Unless You Become Like Children

Becoming like a child… Recently, I had the opportunity to sit and listen to my wife explain to my 4 year old son – Dawson – about the mysteries of communion…

With children everything is so literal… When Dawson started eating the wafer, he turns to my wife and says, “This doesn’t taste like Jesus’ body !” And Elizabeth quietly explains, “No… it’s not meant to taste like Jesus body… it helps us to remember him.” To which Dawson replies, “I can’t remember Jesus’ body because I don’t know what he looks like !” Elizabeth starts becoming more directive, “Look up at the Cross and imagine Jesus on the Cross”. So Dawson looks up at the Cross for a bit and then he turns to my wife and says, “I’m just going to remember him as a circle !”

A little while later the little cups of juice were given out and I see my wife take a breath. Before Dawson drinks he is asking, “Is this going to taste like blood ?” To which Elizabeth replies, “No, it will taste like juice”. “What kind of juice ?” asks Dawson. Elizabeth answers patiently, “Grape juice !” And Dawson says, “No, I want apple juice.”

‘Unless you change and become like children you can never enter the Kingdom of heaven…’ 

Hasidic Storytelling

One morning, the Rabbi was walking through an uninhabited region with his disciples. “I am thirsty,” complained one of the young men, “I am burning, I am dying of thirst.”

The countryside was like a desert. There was no sign of water anywhere.

“Don’t worry !” said the Rabbi, “When God created the world, He saw your thirst as well as its remedy.”

Shortly afterwards they came upon a peasant. He was balancing two pails of water on his shoulders.

“My Lord has gone mad,” grumbled the peasant, “this morning he sent me here to walk backwards and forwards with this load of water – just like that, for no reason at all.”

“You see,” said the Rabbi to the thirsty student, “when God created the world, He arranged all this madness, so you might quench your thirst.”

Life Stories

I can remember as a boy, standing next to my grandfather in church and being a little embarrassed because his voice would boom out louder than anyone else’s when we sang hymns. And when we prayed, he would turn around and kneel on one knee facing the pew and fill the silence all around with ‘amen’s’ and ‘hallelujah’s’. At the time I used to think his behaviour was a bit odd because no one else did what he did. Now as a man, I love the memory of it because I know my Grandfather loved his Lord.    

As a boy I also used to love hearing stories from both of my grandfathers. One Grandfather, my Little Grandpa… would tell me stories about being a Salvation Army officer in the days before most people had cars…

One day he was riding down the street in his horse and sulky, when suddenly heard a voice say, “Stop and visit that house across the street !” Now my Grandfather looked about for the voice and saw no one. Then my grandfather looked across the street and didn’t recognize the house, so he went to move the horse on again.

Again he heard the voice say, “Go to that house across the street”. Little Grandpa said it was then that he realised, it was the Holy Spirit who was speaking to him… so he went. And sure enough there was a widowed woman and her family who were in great need. And my Grandfather was able to help that family. My Little Grandpa said the Holy Spirit often used to prompt him to do such things.

Then I also had a Big Grandpa. Now Big Grandpa used to tell me stories about being an Salvation Army Officer during the Great Depression. One the things that made me laugh & laugh was him describing how he used to have to use strips of old War Crys as toilet paper. Then he would get serious. He would say, “In those days we used to have to pay all the church bills before I could draw my pay. Often there wasn’t enough money, and sometimes we would run out of food”. And I would say, “What did you do Grandpa?” And he would say, “We prayed and God provided the food we needed”.

Sometimes a lady from the church would come to the door and say, “I was just doing some baking and I thought of your family”. Or, another would come and say, “I was down at the butcher and I thought I should buy another leg of lamb”. Occasionally whole boxes of groceries would appear – anonymously – on the back doorstep. My Big Grandpa would always finish with, “God is always faithful !”

As an adult I find these stories from my grandparents becoming more & more important to me. I find these stories are wonderfully centering. They say, ‘this where you have come from & this is who you are’. Sometimes they even say, “This is what you must do !”

It’s interesting… as my relationship with the Scriptures develops there is also now a number of passages & stories that resonate strongly within me. And from time to time I like to check in with them to see how I am doing. They are stories that anchor me, stories that say, “God is always faithful” & this is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

Outwards & downwards…

The Spirit of the Lord is Upon Me

The good news of the Kingdom is that God wants us to participate with him… God didn’t just send Jesus to save us as individuals. God’s plan is much, much bigger. Jesus stood up and read from the scroll of Isaiah in the Synagogue in Nazareth, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me”  (Luke 4:16-30) because that’s God’s model for redeeming creation.

Jesus says, “You know all those things you have been longing for in a Messiah ? Today, those things you have hoped for begin with me. God’s reign isn’t just still coming, it’s here right now. And I want you to follow me, so by an effort together we can begin repairing a hurting world. We can participate with God in putting it all… back… together”. 

That’s the way that God is choosing to work in our world. It’s mostly anonymously and invisible and below the radar. You see when our actions on behalf of justice and mercy resonate in tune with the purposes of God, they become so much more. They ripple out in all directions. 

Stay The Course Joseph !

This last week I’ve been reading again the account of Jesus’ birth in Matthew’s Gospel. Talk about living life in circles… This is my 41^st Christmas and I know this story like the back of my hand. It’s all there…

There’s the angel appearing to Joseph saying, “Stay the course Joseph. Mary is pregnant and you are not the father but hang in there. This child is special. This baby is destined for great things.”

Then there’s the wisemen, the Magi who arrive in Jerusalem from the East. They’ve come expecting to find a kingdom in the middle of a party. And they come asking, “So are we too late ? Where is this baby who has been born King of the Jews ? We saw his star rising in the East. We want to meet him and we… have… presents !”

And then there’s the startled King Herod. He’s hosting no party. All he seems to want to give the wisemen is his suspicion and his forty questions. And then Herod sends the wisemen on their way with murderous intent. He’s says, “Look, you keep following your star. When you find this royal child, you let me know. I have something special I want to give him !”

And the wisemen… well they just keep following their star & searching, till they find the baby Jesus. He is certainly not living in a palace but the wisemen are certainly not disappointed. Scripture says they are overwhelmed with joy.

Yet despite their joy, despite their celebrating… the many threads of this story begin to unravel. Herod is filled with murderous intent. He is anxiously waiting for news of the location of the child. The wiseman are warned via a dream. They do not return to their country via Herod’s palace. And when Herod finds this out he unleashes his murderous rage.

One night soon after, Joseph is woken up from restful slumber by another angel. The angel says, “Wake up and run Joseph. Take Mary and the baby and go far away from this place. Go to Egypt. Herod is coming to kill the baby. Run Joseph, run away now!”

I said before, I know all these aspects of the story like the back of my hand.

However, the part of the story that rings the most true with my experience of the world is also the most terrible. It’s Herod’s slaughter of the infants. In response to the arrival of the wisemen, Herod is threatened at the most fundamental level. In fear & fury he unleashes infanticide on all the toddlers and babies 2 years and under in and around the town of Bethlehem. It’s a monstrous act of political expediency.   

