Holy Ground

So the message I preached on Sunday took a turn on Saturday morning. I was doing some last minute prayer and preparation, and I felt like the Spirit had something to say. I was planning on talking about Moses and Exodus and wrapping up our 2-month series on listening to God. I wasn't ready for what He actually had to say.

Here's how it ended:


God is not silent. He is not even quiet. God is screaming through the cries of 30,000 children dying every day as a result of poverty. He is screaming through the voices of countless women and children in Thailand and India who are being forced into slavery and prostitution. God is crying out through the cries of the hopeless teenagers and men and women who are addicted to pornography, who are addicted to alcohol, who are addicted to drugs. God is crying through the voices of the 15% of Americans who suffer from severe depression. God is calling out through the desperate prayers of the lonely, of the rejected, of the sexually abused, and of the billions of people worldwide who have yet to find hope in Jesus Christ.

"God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives and God is with us if we are with them." -the prophet Bono

So the next time you encounter an overlooked homeless woman in Triangle Park or a forgotten Alzheimer's patient in the nursing home, it would be appropriate to take off your shoes, for in that moment you are on holy ground.

"And the Lord Said to Moses" and thoughts on leadership

So I'm preaching at Lifebridge (www.lifebridgelex.com) on Sunday, and here is a foretaste of that. As I haven't posted in over a year, I don't have any expectations of people reading this and responding, but if you are reading and you do have thoughts, by all means comment.

The last sermon in a series our pastor and team of teachers has been doing on Listening to God, I am focusing on Moses as we find him in Exodus. Having read through Exodus several times in my many failed attempts to read through the whole Bible (at least I know Genesis and Exodus pretty well. I apparently haven't had the endurance to make it through Numbers), I noticed something. Out of all the things we praise Moses for doing--the plagues, the Exodus and the splitting of Red Sea, providing manna for the people in the desert--well, he didn't really do any of them. I mean, he couldn't really do any of them. I mean, they're kinda big. I can't even divide the waters in my bathtub (although I can't think of any good reason why I'd want to, but you know what I'm saying). I look back on the last (and only) 26 years of my life, and my resume looks a little thin compared to Moses'. I mean, he led more people out of slavery than Lincoln, and it wasn't like he "had what it takes" to me a leader. I mean, the guy's never led anything but sheep, and he says himself that he's "slow of speech" and everybody wants a leader who can give a good speech (although the US seems to be a current exception to this rule).

So what does he have? Definitely not confidence. Courage? Nope. A plan? Nadda. Drive? He's trying to pawn his calling off on his brother. I don't think so. He doesn't have much of anything that you'd want in a leader. God must not have been at Catalyst or Willow, b/c Moses doesn't really have any of the necessary ingredients to lead a little league team, much less the whole nation of Israel. I mean, Moses couldn't speak, but that's exactly what God was asking him to do to Pharaoh.

So again, what does he have? This is all I got--Within the span of just a few chapters in Exodus, you can find the phrase "And the Lord spoke to Moses..." more than 25 times. That seems significant. Either the writer of Exodus couldn't think of anything else to talk about, or he wanted the readers to see something... or, maybe that was just the most important thing to say about Moses. Moses didn't have skills or confidence or strategy or much of anything, but he did hear from the Lord...a lot.

So basically, Moses didn't have "the right skills for the job," but he did hear from the Lord, and he turned rivers into blood, a staff into a snake, led a heckuva lot of people out of slavery, divided a large body of water with previously mentioned staff. Hmm...maybe I should change the way I do ministry.

What's Your Theological Worldview?

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan. You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God's grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists. Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 89% Neo orthodox 82% Emergent/Postmodern 71% Charismatic/Pentecostal 43% Roman Catholic 39% Fundamentalist 32% Reformed Evangelical 29% Classical Liberal 29% Modern Liberal 14% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

Right and Wrong

"Nobody said it was easy, but no one ever said it would be this hard."--from Coldplay's The Scientist.

Sometimes I think I should have read the fine print before signing on to follow Jesus. He's great and all, and we get along most of the time, but the problem is that when you love Jesus, you have to also love everybody He loves...and the list is long. And there are definitely people on the list that I don't even like.

