lord's prayer...redux

hey...over the next little while i am going to be posting alternate versions to the lord's prayer as written by members of the formation class that i [and several others] teach.

we are just waiting to collect a few more and then we will start publishing them on this page for review.

stay tuned.

silas

this is the reason why i haven't been posting lately.

his name is silas james robertson & he was born at 244am on wed nov 14th.

melissa & i are thrilled (and exhausted) and i will get back to posting soon.

thanks for the outpouring of well-wishes from so many people...that means a lot to us!

can't wait to intruduce him to all of you

later....jamie

eternal father, wonderful counselor, designated driver??

so, the images used to express god have been too numerous to count throughout the centuries. some of them are beautiful and some are disturbing, each one of them served a purpose. some were designed to bring people into submission (frequently to human institutions) while others were used to set people free from fear and let them know something more intimate about the creator of the universe (another one of god's monikers). even the term 'god' is not a name as much as a title or position.

however, as we explored the ideas we have of god in our bible study the other night an interesting point came up.

we were talking about whether or not a christian can attend a bush party (this was our youth study) and many people talked about not being interested in drinking and others stated that they thought it was important to go as a dd (designated driver) in order to make sure that people would get home okay.

then we started talking about whether or not driving people home gave implicit approval of destructive actions. most agreed that is was important to keep people safe and let them know that you are there for them even if what they are doing is not in line with your own stance.

thus was born the idea that god needs to be viewed more as a 'dd' than as a punisher from the sky.

it is not that this image is all-inclusive but it does communicate an idea that i think a lot of people need to embrace. the truly amazing thing about god is that, it appears, that god comes with us into all manners of inappropriate situations. god is there but that is not the same thing as saying that god approves. it appears that god really does love us and spend energy and time seeing to it that we are taken care of and safe as opposed to simply waiting to 'zap' us every time we step out of line.

what can we learn about god as we see him as caring and concerned for our well-being? after all, if jesus is god in the flesh then we must admit he spent a lot of time in unsavoury places and even referred to the 'sick needing a doctor' i think the clue to the answer lies in the fact that when jesus went to a bush party in his day he went to heal and celebrate and, above all other compulsions, was his desire to see people saved. if that is where we are at then i think there is no place on earth we can't go, in fact, there is no place on earth we shouldn't go!!

what is worship? pt. 2

the following is a quote from tricia who posted on the last topic:

"Worship does not require other people - it can be just me and God. But maybe because fellowship is so important for Christians I think we need to worship together - to learn and grow together. However we do that whether it is picking up garbage, singing in a church or gathering together to eat, if we do it in a way that honours God, I think we can call it worship."

i think she is right on with this one. it is an interesting idea that almost anything can be worship (obviously there are certain things that are in direct contradiction to god's will that we cannot call worship, e.g. you cannot harm a child with malice and call that worship). if the radical promise of god is true-that he is with us wherever we may be-then it follows that what we are doing at any given time can be worship. cleaning the bathroom can be worship, if done as service unto god; watching a movie can be, looking at art can be, eating dinner with a friend can be if it is done to honour god. maybe even getting a tattoo can be.....

that is pretty cool.

the idea here seems to be one of daily sacrament. the notion that life is, in essence, a holy thing and a vehicle that contains god's grace. like communion or baptism (or several others for our catholic brothers and sisters) god's grace can (and does) enter in throughout our daily activities. therefore, worship is what we do when we ask the question 'is this pleasing to god?'

if we asked that question throughout the day and then were honest about the answer and then acted accordingly can we imagine where our faith journey might take us? if life is holy and we spend so much of our lives doing the so-called 'little things' is it so hard to think that god, who desires to be with us and to invite us into his presence, would not also be with us during those times? is it so hard to think that god, who elevates the mundane into the divine every day, can elevate our chores into something more cosmic in scope? i think the follower can get excited to see that this thing called life is not just a series of random and meaningless activities strung together but a host of countless opportunities to offer worship to the creator of the universe. and, in so doing, make our lives more interesting and meaningful...following this One called jehovah is never boring.

after all, as aristotle put it: the brave man is brave in battle because he has spent his life being brave when no one was looking.

for our purposes can we not say that the follower is found faithful when the chips are down because he or she was faithful when no one (other than god) was watching what they were doing?

is that not what jesus tried to tell the religious people of his day when he said: "when you pray, do it when no one is looking so that your father in heaven, who sees what is done in secret, will truly reward you"? (matt 6.6)

thanks for the thoughts.