Can you imagine it ? Can you imagine the impact, the pain of this action rippling through a community, through an entire district ? Can you picture the mass of mothers weeping inconsolable in their grief, over their lost children ? All that hope, all that potential wiped out in one callous and capricious act. It’s breath taking in its sheer horror. 

And the wonder of it, is that Jesus, the helpless & unknowing infant survives. God intervenes and Scripture gives us the image of this one who is born King of Jews fleeing with his parents. They run like refugees and their only protection is the cover of darkness.

For a time this fragile royal family become aliens and strangers in the land of Egypt. But the world turns. Scripture says Herod dies but Joseph is still afraid to return to his own country. Again Joseph is woken from peaceful slumber. And the angel says, “Get up and go Joseph. It is time to return home. Take the child and his mother and go back to Israel!”

So Joseph gets up and again he goes. And when Joseph finally arrives back home, I get a sense he continues living anonymously and below the radar in Nazareth. Even at this point, you can still see the consequences of Herod’s actions… rippling out in all directions, affecting Joseph’s choices long after Herod is dead. Jesus, the shoot from the stump of Jesse, the King of the Jews, becomes Jesus the son of Joseph, a carpenter living in a rural Jewish backwater.  

Here Is My Servant In Who My Soul Delights

Traditionally Isaiah 42:1-9 describes one who is known as the Suffering Servant. There is definitely a sense of weakness and vulnerability about this figure in verses 2 and 3. “Here is my servant… he will not cry or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street”. This is one who lives among ‘bruised reeds’ and ‘dimly burning wicks’. This sounds like a subjugated person, a slave whose spirit has been broken… a man living from day to day who does what he is told.

However I also notice that this is vulnerability & weakness that has been turned on its head.

Scripture also says, “I have put my Spirit upon him”. And the suffering servant’s task is nothing less than bringing equity and justice to the nations. This is one who will redress the imbalance… And Scripture says, “…he will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice upon the earth”. Wow ! That is no small task for one who is an exiled foreigner in a strange land.

And what or who makes this possible ? v6 “I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations… I am the Lord, that is my name.”

I suppose my question here is, ‘Is this what it means to begin living life in ever increasing circles ?

It’s interesting… Abraham Heschel makes the comment that no other problem has occupied OT scholars more than the identity of the Suffering Servant. Who is he ? Is he the prophet who wrote the passage ? Is the suffering servant the whole of exiled Jewish nation ? Or is he the Messiah, the one who is to come ?

A couple of weeks ago I described the writing of Isaiah as deliciously ambiguous. This means that over time it seems to accrete more & more meaning. While a passage like this sits well within history, it is ambiguous because it also sits above history. In a sense it defies time – it is ageless.

That’s the remarkable thing about the Gospel… When people open themselves to the Spirit of God there is something remarkably consistent about the outcome. It gives people particular priorities, it evidences itself in particular actions, it inspires people with particular visions… Over time it establishes itself in ways that turns everyday experience on its head… Imagine for a moment the audacious possibility of a subjugated exiled foreigner, an alien bringing forth justice to the nations. Imagine an expat community of weakened Jewish exiles without a country being given as “a covenant to the peoples, a light to the nations”.

I call this living life in ever increasing circles…   

For Unto Us a Child Is Born

Living life in increasing circles…

Truly, one of the great joys of life is now seeing my own children get excited about Christmas. It wasn’t always like this… I remember my daughter Zoe’s first Christmas. She was 6 months old and we propped her up under the tree with presents all around and a cute Santa hat on her head. Zoe’s delight that year wasn’t the presents, it was ripping up all the Christmas paper.

The next year Zoe was 18 months old and I remember taking her to see Santa for the very first time at Harrods in London. She was terrified of this BIG red man with masses of white hair… so much so that I had to sit next to Santa and Zoe sat on my wife’s lap next to me.  She did not want to talk to Santa, so Santa talked to me instead.

By Zoe’s 3^rd Christmas she got the broad strokes concept of what was happening. Thankfully she didn’t get up any earlier but I remember Zoe was now definitely interested in opening every present under the tree.

This year on her 8^th Christmas, Zoe directed her 2 brothers through the delicate process of decorating the Christmas tree. She typed out her own gift list for Santa on the computer. With a little encouragement from her Nanna, Zoe even gave some of her own pocket money towards the Christmas hampers.

You know it takes kids a while to get Christmas but once they do Christmas sparkles with the purity of their sheer delight…

The other evening my son Ethan was decorating the Christmas tree, and he turned to me and said, “Christmas makes me feel so happy Dad !” And I sat there wide-eyed and I gulped. I couldn’t begin telling him how much hearing those words filled me with overwhelming joy.

Earlier this week I watched my kids pack twenty hampers for the shutin members of our church community.  I didn’t have to ask them… they begged me to help. They did it enthusiastically, totally naturally. And in the middle of it all little Dawson looks up at me with a big, big smile and a twinkle in his eye. And he tells in a look, “Of course we get the idea of these hampers Dad… we are doing this to help all the poor people.”

This is my 41^st Christmas and Christmas just keeps becoming deeper and richer. When I was a child, Christmas was filled with the magic and wonder of childhood. Now as an adult Christmas has been transformed. There is still magic and wonder but it is the magic and wonder of a father delighting in his children delighting in Christmas. You see when we live life in circles, the familiarity of those persistent repetitious rhythms makes life a sacred gift… a high calling.

Surely the Lord Is In This Place and I Did Not Know It

I remember vividly those first moments I spent holding each of my children after they were born. My wife gave birth to all three of our kids by caesarean, so there was always about an hour after my wife had been stitched up and was in recovery, where I would be waiting & holding our new little bub. On each occasion, it was a time of being overwhelmed by the experience.

And I would mostly be unable to speak. I would teeter on the brink of laughter and of crying. And every time I looked up at any of my family on the other side of the glass – I was told – I was simply beaming from the experience of holding such a perfect & serene little one.

Do you think in those moments I was trying to rationally work out what was happening to me  ? – No ! I was simply & profoundly overwhelmed with the wonder of this first and long awaited meeting with this captivating little one.

When I reflect back, there was definitely something vulnerable & unguarded about me in those moments. In my humility, I opened myself up to something mostly beyond words, the experience of which I can only describe as pure & sacred.

Suddenly, the idea of Almighty God poured out into the package of the Babe born in Bethlehem becomes comprehensible and totally accessible. 

It reminds me of that episode in Genesis where Jacob is out in the desert. He has just been sent away by his father Isaac – for stealing the birthright of his older brother Esau. It is night and he falls asleep on the hard ground using a stone as his pillow.

And Jacob has this amazing dream. You can imagine the vividness of this dream because Jacob is tossing and turning – using a stone as his pillow. In this dream, Jacob sees a ladder reaching from the ground all the way up to heaven with angels ascending and descending. And the Lord God stands beside Jacob and says,

“I shall make the number of your offspring like the very dust of the earth… know that I am with you and will keep you where ever you go… for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you…” Then Jacob wakes up from his sleep – feeling overwhelmed and afraid. He says, “Surely the LORD is in this place and I did not know it… how awesome is this place. This is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven.”

