Tag Archives: Jesus

Thoughts on THE Prayer Pt 2 :: “In the heavens…”

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Our Father, who lives in the heavens,
May Your name be kept holy.
May Your Kingdom come,
May Your will be done,
On earth just like it’s done in Your presence.

Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive our sins
As we forgive those who sin against us.
Don’t bring us to the times of trial,
But deliver us from the evil one.
Amen.

Where does God live, and why does it matter?

This phrase introduces two ideas about God that exist in constant tension: God’s transcendence and God’s immanence. 

God’s transcendence is the “clouds-in-the-sky” part of God: the I-created-the-whole-world aspect of God’s character. This incredible power was important to God’s people; it established YHWH’s credentials as the ultimate power in the world. This is the power that is present at, over, and above creation; in fact, you could say that the point of Genesis 1 and 2 is not to show that God can count to seven or invent the platypus. It’s to show that God is separate from and has power over the creation.

Jesus is not using this phrase so that his prayers have the correct “address” to get to God. He uses the phrase as a form of worship, as a way of reminding himself of God’s infinite power. No matter what life on earth looks like, Jesus prays to the God who created the whole operation, and is more than capable of intervening at any point.

Simultaneously, the phrase “in the heavens” indicates another—and almost more profound—mode of God’s existence. Simply put, “the heavens” doesn’t just indicate a specific address beyond the clouds where God lives (with an awesome beard).

The heavens can mean anywhere.

Even right next to you…

even inside you.

To pray to “our Father in the heavens” is not merely to call on God’s infinite creative power, it’s to call on his intimate presence. 

It means that He is not standing (sitting?) far off watching us succeed or fail, watching us walk or stumble or crawl or fall. He is capable of being everywhere: in our vehicles, in our classrooms, in our dining room, in our cube farm.

Because of His infinite (transcendent) power, He has can be absolutely (immanently) anywhere.

A couple of questions:

  • Does your prayer life involve worship? What would it mean to turn your thoughts to God’s infinite power during prayer, to dwell on the fact that He is in control of everything? How powerful (or weak) is the God of your prayers?
  • Does your prayer life address the fact that God is very, very near? That He has not left us to languish, but is dynamically and constantly present with us? What would it mean to understand the infinite as intimately present with you? How close is the God of your prayers?

Father God you are infinitely present in the heavens; in control of all. You were present before creation, and at creation, and will exist forever. You are all powerful, and nothing is beyond your doing. I thank You that You in control of all the situations that stress me out, or that cause me distress, and I ask You to sustain me through them. At the same time, Lord, I know that You are very gently present with me, even as I sit in this kitchen typing. Not only are You ‘Lord Most High,’ You are also ‘God With Us.’ You are here as I walk through my day, and are always inviting me into a deeper, fuller life of submission and obedience. I pray that I might exist more completely in Your presence, in order to see Your creative power at work in my life. Amen.

Evangelism and Eyesight

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‘But you are my witnesses, O Israel!’ says the Lord.
‘You are my servant. You have been chosen to know me, believe in me,
and understand that I alone am God.
There is no other God—there never has been, and there never will be.
I, yes, I, am the Lord, and there is no other Savior.
First I predicted your rescue, then I saved you and proclaimed it to the world.
No foreign god has ever done this.
You are witnesses that I am the only God,’ says the Lord.
‘From eternity to eternity I am God. No one can snatch anyone out of my hand.
No one can undo what I have done.’ (Isaiah 43:10-12)

 

Yes, it was written long ago that the Messiah would suffer and die and rise from the dead on the third day. It was also written that this message wuold be proclaimed in the authority of his name to all the nations, beginning in Jerusalem: ‘There is forgiveness of sins for all who repent.’ You are witnesses of all these things.’ (Luke 24:45-47)

 

And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:8)

Witness.

Over and over again, God tells us that we are witnesses to what he’s done, and that we are to tell others what we’ve seen.

Not always what we know.

Not our opinions about their character.

Evangelism starts with being a witness. It begins with seeing.

Sometimes we want to start the “telling” part of our lives without addressing the “seeing” part.

What gets in the way of seeing something?

Sometimes our vision is obscured, because we’ve let something come in between us and what we’re trying to see. Either we need to move the obstructions, or we need to move in order to get a different perspective.

Sometimes our vision is blurred, because of something inside of us needs repair or correction, sometimes by going to see a professional. No matter how hard we try, something we’ve grown up with, something that we’ve learned to “live with” is making it impossible to see Jesus accurately.

Sometimes we are simply distracted; we are looking at everything else except the object of our sight. Sometimes we just need to admit that there is too much going on in our lives, and remove the distractions and find a time and place to “see” the thing that we’ve been looking for all along.

How are you doing “witnessing” (seeing) Jesus? Do you need to move something?Do you need time and help to correct your vision? Do you just simply need to find a way to focus on his activity in your life?