now, if you will excuse me i am off to do some chores....for god.

what is worship?

as a faith community this question should be at the front of our minds. i mean, if we don't know the answer to this question then what the heck are we doing?

tonight at immersion we are going to explore a different form of worship. that is nothing new for immersion but we are going to take worship in a different direction.

we are going to clean a park.

now, is this a form of worship or simply a good deed?

in immersion we have an ideology called edenism which means that we think things like recycling, pollution, mass energy consumption and the systematic destruction of non-renewable resources are spiritual issues. we desire to look at the world as the garden that god gave to us and treat it accordingly.

therefore, for us, cleaning a park is a spiritual expression of honour to god and an apology that our hedonism [yes, edenism is a play on this word] has taken this planet so far down such a destructive path. therefore, worship can be the act of picking up a piece of trash.

but only in the context of a service? i mean, if you or i pick up trash tomorrow when not in a defined worship time does it mean the same thing?

is worship something we consciosuly take time out of our day to do or can it be at all times? and if so, then what is so special about worship? if i can do it any time, in any way and at any place then what is the difference?

check out my vids section and the short film creation that is there (about 8 mins long). I am curious to see what your views on it are.

jesus: good miracles, but kind of a jerk

was jesus killed because of a personality conflict?

at the past immersion we watched a video from a man named john macarthur on the larry king show. here is that clip (i have also put the clip in the 'vids' section of this page) and you will need to spend 5 mins. to watch it for the rest of this to make sense (if you attended immersion you can skip to the next part)

so, after the clip (which has to deal with whether or not christians should support the war in iraq, but ends up being an interesting debate on the nature of salvation and other religions) we began discussing what we had just watched.

most people seemed to side with the more moderate methodist minister when he spoke about the need for christians to worry less about who is going to heaven and concentrate more on living like christ in the here and now. a point i support 100%.

however, what caused me to think as i reflect over a very good discussion was how many people were put off by macarthur's personality and had little to say good about the man. he was accused of arrogance, narrow-mindedness and acting like he had all the answers. now, i have been listening to this guy for a while and these seem like fairly accurate assessments (judgy, wudgy was a bear) but should this man's personality foibles dictate whether or not what he says is true?

the simple answer: no. but it is hard to get past the messenger to understand the message isn't it? but, as followers of jesus 2000 years later, should we not be concerned that we, too, can miss what god's message is because we don't like a messenger that he may have chosen?

is macarthur wrong, or is he simply a jerk?

was jesus insensitive to the culture of the day? was his message so exclusive and his personality so offensive that it got him killed? yes.

therein lies my concern. let us look deeper than the messenger and really hear the message. i am not saying that macarthur is correct in his ideology of what the gospel message truly says and i find myself more in the methodist mininster's camp, but i do not want to dismiss him out of hand because i don't like the guy. after all, if the story of jesus (and indeed the bible) has taught us anything, it is that god speaks through the strangest people.

and the ones who put jesus on a cross did so because they didn't like the message OR the messenger, so they killed him. theologically speaking i benefit from that, but i would not want that on my conscience!

other points to consider? fire away...just don't kill the messenger!

welcome

hokay,

so this is the new (and hopefully permanent) site. i have kept all the posts from the last one (although you will probably note that they now look like they were all posted on the same day) which is good except that i was unable to bring over all your comments- which were my favourite part of the last site- so please keep writing and interacting and i'll keep publishing them!

thanks, welcome & high-5!

bound by tradition

it seems that the general consensus from the last immersion goes as follows:

imagery that is inspiring and uplifting and causes one to look towards god is spiritual
imagery that is traditional or features hands bound together by rope (a beautiful last minute addition to the art show...thanks to the artist who chose to remain anonymous) tended to make the group think of religion.
so, there it is: freedom=spiritual; rules=religion. i am not surprised but i am saddened.
not because i--a not overly rule oriented individual--am a leader in the "soul-crushing-rule-factory" that is the religious institution but because i think the views held by most the other night are pretty accurate.
the thing about religion that sucks is that it does seem to communicate the idea that there is only one small path to god and it usually involves a laundry list of "don'ts" instead of a freeing experience of elation and inspiration that raises our eyes to the lord. what happened? when i read scripture that is not the story i read, yet it seems to be the thing we practice most in our worship times together.
we talk about the inclusive nature of god (well, some don't but we do), we talk about god's love of children and we smile at the pictures of jesus with the babies or holding kids on his lap. yet, heaven help the young person that tries to crawl on the communion table! just look at the eyes of the people when a baby is crying during the service. for some you will see compassion and understanding and even the occasional smile, but from my vantage point you see more scowls and silent nods to other grim faced keepers of the quiet as they politely fill the air with enough tension to make the words of the sermon stop abruptly only several feet out of the mouth that just uttered them and descend, unheard and unheeded, to the floor. where does the bible talk about worship needing to be quiet? i understand that worship needs to be reverent and reflective and that can't happen when a child is crying, but let us not forget that a crying child is evidence of a miracle in our midst...that can allow for reflection too.
and i know of what i speak because for the years that m and i couldn't get pregnant the sounds of children could be accutely painful. but not because of the child but only because the miracle had not happened to us yet. however, that pain still drove my eyes and heart to god...pain can be worshipful and some noise can funnel our thoughts to god.
which brings us back to the topic at hand: religious rules.
how did the message of jesus as found in john 3 become so rule-laden? how come the followers of the One who talks about being spirit-led, and then goes on to explain that the spirit is invisible but it's effects can be felt, have become so concerned with the visible? are not rules ways of letting us know who is in and who is out? whether or not we belong? but jesus tells us that we are to be driven by the wind. that we are to be born from above and those sorts of things are impossible to see or to contain with rules!
the christian faith is one of freedom but we have traded that in for a system of regulations...and then when the system becomes too cumbersome and too demanding and not freeing enough we search for the very things that the faith gives us in other places.
we look to angels as symbols of protection...all the time forgetting that the word 'angel' means 'messenger' and they do not do one thing without god telling them. so, people look to angels for spiritual guidance because they think that god is too grumpy or scary not realizing that those angels are acting on god's will.
we look to dreamcatchers to remind us of our need to care for the world, the planet, animals , and all creation...all the while forgetting that all things were made by and through christ and a large part of the christian tradition deals with our need to care for animals and the planet (al gore is jumping on the church band-wagon!)
we talk of love and spirituality as if we were teaching the church when all the while it is the faith that taught us the values of those things in the first place.
it is not the faith that has taken these things from us...it is the religion.
when jesus and nicodemus spoke that night we get to witness religion vs truth. we get to see nicodemus, the rep. of the traditional religion, seeing something in jesus' ministry that is obviously god-driven but uncomprehensible to him. we get to see jesus flabbergasted that this religious teacher does not know anything about the most simple lessons jesus is communicating. in this discussion i think we see what we talked about the other night.
we see god-driven things that defy common conventions of labelling (some inspired by the church) so they become 'suspect'. but we can also see that these things help people and bring them closer to god...so we label them spiritual. thus a kind of spectrum develops with spiritual on one end and religion on the other. but shouldn't religion be the ultimate teacher on all matters spiritual? isn't the point of the rules to keep us safe from fales teachings? are we not supposed to question everything and not give equal value to all teachings? in a word: yup. so, how do we do that withouth becoming rigid and narrow? all the time the answer to the problem is right in front of us in the story of jesus and nicodemus.
the answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind.
it is not the church, or even religion, that saves us...it is the spirit of christ, present in each believer, given by god the father and enacted upon earth in the life of jesus, god the son, and available to all those who call on the name of christ because of the death of jesus upon the cross for the failings of the world.