When we allow ourselves to be pierced and disarmed by the babe of Bethlehem – awe and wonder are our first and most appropriate response. This is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven…

A Virgin Shall Conceive a Son and They Shall Name Him Emmanuel

Jurgen Moltmann says when we celebrate Christmas, at its heart we are celebrating something almost unimaginable, “the Creator of heaven and earth, whom even the heaven of heavens cannot contain, becomes so humble and small that in this child Jesus, he is beside us and lives among us”.

Matthew’s gospel says, “Look, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel which means, ‘God with us’”. Yet what manner of child is this, in whom is expressed all the majesty and glory of God himself ? I don’t just stumble at the thought of that, I literally stagger at the possibility. 

Don’t worry about putting God into a box. When you consider the Creator and Sustainer of the universe freely packaged into a tiny, helpless frame of a baby – then God literally bursts out of the box of convention & cliché. And the unimaginable happens. Suddenly the God ‘whom even the heaven of heavens’ cannot contain is up close and personal.

Like Christmas wrapping after the presents are opened – there is nothing neat and tidy about it. I have my struggles with the logic of Incarnation as it is. Process it just for a moment – holy God and finite hormone driven, male humanity – packaged together in the God-man Jesus. The divine and human natures are united. At best this is holy irony – at worst it’s madness.

It leaves me feeling off balance & uneasy – almost overwhelmed at times with unknowing – like as though all I thought I knew has been erased back to ground zero. And what does that sound like ? 

In Old Testament language we would call this being humbled in the presence of God. And you know what ? I don’t think rationalism or logical argument quite cuts it in these places.

In moments and events touched by the finger of God, a more appropriate response is wonder, awe and radical amazement. Abraham Herschel says, “…wonder is the pre-requisite for an authentic awareness of that which is.” You see, when we use reason, we are trying to explain & adapt the world to our concepts. However, when we experience wonder – we make a significant shift. We begin seeking to adapt our minds to the world as it is. Herschel says, “Under the running sea of all our theories & scientific explanations, lies the original abyss of radical amazement”.

From the Stump of Jesse, From the Line of King David

Sometimes I think we live in a world of broken promises, a world of good beginnings and either bad or incomplete endings… It is a world where so often the people who lead us, disappoint us. They let us down.

Martin Buber says when you look at the Scriptures, “the history of the kings of Israel is the history of the failure of the one who is anointed to realise the promise of his calling. The rise of [the idea of a messiah] – is the hope of the coming of an anointed king who realizes the promise of his anointing”.

You know the prophet Isaiah lived during the reigns of 4 kings of Judah… King Uzziah, King Jotham, King Ahaz and King Hezekiah. They were all descendents from the stump of Jesse, from the line of David.

Now Scripture records problems with 3 of the 4 kings. While 3 of them did what was “right in the sight of the Lord”, they still mostly behaved and pursued the trappings of the kings of the lands all around them. Instead of placing their faith in the help of the Living God of Israel, more often they relied on their own success. They put their faith in political intrigue and timely alliances and their own ability to make war.

Take King Uzziah for instance… Under Uzziah, the Kingdom of Judah reaches the height of its power. Uzziah develops the economic resources of the country as well as its military might. He conquers the Philistines and the Arabians and he receives tribute from the Ammonites. Scripture says he was strong and prosperous because “… he did what was right in the sight of the Lord”.

Yet Uzziah’s success & strength became his weakness. Scripture says, “he grew proud… to his destruction”. Uzziah attempts to enter the Temple to burn incense on the Alter, a privilege reserved for the priesthood only. Azariah, the chief priest pleads with him, “It is not for you Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord but for the priests, the sons of Aaron, who are consecrated to burn incense. Go out from this place, for you have done wrong… it will bring you no honour from the Lord God”. 

Uzziah becomes angry and as his anger grows leprosy breaks out on his forehead. And Scripture says, “King Uzziah was a leper to the day of his death and being a leper lived in a separate house, for he was excluded from the house of the Lord”. 

And when things got really tough, when the Kingdom of Judah began paying tribute to the Kingdom of Assyria, King Ahaz from the stump of Jesse, from the royal line of David – even turned his back on the Lord. He desecrated the Temple & called on the help of other gods.

All of these events occurred during the lifetime of Isaiah. And as a prophet it was his duty to call people back to God. It was his calling to describe the visions he was given of God’s alternative reality. And while these visions filled Isaiah with hope, they also made him unpopular with the kings he served.

Isaiah 11:1-10 is a messianic vision of a peaceful kingdom. It is an alternate vision of a king of the stump of Jesse overwhelmed by the Spirit of God, who is both human and holy. This king is so singled minded in his zeal for God, that he realizes the promise of his anointing… he establishes the Kingdom of God… a kingdom of righteousness and justice and mercy. 

The Lion Laying Down With the Fattened Calf

It’s interesting… while Isaiah 11:1-10 sits well within history, it is ambiguous because it also sits above history. In a sense it defies time – it is ageless !  It’s like throwing a stone in a pond… The effect of that action is the release of a burst of energy that ripples out in all directions.

That’s the remarkable thing about the Gospel… When people open themselves to the Spirit of God there is something remarkably consistent about the outcome. It gives people particular priorities, the Gospel evidences itself in particular actions, it inspires people with particular visions… Over time the Gospel establishes itself in ways that turns everyday experience on its head…

Imagine for a moment the possibility of a lion laying down peacefully alongside a fattened calf…

I remember visiting a game park in South Africa once. We came upon a grouping of cars and 4wds all stopped along the side of the road. There were a bunch of adults & children all hanging out of car windows, standing out of top of their sunroofs. Some were even sitting on car bonnets. All were pointing admiringly and looking through their binoculars at some far off tree.

And at the base of the tree was a pride of lions all lazing about in the hazy shade. The lions were all stretched out around a stripped zebra carcass.

Then the male lion stood up and yawned and roared. It was a huge sound and he was huge lion! Latent power was oozing from every muscle and sinew. From gaping mouth to claw to tail he was one efficient lean mean killing machine.

Then the park ranger pulled up in front of us. He started berating the tourists who were hanging out their windows and sunroofs and sitting on their bonnets.

He was gesticulating wildly as he drove home his well rehearsed mantra… “Usually… lions who have just eaten aren’t interested in people but you just never know! If for some reason they feel threatened and the male charges… you would be pushing it to get back into your car and to close the doors and windows before he would be among you… and the rest doesn’t bear thinking about… So don’t be so reckless & stupid… Get back into your cars.” 

Now I ask you… if that is the way of the world, can you imagine a time when a fattened calf and a lion could lie down side by side ?

There is a predictable certainty about all the violence & the harsh edge of this world. And yet the writer of Isaiah says, “Behold the one who is overwhelmed and filled up with the Spirit of God… this one who dares to truly live life consistent with that relationship. Behold what he will do… Those things you thought that were so certain, will all change because of his actions. And the changes will be startling, unexpected and beyond your wildest imagining.

They will be glorious to behold and they will amplify the power and the majesty of God”. 

When the Gospel begins taking root, its like the yeast in the dough… a little goes along way and changes the flour fundamentally. It is like a lion laying down peacefully alongside a fattened calf ! 

