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Four for Friday

Okay, here is some music to get your weekend started right.

Florence + The Machine – Shake It Out // “I am done with my graceless heart, so tonight I’m gonna cut it out and then restart.”

Coldplay – Paradise // Very Coldplay-ish, which is therefore very awesome-ish.

Wilco – Art of Almost // I like Wilco, but they are mostly on the fringe of my musical taste. With their latest album, they have moved a little closer to home for me. This song even had some Radiohead-like moments going on. That’s a good thing.

Ryan McAllister – Music for a Rainy Town // Rainy town indeed.

Later.

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social media wisdom

I receive a publication called The Regent World aimed at communicating with friends of Regent College, a seminary in Vancouver, British Columbia. Each edition is themed around a particular idea or issue. Various faculty, students, and alumni weigh in on the topic and it is generally good stuff. This latest go around took a look at social media.

One contributor in particular, Conrade Yap, shared some thoughts that seemed soaked with wisdom.

Social media can be a bridge as well as a barrier. While it can bring people from afar closer together, it can also create distance between people in close proximity. For example, we can joyfully interact with a friend on Skype halfway around the world, and alienate the friend sitting just next to us at the same table. The key guideline I have about social media is this: “Manage social media before it manages you.” For me, one way to do that is to practice a technological Sabbath once a week. From 6pm Saturday to 6pm Sunday, I shut my computers down. Strangely, when that happens, I am free to see that life is bigger than an Internet connection. I am free to let technology be technology. I am free to let me be me, and let God be God.

The technology Sabbath he suggests might be too much or not enough for you, but I think there is a question worth asking…

Is there any time in our week when we aren’t “connected?”

Bobby and I were lamenting that during our time with students, they were so preoccupied with their phones (and no they weren’t just looking up Bible passages) that they didn’t seem like they were really able to engage what was happening in room. They were missing out on connecting with the people standing in front of them or sitting around them. They were there, but they weren’t. So on a whim, we just asked them if they wouldn’t mind setting their phone aside (actually, on a table in the back of the room) for the duration of our time together. Not because either of us think phones are bad, but because they can be distracting. We felt like them being willing to do that was as much symbolic as practical. Students can get distracted pretty easily  – phone or no phone. But parting with their phones – even for an hour – is a non-verbal way of saying, “I’m here. Really here.”

I was sort of surprised that there wasn’t more whining and pushback. I thought the students would get all irate and even say, “forget this blankity-blank place, I’m out.” Instead, they seemed to embrace the idea. No “I’m outta here’s.” No whining. Just a willing – maybe even eager – compliance. And what started as just sort of a fleeing idea has grown. The next week, we mentioned it again and they deposited their phones on the table in no time at all. And then last week, before anyone had said anything, there were at least a dozen phones (curiously, most of them iPhones) taking a break from their masters.

Maybe students aren’t as committed to their technology as we are sometimes led to believe. Maybe something in them recognizes that being constantly “connected” isn’t good for them. Maybe they are longing for more than just a webpage that tells them how many “friends” they have. Maybe there is hope for them yet.

And if there is hope for them, then maybe there is hope for us.

More of Conrade Yap HERE.

The Regent World publication on social media HERE.

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The Gospel of Luke 6:1-49

Luke 6:1-49

A popular reading of Jesus’ disregard for the laws governing Sabbath casts Jesus in the role of the rebellious visionary who wants nothing to do with the prig-ish piety of his religious contemporaries. At some level, this is probably true. However, what Jesus is doing in his non-Sabbath observance is something much deeper and more significant than trying to stick it to “the man.”

Sabbath is a sacred period of rest set aside at the end of the Jewish week so that one might be reminded of their dependance on God and that human beings are mortal and finite. Sabbath is meant to remind us that there is more to life than work and the common events that make up our everyday lives. It is meant to point to a Reality that is greater than ourselves.

But when the Reality shows up, it is the dawn of a new day and everything is seen in a new light. That to which the pointer points isn’t necessary when the pointed to thing (person) is standing right in front of you. In Jesus, we see the “Sabbath” face to face.

It is in this spirit we are to read, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” Or as in other places, “The Sabbath was made for the man, and not man for the Sabbath.” This isn’t meant to taken as some sort of anthropocentric – mankind is the center of the universe – sort of teaching. It is meant to highlight that Sabbath has a purpose, and when that purpose is fulfilled then Sabbath observance takes on a secondary significance. In much the same way that one doesn’t spend all their time looking at a shadow when they can be looking at the object casting the shadow in the first place.

