The Friend I Sleep With

I have a friend who I sleep with who is the mother warrior, with the strong spirit of Africa beating within her. She is the stone woman, fertile yet unshakable. To be enfolded in her arms is to be enfolded into a soft and cooling place – safe & truly nurtured.

I have a friend who I sleep with who is like the sun in morning – arisen and bright. She is like the sun in the evening too – hibernating, spent and wrapped in velvet darkness. To be beheld by her big compassionate eyes is to glimpse the vast capacity of her overflowing heart.

I have a friend I sleep with whose beautiful form has been etched and truly formed by the experiences of living. To be massaged by her fingers is to ‘BE’ in the presence of exquisite pleasure – content & blessed. To be caressed and loved by her is to be transported and to die a little.

I have a friend that I sleep with who I love mostly unworthily – yet I am drawn to her like a moth to the fire. I am fascinated and drawn in to the dance. Truly I am refined in her presence.

Like Old Men Dreaming and Young Men Seeing Visions

This is what happens when mission comes home…

In Acts 2, the Disciples are all gathered waiting expectantly. They are sitting in an upper room where they were staying in Jerusalem. Jesus has just ascended into heaven and the Scriptures say the Disciples were occupying themselves by constantly devoting themselves to prayer.

Suddenly, the room is filled with a sound like the rush of a violent wind. Then tongues of fire appear among the Disciples. Scripture says they are filled with the Holy Spirit & they begin speaking in a great variety of languages. This experience is so overwhelming, that it draws the Disciples out onto the street below. They are speaking in this incredible diversity of languages and they are quickly surrounded by a large & curious crowd. Now the crowd is confused because people from all over the Roman Empire are understanding what is being said by these Jewish disciples in their own native tongues.

Then Peter gets up and he addresses the crowd. He says, “You may suppose that what you are witnessing here is a group of people who have been drinking too much. Let me assure you, my companions are not drunk… It is only 9am in the morning. No, this is what the prophet Joel spoke of in the Scriptures when he said, “In the last days… God will pour out his Spirit and your sons and daughters will prophesy, and your young men will see visions and your old men will dream dreams… and everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved”.  

Scripture goes on to record that when Peter finished speaking, that the number of people in Jerusalem, who ‘welcomed’ his message and were baptised that day, numbered 3000 people.

This is mission vision. This is what happens when mission comes home. This is the Spirit of God drawing near and holy bedlam breaking out. This is messiness & diversity, it is a tremendous energy expressed as movement outwards. This is the Spirit of God being present and His people responding with an amazing clarity of purpose.

You know mission often takes a while to find its rhythm. However, once it begins to truly sing, it spreads like a wildfire. 

Tower of Babel, Translating Genesis 11

”What happens when mission comes home ?”

The story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 captures for me the essence of the answer to this question. It begins with the Shems. Long ago, they came to the great plain of Shinar and they settled there. Now the Shems were an industrious people. They were clever & resourceful and they said to each other, “Come let us make some bricks and fire them in the fire…”. So the Shems got working and in time they built a safe and a functional town with a wall all around.

The Shems took great pride in what they were able to achieve together. Their confidence grew and so did their vision. They said to one another, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches up into the skies”. So they got working. And as each building was completed, the Shems grew in learning and wisdom and civic pride. Finally, they had the courage to begin working on the centrepiece of the city – the Great Tower. Day after day they worked on the foundations. Then, they began working on the tower itself and soon the tower was dwarfing every other building in the city.

Spurred on by their ever-expanding vision, the Shems grew bolder still. They said to one another, “Now that we have our city and our tower, let us make a NAME for ourselves, so that we are not scattered over the face of all the earth.”

In this moment the Shems came to the particular attention of God. God descended from heaven and God saw their handiwork. Heisenberg’s principle says the act of observing a phenomena changes it. God saw the city of the Shems, with its tower reaching up into the skies and God discerned the future. He said, “This is only the beginning of what they will do… soon nothing they propose will be too hard for them”.