"for god so loved the world..."
don't we see? the rules are evidence of our old life when we needed to know, in writing, what god wanted from us. now, instead of being pupils we are called children (and even friends!) and children act (whether they admit it or not) like their parents. sure, we will step out of line but that only brings the death of christ more into focus. sure, the spirit will act differently in all of us but that is only because god is so big and so creative. let us not forget that we are all of One spirit, One faith, One baptism and One god and father of us all and in us all and greater is the One that is in us then all the screwed up crap that is in the world.
"for god so loved the world...."
living by the spirit means a whole-sale rejection of religion and an entire embracing of christ. make no mistake, following rules is easier than following christ. but that is not what we are called to do. we are called to be born from above, we are called to follow the breeze and live in the light. none of those things involve hard and fast rules...save one: we must be willing to let go of where we want to go and walk where the light, or the wind, or the whisper is calling us.
sure, we need to be careful of what voices and influences we listen to. but a life lived following god is its own evidence. and the community of believers is supposed to look out for each other and correct each other if necessary to make sure that not one of us wanders too far off course.
this is confusing and scary but only because it is profoundly simple and utterly refuses to acknowledge the human desire to be in charge. but, then again, it is in thinking that we know it all which causes us, day after day, to walk up to the tree, pick the fruit and take a gigantic bite. and each time we do, death enters into us, and each time death tries to gain that foothold, an empty tomb reminds us that our story is not about death but life, full and eternal. people refuse to honour god with their choices, then they start to reap what they sow, then they blame god for not being loving, then they start to look all over for the thing that they used to have, all the while jesus is still risen, death has still been conquered and god has always been right there, guiding and consoling and doing everything in his divine power to win us back. the thing that is amazing about god is that he does not enforce his will...he acts in our best interest, not his. he does not crush and control, he romances and woos. we are not following a dictator (though make no mistake, he is in charge) we are following a lover and anyone who has ever been in love laughs at the very thought that it can be controlled by rules!
so, let's recap: rules can only bring death because they can only point out what we did (and do) wrong. christ brings life and teaches us that a relationship with god is like walking in the wind: invisible but tangible and able to guide us if we let it. so........let's go sailing!

losing our religion

i have noticed that a lot of people i talk to these days are less and less comfortable declaring themself a member of any one particular faith tradition/church/denomination. however, many of these people are equally shy of declaring that there is nothing more to this life than what we can engage with one-or all-of our 5 senses. therefore the word 'spiritual' seems a more comfortable term. but what does that mean?
is it as wide open as the title suggests? is it a one-word rejection of organized religion and all that such institutions stand for? is it a way of getting one's soul-cake and eating it too?
who knows? and that's why we're talking about it at immersion tonight....
we've gathered art from a variety of places that we're going to spend time looking at...we've got some musicians from far away milton to come and sing...we have coffee from nicaragua and food from sobeys and a story that is over 2000 years old to reflect upon.
all opinions count as they, quite frankly, are what makes a community function. hope you can join us and, if not, stay tuned to the ol' blog for a recap of what happened tonight.
laterdays.

pop goes our faith

so last night at immersion the topic of discussion was christ and culture...can we use the culture we live in to communicate the gospel? i think we decided that the question is not really a question at all. of course we not only can use this culture but we have to!
what else would we use? what, other than water, is the fish going to swim in and survive?
so what does our gospel show us about culture? we looked at paul in athens (acts 17:16-34) and listened to the way he used the epicurean and stoic philosophers' writings to communicate to the larger greek audience. he took questions and concerns written down in their own pop culture lingo. he acknowledged their questions and honoured their search. he commented on their devotion to the divinity they professed to see all around them. paul did something radical by even today's religious standards. paul admitted that, when faced with a question of divine revelation, the pagans could profess truth and could glimpse god and hear whispers of The divine one.
but then he took it a step further....
paul commented but did not compliment the athenians on their religious ways (or idolatry as he said). he simply used it as his "contact point" to bring about the questions that their own thinkers had been raising.
why would a god live in a small house we build for him/her?
are we not the offspring of the gods? should we then be bowing down to these manufactured idols?
do we not move, breathe and have our being because of the gods? is not zeus (not the bearded dude with the lightning but the all-encompassing end of philosophical thought...kind of the way christians might call jesus "the word") responsible for all things?
paul honoured these questions and then offered what he believed to be an answer to one of the questions that stood out in the city of athens. throughout the city there was a statue to an UNKOWN GOD and paul brought forth the idea that he knew who this god was. this god was not distant and remote but intimate and close and in love with humanity. this god was not honoured by the little trinkets they made and bowed down to, in fact he found that insulting. this god created the world and all that is in it. one day this god will judge everyone on this planet that he made and gave to us. he has even appointed that judge and proved this by raising him from the dead.
that's when he lost people.
but it is a succint view of the christian faith. it is a culture-honouring way of telling the gospel story in ways that make sense to the listeners. sure, paul lost people but not because of his inability to communicate the gospel. it was the gospel itself that some rejected (others accepted it too). it is one thing to have people reject the message, it is our failure oftentimes that we refuse to tell the gospel stories in ways that make sense. then the rejection is not quite the same thing.
so, during the immersion service we read the lyrics to some songs that are not considered "christian" to see if we could spot what god is doing in them. we wanted to hear the whispers of god in the culture of our day so that we could honour the questions that people are asking and maybe, just maybe, say to someone...
"this one you are looking for, i think i might know something about him...."
so here are the songs...they are all fantastic and evidence of just how alive god can be to those who are looking...
coldplay: god put a smile upon my face
daniel lanois: the maker
r.e.m.: talk about the passion
happy listening.