It is this idea of fulfillment that permeates the rest of the chapter as well. The story that immediately follows of Jesus selecting twelve disciples functions in a similar way. Jesus decision to select twelve disciples is hardly arbitrary. Twelve people. Not eleven. Not thirteen. Twelve.

In a similar way that there were twelve tribes of Israel, Jesus’ selecting the Twelve is a not so subtly way of symbolically redefining Israel in and around himself. He establishes an alternative Israel. Or perhaps more in line with what we’ve been saying all along, in Jesus we find the true Israel or the fulfillment of all that Israel was to be and do.

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bloodlines

My church has become increasing committed to the gospel vision of a racially unified family of believers. Every now and then something will happen in my ministry or life (there is quite a bit of overlap between those two things, but they aren’t entirely one and the same) that reminds me how far we still have to go. Today has been such a day.

Providentially, I saw this video trailer for a book (or maybe it is a trailer for a longer video) that John Piper has written on race, the Cross, and the Christian. It is called Bloodlines and I can’t wait to read it. Not everyone loves Piper, and there are times when he misses it. But there are times when he is gloriously right. I expect this book to fall in the latter category.

(HT: JT)

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The Gospel of Luke 5:1-39

Luke 5:1-39

Alright people, let’s get to this. These are going to have to come fast and furious, so please receive it in its rough form.

Back in Luke 4, Jesus had a power encounter with Satan in which Jesus made clear that his “vocation” was to be the chosen People Person of God – the Son of God – that Israel had failed to be. And now, it was time to get work on demonstrating what happens when the Kingdom of God breaks in around us.

While there are a number of remarkable things about the calling of Peter and the other early disciples, perhaps the most striking thing about the story isn’t the manner in which he calls them, but who he calls. Peter is a regular guy. He’s got a 9-5. The same is true for his co-workers. I am certain that Peter and the fellas woke that day with the expectation that it was going to be another normal day. As far as work was concerned, it was sort of a bust. No fish. None.

Then Jesus shows up. And not only do they end up taking in the largest haul any of them had every experienced, but Jesus invites them into his Kingdom work. Here was a guy who believed enough in them to say, “I want you to join me in turning the world upside down. You in?” And they were. They dropped everything and followed him. That is how it is in the Kingdom.

Next, he encounters a man with leprosy. And regardless of how traumatizing this man’s physical condition was, his legislated rejection from the community of God’s people would certainly have been more painful still. Excluded from Temple worship. Excluded from joining with his fellow Jews.

All that changes for him in an instant. Jesus comes to town, and despite the Law’s insistence that the “unclean” stay separate from the “clean,” the diseased man casts aside convention to throw himself at the feet of Jesus. And in that moment, Jesus extends his hand, makes physical contact with him… and he is healed. Inside and out.

News spreads rapidly, Jesus’ reputation and popularity are beginning to take off. And yet, Luke wants us to take note… Jesus often retreated to be alone and pray. In our contemporary church culture that places penultimate value on community and relationships (and in many ways, rightly so), Jesus makes clear that times of solitude are equally precious and meant to be sought out.

This dual healing seems to be the refrain throughout chapter 5. His next encounter is with a paralyzed man and his optimistic friends who literally drop him at Jesus’ feet. Jesus looks at the paralytic and addresses this man’s most obvious need. Surprisingly, it isn’t restoring his ability to walk. It is his inward brokenness. And Jesus speaks healing to him in a single word… “forgiven.”

But the healing doesn’t end there. Jesus attends to his secondary need as well. The external healing reflects what has happened in the dark and undisclosed recess of his heart. “Get up… go home.” Certainly, a straightforward enough command. But perhaps just below the surface one sees the broad sweeping invitation for all people to stand up and walk away from that thing which truly paralyzes and to return to our true home.

It won’t come as any surprise that he repeats the scene in a slightly different manner immediately after that. Now the malady isn’t so obviously a physical problem, but a social one. Jesus associates with people that no self-respecting Jew would ever sit at table with. But Jesus makes his intentions clear, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

Jesus’ mission made plain, “I have come to heal.” In fact, if someone only had this chapter as a record of Jesus life and mission, one would come quickly to the conclusion that Jesus came to “heal” the whole person… inside and out.

Or maybe from the inside out. Being “healthy” is an obsession in American culture. I couldn’t begin to guess what kind of revenue the “health” industry generates. Health clubs, health food, psychic healers, health insurance, health care, etc… And I’m not just pointing the finger either. I’m pretty committed to a healthy lifestyle as well.