So God acted. He said, “Come, let us go down and confuse their speech so they will no longer understand each other”. God drew near to the city, he confused the speech of the Shems and they stopped building their tower. God confounded the words of the Shems and he scattered them over the face of the earth. That is why the city is named Babel – ‘City of Confusion’ and why people speak with such a diversity of languages.

I really like that this narrative makes abundantly clear what happens when the Spirit of God comes near to a group of people who have become self-satisfied, complacent and who have closed the circle. It’s a missional story because this is what happens whenever people allow themselves to be overwhelmed by the Spirit of God.

Traditionally we tend to view God’s scattering of the Shems as punishment. Yet for me, this idea of the Spirit of God drawing near and breaking open the circle… this image of tremendous energy and diversity being released; of the Shems moving outwards, speaking a great diversity of languages… all of this sounds like an amazing outpouring of God’s blessing. It sounds like Pentecost in Acts 2.

This is what happens when mission comes home. 

Go And Learn What This Means

Sometimes blogging intensifies the chances of people missing each other. At times it seems to lack the intimacy of two friends who through an effort together can clarify confusion or continue speaking about an issue until they vibrate in tune.

 

Recently I asked the question, “What would happen if we allowed mission to become the focus of our churches instead of worship ?” Out of the hit and miss world of the internet I got back this comment… “A church that is first and foremost mission-oriented is a church of works. Works are both wonderful and needed in the world but they must be God working through us rather than us doing what make us feel good…” Now keep in mind I titled my post, ‘I Desire Mercy Not Sacrifice’… This is a direct quote from Matthew 9:13, where Jesus is being criticized by his rabbinic peers for eating with the wrong kinds of people. Jesus is reminding the Pharisees of a verse from Hosea that is saying that true knowledge of God translates into merciful actions on behalf of undeserving others rather than pious temple sacrifices.

 

I make no apology for saying it is time to refocus the church around the organizing principle of mission when the church is losing ground in this country. I’d have no trouble gathering around the organizing principle of worship if 80%, 70% even 60% of people in our communities declared the Lordship of Jesus. The problem is the truth that on any given Sunday there is less than 10% of people who do that.

 

Jesus says to the Pharisees, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice…” because fundamentally discipleship means being a sent one. The Kingdom of God propels people out into a hurting world to engage with those who don’t yet know Jesus, to stand in solidarity with them where they are, to serve them compassionately, mercifully. Amazing grace is the knowledge of God expressed as compassionate action among undeserving men. John 20:21 sums up this idea, “As the Father sent me, so I send you…”.  

“Doing what makes us feel good”… for me this kind of activity is costly, mostly sacrificial… going against the flow. When I think back to my experiences of mission in Africa and South East Asia sometimes they were oh so sweet, often they were just plain hard. Yet the stretch of those experiences made me more God dependent, more sensitive to what the Spirit of God was doing.  

I pray for the refocusing of the church around the organizing principle of mission because the organizing principle of worship isn’t releasing the Kingdom of God and holy bedlam into our communities.

 

“Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24) The prophet Amos spoke these words because his vision of Yahweh was the vision of the missionary God – the mystery of a never-ending surging, fighting movement.

The Undecidable Ghost or Derrida Revisited

I have been thinking about life out on the margins. For a while now, I have been particularly interested recently in what lies beyond the boundary of the margin – chaos. It strikes me that Jesus walking on the water in the storm is Jesus at ease in a field of chaos. Jesus deliberately takes his disciples into that place. There Jesus is neither terrified or diminished. We usually talk about the Jesus who calms the storm – what about Jesus creating the storm ?

When Jesus is walking out on the water and the disciples see him they think he is ‘a ghost’. Jacques Derrida says there is something interesting about ghosts – he calls them ‘an undecidable’. The figure of a ghost seems to be neither present or absent or it is both present & absent at the same time. There is a tension – a dissonance in this in-between place that breaks open the meaning of things. 

