occasion and think of Friends University and smile.]

It was Dallas’ books that have left the most riveting impact. I remember the stark emotion and revelation that swept over me when I read The Great Omission in Holdrege, NE. I remember the late afternoon light when I would often finish the last minutes of the day with a chapter. I was swept into the meaning, the implications. “Good grief,” I would pause, “We don’t know Jesus or ‘the gospel.’”

Dallas’ words have contained for me a balance of wisdom, spiritual renovation, and awareness of the ordinary. It was from him (and Eugene Peterson) that I learned the grace of “normal life,” that folks are meant to imitate Jesus in the here and now situations they find themselves in.

I also remember from him the role of the Gospels – that you can’t know freedom if you don’t know Jesus and you can’t know Jesus if you don’t know the Gospels.

And of course, the role of the Spiritual Disciplines in the formative work of the soul – not as earning formation, but elements for placing oneself in the arms of God’s Holy Spirit for renovation.

I brought my highlighted copy of The Great Omission home tonight. I hope to read my old highlights and revisit the grace Dallas has been for me. I also hope to pause in a vigil of sorts, thanking God for Dallas’ work for me and for the Church and world. I have been blessed to see many people resonate with Dallas’ works like I have; meeting or hearing about such folks always brings the kind of smile that comes when you meet someone with a common affinity.

The last thought that sweeps over me tonight is remembering a thought that came over me not too long ago, a thought that asked, “What will it be like to lose a guy like Eugene Peterson or Dallas Willard to age or illness?” I was bracing myself then for wondering who I would trust theologically next. Both of these guys have left their mark on my soul, by God’s grace, and I will miss Dallas – and the anticipation of a new work or word from him.

I believe much of our culture (especially the western religion which cannot be labeled as “Christianity” due to lack of association) believes that the more impressive an item must be, the more life it must contain. I believe wisdom is the opposite of this: the more life something contains ought to reshape and redefine what we find impressive.

The big, numinous, powerful, and attractional are impressive in our culture; we often associate these things with vitality. We pursue these abstractions in our religious salesmanship.

Wisdom, however, is more frequently discovered in their antonyms. Wisdom is found like a pearl in a large field, happened upon like a mustard seed, and seen within the face of the vulnerable.

In light of this, I also believe that there are fewer than we imagined among us who have met Christians who pursue Jesus and wisdom. Some among us are blessed to have met such folks; when asked to describe these individuals, the Beatitudes feel to be about the only helpful descriptors. …either that these folks are living icons of the Beatitudes and the Great Sermon or that they are visibly seen as practicing the way of life (wisdom) found within.

It is the likeness of these kinds of folks that we ought to pursue. Doing so will usher in an era of Christian growth, rather than numerical expansion of the western religion. Doing so will find us walking in wisdom and life rather than constantly discovering our feet mired in the political clout and fight of attracting and selling a project of western religion imperialism (a religion that carries the name “Jesus” but not the biblical person found in the four Gospels).