Don’t Judge and You Yourself Will Not be Judged

Have you ever noticed, when we judge others too quickly or much worse, when we label people, we freeze people and we stop moving towards them ? Instead of remaining complex subjects, judging objectifies people into caricatures and cardboard cut outs. And when disciples of Jesus stop moving towards people – the Kingdom of God is diminished.

It’s interesting… the Scriptures say all kinds of things about
 judging. In one place Jesus says, “Don’t judge and you yourself will 
not be judged. Don’t condemn people & you in turn will not be
 condemned. Give generously and, ‘a good measure, pressed down, shaken 
together & running over…’ will be given to you in return. Forgive
 others and you will be forgiven”.

It’s like as though judgment & labeling people are so engrained in
 everything we do, that the only possible way to undo it is to do it’s 
opposite.

Jesus goes further. He says if someone hates you, love them – if they
 curse you – bless them. If someone abuses you, pray for them. If 
anyone hits you on one side of your face, offer them the other side as
 well. The list goes on & on until the picture that is formed is one of
 overwhelming openness & generosity & movement towards people.

Jesus says, ‘If you love only those who love you, how is that
 different – even evil men love those who love them’. Jesus says that 
in his Kingdom, the thing that defines his disciples is not how they 
respond to those who love them but how they respond to those who don’t
love them – to those who even despise them.

You know, I used to think that when Jesus said ‘Love your enemies’ he
was speaking in exaggerated language about extravagantly loving your
 neighbor. Yet now I think Jesus is just saying, “Don’t judge, don’t 
label, give & forgive generously – love your enemies !” It’s that
 straightforward !

That we use our judgment to make decisions for living is natural 
however when disciples of Jesus judge and label others, they freeze 
people, they stop moving towards people and the Kingdom of God is
diminished.

Betwixt and Between

I have a dilemma… The whole focus of discipleship is that we are profoundly changed by the experience, ‘…to the measure of the fullness of the stature of Christ’ (Eph 4:13). Yet when we allow ourselves to be inspired by visions of newness & possibility, when we journey out & dwell in the margins – sharing hospitality with the stranger, with the widow and the orphan, in a sense we become like strangers & widows & orphans when we return back home. A disciple’s home is now on the road – betwixt and between.

It’s like the character of the Wiseman in TS Eliot’s 1929 poem, ‘The Journey of the Magi’. After returning home from his long journey to see the Christ child, he says, “This birth was hard and bitter agony for us, like a death – our death. We returned to these kingdoms, our homes but no longer are we at ease here in the old dispensation, with an alien people clutching at their gods. I should be glad of another death”.

Betwixt & between are never easy spaces to inhabit – seldom tidy. They are like London train stations – mostly chaotic, with people going everywhere and nowhere – never still, feeling edgy ! There is often an overwhelming sense of anxiety and restlessness and difficult labor – even pain. Yet betwixt & between are also places of tremendous excitement and energy, of experimentation & newness & reversals – where dreams are boldly dreamed & visions are nurtured. Mostly they are places of meeting & genuine community because people are participating & journeying together.

Disciples mature & the Kingdom of God is established in those places !

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 !

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!

Perfection = Mercy

The Sermon on the Mount has many demanding teachings. Perhaps the most confronting for me is Jesus’ injunction at the end of his teaching on loving enemies. He says, “Be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect”. It’s interesting when you look at what Jesus says in his similar teaching in Luke’s gospel, instead of using the word perfect, Jesus says, “Be merciful just as your Father is merciful”.

Perfection in Matthew equals mercy in Luke’s gospel. Being perfect just like our Father in heaven means being merciful.

So this is love expressed as mercy, generosity, openness, sensitivity & forgiveness… As disciples of Jesus, this our way of being in the world that impacts everything that we do.

Why The Golden Rule is Golden

My grandfather sometimes used to get into fights with other boys on the way home from school. When I was young he used to tell me, the fights were always round the issue of him being Salvation Army and them being Catholic. The irony is that as an adult his sister Grace married a Catholic. My mother, whenever she speaks of her Aunty Grace always remembers her husband in those terms. I am sure she has mentioned his name but the stronger memory for me is Aunty Grace and her Catholic husband. 

I have a sense that you have only to scratch the surface of any one of us, & there is some kind of prejudice shaping our decisions. It’s natural ! It helps us to give order to the world. Prejudice gives us an efficient way of setting boundaries, of filtering experience – of keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe. Yet the effect of prejudice is that it always keeps the people we are stereotyping at arms’ length – typecasting them into caricatures and cardboard cutouts instead of living, breathing people like you and me – complex and conflicted.

I’ve been reading the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel this past week again, focusing particularly on the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule says, “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (Mt7:12). This verse has it’s foundation in the much older book of Leviticus that says, “But the stranger that lives among you shall be like one born among you, and you will love them as you love yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Lev19:34).  So the sense of Jesus teaching here is an openness to others, that breaks down prejudice, creating space to encounter all people as image bearers of God himself.  

Over the years I have met too many evangelicals who are willing to right off a major part of the Church because Catholics don’t profess to be saved or born again like they are.

During the week I was reading a piece in the paper by a young catholic professional, Rachel Patterson.  After all the media hype surrounding the Pope’s visit and World Youth Day, I found it a refreshing read. Let me share some of the highlights…

“At the core of catholic faith is the belief that Christ is God and God is love. As followers of Christ we are called to love God and one another. As such, for Christians, life is not a meaningless experience but a beautiful, sometimes difficult thing to which there is a purpose other than mere self-satisfaction”.

“At the heart of Catholic moral teaching is an understanding of freedom that contrasts sharply with popular notions of choice. For most people, freedom is simply the ability to do what they want. For the Catholic Church, freedom is the is the ability to do good. It is easy to do what we want. It isn’t always easy to do what is right. And when we choose to do right by another, especially when it isn’t our inclination or in our interests to do so, we exercise our capacity for love. In other words, love isn’t just some gooey emotion we feel for our parents, children or significant other… ”.

“Some people… question why the church persists in having so many rules –especially when it comes to sex… [Why] does it ask us to keep sex within marriage [?]… Not because the church is scared of human sexuality. Sex is understood as something created by God and, therefore, a… good and beautiful thing. It can, however be misused and when it is we can hurt people and ourselves. Far from being oppressive, church teaching on sex is meant to be liberating”.

“It can be lonely leading a life that is counter to the prevailing moral norms. For many of the young adult making the trip to Sydney for World Youth Day, it is one of the few times in their lives that they will be surrounded by other young Catholics in a decidedly Christian atmosphere. To them I say, enjoy. Your faith is a gift and you do not need to apologize for it or isolate it from the rest of your life”.

“But the stranger that lives among you shall be like one born among you, and you will love them as you love yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt”.

Allowing the stranger to draw near… This is why the Golden Rule is golden.

Arms Wide Open

The Sermon on the Mount. These words of Jesus are life… life lived abundantly, generously, with arms wide open. They create the space for us to live life BIG, to embrace today – even when the storms of life come. These words are demanding because every stroke and letter is absolutely brimming with the merciful, compassionate and grace-filled way that God deals with people. These teachings of Jesus are what it means to live life naked and exposed in the very presence of God himself.