get immersed...the video

many of you commented on how much you enjoyed the first immersion video and i am glad that you did.
anyhoo, here is the link to the video and i hope you continue to enjoy it.
this is a video that i think speaks volumes about someone willing to swim blindly in another world. i especially like the end when the blidnfold floats away. i think true faith does not require us to clench our eyes. it may require a leap that looks like intellectual suicide at the beginning but i think that is only because god wants us to rely on him more than our minds (or eyes)
but i think you can tell real faith not by how little the people who profess to follow it see, but by how much it opens their eyes to the world around them. then they step out into the world and find ways to make the world they see into the world faith has shown them it can be. but those are just my thoughts.
please, post your own ideas and impressions of the video once you watch it...i love seeing and hearing what others get from this kind of stuff!
become immersed............

is madonna god's new spokesma...er, woman?

is it posible that god can speak through madonna?
i ask this in light of the save the earth concert a while back and my reflecting on the upcoming immersion service this wed night when we will be discussing the media's influence over our understanding of Jesus. i remember watching the concert (for those who don't know, there were 7 cities throughout the world that hosted musical acts at the same time on the same date june 7, 2007...07.07.07 in an effort to raise awareness about global warming issues...don't get me started on the irony of flying people from all over the world and the energy needed to put on the concerts, we all know but they are still trying to make some good points so kudos to them) anyhoo, i was watching the final act of the london show, which was madonna.
now, i am not a big madonna fan (sorry sarah) but she was incredible! i mean she even blew the doors of the foo fighters (the band i was really waiting to see) and i was truly impressed because she left it all on the stage, so to speak. but as i was watching her show a thought occured to me. if the christian church has been refusing to hear god's word regarding our role as tenders of the global garden is it possible that god has not turned to the entertainment industry to get the message out?
that seems abhorent and potentially blasphemous but there is biblical precedence for just such a thing. after all, we are talking about the god who is not too proud to speak through a donkey (num 22:22-35), use the pagan king of persia to begin the ball rolling on the re-building of jerusalem (cyrus: 2 chronicles 36:22) , and let us not forget: a humble nazarene carpenter to save the world (matthew, mark, luke & john)!
perhaps, just perhaps god is using those who will hear his truth and moving beyond those who refuse to hear his message because it is inconvenient to their current status (that's right, an inconvenient truth). if the christian church refuses to acknowledge the biblical mandate of taking care of the world that god has created for our existence then perhaps we will be left behind. god is nothing if not unpredictable and let us remember that we are not in charge of him and who he uses, it is the other way around.
so, maybe we have missed the bus on this one and so god has moved his message to the receptive ones....rock stars. and just as i think that is distinctly possible i see madonna gyrating on a speaker and i think: "then again...."
hey, stranger things have happened.