And yet with all our preoccupation with being healthy, so little attention is focused on the whole person being cured. So much so that when one begins to look inward, we get that all messed up too. If all we had was chapter 5, we would see that what a person most desperately needs is to be called by Jesus, touched by him, have a word spoken to by him, and to sit at his table. And that is what it looks like when God’s Kingdom comes “on earth as it is in heaven.”

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Luke – Round Two

Ok, where were we? In Luke that is. It has been a while so perhaps you have forgotten. At the front-end of the summer, I had the brilliant idea of blogging through Luke’s gospel. It was going to be great. Our church was preaching through Luke, and I was going to work out my thoughts in rough sketch here on the blog as the rest of the church was following along on Sundays. Everything was a “go.”

Then summer happened. And when summer hit, all things normal, routine, and consistent were thrown out the window. I knew that it was going to be a challenge staying on top of things around here, but I didn’t foresee everything coming to a screeching halt.

Now three months later, I’m back. Actually, my body has been back for well over a month, but it has taken my mind and spirit that long to catch up with my body. I didn’t feel like the rest of me had really “returned” until right around Labor Day weekend.

So it hasn’t been until the last couple weeks that I have returned to a normal routine. I’m of the opinion that “routine” is often unfairly criticized for being mundane and boring. While I dislike just going through the motions or getting into a rut as much as the next person, there is a certain stability in settling into a routine that can be life-giving. This is true for the person finding their way back into their rhythm, as well as everyone who depends on that person in some way.

All of this is a long way of saying, I’m coming back around to the Luke blogging plan. I know that this blog-o-project is sort of moot now. We started a new teaching series at church yesterday, and so the church is officially done with Luke. But I’m not. The entire time we were going through it, most everyone I know felt like it was rushed. None of us had the chance to really dig in like we would have liked. And so, I will be journeying with Luke a little longer still.

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a rope around my waist

Last Sunday, I had the privilege of leading the church in Communion. We don’t observe this ritual very often on Sunday mornings. Generally, it is something we do at our New Community service which happens once a month on a Wednesday evening.  However, this past Sunday was special in that we were finishing our summer-long teaching through the Gospel of Luke. In the final chapter, the eyes of the disciples are opened as Jesus re-enacts the Eucharistic meal, and so it seemed appropriate to end our with Luke in the same way he ends his account of Jesus’ earthly ministry.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the nature of the Lord’s Supper lately, and I am beginning to think that there is something of a deficiency in the way we “low-church” evangelicals view the sacred meal. Somewhere along the line (shortly after the Reformation), what Christians  believed about the elements started to change. There was a shift away from seeing the bread and cup as the actual body and blood of Jesus (as I believe it should have) to a belief that they are merely symbols to remind us of Jesus’ sacrifice. While I certainly think it is helpful for the elements to serve as reminders of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, I am convinced they are more than mere symbols. As the church increasing embraced the empirical methods of the Enlightenment, and perhaps felt the pressure to explain everything from a “scientific” point of view, we may have forfeited something significant in the way in which we engage the Lord’s Supper. It feels like some of the mystery and wonder of Christ manifesting his presence with us through the bread and cup is lost when we think of them as simply reminders.

Ok, I know you are getting bored. Naturally, lots could be (and has been) said about this particular topic, but I mainly want to go on record as saying that I think the Memorialist (symbolic) view doesn’t do justice to what is actually happening in this observance. Instead of keeping on with my half-baked ideas, I’ll leave you with some more of Ian Cron’s wonderful words from his memoir, Jesus, My Father, The CIA, and Me. I hope Mr. Cron doesn’t mind my reproducing at length one of his stories. May it prod you to obtain a copy of your own.

It wasn’t until I was within four or five kids of the bishop that I could really see his face. He was corpulent, his cheeks and jowls glazed with  perspiration, and he was slightly wheezing like Kip Merriweather, a kid in our class who had asthma. The bishop looked like he would have paid a hundred bucks to get out of the clericals, go home, put his tired feet up, pop open a Pabst Blue Ribbon, and watch a Notre Dame basketball game. As I stepped forward and stood before him, he saw the tears running down my face. For an instant, his pasty white face softened, his eyes sparkled just like the Virgin Mary’s, and the corners of his mouth turned upward in a smile of deep knowing. I suspect he knew that I was one of those strange kids who “got it” – who was hungry and thirsty for God, who longed to be full. Maybe he’d been one of those weird kids too. He placed the Host on my tongue and put his hand on the side of my face, his fat thumb briefly massaging my temple, a gesture of blessing I did not see him offer to any of my other classmates. And I fell into God.