That’s why everyone who hears these words of Jesus and who acts on them are like the wise man who built his house upon the rock. The rains came down and the floods came up. The winds blew and beat on the house but it did not fall because it was founded on a firm foundation. I like what Rob Bell says about storms. He says it’s not like the storms might come. Storms come. The difference between a wise and a foolish man is in their ability to weather the storm. 

The Rock From Which You Are Hewn

God’s story woven into lives of ordinary men…

There’s an interesting word of encouragement that the prophet Isaiah gives the Jews when they are in Exile, when they were poised between the choice of assimilation and despair. It says,

‘Listen to me you that pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord. Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him and I blessed him and made him many’. 

I like what Walter Brueggemann says about theses verses. He says that Isaiah is saying if you want to seek God, look to the oldest, most embarrassing beginning we ever had. He says firstly, remember Abraham. On the one hand, he is the strange, impressive father of the faith who leaves his home at God’s command & goes out on a long journey. On the other hand, Abraham is also a pitiful figure – often helplessness and filled with fear.  Two times he gives his wife Sarah away to other men to save his own skin. Despite God’s promise of a child with Sarah, he sleeps with Sarah’s servant Hagar, to get an heir.

Often Abraham appears so confused, so unsure, so barely faithful.

And when you are done reflecting on Abraham, remember Sarah your mother. Sarah is the beautiful woman who other men desire. She is also the mother of Isaac, the promise carrier. However, when you remember Sarah, remember her oldness, remember her barrenness, remember her mocking laughter in the face of God when He promises her a son.

Yet when you remember Sarah, remember that this old and pitiful woman now laughs a new laugh – an Easter laugh. God uses her very barrenness to create newness. Sarah is the example for all barren people, who have within them no gift of life, no capacity for faith – yet God does something new and unexpected in the face of all the evidence.

What impresses me about this foundational story of Scripture, is what it says about the way God’s story is unfolding among us. Abraham and Sarah are people we can identify with because they are fragile and tentative, often moving forward with fear & hesitation. These are people just like us.

You know, God’s story often isn’t in the grand epics of history, the stories told by the winners. When I read the large sweep of Scripture, it seems to me that God’s story is mostly unfolding quietly, below the radar, twisting and turning – always with the very real possibility of failure. Yet when we remember this story of faith, remember that it is told and retold through the same fragile stories of other biblical characters. Remember the scheming of a timid Jacob, the stuttering of a reluctant Moses, the paranoid actions of a bipolar Saul, the treachery of a wife stealing David, the depressed and suicidal Elijah…

The very wonder of God’s story is that he achieves his purposes in the world through broken ordinary people, just like us.

Bruggemann says we remember these stories because they model faith and they invite faith.

We remember these stories because when these fragile people centered their stories in God’s story, they lived life BIG – filled with purpose, newness and imagination.

He Who Saves One Life, Saves the World Entire

Living life naked and exposed in the presence of God himself. I think this is what Jesus has in mind in his teaching of the Sermon on the Mount… why it is so demanding. We are not merely talking about Jesus giving new order to the parameters of Jewish religious life or even temple worship, but the Spirit of God being granted access and transforming all areas of life. Anything that has God in such close proximity is deeper, wider and higher than ordinary living.

You see when we dwell in close proximity to the Scriptures, when we turn them over again and again, when look back over their writing down through the ages – something becomes very clear. God has priorities. God desires some things more than he desires others…   

Like the time Jesus calls Matthew the tax collector. Jesus is sitting eating a meal openly with a number of tax collectors and other social outcasts. Some Pharisees are walking by and they ask Jesus’ disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with those kinds of people ?” And Jesus, hearing what they are saying, turns to them and replies, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy not sacrifice’”. 

Jesus says this because as a good Jew who had memorised the Torah, word for word – Jesus knows God’s priorities. God desires mercy more than he desires sacrifice. God desires compassion more than he desires contemplation. God desires our hearts more than he desires our intellectual ascent.

Why ? Because the goal of life isn’t purity and holiness – that’s a by-product. The goal of life is an intensity of living, a fullness of life, concretely focused into habits of action that help to repair the brokenness of a hurting world. It’s like the Jewish Talmud says, “He who saves one life, saves the world entire.”

Really Turning the Other Cheek

“You have heard it said, ‘You shall not murder’ and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment’. But I say to you that if you are angry with your brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment…”.

“You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye…’. But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also…”.

 “You have heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”.

 

I really feel the stretch of Jesus’ teaching in these passages from the Sermon on the Mount. When I reflect on how my own life measures up to the Sermon on the Mount, I have a sense of missing the mark, of failing daily. In my darker moments I would be sorely tempted to just… give up !

Now, I also balance this with the tension of experiencing God’s grace, of my sense of assurance that the blood of Jesus covers my sin, that before the throne of God I am already declared pure, holy, acceptable, with a righteousness that is not my own. The freedom of it allows me to enter boldly into the presence of God Himself.

While the grace of God releases me from the overwhelming sense of guilt that comes from working hard for salvation, I also wrestle with the tension of scriptures like Mt 5:20, that says, “unless our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, we will never enter into the Kingdom of Heaven…”. What about John 14:12 where Jesus says, “The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and in fact will do greater works than these…”. 

Words like these create tension, they create discomfort and uneasiness within us about the teachings of Jesus. I wonder if the anxiety & dissonance is Jesus’ intention, indeed God’s intention for Scripture in general ?  You see I think God can work with us in those places. He wants access to all areas of our lives. I think these are the teachable moments, the places where Jesus teachings can be translated into meaningful action that flavours our total response to living. 

Rather like a wise man who builds his house upon the rock….

 

Turn It Over & Turn It Over Again

There’s an ancient Jewish proverb from the Talmud I have grown rather fond of. It goes like this, “Turn it over and turn it over again, for everything is contained in the Scriptures. Regard it, grow old in it and never abandon it, for there is no greater virtue.”

During the week I have been reading through the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel. I have been turning it over again and again, I feel have been regarding it to the point where it has grown rather old. Thankfully, I didn’t abandon it.

For me the Sermon on the Mount has been personally demanding reading. It has made me feel contrite & reflective about the quality of my discipleship; even the integrity of my walking with God.

You can’t read very far into the Sermon on the Mount without starting to feel the weight of God’s glory, the light of his holiness pouring into all the nooks and crannies of our mixed intentions… even filling the yawning gap that exists between our words and our actions.

Like John Calvin before me, I notice that these series of teachings read more like a dense compilation of many teaching sessions, rather than one singular occasion. There doesn’t seem to be that logical, sequential development of an argument that one would expect from a master teacher, delivering his message.

Instead each topic appears like its own particular teaching, concentrated & hard-hitting – complete in and of itself. 

Oh My God !

I remember my wife being away at a conference and being busy preparing dinner in the kitchen. I was focused and safely immersed in the mundane activities of domestic bliss, when all of a sudden I could hear a high-pitched cry from the garage.  I thought nothing of it because my two boys playing, regularly involves rather loud high-pitched yelps of both pleasure & pain. The problem was that 15 seconds later the noise of it was still there and it was becoming more earnest by the second. It made me come out running, muttering under my breath.