There's this one guy who's particularly been a pain. I can tell you 10 good reasons why this person is a bad person. I can give you a long list as to why this person makes me angry just looking at him, and I can prove to you beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am right and justified in my feelings. The problem is that something inside me is telling me that I'm wrong. I don't think God heard my argument, b/c God would know that this feeling shouldn't be here. I mean, I really know I'm right. And I really know I'm pissed off. And the voice that is telling me that I'm wrong just pisses me off even more. I want to love Jesus, but why do I have to love His friends? Some of them are pretty selfish and just plain hypocritical. How does He love these people? Even more, how can He expect me to?

Whatever my personal thoughts on this, according to Jesus, even if he is wrong, if I don't love him like Christ loves me, I'm just as wrong. Gotta be honest, that's part of the gospel that I'm not a big fan of. At least not right now. I might like it more when I'm on the other side of the situation.

The Mark of The Christ

The Mark of the Christ
Amidst all the talk of my sin and the imposition of the black, ash cross upon my forehead, I could barely hold in the tears. I wasn't really broken over my sin like I thought I should be. I kept trying to replay all the sins I had committed over the last few days, especially the bigger ones, so that I could make myself feel as bad as I thought I was supposed to. It just didn't work. Instead of wearing the cross like a sort of scarlett letter announcing my sin, for me, the cross on my forehead was a mark of Christ's love for me. As the Israelites marked their doorposts so that the angel of death would pass over their houses, the ash cross was, for me, a sign that I have been spared. God's mercy overwhelmed any feeling of guilt that I thought I should have been experiencing.
We see a different view of Jesus with each of the seasons of the Christian year. In epiphany, the season we have just left, I believe we climbed the mountain to see the heights of Christ's love, the Light of the World that has come down into darkness. In Lent, we climb down from that mountain into the valley to witness the depths of that same love. Today, Ash Wednesday, our foreheads are marked with the depths of Christ's love for us.

Progress and Recess

27Jesus resumed talking to the people, but now tenderly. The Father has given me all these things to do and say. This is a unique Father-Son operation, coming out of Father and Son intimacies and knowledge. No one knows the Son the way the Father does, nor the Father the way the Son does. But I'm not keeping it to myself; I'm ready to go over it line by line with anyone willing to listen. 28"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. 29Walk with me and work with me--watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. 30Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." (Matthew 11 from The Message Translation)

It doesn't take long for my schedule to fill up. Occasionally I'll actually say no to something or give up the responsibility for something else, but I usually fill it with something else, some task, some job, some class. My life is filled with a lot of doing but not that much growing. I've bought into the lie that doing a lot is progress. Jesus' way is different. All the things the Father gave His Son to do and say came out of Father and Son intimacies and knowledge. Real fruitfulness is birthed in the same place as real rest--intimacy. Living with the Father and the Son is living freely and lightly. If I'm tired and worn out and burned out (and I am), it's because I'm not living in intimacy. It's because I've believed the pride of progress--that the more I do, the more important I am. My religion has been making good grades in seminary classes, as if Greek tests are tests of knowing God. They're not. I can make 99's on my midterms and ignore the voice of God. I've somehow convinced myself that I can please God by my hard work. We live in a culture that prizes independence. We even have a document that declares it. But God is not pleased with my independence. He wants to hear my Declaration of Dependence. He wants to go over His way line by line. He wants me to walk with Him and work with Him.
In the kingdom slowing down is better than speeding up. Listening is more important than doing. Recess is better than progress. The way of Jesus is the way of a son.

