Imitatio Dei

Mission as the Imitatio Dei… it is the imprint of God expressed in the total life of a person. It infuses life so that every act, every word, every gesture lends weight and intention to the Misseo Dei.

This is the idea of the whole, the One… focused into the part and the part giving focus & completion to the whole. It is the same as Jesus’ notion of abiding where he says, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me”. While that might seem possible in the Messiah, imagine a company of disciples being called to the Apostle Paul’s standard of being of the same mind ‘that was in Christ Jesus’ (Phil 2:5). The Imitatio Dei is beginning to sound like some kind of dreamed up, idealized utopia… except for the inescapable fact that Jesus gave such focused attention to discipleship.

Jesus gave over the largest part of his ministry time to the practices of intentional concrete imitation. This is how we are to be his witnesses in the world. This is how the Imitatio Dei becomes possible. Jesus wanted it to become a reflexive action.

The question I have is, ‘Do I dare to pray that the same mind that was in Jesus Christ would also be found in me ?’

Jesus’ yolk may be lighter but his words pierce bone and sinew… all the way down to the heart.  Can I bear to have the mind of Christ, “who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as the main thing. Instead he emptied himself, to the point of taking on the very image of a slave. Jesus was born in human likeness & embraced the frailty of his humanity with his arms wide open. Jesus humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross” ?

Jesus held this Imatatio Dei in exquisite tension within himself and as disciples we are similarly called into the same dissonance, always uneasy. We are like midwives, waiting patiently, expectantly, helping to birth a Kingdom that is long, long overdue. 

Dark Heart of Africa

“So Abram went down to Egypt [in Africa] to live there as an alien…”

The dark heart of Africa…  I remember being in a rural African village & watching a colleague, newly arrived from Australia, playing a game of bawo. Despite the excitement, I became aware I was staring at the feet of a young boy, sitting close by me. It must have been the contrast of the white soles against his richly tanned skin that got my attention. I found myself questioning, “What kind of place is this, that a young boy’s feet can look like those of an old man – cracked and eroded ?”

Suddenly my concentration was broken & I was looking up into the eyes of some children staring back at me. Instead of being a spectator, I was now the focus of many deep brown eyes looking my way. Each face seemed to be asking the same question, “Who are you ? What are you doing here ?”

I wish I could say that was the only time I felt like an alien in a strange land…

Be the Change You Wish to See in the World

Moving overseas… I remember we were fussing over a family photo that people could stick on the fridge, to remember to pray for us. I was looking for a quote – something short & pithy that summed up our intention – a credo if you like – and this jumped out at me from a fridge magnet.

“Be the change you wish to see in the world…” – Mohandas Gandhi

So I sent out a copy of the photo with this quote along the bottom, to some friends at church for their feedback. I got back this comment, “Love the photo… I am concerned though about the mixed message you are sending people using a quote from Gandhi when you are about to go overseas on Christian mission!”

Its interesting… despite my friend’s concerns, the writer of Mark’s Gospel records Jesus’ opening words with a similar sense of the personally empowering present. Jesus says, “The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the Good News” (Mk1:15).  There is a sense of the weight of history unfolding here, of Jesus inviting people to play their part on the cosmic stage. That which people have only dreamed about, is coming to pass.

Now is the time to act.

I like what Brian McLaren says about people. He says,  “Everybody believes that someday the poor should be helped, someday the rich should be generous, someday racism should end, someday the environment should be cared for, and that someday wars should cease. But very few people will say, ‘Let’s start today, let’s start now !’”

Yet the Good News that Jesus proclaimed said that now is the time to experience the grace of the Kingdom. Now is the time to embody it… to live it out in every word and deed. Don’t wait around until everybody else is doing it. Instead, be non-conformists and innovators ahead of your time.

‘Be the change you wish to see in the world’. Gandhi had that sense of today, of now being the time.  Gandhi believed that focused & determined individual effort made a difference. He also believed that when focused & determined individuals banded together they became unstoppable.  Using this credo Gandhi rallied ordinary people and together they broke free from the dominion of the Empire !

Your time is now. The Kingdom of God has drawn near… repent, believe and be the change you wish to see in the world !

The Idea of North

During the week I began the process of putting my philosophy of ministry down on paper. This is what it is looking like so far. A work in progress… 

“My philosophy of ministry is strongly flavoured by my experiences overseas. I embrace this and am attempting to translate that experience synergistically into my context here.

Consequently, I am passionate about mission as an organising principle for a community of disciples who gather around Jesus as their living middle. I am committed to discipling practices that ground people in the deep channel of Scripture and a developing Biblical worldview.

I am committed to building spiritual maturity to the point where it is self-sustaining, sensitive to the Spirit of God and actively seeking accountable relationships with other disciples who are further along in the journey. 