I opened the side door of the garage and the scene unfolded before me. Both boys were crying but my older one was lying on the ground thrashing about grabbing at his neck. At first I thought he was fitting or that he was choking on something but then I was reminded of his high pitched screaming. I rushed to his side and tried to move him and found the situation even more sinister.

Both of my sons had become entangled in a deadly web of almost invisible nylon kite string. Now keep in mind one is six and the other is only four. The older one had the string dangerously wrapped a number of times around his neck. The string was also wrapped tightly around the younger one’s arms and torso and every time he moved in panic, trying to help his brother, the string would pull tighter, cutting into his older brother’s neck.

In those desperate moments my vision narrowed and I felt myself rushing to the precipice of unspeakable horror. My heart was beating out of my chest and I felt sluggish in my thinking.  It took me what seemed forever to break those deadly cords.

When I had finally freed both my boys, I held them tightly, speaking to them quietly, reassuring them with tears streaming down all our faces…

I was very fortunate that day, life isn’t always so forgiving !

You know, it is in those moments, when we are immersed in overwhelmingly difficult circumstances, beyond our control – that Jesus’ cry from the Cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me ?” seem most accessible & resonate deeply within me. 

You know life wasn’t supposed to be this way. In a more just world, a life lived well is supposed to bring blessing & the favour of God. It is the ones who deliberately pursue their selfish & evil ways that are supposed to suffer and to perish.

Yet as the writer of Ecclesiastes observes the world is rather more topsy-turvy. There are, “righteous people who perish in their righteousness and there are wicked people who prolong their life in their evildoing.” 

These last words of Jesus resonate within me for all the times I have been pushed around and broken by a capricious and self-centered world. A world where God sometimes seems distant, even disinterested. 

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.

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.

Remember the Sabbath… Keep It Holy

The Sabbath… Abraham Heschel calls it ‘God’s architecture in time’. The Sabbath creates the regular rhythm of a space in-between. This is the context where local, individual moments touch eternity. This is truth local & asymmetrical brought into proximity with truth unchanging & persistent. The habit of regularly entering into that space is the discipline of perspective. It a journey towards difference and holy otherness where the revealed and the mysterious are held in tension. Derrida says, “there is a duty to translate and not to translate, to understand, to enter into relation with another but at the same time preserve the otherness of the other”.

It’s interesting… truth local, pitted and asymmetrical is often overwhelmed by a seemingly wanton, unpredictable vortex of violence and dislocation. It is that sometimes intensified aspect of chaos where there is a mischief and a vandalism in its milder forms and terror & death at its most determined. 

Tragedy is potential dissipated, opportunity lost, beauty erased in a vacuum untouched by meaning.

The result of truth tinged with violence, overwhelmed with chaos is theodicy. The affective response to the harshness of local truth is, “Where is God ?” or the cry of Psalm 22, “I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint, my heart is like wax, it has melted within my breast… my God, my God, why have you forsaken me ?”

The Sabbath reminds us that not all truth is local. For the sensitive ones who create the space, it is the possibility of continuing revelation. It is the reminder of the close proximity of God’s glorious presence in the fabric of time. The Glory of God lightly touches the world and for those who engage in the holy habit of attending, of offering hospitality to the presence of God, this translates truth local & unrelenting into glorious possibility & a future punctuated with hope.

Every instant is an act of creation. There is a pilgrim journey, a constant and continuous movement that is made possible by the Sabbath – a journey towards otherness and difference away from our man made structures. Those who take this journey find day after day they are sustained, inspired and led by a God who is undiminished by truth local, pitted and unpredictable. This is the God whose glory is most easily perceived in the chaos.  

What If Mission Came Home

Last Sunday evening I attended the commissioning of some friends who are preparing to serve in overseas mission. It was inspiring to here them speak with passion and honesty about their desire & intention to serve God in South East Asia. Their challenge came as a question, “How could we simply kick back into home renovation and career building when there are so many people who have yet to hear about Jesus right on our doorstep ?”

Over the last few weeks I have been reflecting on the question, “What happens when mission comes home?”  I have been seeking to challenge the idea that mission doesn’t just belong with the 1% of christians who leave their homes and travel to other lands where the Gospel isn’t. Mission and mission practices belong right here at home as well. Mission could be the organizing principle around which we re-orientate the whole church. Supporting missionaries in other cultures could be but one expression of our total mission vision.

I was reading back through the covenant that my wife & I made with our home church before we left for South East Asia in 2005. In that covenant we said the following,

“We identify the centrality of the missional task within our own lives as disciples of Jesus Christ. We reaffirm our desire to follow God where he leads and to be His witnesses & disciplers in those places. Through the Holy Spirit’s enabling we will seek to creatively evoke and to nurture the Gospel as a powerful & vital alternative to the dominant culture in which we will live. We renew our commitment to open our lives to otherness & difference so that we may authentically connect & participate in the lives of others”.

As a consequence of this statement we committed ourselves to a number of concrete practices. Firstly we committed ourselves to weakness that deliberately sort the role of a learner & a lifestyle of simplicity. Next we committed to listening & sensitivity that sort discernment from the Spirit of God, fluency in language learning & nonjudgmental insight into the cultural practices of the people with whom we will work. We committed ourselves to hospitality that sort to create nurturing & safe spaces where storytelling, discipling & worshipping communities could thrive. Next we committed to advocacy biased on behalf of poor and marginalised people that sort their participation in processes of reversal, empowerment, transformation, healing & reconciliation – so they could experience the presence of the Kingdom of God among them. Finally we committed ourselves to excellence in our professional roles.

As I read back through this list of concrete missional practices I find myself asking the question, “If we were prepared to commit ourselves to these things over there then why can’t we commit ourselves to those same practices back here in Australia ?”

The World Breaks Everyone

‘Myanmar Refugees’, May 2008

We live in a fallen world – a world where we fall often and hard… a world where survival depends on learning to get back up again.  There is harshness, rawness – an ever so sharp edge to just plain living. When the elemental forces of nature gather, concentrate suddenly and unleash their power, people perish in great numbers. This is life annihilated, extinguished without meaning.  Survivors stand on the edge of a great abyss & question the very presence of God in the world,

“How could a God of mercy & compassion, the very ruler of the universe allow such a thing to happen ?”

The fragility of life on this ball of rock we call Earth, hurtling moment by moment through space. The invisible forces that hold it in relation to the sun in such a way that biological life is sustainable – mostly not too hot and not too cold – that is as amazing as it is precarious. Indeed that there is life on this planet in the midst of the vast darkness & coldness of space is a miracle. I like what Ernest Hemingway says about suffering. He says,

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry…”

There is an inherent vulnerability and weakness in living. Yet it is also built into us to fight and resist almost to the last breath. It is our survival instinct – the quickening that courses through our veins whenever we are in proximity to death.  The truth of life is its tenacity, its vigor in the face of death. Maybe that’s what it means to stamped with the image of God.

The good news of the Scriptures is that the suffering of people invokes the pathos of God.

God says to Moses, “I have observed the suffering of my people… I have heard their cry… I know their sufferings and I have come to deliver them…”.

The good news is God hears the cries of the suffering ones. God is not an abstraction dwelling in the lonely splendor of eternity. God is concretion itself – present and accessible – suffering alongside his people. 