Upton on Ambition

Why should we be ambitious? We're the children of God.
--Jason Upton

Us and Them

This post is possibly going to be difficult for me to write because the ideas that I'm having haven't completely taken shape yet, but I think that I need to get them out, so maybe you can help me with them.
I was talking to a friend on the phone recently, and she asked me what I had eaten for dinner, and I told her "stir-fry" which is an Asian type of dish with meat and vegetables cooked in a frying pan and served with rice. She responded with a comment about it being an "ethnic" meal. Oddly enough, this comment took me a little off-guard because my family had eaten this meal dozens of times, and it ceased to be for us the food of a culture vastly different from our Southern U.S. culture and had become very much a part of our own menu. It is more common to eat stir fry in our house than it is to eat fried chicken.
I'm working at school on what is called an Intercultural Worship Task Force to try to represent the many cultures present in our community within our worship. While we have had some success in this feat, having incorporated music from India, Nigeria, and our Native American cultures, among others, I don't believe that we have yet adopted these different ways of worshipping Trinity as a community, though I do believe we have made strides in that direction. When groups from cultures not normally represented in chapel (anything non-white, non-North American) lead us, it still seems like "special music" or an event, rather than a normal part of our worship to God.
I think the problem is in the pronouns. We're still singing "their" songs when we need to be singing "our" songs. I hope to see the day when there is no "them", and there is only "us", not because the minority has accepted and conformed and been swallowed by the majority, but because I adopted my Indian friend Andrew's culture when I adopted him into my family, and he adopted my culture when he adopted me into his family. I hope that we will weaved together, not blended, as one, and their songs will become our songs as our songs have become their songs. The Gospel is this: we were Them's, and Christ became one of Them, so that we(They) could become one of Us.
As Christ and the Father were one, may we also be one.

Supermodels

In his book Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller says that we sometimes have to see someone else love something before we ourselves are able to love that thing. Tonight I found myself among a group of teenagers in Florence, Alabama as we entered into the new year in worship. Had I not been overcome by a sense of wonder at the sight, I would have probably been a little embarrassed to be a worship intern at a seminary who was standing at the back of the building looking on as the teenagers danced and sang and bowed and raised hands. I watched as they taught me through their worship how to love Jesus. But for some reason, i wasn't embarrassed at all. Perhaps because when I am desperate to learn how to love, it doesn't really matter who teaches me or who leads me in worship.
After a few minutes of standing, I decided to sit, because a slow song came on and that's what you do during a slow song. That is unless, of course, you are at a high school dance (or any dance), and then, slow songs are the only times you (if you are me) actually walk to the dance floor and dance. As I sat on one of the many futons scattered across the room, I couldn't stop staring at the 10 ft. wooden cross that faced me. There was nothing particularly special about this cross, but it spoke of a mystery that I seemed to have forgotten. It probably should have been strange to watch followers of Jesus dance around the very symbol of his death, but it was in this symbol of death that those who danced around it (as well as those of us who just sat and stared) found life. In our Lord's greatest sorrow, we find our greatest joy. So I just stared and smiled, because it was in that cross that I was able to see Someone else love something in a way that inspired and empowered me to also love that thing.

Fundamentalist Scrabble

Sitting in my navy-blue plastic chair leaning forward with elbows propped upon my pressed-wooden desk, I listened eagerly to my fifth grade teacher and watched as she spelled S...A...N...T...A. on the white marker board. (We were high tech. No chalk here.) All eyes were on her as she proceeded to scramble the letters to spell another word directly beneath the first--S...A...T...A...N. Satan. I don't remember anything else said that day in class, or really the whole year for that matter, but that display stuck with me.
In recent months I have received a lot of flack because of a statement I made that I did not plan on ever teaching my future children about the existence of Santa Claus. Yes, I think that my education in fifth grade on the subject was ridiculous. No, I do not think that Santa is equivalent to Satan. My reasons are much different. The main argument made to me regarding the subject was that teaching about Santa Claus would give my children a since of imagination that would be lacking without it. This is my maini point of disagreement.
I believe Christmas is a time to celebrate the greatest show of imagination the world has ever seen--God becoming man, or even more--God becoming infant. Reindeer, elves, snowmen, and a jolly old man delivering presents every year make for a pretty good story, but compared to the story of Jesus, I think it is like comparing The Davinci Code to The Odyssey or to the other great epics. It's not that I am opposed to Santa Claus; it's just that his story is a distraction, a big distraction, from The Story. The problem is that the great story has become common, and the story that is somewhat common is now seen as imaginative. I hear as many songs about jingle bells and winter wonderlands as I do about the wonder of God incarnate. Where is our imagination?
Perhaps you're just hearing the rantings of a guy who never got a single present from Santa, but perhaps there is a greater story than that of Santa Claus that needs to be told, that needs to be heard.