few thoughts

A while ago I read the book "City of God, City of Satan" b y Robert Linthicum and my own summary is this: cities can be either a blessing or a curse and after having visited Washington, D.C. I'd say that's one of the cities that is closer to the curse designation. Having grown up in Atlanta through its population explosion post-1996 Olympics, I found that D.C. had a similar curse: traffic. On top of clustered, time eating traffic jams, there was the "if ur my neighbor I'm gonna act like u r an alien" disease which I have discovered is actually an extremely contagious viral infection. Unfortunately, the city has yet to discover the immunization equivalent of the cooty shot which worked out pretty well until I hit the age of 23. i don't think my shots were up to date and so I ended up married. That's turned out pretty well I think.

i was in d.c. for a lead now conference and it gave life to dry bones. Speakers like Donald Miller, Dan Kimball, Rob Strong-just to name a few with whom I had some interaction- were there. The purpose of the conference was to learn to do ministry in a fragmented and, most times, fractured world. It seems to me that after giving some thought to ideas presented there, relationships and experience are key to anyone's ability to have faith. I think I've always known that faith does not mean much to me if I cannot experience the movement of God's Spirit in my life. You could talk to me about doctrine and other stuff but if I can't experience what you are talking about, you might consider stoping talking. But you don't have to.

Something else I found interesting is that with clergy who are below the age of 45, you may find more personal sharing. I think that in a very general way these folks realize that even if you are in the church, we all share in joy and sorrow, purity and flaw, redemption and sin. So it's like...let's be honest and then let's worship the one who meets us in the middle of the imbalance we know so well.More to come...

Talking about Jesus

This last week at F2:19 we worshipped on the circular drive outside the church offices, the doors to which open onto the main street in Southside Birmingham. In the message grounded in Revelation 7:9-17, we hear the absolute affirmation "Salvation belongs to our God alone" and that affirmation is made with the promise that every tear will be wiped away, that all suffering will be transformed into comfort, and that all the hungry will be fed. Salvation becomes more than a spiritualized hope that can only comes to fruition after we die. It happens in this world as we become more aware of God's presence in the world. Salvation is liberation and deliverance from actual death and from the powers of death in this world: the apparent obsession with sex and the compulsion to hoard money are just two of the obvious deathening worldy influences. They pull us away from the human satisfaction that comes from being in communion with God. God saves us from the temptation to clutter our lives with those temporary and short-lived satisfactions. To understand that we are saved is to take delight in what could God has done for us that we could not do for ourselves. That kind of delight cannot be met by the worldly investments that we make but only by the sincere love of a God who sacrificed his son's life in order to have ours.

April 8 we celebrated the high holy day of Easter. The time when we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, this day's significance to the Christian faith is overshadowed by the commercialism we've come to know in painting eggs, giving all glory laud and honor to The Easter Bunny, and decorating baskets with green Easter grass. The scene is quite pretty and safe. And that's what the resurrection is not. It is not safe. When we talk about the resurrection, we are saying that God took an unjustly condemned man named Jesus who was killed for being merciful, good, and compassionate and brought him back to life. Often we equate familiarity with safety and so if I saw a once dead man walking around again I would say that that is an extraordinarily unfamiliar experience and, therefore, not safe- even dangerous. I am used to dead people staying dead. But God raises this Jesus and if God will do that to a dead man, then it becomes even scarier to think about what God will do with my life. The idea of God raising Jesus from the dead got me thinking: I know for certain that when God raised Jesus from the dead, it was God's way of thumbing His nose at the world. By its nature the world deals in the ways of death and it is most sobering to figure out that when we believe we are alive, we are actually dead. When we are busy hunting for approval from our friends, wallowing in our greed to fill God's vacancy in our hearts, and saturating our souls with temporary pleasures, we are indulging the ways of the world. And Jesus' own words illustrate that these death-filled cream puff pursuits can never undo the life we find in Jesus Christ: "For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their lfie for my sake will save it." Gain through loss. Hmmmm....

f2:19 aftermath

Back in to the new year which means nothing more than the new year's resolutions we made for this year will be recycled next year. Now for some that seems a little too cynical and for others it may be realistic. That's fine I suppose. I'm gonna get deeper with the whole F2:19 : No longer strangers idea. Today I was surfing around my space which, as I found, it can be really hostile. Its like people talking in small sound bytes that don't really mean anything and most that I have encountered have been mean-spirited. In th middle of all of these words is the Word Jesus Christ, the word that plopped itself down into the middle of ugliness and decided that He would haang out for a while. He comes to be with us and if you have stopped to take a breath from the busyness that tends to plague your life, then you know what it is to realize that busyness can mask loneliness and words can mask deep isolation. It is like being in a coffee shop, the usual place where we go to hang out with friends, talk to people, but in this coffee shopthe people are gone and there is only your own scuffle of feet across the floor. When you reach the register to ask for something to drink, you see that somehow Jesus got past you in order to say come on, I came to see you and while I am at it I want you to have a bite to it. Don't worry...its on me. A powerful encounter when our lostness is met with surprising presence. An encounter with God when the world suggests that it cannot happen. I saw the words of a my space guy and they were dark and angry and I think our hearts should break for this poor child of God that something has told him that life is about saying mean words. I believe that his enjoyment of anger is something we are quick to criticize but I think we are not so critical when we see that we are busy enjoying our own anger for wrongs that won't be righted and rights that will never see beyond an eclipsing shadow. AN encounter with Jesus who says you are not alone. And then its the hard stuff- going out not because we need everyone to see the world the way we see it but to share something amazing like Jesus coming to be with us regardless of whether we made a resolution or not for the new year.