I Desire Mercy Not Sacrifice

Mission as an organising principle… I was listening to Michael Frost talk about this in the last couple of days. He was saying he has a fear of mission becoming a style thing, of it being domesticated when it should be dangerous and costly and totally reorientating. His is a vision of mission as a never-ending, surging fighting movement.  It’s interesting… Jesus says to some rabbis who are critical of his eating with social outcasts, “Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy not sacrifice”. What would happen if we allowed mission to become the focus of our churches instead of worship ?

When mission is the organising principal discipleship is key. The goal is one of maturing to the point of knowing what to do to personally grow and doing it. Disciples are even deliberately pursuing accountable relationships with people further along in the journey.

This is the vision of a church who breaks out of its building and seeps into the cracks and crevices of it’s surrounding community. It is always listening, sometimes participating in the conversations of the community, even starting some of those conversations. In mostly quiet, unassuming ways, whenever it encounters pain and violence and oppression, it offers solidarity and hope and healing.

It is the vision of a church whose edges are permeable, where sensitivity & awareness reaches out from its very middle, to the ends of the earth. 

It is the vision of a church that is deliberately creating spaces for people and experiences beyond itself, allowing them to get close. This affects disciples in costly ways – including the use of their time and financial resources, even relationships. It is a church that engages in ministry enterprises and experiments that are provisional, home grown and have every possibility of failure.

What would happen if we allowed mission to become the focus of our churches instead of worship ?

Holy Bedlam

Luke 4 describes Jesus spending time in the desert, out in a place where people and civilisation were absent.

Out in the desert under the blazing sun, Jesus is distilled & concentrated so that all that’s left is a focused and very determined Son of God who finds the heart of what his mission will be.

Scriptures says that Jesus returns from the desert filled with the Spirit of God, and the very next Sabbath he stands up in his hometown Synagogue and reads from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me… The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and the recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.”

What is Jesus saying here ?

Jesus is boldly declaring what is called the Great Reversal. Essentially Jesus is saying that the Spirit of Almighty God is leading him to engage in concrete actions that will fundamentally reverse the status quo.

In other parts of the Gospels this movement to reverse the vast litany of injustice in the world is called the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God refers to a future time when all peoples will be united in all their diversity in a kingdom of justice and righteousness and mercy. There will be peace and equal prosperity and even harmony among men and women. Essentially the Kingdom of God is a future time when the reign of God will be universally recognized and established among people.

The message of Jesus was that this future is has made its beginning. It is breaking into the world right now in the person of Jesus.

What impresses me about Jesus is that he walks out from the Synagogue, through the middle of a murderous crowd & does exactly what he says he will do. And as he wanders about teaching his gentle message of freedom and justice and reconciliation, while he is healing people and working miracles – Jesus attracts a vast following of people from all walks of life. At the same time Jesus deeply offends other people… people of power and influence, people whose position is best maintained by keeping things exactly as they are.

Now the outcome of Jesus pursuing his mission was that the religious establishment conspired to killed him. And the outcome of that conspiracy ended with Jesus being killed off on the Cross.

What makes this Great Reversal so potent is that 3 days later Jesus began appearing again to his closest followers.

And you know what, Jesus’ message didn’t change after he was resurrected. Instead of saying, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…”, Jesus tells his followers, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon you because he has anointed you to bring good news to the poor. He has sent you to proclaim release to the captives and the recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.”

“Go on, go and share this teaching with all people. Go make disciples of all nations… teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you…”.

By the time the Apostle Paul begins writing to the early Christian communities, this broad sweep of Jesus’ teaching has been distilled and concentrated again into a potent confession that propels would be disciples on their way. It says, “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord & believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved.”

Here we have it… People who follow after Jesus, people who say Jesus is the main thing are people who deeply, truly, profoundly believe that God raised Jesus from the dead. As a result they begin to re-orientating their lives around the teachings of Jesus. They become participators in the Great Reversal. They seek to embody God’s justice and mercy and goodness. They group their lives together and they become God’s alternative community and the Risen Jesus is their ‘living middle’.

When people associate their lives together, when this Risen Jesus becomes the living middle, then it is possible for community to arise among them and the Kingdom of God spreads like a wildfire !

Moving Towards Others

At its core, mission is all about moving away from the familiar, the safe & the predictable. It is about resisting the strong drive to remain where we are. Mission expresses itself concretely as moving towards people and places that are different. Effective mission always involves taking on the role of a learner. It requires acquiring new ways of speaking and doing, so one can thrive in that other place. The aim is to interact & communicate meaningfully with the people we are moving towards, out of the very fabric of everyday life – for the sake of the Gospel. Within this dynamic of moving away from ourselves & towards others, the Kingdom of God spreads like wildfire.

On the two occasions where I have been immersed in living in another culture – I have to admit to it not being an easy place to choose to stay. In both of those places I have been mostly weak and awkward, often overwhelmed and stammering, sometimes even exhausted by the experience.

You might think that in such a place, one’s sense of identity could be in danger of being scattered or even lost. Yet I have found the opposite to be true. Immersing myself and embracing other people and their cultures, has put me profoundly in touch with the person God has shaped me to be. How much more difficult it is to become conscious of your shape and your purpose in the world, when you remain at home.

It is this persistence, this movement towards the not-yet-known stranger that shapes us & concentrates our presence in the world as disciples of Jesus. Think of it like God’s calling of Abraham. He says, “Go from your country… and your Father’s house to the land that I will show you… I will bless you… so that you will be a blessing… In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”  

So Abraham goes. He begins a journey and most of the time he is so barely faithful. God promises he will make a nation out of Abraham’s decedents but his son isn’t even born until Abraham is a very… old… man. Yet from such a fragile beginning, a story that twists & turns with every possibility of failure, becomes the revelation of God himself – the gospel that is good news for all the families of the earth.   

Breaking Open the Circle

I remember back in November, 2006. It was the evening of the first night of Idul Fitri – an all night of muslim prayer marking the end of the fasting month. I was standing on the roof of my house – immersed in the anonymity of the night. Here & there the mere suggestion of shapes & surfaces marked my particular place in the world but my hearing was telling me otherwise. I was immersed in a uniquely bounded moment of a tremendous speech act, a multitudinous calling of the name of Allah from mosques in all directions. From the front, now behind, to the side, the other side… came an unbroken multi-vocal charge of different utterances converging, rising to crescendo then falling again… a creative gaggle of voices congregating around the speaking of the name of God.

However, there is another kind of speech act. It is the unending calling forth of my name by God. It’s like God’s calling of Abram. He says, “Go from your country… and your Father’s house to the land that I will show you… I will bless you…  so that you will be a blessing.”  

Such a calling is a creative utterance. It is a never-ending self-involving unbounded moment. It calls us out from the anonymity of the night & into a world of light and encounter with particular other people. It calls us to become familiar with the sounds of their voices, engaging in their specific situation, immersing ourselves in their unique stories.


To be involved in a conversation with strangers, begins in speaking words with little meaning. The sounds are mostly harsh and unfamiliar. It is hard to remain in that place, like the smoke of burning leaves barbing my eyes or the pungent smell of rotting garbage taunting my nostrils. To remain in the creative gaggle of a continuing conversation with unfamiliar people, day after day, in situation after different situation, etches out a new space of shared meaning. Me and them eventually becomes us – a shared story. This is mission and it applies as much up close as it does far away.