I am committed to helping people discover & exercise their spiritual gifts both individually & corporately, to creatively experiment & to tenaciously fail forwards together for the sake of Kingdom of God.

I am committed to modelling an authentic & costly discipleship that moves beyond prestige and comfort for the sake of those who are yet to encounter Jesus anywhere in our Global village”.

Reflecting on what I wrote yesterday, I know I don’t always do what I say above very well… sometimes I get sidetracked. Sometimes I am scattered & selfish and I get shunted off into a siding for a while. When I am open and focused, I resonate in tune with the Spirit of God & my life as a disciple is about getting habitual about the rhythms of the Kingdom. 

Cover Yourself With the Dust of Your Rabbi

In the ancient world, a disciple who accepted the call to follow a rabbi, entered into the inner circle of that master, sharing life in all of its intimacies – warts and all. The aim of being a disciple was the application, the translation of all the long learning & memorization of the Hebrew Scriptures into real life lived under the watchful eye of the Rabbi.

A disciple would follow his rabbi everywhere. One of the sages of Mishnah, Yose ben Yoezer, used to say, “Cover yourself with the dust of [your rabbi’s] feet, and
 drink in [his] words with gusto.”

The idea of being covered in the dust of your rabbi came from something that was a common sight in 1st century Palestine.

I like how Rob Bell describes this… He says a rabbi would be walking down a dusty local street and right behind him would be his students doing their best to keep up with him, as he went about from place to place teaching his yoke. By the end of the day, the disciples would have the dust from whatever their rabbi had been walking in literally caked all over them.  

Covering yourself in the dust of your rabbi… this is what devotion means when you are a disciple of Jesus.

Consuming Fire

Openness… I usually have a sense of openness as being an attitude of quietness. The idea is that if I am still and attentive for long enough in my spirit, I can begin perceiving God’s reality more as it is. But what about openness as ‘the enflaming’, the quickening, in the sense of the physical & spiritual person being overwhelmed by God’s holiness… like in Acts 1 ?

It says the disciples were gathered together in ‘the room upstairs’. They were ‘constantly devoting themselves to prayer together’… “And suddenly from heaven there came… the rush of a violent wind and it filled the entire house… divided tongues of fire appeared among them and a tongue rested on each of them… All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.”

This sounds like an experience of spiritual ecstasy, of one’s whole being quivering with the awareness of the presence of God.

Martin Buber says, “to the man in ecstasy the habitual is eternally new.” He illustrates with the example of the zaddik – a holy man -  who stands at the window in the early hours of the sun dawning. Weeping, he says, “A few hours ago it was night and now it is day – God brings up the day !” And he is full of fear & trembling. The zaddik also says, “Every person should be ashamed before the Creator: were they perfect as they were destined to be, then they would be astonished & awakened & enflamed because of their renewal… at each time and in each moment”. 

This kind of openness reminds me of Jeremiah when he says, “I will not mention Him or speak anymore in His name, then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones. I am weary with holding it in and I cannot.” (Jer20:9)

There is nothing passive or particularly reflective about this kind of openness. It is demanding like the Sermon on the Mount where the receiving is in the asking and the finding is in the searching and the opening is in the knocking. The only thing that is certain is an experience of living with the volume turned right up… moment by moment !

Walking On Water

There is a narrative whose presence in the Gospels leaves me feeling slightly off balance. Its like a splinter in my imagination…

6 times the story of Jesus and his followers out in a boat on wind blown waters at night appears in the gospels. In each telling some elements of the story remain the same – the disciples, a boat, the wind, their unbridled fear – yet the identity of Jesus is elastic and ambiguous !

In some instances Jesus is in the boat and in other instances he is out of the boat walking on the water. The disturbing thing is that when Jesus is in the boat up close and personal, those who know him best are left asking the question, “What sort of man is this ?”  Out of the boat he appears at distance like some kind of ghost or phantasm and the disciples cry out in fear and terror. Neither option brings relief.

As the boat moves out onto the water, away from the crowd and the safety of the known, it is as though it slipped through a crack between the worlds. The disciples took Jesus out in the boat ‘as he was’ yet out on this margin Jesus expands and intensifies. In sleep his dreams evoke the restless, primordial, creative possibilities of Genesis – the storm like ‘a wind from God over the face of the waters’ – pregnant with change & newness. Likewise his prayer alone on the mountain evokes Moses and encounter with holy Otherness – the storm moving before him like ‘the voice of the Lord… over the waters… the God of Glory… thundering’ – powerfully declaring the One who walks on water.

John captures this ‘holy otherness’ when he tells the story. In his telling, Jesus doesn’t calm the storm. He instead reveals himself to them as ‘I am – do be afraid’ & when the disciples try to take him into the boat, they instantly arrive at the their destination. What happens in-between happens on Jesus’ terms. And Jesus will not be contained or domesticated.