I have spent forty years living the result of that moment.

I am told that, in years past, when a blizzard hit the Great Plains, farmers would sometimes tie one end of a rope to the back door of their farmhouse and the other around their waists as a precaution before going out to the barn to tend to the animals. They knew the stories of farmers who, on the way back to the house from the barn in a whiteout, had become disoriented and couldn’t find their way back home. They would wander off, and their half-frozen bodies wouldn’t be found until spring, when the snow melted.

That day, Bishop Dalrymple, sweat dripping from the end of his bulbous nose, tied a rope around my waist that was long and enduring. How did he know the number of times that I would drift onto the plains in a whiteout and need a way to find my way back home?

And all God’s people said…

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Four for (Labor) Friday

Well, it is a holiday weekend and currently I’m a bit cooped up (in case you couldn’t tell). I obviously have no idea what your Labor Day weekend plans hold for you, but here’s some music to pass the time.

M83 – Midnight City

The Civil Wars – I Want You Back

Brooke Waggoner – So-So // This one comes courtesy of my friend, Jessica.

Josh Garrels – Farther Along

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Jesus, My Father, The Zen-Do, and Me

I don’t often read memoirs. Or really ever. I still haven’t read Blue Like Jazz, which in my circles is apparently akin to not reading The Bible.

I like my reading the way I like my coffee… robust. And frankly, I tend to view autobiographies as hopelessly thin on substance and more often than not an exercise in self-absorbtion. The stereotype that I have with regard to memoirs is that they are more or less people (typically, of substantial means) whining about their lives. So sorry to anyone who has written a memoir or aspires to do so. I fully understand that this gross over-generalization says way more about me than it does peoples’ desires to write autobiographically. A certain response could be leveled that what I do on this blog, or in the pulpit, or every other arena of my life is equally thin and self-absorbed. Ok, duly noted.

At any rate, Alison is not unfamiliar with my jerk-wad opinions about books. So when she insisted that I begin to read one with the peculiar title, Jesus, My Father, The CIA, and Me: A Memoir… of Sorts, it instantly rose to the top of the reading stack.

Like most self-fulfilling prophecies, it was living up to my low expectations and I was having a hard time getting into it. First off, I wasn’t wild about the title. It sounded sort of weird. I know titles are meant to be intriguing, but I couldn’t fathom what any of those things had to do with one another. And I wasn’t all that committed to finding out. I think the real problem though was that being unaccustomed to reading anecdotes about other people’s lives, I just couldn’t seem to grab hold of it. A couple days ago and several chapters in, Cron’s story grabbed hold of me.

Sixth grade was about as painful a period in my life as any.

Up until this opening line of chapter 7, I could appreciate the cleverness with which he told stories, but I just wasn’t connecting. And then in these few short words, he states clearly and succinctly the way I am certain every human being feels about the junior high years. And from then on, I was in… all the way in.

Not all the popular kids at my junior high were model students; some were miscreants. I learned from this period in my life that if you put a hundred people in the same room, in less than two minutes the sociopaths will find each other and begin terrorizing the rest. The same thing happens on playgrounds and in prison yards. It also happens at the United Nations, but that’s a different conversation. 

When I got to this chapter, I knew this guy was on my wavelength. I’m going to go out on a limb here and venture a guess that a tell-tale sign of a really good memoir is its universal appeal. But for crying out loud, Mr. Cron and I could be twins who were separated at birth. Except that he is probably a decade older than me, of Irish descent, and far more intelligent. But other than those minor details, he and I are the same.

Similar family dynamics, similar flailing (or as he describes it, “falling”) through high school/college, similar stumbling into faith (even through the influence of the same para-church ministry), and a similar difficulty in knowing how to deal with emotions across the spectrum.

It is this last commonality that is the most intriguing. While he confesses that he struggles with being able to get in touch with his emotions, one certainly doesn’t get that impression from his writing. Cron is one of those gifted human beings who is able to express a thought or feeling with words that leave one (or maybe just me) saying, “That is exactly what I think and feel.”

I will spare you the reproduction of entire pages from the book, and instead just leave you with a few quotes that convey both his wit and depth. And if you “get” them, then you get me. How’s that for self-absorbed? Hopefully, ripping a few sentences out of context doesn’t do too much violence to the richness of his storytelling.

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who have dimmers and those who have on-off switches.