we're being a sold a line of crap. there, i've said it.
it is a well-known obsession of mine to listen to radio preachers and tv preachers and, more often than not, yell at them in my car or from my couch in my living room (to be fair i also listen to myself on iTunes and shake my head too).
but this morning took the cake and will form the hub around which this final installment on grace will be built.
the man was lamenting the "secularization" of the u.s. since the 1960's (a common theme in many older preachers: "remember when this country was great and godly, like in the 1950's? remember when family values stood at the forefront?" that sort of thing. i always like to add "and wasn't it great when black and white people had different drinking fountains and schools? yeah, that was a real golden period!" idiot.) and how the hippies (or "radical leftists"...terms these guys use fairly interchangeably) ruined everything by bringing politics into every realm of life. he said that in the 1950's no one cared much about politics (tell that to the people on McCarthy's list) and life was pretty sweet and simple. do you remember when...blah, blah, blah. now the populace is political and the political system is too concerned with the people. honestly, i am not making this up, that is what he said...that politics are too invested in the national culture! i wonder what he thinks politics are for...but that is for another time.
and then, to cite an example, he mentioned abortion. he talked about how for all of history abortion was a moral and spiritual issue and then government came along and said it was okay, so now america is a hell-bound nation...apparently getting to hell in some kind of hand-basket.
ignore for a moment the unchartable arrogance of the direct quote "and then government came along" as if to say that before the u.s. there was nothing known as "government" (stupid greeks, romans, egyptians, persians, syrians, hittites, jews, germans, slovaks, british, irish, scottish, welsh, french, russian, prusssian, dutch, japanes, chinese, canadians...etc. you had no government, you were just following stupid men organized into collectives that decided the fate of the populaces of their designated geographical location, but you did not have a government) because his next point is the one upon which i will conclude because it has to do with grace.
he then went on to mention the early church as setting the proper precedence for what we should be doing (another popular pasttime of these guys) by telling how, when someone in the early church had an abortion, they were excommunicated with no hope of ever returning. he mentioned that it would be a glorious thing to return to those days of moral fortitude and conviction.
now, i do not know if that permanent excommunication is true or not, it may well be, but a deeper issue creeps into a statement like that. the notion that somethings are simply unforgivable and whatever one's own opinion on abortion (or homosexuality, feminism or atheism...other frequent guests on the "how evil is our country" show) i am deeply, deeply offended by this so-called christian's terribly disrespectful view of jesus; more specifically jesus' death on the cross. to afix one group of people as "unforgivable" or deserving of permanent excommunication in essence says that the death (and resurrection) of jesus--the one they profess to be god--was somehow insufficient to reach all the way to some poor girl who got in over her head and made an impossible decision. yeah, jesus will forgive the enron guys who consciously destroyed the lives of countless people but not some high schooler who got caught in a moment of passion and had to pay a horrific toll for it. yeah, that's my god, i'm so proud.
crap. total crap. and that is what i mean when i say that grace, real grace, is scandalous because it means that god extends forgiveness to the very people you believe don't deserve it. god extends grace to the poor girl who has had an abortion, frankly i can think of few people that need grace more. but god also extends grace to the abusive men who would see it as a good thing to lock someone like that out of christian fellowship with no hope of return. the sickening part for me is in realizing that god even extends grace to the enron jerks. and it is that feeling in my stomach that lets me know that if jesus were around today, pushing me and convicting me to love others, more likely than not, i would want to kill him. not just kill him, but watch him die horribly. grace showed me why jesus died.
you don't kill a man for healing people or teaching about love. you may dismiss him as a fritucake or an affront to god (a moniker, i am proud to say, that i have received from an irrate congregant) but you don't have to kill him. you can ignore him. the problem with jesus is that his love extended to the most undesirable people. jesus loved "them" and he spent time with "those people" (and we all have a "them" and a "those people" in our own lives) and, worse, told people that god loves "them". that starts to explain why jesus died so horribly, he let the establishment down by not furthering their aims but by furthering god's. and nothing makes a holy person angrier then telling them they've got god wrong. jesus died because he was not what we, in the religious circles, thought he should be. he was so much more. we wanted vindication for our positions, he told us to love our enemies. we wanted our holy places to be honoured, he said he could rebuild the temple in three days. we wanted our holiness recognized, he told us to pray in private. we wanted our rules validated, he screamed at us that we burden people unnecessarily and don't lift even one finger to help them. we wanted to be on god's "in" list, he told us that whores, crooks and theives were closer to heaven because they got it better than we did. that kind of man has to die. we knew it...but the real kicker is that so did he.
to conclude, despite the preacher's (he recently died and i believe is in heaven because he tried to serve god and god does extend grace to all his little screwed up kiddies...that doesn't mean i am going to talk to him at the banquet when i get there!) notion that we christians must swim against the tide and be more righteous while this nation goes "flush" down the moral sewer i challenge that to truly swim against the tide would to be even more forgiving and even more loving. i challenge that grace is much harder than condmenation. forgiveness causes us to lose our political ground (and for all their rhetoric opposing politics these guys LOVE being elbow deep in it), mercy and inclusion result in the death of our little homogenous churches where everyone thinks, talks, acts and--apparently most importantly--dresses the same. but we are given the gift of a community of people who know what it means to be forgiven. we are given the gift of a messy spirituality that gives us room to breathe and move and explore god witout fear of reprisal or a ruler across the knuckles if we "step out of line." in short, grace lets us live with a vision of faith that is more like a field or a forest to explore rather than a tightrope that we must walk with careful precision. that does not mean we who wander in the forest of faith do not screw up...in fact the total opposite is true: we acknowledge our inability to walk in faith without screwing up. but the greatest thing at that moment of moral/spiritual failure is that we know our god loves so profoundly and so recklessly that all we need do is acknowledge that error and he dusts us off and starts walking through the woods with us all over again. if he can die for us, can he not also forgive us? if he cannot forgive then why did he die?
in the early church abortion was an issue. prostitutes would become pregnant, give birth and then throw the babies outside the walls of the city for the animals to "dispose of". some early christians heard about this and decided to change things. they did not picket, they did not preach hell and damnation outside the brothels. they waited outside the city walls. they caught the discarded babies and raised them as their own. and the church grew in leaps and bounds, i wonder why? they did this day after day. they literally deprived the wolves of human flesh. i can think of nothing more fitting as the picture of lowly christians standing for hours in a dump just waiting to see if there is some defenseless person that they can save that day. it makes me cry because that is the stuff that changes the world and i would love to hear that on the radio one day. i would love to stand up from my couch or pull off to the side of the road and cry buckets of thankful tears because i had just heard a story of true grace. that, my dear friends, is truly going against the flow. that, brothers and sisters is grace. but, most imoprtantly, i long to be the kind of person that doesn't simply talk (or write) about grace in action but someone who actually lives a grace-filled life in community with other people trying to do the same. because, one of grace's coolest attributes seems the be the more time you spend in it the more time it spends in you. grace begets grace, and what a world it could be if we all decided to grow a little more grace. thanks be to god.
thanks for all your kind words and patience reading these long posts. i will keep them shorter in the future.