Paying Attention

“There are times when I feel transparent – almost invisible. It is a fragile state in which I am diminishing. I have this feeling of being stretched so thin, of being insipid, diluted – a lite version of me. It is like speaking in a crowd and the conversation continues right through me – no one hearing. It is like being one of the weathered, nameless ones, appearing at my car window begging & when sated, blending right back into the shadowlands. Where did she go ?”

“The transparency of God… Abraham Heschel says that life passes on in close proximity to the sacred, “You are not alone, you live constantly in holy neighborhood: remember: ‘Love thy neighbor – God – as thyself.’” The accessibility of God, God drawing near – holiness moving in next door”.

“The discipline of transparency is positional. It implies sensitivity to place & openness to otherness in close proximity. It has that sense of vibrating in tune, of being immersed, enveloped and eventually becoming at ease and purposeful there. It is relationally significant yet non-threatening – reflective yet non-judgmental”.

“Transparency has that sense of being pores & permeable – of light passing through the thing uninterrupted. Relationally it risks greater vulnerability and exposure of self”.

“Transparency pragmatically embraces truth; not so much truth – universal & immutable but truth – local and dynamic. It is at ease with a reality that is pitted, asymmetrical & irregular. I think transparency is a choice – I choose to be present, I choose to be open, I choose to immerse myself & to allow myself to be penetrated & shaped by this place !”

“As for those others dwelling out on the margins – disempowered and vulnerable - the anonymity of transparency is a discipline of necessity & survival”.

I remember when I penned these words I had been living in South East Asia just a few short months. Almost daily I was being overloaded with exotic and unfamiliar experiences in my new home. As I looked about me I saw people who were marginal and poor using transparency as a survival strategy. I was fascinated by it.

At the same time I encountered the idea in the writing of Thorleif Boman. He was suggesting the idea of ‘transparency’ as a theological expression that more accurately captures the way God’s presence and activity is revealed in the world. I was also in the process of reflecting on Jacques Derrida’s usage of the Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac and the Tower of Babel as metaphors in his philosophical wonderings. Abraham struck me as a person who understood this idea of ‘transparency’ as he wandered about as an alien in the world.

I think it is time to revisit this practice of transparency ! I suspected it was a missional practice in South East Asia. It is time to see if it has currency back at home.

Go and Make Disciples

During the week I attended the funeral of my Uncle in Brisbane. He had passed away quietly and in the end quite quickly after a long battle with cancer.

A couple of days before the funeral, I received an unexpected phone call from my cousin, asking me if I would read out the tribute of his brother Wesley.

Unfortunately, my cousin Wes couldn’t be at his Dad’s funeral because he was in Shanghai, in the middle of a 4 week concert tour of Asia, with a children’s’ choir that he conducts.

Now as you can imagine I said, “Sure ! It will be a privilege for me to help”. But getting off that phone, I was also thinking, “Do I really want to go that difficult place of a son struggling to honour the pain of losing a father who has been suddenly taken from him ?”

Yet despite my reluctance I was also fascinated with the things he had to say about his Dad. Let me share some of them with you…

“As a father I sometimes pause and reflect on what legacy I would like to leave my children. I ask myself, ‘What gift can I give that will lay a firm foundation for them to build their lives on ?’ I need look no further to find the answer. If it is true that a life of example speaks the clearest, then there can be no question that my Father’s life spoke with clarity. It spoke with a resonance, consistent with his deep belief in God, his family, hard work and a ripping good laugh.”

“I feel if I can emulate him trying, in my own way, to be the kind of man he was, then I shall come closer to giving to my own sons the necessary values and foundation they will need to live life in this world…”

“I will always be grateful for the Father I had. I will try, for the sake of my own sons, to become equal to his example”.

As you can see, these weren’t easy words to speak but what a privilege it was to share something of my cousin’s deeply held love and respect for his father.

Have you ever noticed how wonderfully clear things become when someone we love, crosses over the threshold into death ?

What I loved about saying these words is the deep insight they give into the way people learn those fundamental, foundational things people need for living in this world.

Children learn how to live by the patterns of living and speaking they are immersed in, in the daily presence of their parents.

It’s true isn’t it, we become like the people we spend the most time with. It’s hard-wired into us as people.

Surely this is the intent of Jesus’ final words, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations… teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you…”

Jesus says, “Go and make disciples…” because discipling ensures disciples become mature, kingdom building followers of Jesus. Discipling makes certain we become like Jesus and do what Jesus does.

Wonderfully Held

I am a fragile vessel and the world pours through me, unrelenting sometimes – with such a force, I become pitted, cracked & worn down, so everything comes gushing out in the broken places.

The wonder of it all is that I do not break… I do not break because I am wonderfully held!