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 ! 

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 !

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….

 

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.

Tower of Babel, Translating Genesis 11

”What happens when mission comes home ?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is what happens when mission comes home. 

Go And Learn What This Means

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

The Undecidable Ghost or Derrida Revisited

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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 !

Dangerous Saying

Sometimes, I see the world as one standing on a grassy hill among ancient manicured burial mounds. The sun is high overhead. A breeze lightly caresses my face. In those moments, I stand content & sure as the stream meandering through lush green fields of ancient battle below me. There is continuity in it, that speaks as surely as the flow of river waters, glinting all the way to the sea.

Yet what if a lone red doorway suddenly breaks in on my peripheral ?  What if in my boundless curiosity I walk over, turn the handle and step through it ?
 


‘You may open any door in the garden but this one… if you open this particular door, you will surely die !’

In that moment of dawning knowledge, I see the world as one standing on the same grassy hill. The sun is still overhead. The breeze is lightly bracing my face. Again I am lulled into contentment… until I am not ! I am anxious. I have a jarring sense of discontinuity. I scan those green fields of suffering & the fallen then out on the edge of perception I see it. It is the river. It has changed its course. Now it rushes back to meet me. 


Facing such eruption, instinctively I turn towards the safety of home. But I stop ! Through the door, in my home, within my hearing… unbidden – a deafening roar is rushing to meet me. I see that in that once sure place, far off on the edge of the boundless, the mountains are skipping like rams, the ancient hill is trembling and the glinting river bursting its banks. A battle again rages in an overflowing torrent that reaches up to the neck !  
 


Behind me, a surge of words thunders… “Do not walk in the way of this people or believe in what they call a good outcome. Do not fear what they fear or be in dread. See it is the Name of the Lord coming from far away, his nostrils burning, thick clouds arising, his lips boiling with rage… His tongue is like a devouring fire & his breath – his breath is like an overwhelming stream reaching up to the neck”. 
 

Storm’s Coming…

There are 6 stories about Jesus immersed in a storm that appear in the Gospels. Like all good stories about chaos, these stories get told from different perspectives.

In Mark’s telling of the story, Jesus sends his disciples out in the boat, and he goes off to a nearby mountain to pray. Soon, the disciples are out in the open water, it is dark and the wind starts whipping the waves up into a frenzy. We are given an image of the disciples straining & struggling to control the boat in the large swells. Off in the distance they notice a figure walking towards them on the water and they are terrified because the disciples think it is some kind of ghost. Jesus calls out to them, “Don’t be afraid. It’s me !” Then he gets into the boat and the storm ceases. And we are told that the disciples are utterly astonished.

The good news is when the storms come – not ‘if’ they come but ‘when’ they come – when chaos descends and overwhelms our lives – Jesus is not diminished or made irrelevant. Far from it, Jesus is at ease and amazingly present and powerful in those places.

In Mathew’s telling of the story, he focuses on Jesus’ disciple Peter – who is an experienced fisherman & a close friend of Jesus. In those moments after he sees Jesus walking on the water in the storm, Peter steps out of the boat and starts walking towards Jesus. What amazes me about this picture, is that while this is 2 steps beyond the reason of a smart fisherman, Peter has begun to encounter Jesus on his terms. Think about that for a moment, Peter is encountering Jesus on his terms when he steps outside of the boat. And what happens ? In this God space of holy chaos, a fisherman can walk on water.

For some reason Peter takes his eyes off Jesus – Rob Bell says he begins doubting himself. Peter notices where he is standing and he is gripped with fear. As Peter begins to be swallowed up by the angry water, Jesus reaches out his hand and grabs hold of Peter and together they return to the safety of the boat.

The good news is that when the storms of life come, Jesus is powerful and present and we are wonderfully held.

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

Give me a Jesus who is rock solid but also give me an Elastic Jesus who expands and intensifies when all about me is a storm of chaos !

 

‘I am Thirsty’ II…

‘I am thirsty’… the placement of these words in John’s gospel , the fact that they are stated as having been said ‘in order to fulfil the Scriptures’ emphasizes that the writer of the gospel isn’t dispassionate – these words are laden with weight and significance. Jesus here is seen profoundly through the eyes of faith.

‘I am thirsty’ points to a life rhythm… I am thirsty for the kingdom of God, I am thirsty for the fulfilment of the Scriptures, I am thirsty for the day when righteousness will be written on the hearts of people and they will do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with their God…

When Jesus says ‘I am thirsty’ his words also connect with other parts of John’s Gospel. In John 4, Jesus says the Samaritan woman by the well, “…those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life”.  Likewise in John 7 Jesus declares in the Temple precinct, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and let the one who believes in me drink… and out of the believer’s heart shall flow river’s of living water.” For me the inference is that Jesus is thirsty for what lies beyond the Cross and the result of Jesus’ suffering will be exponentially so… much… more ! Every action has and equal and opposite reaction doesn’t apply here. There is a sense in which the bounded, indeed the almost extinguished is exploding and bursting the banks of the boundless.