People who have dimmers can regulate how much they drink, smoke, exercise, have sex, eat, work, or play BrickBreaker on their BlackBerrys. They can “dial it back.” They can “take it or leave it.” Their motto is “Moderation in all things.” We need these people. They become actuaries and veterinarians. Our pets would die without them.

Our parents are mysteries to us. No matter how close we think we think we are to them, we cannot know the content of their hearts. We don’t know the disappointments, or the scars and regrets that wake them in the night, or the moments for which they wish they could get a do-over. I’m not persuaded we should know them better than that. In our therapeutic age, it’s commonly said that we’re only as sick as our secrets. But there are secrets that we should keep only between God and ourselves. I don’t trust people who tell you everything. They’re usually hiding something.

Drinking is fun until it isn’t.

There are acts of love so subtle and delicate that the sweep of their beauty goes unseen. I know of none more miraculous and brave than that of a seventeen-year-old boy coming to his friend’s side to take his tear-soaked face to his breast.

I believed that if Bowdoin [College] took me, I would magically stop feeling out of true. It would be like God saying the lien on my happiness had been removed. It would mean no more going through the day asking, “How do I compensate for who I am?” I thought this mysterious voice could make me believe what I couldn’t make myself believe: I belonged on earth.

As we pulled out of our driveway and drove down our street, I grabbed my mother’s headrest and pulled myself toward the front seat. We didn’t wear seat belts in those days. Parents smoked with the car windows closed too. Humans should be extinct.

Ok, if I share anymore I will probably be in violation of some copyright laws. I am happy to say that I was entirely wrong about Ian Cron’s wonderful memoir. Odds are that I’m wrong about memoirs in general. Regardless, getting your own copy will be well worth the time and money.

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under every spreading tree

There’s some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.

Samwise Gamgee

Not all night skies are equally dark. At least once this summer, I had the privilege of seeing the night illuminated by a full moon that had less atmosphere and light pollution with which to contend. We were in the high mountains of Colorado and the moon looked as if we could simply reach out and take it for our own. Of course, those same skies can be so inky black that the saying “I can’t see my own hand in front of my face” is not just hyperbole but a reality.

The days can be dark as well. But the darkness of which I speak isn’t one dictated by the movements of celestial bodies. No, it is the much more oppressive darkness that has to do with the ebb and flow of evil in the world.

And some days are darker than others.

Am I alone in sometimes feeling that evil is getting the upper-hand in the world? Set aside (which is sadly all to easy to do) all the atrocities that happen on a global scale… genocide, world hunger, human trafficking, and so on. My guess is none of us has to search very far to find people whose lives are falling apart or being ripped apart by sin, brokenness, and evil. String enough of these stories together and it leaves one with the impression that that the Kingdom of God isn’t making much headway. There are times when the darkness so overwhelms that it can be difficult to join Samwise in seeing the “some good in the world.”

One of the reasons I’m a “not-so-closet” Calvinist is that I am pretty well sold on the doctrine of Total Depravity. Sadly, this theological tenet (as well as Calvinism in general) is woefully misunderstood. It doesn’t suggest that there is no good in the world… or in human beings. Rather, it only affirms that which we already intuitively know. That even our best attempts at “good” are tainted with self-interest, self-righteousness, and self-promotion.

All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

Isaiah 64:6

Yes, the days are evil. So is the world all around us. And as our old friend N.T. Wright reminded me recently…

The line between good and evil is never simply between “us” and “them.” The line between good and evil runs through each of us. (citing Alexandr Solzhenitsyn)

Never a truer word.

Speaking of Wright, he has written a brilliant book (he is apparently incapable of writing anything that isn’t) on the nature of evil and the way in which the Scriptures invite us to see God’s answer to the darkness around (and in) us.

One of the thing I appreciate about him is that he is both a realist and idealist at the same time, as the following two quotes should illustrate.

To be sure, it is humiliating to accept both the diagnosis and the cure. But, as our world demonstrates more and more obviously, when you pretend evil isn’t there you merely give it more space to operate; so perhaps it is time to look again at both the diagnosis and the cure which the evangelists offer.

Evil and the Justice of God, 90-91.

The New Testament invites us, then, to imagine a new world as a beautiful, healing community; to envisage it as a world vibrant with life and energy, incorruptible, beyond the reach of death and decay; to hold it in our mind’s eye as a world reborn, set free from the slavery of corruption, free to be truly what it was made to be.

Evil and the Justice of God, 118.

These great words (from an even better book) couldn’t have found their way into my life at a more opportune time.