Life has many such tensions. The story of Jesus – the ghost – walking on the water is one. Our faith is based on the rock-solid idea that Jesus is the God-man ! Think about that tension – the church fathers argued about how that was possible for nearly three centuries. As Derrida says there is an uneasy tension in those kinds of paradoxes and for me that isn’t rock solid – that is dynamic & fluid – expanding and intensifying then contracting again – forming and un-forming – like Galadriel when she is offered the ring by Frodo in the ‘Fellowship of the Ring’. 

When I think about Jesus as the Rock, it makes me think about perspective. For example, from a distance a large company like Walmart appears rock solid – institutional, a solid pillar of free market retailing. Yet I wonder if the daily experience of Walmart up close is more asymmetrical & dynamic – a lot less certain. Jesus called Peter ‘the Rock’ and he was all over the place.

When the disciples respond in terror to Jesus walking on water and in fear to the storm – Jesus’ movement is toward them and His words restore peace – easing their discomfort. Jesus is rock solid & consistent in his expression of the pathos of God – God’s compassion & care ! Yet peace on the waters comes at the expense of stepping away from the experience of Jesus in his Glory !

GK Chesterton in his book ‘Orthodoxy’ says, “… the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.”

Give me a Jesus who is rock solid but also give me an elastic Jesus who expands and intensifies to become a volcano in full vent !

 

Day After Day Pours Forth Speech

The lite touch of God’s glory in the world is like the unexpected arrival of rain. Suddenly, leaves are dipping involuntarily in asymmetrical acknowledgement of its presence – a persistent shower giving lustre to the world & heightening awareness. 
 
The Psalmist says that, “day after day pours forth speech and night after night declares knowledge… of the glory of God – yet there is no speech nor are there words…” While the lite touch of God’s glory is ever present, the sense of its arrival is always subtle. It builds in degrees, inhabiting the peripheral of vision or the graduated silences out on the edges of constant noise. 
 
That our vision and hearing are dim to its arrival is witness to our routines of busyness and distraction.  
 
That the activity of God’s glory in the world shapes our daily situation is beyond question. Glory lends intention to secret acts of mercy and kindness. Glory intensifies hope and endurance when the real is all too abrasive & unfriendly, Glory makes forgiveness the unthinkable possibility that dances in the midst of a hurting relationship At its most compelling the Glory of God ignites a passion for justice that burns & is vigilant, restless & creative.
 
When the dipping dance of the leaves ceases, the enduring effect of rained out rain is that cleansing wetness that soaks into every crack & crevice – absorbed into pores of everything it touches. 
 
Drips hanging like jewels are the multitude of mundane moments touched by the finger of God.

Sharper Than Any Two Edged Sword

Getting your head around the Cross is difficult. The Cross is really rather awkward in the sense of being clumsy & inelegant. Think about the metaphors we reach for to describe it. Think about the old hymn… “At the Cross, at the Cross – where I first saw the light & the burden of my heart rolled away. It was there by faith I received my sight and now I am happy all the day…” What about the words from a more recent song, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound; amazing love, now flowing down. From hands and feet that were nailed to the tree… His grace flows down and covers me”.

Part of the awkwardness of the Cross, is the holy paradox… the place of God-forsakenness is also the place where God is profoundly present. The Cross describes the execution of a particular man but it also describes the possibility of the crucified God, the very pain of God…

The paradox of the Cross is dissonance & tension – even anxiety itself, like being on the knife edge of uncertainty. Remaining here means the knife cutting deeper, ‘…piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow… able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart’ (Hebrews 4:12).  Imagine a deadend place of such brutality and physical violence also being the place of safety, of confessional intimacy and so… much… more…

The awkwardness of the Cross is that it is not just some kind of splendid vision that we observe, we behold and we adore. Instead, the Cross is the beginning of a journey right now - that will eventually take us to an unbounded place, to a place that even death cannot hold us back from participating in. A place where we will see God face-to-face.

The irony of the Cross is that its very awkwardness, its enigmatic character speaks most plainly about the lengths God is prepared go in his pursuit of people.