grace II

so are we truly called to be victims? is god really as unconcerned with justice as it appears? are we really powerless? that answer to all those is no. we are not called to be victims because paul told us that we are more than conquerors through christ. anyone who has read the bible can see how concerned with justice god is. only, god spends more time worrying about the poor and the oppressed and those who have nothing like orphans and widows than he does spending time making sure everyone who got you gets got. and we are not powerless, we are tapped into the power of the universe. the problem is we have misconstrued what that power really looks like.
when i think of power i think of someone that can clean anyone's clock and who is the one guy that everybody knows you shouldn't mess with. i think of some cool person who walks around and never has to do anything because if he did, watch out! sadly, i think of tony soprano. benevolent and respected until someone stupid crosses the line and forces his hand. then that person is never heard from again. i want to have the kind of power that makes others see me like that. i want the kind of power that the creator of the universe has. i want the power that is promised to a child of god, i pray that things might go my way. i pray and fast for the people in my life. occasionally, however, i also pray against those who i know are doing wrong and i want god to acknowledge my prayer and bring the divine smackdown on them.
after all, we are promised to be treated like children right? i have been told that all i need do is ask and it shall be given unto me. so, why don't i feel like the powerful child of an all-powerful creature.
then i read about jesus. then i hear things like blessed are the meek...blessed are those that mourn...blessed are the poor...turn the cheek...walk the extra mile....forgive. i read about One who could walk on water, heal teh blind, raise the dead and i get excited. then i hear about the beatings, the mockery and the death, and my blood runs cold. why did jesus die? i don't really know but i am beginning to see that there are two ways to live life. one way demands justice and gives me the satisfaction of demanding recompense for actions and trespasses against me. it feels good to hit the head of the one who struck me. it feels good to shove the shover, to curse the curser, to harass the harasser. that feels good. that feels right. that feels powerful. but then i realize that just as i am thinking that about someone else, someone entirely new is thinking that about me. as i strike out at my oppressor someone who sees me as their enemy strikes a blow at me. and someone at them, and then someone at them...and so on and so on.....
the other way is the path of grace. in this way we do not allow ourselves to retaliate. we do not push, we do not shove, we do not harass or curse or condemn. we thwart evil with good. we offer water and food to those who call us enemy. we offer peace to those who want nothing but war. we offer love to the unlovable and detestable. in this we conquer because the truth of the matter is that, in this, we are set free. we are no longer chained to the one who hurt us. we step out of the destructive circle of retribution and into the peace of god's kingdom. it hurts at first but that is only because we are not used to it. we still live in the world that loves revenge. to do other feels alien, weird. did we really think following god would feel natural to the broken person?
we are called to usher in a new world order. one that is not built by the sword or through an army. this world order operates in the unseen alleyways where drug addicts lie prostrate. this world comes alive in the gutters, in times of suffering. when people weep, when people are shut out, when people are locked out, forgotten and spit upon. those people are the celebrities and roylaty of the kingdom of god. those the world sees as unfit are the cream of god's crop.
jesus once told a story about two men. both men were in debt. one owed $50 the other owed $500 000 and both debts were forgiven. which one was happier? if you said the one with the larger debt you are correct. and in that answer you see the kernel that will grow into the very kingdom of god. heaven is here, heaven is waiting, people who have got it "all together" need not apply (don't worry, they probably wouldn't anyway).
to be continued.....