I am shaped & held by the words and the stories of particular other people. That’s why God says, “Go from your country…”. The stretch of it, the leaving of myself behind, builds & intensifies my presence in the world & my relation to the One who calls me forth.

Living Middle…

Martin Buber says when people associate their lives together, when they gather around a living middle then community can arise mong them.

If we stubbornly chose to live our lives in close proximity to other people that means there will be times when they see us weak and vulnerable, times when they experience flashes, even prolonged periods of our darker shadow side, the side we like to hide.  As night follows day, there will be times when we mess up and make mistakes.

Life lived in the presence of others, if it is to be life that is lived truly will be glorious sometimes, yet often it will be inglorious even tedious. Sometimes it will be energising & synergistic, often it will be painful – even self-defeating. Sometimes there will be intense joy yet at other times there will be boredom- even sadness.

Yet here’s the thing. When a group of people make Jesus their rabbi, when Jesus becomes the living middle, then all that chaotic mix and clash of egos and different hard-edges opinions begins to become plastic and malleable and refined in the fires of love. What makes community possible is that they fail and they fail and they fail… The value of that failure is that they are failing forwards and they are doing it together.

And when people who associate their lives together don’t fail, they are magnificent in the quality of community that arises among them.  Together what they can achieve is just so much more ! They participate in the Great Reversal and they change the world. They are truly God’s alternative community who are establishing God’s Kingdom on Earth.

The Knife Edge Cutting Deeper

 “the Egyptians pursued them, all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots, his chariot drivers and his army…”

The image we are given is of Pharaoh relentlessly bearing down. He is rapidly advancing towards the Israelites with his murderous host. The Israelites can see the dust and hear the thundering chariots and they are afraid. They can do nothing because they are trapped on the edge of a very large expanse of water. This is being caught between a rock and hard place… between the devil and the deep blue sea.

And as the Israelites totter on the edge of chaos, their courage evaporating by the second, Moses says to the people, “Do not be afraid, the Lord will fight for you… stand firm!” And immediately God speaks. He says to Moses, “Why do you stand there and cry out to me – go forward !”

Now logic would dictate that ‘going forward’ would mean the Israelites moving into battle against the Egyptians. Scripture says that the Israelites went out from Egypt prepared for battle. However that wasn’t what God had in mind. Instead, God intends this mass of newly redeemed slaves to move forward, out into the sea ! 

The Israelites camped on the edge of the sea is a group of people who have pitched their tents on the edge of chaos. A tremendous mass of newly redeemed slaves moving out into the sea is like Peter the wily fisherman stepping out of the boat and into the angry water to walk to Jesus… It is beyond logic, it is beyond wisdom. This is a holy paradox. Yet in such a place a man can walk on water and a teeming throng of people & their vast menagerie of animals can walk through the banked up water on ‘dry ground’ to the other side.

Like the waters of baptism the Israelites went into the Red Sea as slaves and emerged on the far shore as a community of God’s chosen pilgrim people. Most of the time after that, while they wandered around with God in the desert, they whinged and they whined and they were so barely faithful. Yet instead of standing still, they were now a community whose identity was being forged on the way.

Edge of Chaos

In the last 100 years science has shifted from a more structured view of the universe to one filled with chaos. It seems the universe is constantly forming & unforming, generating & expending tremendous amounts of energy creating and destroying the stars. According to chaos theory the universe is filled with the almost infinite possibility of the next unpredictable moment.

Today, the biological sciences are hotly debating that nature is at it’s innovative best near the edge of chaos. When a natural system fails to position itself in this in-between place it becomes static, out of balance, unhealthy. Eventually it dies. However moving to the edge of chaos creates fluid movement – even upheaval – where both order and disorder are present. Nature itself is suggesting the edge of chaos is the sweet spot for productive change. It seems that chaos is woven into the very fabric of life and the universe.

The Scriptures are filled with a similar notion of the edge of chaos. Alan Hirsch says, “the theologically most fertile parts of the Scriptures are all, yes all, set in the context of the people of God facing significant danger & chaos…”.  Whether it is Abraham being called to leave home and journey to a new land or the harrowing experiences of the Exodus and the Exile, whether it is David’s adventures in becoming king or Jesus’ ministry in the Gospels or even just the book of Acts… none of these describe stable situations. They are dynamic, even life threatening and chaos is ever present. 

Good Friday ?

I have never understood the idea of celebrating the death of Jesus at Easter.

Jesus’ death speaks of the violence of men, of life beaten out of his body. It speaks of a body breaking – screaming out to its last breath about the injustice in a world that breaks too many people.

The image of the two Marys weeping over the soldiers savagely beating Jesus is surely the image of women generally – crying out against men and their violence, against the death of their compassion and sensitivity.

That men would seek to undo the purposes of God, that they so readily destroy righteousness and justice and that they drown mercy in their deep arrogance flowing in a never ending stream. This is just more of the same in the history of men.

Oh the anger, the rage of Power when it is defied and disturbed, when it is made to feel irrelevant. The violence of authority, when it is shown to be hollow and without substance, lacking in pity.

The birth of something new of means allowing something held too tightly, to be truly extinguished, to die in dust and ashes and then to rise up reborn like the phoenix.

Jesus, on the night he was betrayed took some bread, broke it & gave thanks saying, “This is my body, broken for you… take, and eat in remembrance of me.” After they had eaten together Jesus picked up a cup and said, “This cup is my blood which is poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins…”.

This Easter, may you hunger again for this bread, may you deeply thirst for this cup. May these habits of confession, of participation, of redemption – be the way you honour Jesus’ death until he comes !

Baraka…

I remember some of the conversations I used to have with colleagues when I lived overseas. Sometimes they would speak long & passionately about their desire for seeing the Gospel spread like wildfire among Muslim peoples. These were people with Big vision who were focused on engaging in activities that would release church planting movements. Often the image that would be evoked in my mind was of the good news being some kind of unstoppable tsunami. I am uncomfortable with that image.

Rick Love says he doesn’t like the term ‘mission’ because too often it misrepresents the peaceable way of Jesus. He suggests that rather than conquering the world for Jesus, the presence of the gospel among a community of people is one of blessing and transformation. He says the pattern of God’s intention for people is imprinted in God’s first conversation with Abraham, “Leave your country, your people & your father’s household & go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation & I will bless you; I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those you bless you and whoever curses you I will curse; and all people’s on earth will be blessed through you “ (Gen 12:1-3). In the New Testament the Apostle Paul makes the direct connection between Abraham, blessing & the gospel, “The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you” (Gal 3:8).

The presence of the gospel among people is like a little yeast in the dough. It is subversive & revolutionary bringing fundamental change but its arrival is often subtle & below the radar… mostly birthed in weakness. It is also like a radiating tiger balm bringing healing and reconciliation, justice and generosity …deeply satisfying and purposeful living.

The presence of the gospel is creative and industrious movement among communities of people responding to the blessing of the Kingdom of God.

 Rick Love says, “So no more talk of conquering… those who follow Jesus are commissioned to bless”.