f2:19 aftermath

With Christmas on the horizon, I have felt the movement of God in ways which seem foreign. It may be attributed to how I am reading through Scripture again- not as an acadmician but as a person of faith. A couple of weeks ago I felt that I needed to work out because I was feeling like I needed something more active than sitting. Go figure. So, I tookmy Bible into the local YMCA and read it while doing 30 min. on the eliptical trainer. Yes, it felt strange as I considered the woman to my left reading a Cosmo and the man to my right reading Time mag. When I read the bible as something of interest that I had to know what was going on between the lovers Israel and Yahweh, Jesu and the religious and political authorities. At this point in my journey, I sensed that God was doing something transformative, a something that is as amorphous and undefined as the ocean. It brought to light the truth that how scripture speaks is dependent on what circumstances surround our lives at the time we read the passage. The stories of Abram and Sarai being unable to belief that God can make pregnant the woman who is beyond child bearing years that show that God's power is not going to be confined by our very human expectations. In a chat with a Jewish friend, I realized how closely he and I understand the sovereignty of God- or rather it is talking about God's ability to be God, to do what is in keeping with his holiness, to do things that are outside the scope of human understanding. Though we do not understand the course of things, it is best to be content that God is moving. Sometimes it just does not seem to have any good rhyme or reason to it, atleast as we see it.

What I realize is that there is a chasm between what we know, indeed, what we can ever know and who God is. In my experience not too many are cool with the mystery that lingers in that chasm. That mystery which lingers is less desirable than certainty, even if it means treating our God like a pet hamster.

Tonight in worship we fleshed out through song and word, why that mystery is so important. The real mystery is that God would choose to build a bridge to us even when we did not want that bridge in the first place. It is a bridge built toward us through Jesus Christ's life and death and resurrection. The mystery of the Almighty: Why bother with us? And why would you love us? Why...that's what we acknowledge before we worship. Once we step into the sacred space to give God all honor and glory, we no longer ask "why?" We move to "just because." We worship becausse its in the Bible and because something just seems lifegiving about it. Robert Webber said simply that worship is a verb and for me it means being intentional in our praise. It is moving into the mystery leaving our why's at the door and moving our "just because" into the presence of the Lord.

f2:19 aftermath

Well, a little while longer than expected to blog what has been going on. Everything from a children's service to one last night that had a strange feel to it. One of those mysteries of worship where the the spirit was more sublime than charismatic. I certainly did not sense that it was business as usual, kinda like the early Sunday morning service with everyone in suits and the usual catching up conversation. The message was built upon the oracle of King David, one of the old folks chosen by God to be the king of Israel, the nation whom God called chosen and the nation who would define themselves by saying Yes to this God. David was the model of the faithful life, sometimes flawed by stupid decisions and choices, sometimes marked by God's providence and sometimes lived faithfully. It seems that David's life is a mirror of actual human life, king or not.

On a different note...just got done with an interview in coffee shop which has become the cause of my current reflection. I was asked by the interviewer "Do you see your faith as being separate from everyday life?" Well, if it was...what's the point? I realize that my life of faith is defined by a life that is not my own. My faith cannot be segregated from the routines of life. Universally, from the lips of God comes a call to live faithfully, and most times it goes against our natural tendencies or regular desires. But my faith in a God who transcends my own personal and selfish interest asks something of me that I would not ask of myself. Why? Just because I am called and I sense that my ways are flawed and that God has better ones.

For now, I can say to everyone be "quiet and listen" or "shut up and listen!"

f2:19 aftermath

And so, yes, it has been a couple of weeks since the last blog entry but everyone person will be delighted to know that I was pacing myself. Didn't want to burn out too quickly.

Seriously, though...the last worship service we had was what we call a child friendly worship service. That is a service that is easily understand by children and includes familiar music and concrete illustrations that illuminate the good news of the gospel. The music was phenomenal and our worship leader, interactive and vibrant as always, engaged the children in a way that helped them to encounter the living Christ in the worship space. Here's the story behind the actual worship:

A pumpkin named Pumpty Lumpkin, cousin of Humpty Dumpty- the famous egg, had a wind push him off of his perch and onto the ground. His contact with the ground, like most things, causes this poor pumpkin to explode after getting a new lease on life. He felt good about himself and wham! something happened. Distressed, Pumpty laments aloud "If all the king's horses and all the king's men could not put Pumpty back together again, then I am doomed!"

The point is that too many times we put our faith in the world and things that we believe will fix, liberate, or save us or make us whole again. At the point that we explode and realize that we are broken, maybe that's the time when we should relinquish our reliance on what the world has to offer and instead wait for the arrival of Jesus.

Pumpty waits in his sadness. He is picked up by the hands of a stranger and is eventually returned to his perch whole and unblemished with a candle shining within- the light of Christ.

The children that night got it: that presence of Jesus Christ may come right when you so desperately need to be made whole. To have faith that Jesus will come is to put our hope in the living Christ, the hope that transcends the circumstances of our lives.