immersion...sink or swim

we are on the eve of something new at walt's house. the new wed night immersion service is only 1 week away. i have been meaning to journal my experiences and now i am going to start. i must confess a multitude of emotions. i am excited, anxious, fearful, timid, confused and really impatient for the 12th to come. it has been a journey to get here and i am thrilled by the people that have started to come along for the ride.
when i originally sat down to see what could be done at the "house" for all the people who seemed to be responding to something within them that told them that church should be something more, something more participatory, something less passive i thought i had some pretty good ideas. i was wrong.
the only good idea that came to me was to gather other like-minded people and see what we could come up with together. i approached a group of young people in the church and told them about the chance to do something else here at the house. they were all excited and the ideas began to flow. then i told them about a planning meeting two weeks from that date. and i did not remind them to come. i prayed instead.
of that original group marina, teija, ethan, lara, cam, jeremiah and i showed up. i knew god had brought the right people. later beth came into the pic and has been nothing but a blessing ever since.
so, we have planned and executed strategies and prayed and had communion and gave up sunny summer afternoons and we finally decided on every service until the end of november. and then something strange happened. we began to realize that we were doing the very thing the people we are trying to reach wanted to avoid. we were telling them how to worship. sure, we found new and exciting ways of doing it but that only made us "cool" and "hip" and "edgy" the very things that make a divine calling into a gimmick.
so then it happened, the group decided to scrap our plans, we planned only 2 services and decided to let the community do the rest. that is where our littl experiment stands. underplanned and utterly dependent on the people that show up.
i am freaking out and i am tempted to make some back up plans. what if no one comes? what if no one has anything to say? what if this is a colossal failure? and then i remember...people don't plant churches, god does. we ar simply called to echo out in praise the praises that pour forth like a stream a clear water from the throne of god. whether or not this immersion is successful or not is of no consequence. the only thing that will make it swim is how faithfully we cry holy, holy, holy. and that is much simpler (yet somehow harder) than planning a service.
immersion...jump on in

grace I

here is what i love about grace...it makes no sense. i mean, frankly, real grace is more than a little offensive. the idea that people who deserve something to happen to them because they have done something wrong echoes strongly throughout most of our inner cores. i think the stories of grace are far more scandalous than the ones of revenge or justice. we want the bad guys to get their due...their "come up-ins". especially if the bad-guy is clever or devious or if what he/she did is overtly heinous. we believe in an eye for an eye and all that. it feels right, it feels fair, it feels like the way the world should work.
but the world does not appear to share that conviction. we have always known (or we are shown) that life is not fair. that the bad-guy more often than not gets away and not only avoids the "come up-ins" but even usally comes out looking better than the victims. this is a world of broken dreams, life-ending illness, evil seeming to conquer at every turn. even the people who are not trying to be great, just trying to live a good life are not immune. the world has always been like this: full of beauty and full of danger.
so where do we get this notion of fairness? i think, like c.s.lewis said, the existence of this thing within us lets us know that it really does exist. we are hungry for food because food exists and our bodies know that they need it to live. we crave justice and harmony and order because our souls know it exists and that we cannot live without it. we crave justice because justice exists. that might be why so many of us like it when the bad guy meets their end. it fills us with a certain type of "soul food". in fact, one could think that this need to see a balance in a world that has never demonstrated such a balance is a good argument for the existence of a place that thrives on such a thing...possibly even a heavenly place?
it is into this world that craves justice but sees only injustice that one man named jesus stepped. thought to be a warrior or someone who was going to set everything straight, he constantly fought against this idea for something even more scandalous. he taught and showed tha fairness and justice do not matter on earth as much as we think they should because they do not matter to god as much as we think they should. apparently we have a god who thinks more of love and grace than of justice and revenge. we have a god who is negligent with his judgments and does not do to others as they would do (and did) to him. so where does that leave us? as sheep among the wolves? as defenseless among the armed? as fools among the cunning? as doves among the snakes?