Why I Wrestle…

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There’s a wonderful scene in The Devil Wears Prada, where Miranda Priestly, played by the amazing Meryl Streep addresses her new assistant’s (played by Anne Hathaway) indifference — even disdain — for the world of high fashion that the fictional Runway magazine reports on. (watch the scene here; I’ll wait.)

I was thinking about this recently while wrestling through a book on the relationship between Paul and 1st century rabbinic Judaism (fascinating, I know). Streep’s character points out the relationship between the frontiers of “high fashion” and the seemingly mindless, instinctive choices that Hathaway’s character makes in shopping and picking out clothes each day.

“You think this has nothing to do with you,” she says. “What you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s cerulean. And you’re also unaware of the fact that in 2002 Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns … and then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers; and then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down to some tragic casual corner where you no doubt fished it out of some clearance rack … It’s sort of comical how think you’ve made a choice that somehow exempts you from the fashion industry when in fact you’re wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room.”

Chilly elitism aside, I think this is important. Theology — thoughts and study about God — is always growing and changing. Archaeology is revealing more about Jesus and Paul and their context. It’s easy to think that theology is irrelevant to our daily lives, but I think that wrestling with “deep things” is like high fashion – as folks think through the really big issues, it will work its way through the seminaries, colleges and churches and eventually into our daily lives. The problem is that I’m afraid many of us are wrestling with the equivalent of acid washed jeans and polyester shirts. The truth is, God is doing new things, always. Are we (as pastors and leaders) willing to wrestle with the “high fashion” theological questions — not so we can be faddish or “cool” but so we can keep in step with what we are coming to know about God, Jesus, and their message and mission for the world?

I believe we will walk out our theology; we will speak it into others’ lives; we will proclaim it from the platform.

I want to know why we pick the Cerulean sweater.

What I Learned in 2010…

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Last year was a pretty cool year, all in all. I preached a lot, served as the interim pastor at my church, recorded a pretty amazing record (just you wait!), and feel like I grew a ton, albeit in ways that few people may actually see. Boiling the year down to some key learnings, it looks a bit like this…

  1. Musically, I am an “outlier”. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell does an extended examination of what it takes to master a craft or skill. Using examples of Mozart, Bill Gates and the Beatles (among others), he concludes that, rather than some kind of strange, random “anointing”, expertise actually comes from hard work and time spent learning a craft, skill, or instrument. As I prepared for a message this year, I realized (some shockingly) that I had probably put my “10,000 Hours” in on guitar around 2003/2004. While it may sound arrogant, it was liberating to me to realize that I could probably claim some level of “mastery” of guitar. (Let me clear: this does not mean that I’m somehow the best guitar player in the world — or even on my block. What it does mean that I have little trouble making wood, metal, and electricity do and say exactly what I want it to.)

    The results of this revelation has freed me to actually look at music as something that I can give to others, rather than something I consume all the time.

  2. “The success of my organization is my success”. I wrote this in my journal sometime in 2010, and it really impacted me. Sometimes, the organization you are in — work, church, etc. — makes choices that you may not agree with personally. At that point, it’s easy to choose to rebel or withdraw because there appears to be a less than 100% “alignment” with your personal values and goals. However, rebellion and withdrawal is not a productive “strategy”. Furthermore, believing that an organization’s goals and values somehow limit your own is thinking that is governed by scarcity. You are not reduced by your organization’s success. By contributing to your job’s success, you have the opportunity to grow more, live more, understand more.
  3. Growth is always an option. In 2010 I turned 42. I’ve struggled all my life with fear, frustration, and — to a certain degree — resentment. And yet, I saw more growth in these areas in my life last year than probably in the previous 5. No matter where you are in life; no matter how “old” (or young) you are, you can always choose to grow, and it’s always an option.

    Relatedly…

  4. God’s power is limitless. That’s the only way I can put it, really. We may know this God as someone who does these physically impossible miracles (dead back to life, seas being parted, walking on water, etc., etc.), but the daily miracles — someone receiving peace when they usually get angry; of someone being able to experience emotional maturity after decades of stunted growth — are just as earth-shaking. His power is always available to help us follow Him, to mature us into fruit-bearing trees.

    Relatedly…

  5. To access that power, you have to make yourself available. The thing that changed in 2010 was my commitment to private practices of prayer, solitude and study. To date, my prayers have been sporadic and reactionary, offered up after “Prayer Requests” or before some special event (or when I felt especially guilty). As I began to regularly practice a form of prayer, I can definitely say that God’s Spirit-inside-of-me began to dwell more actively, and my life began to change.

    To often, we live our lives with the expectation that God will “just do” something supernatural when He wants to, and we are largely the passive recipients in this life.  While He is always the prime–as well as the primary–mover and actor, we are meant to be co-participants with Him in this life. Most of us sit around hoping that God will heal us or change us. History tells us otherwise: that men and women who have seen God’s power move in their lives have been devoted to prayer and other disciplines in order to “make room” for the Spirit of God to move in our lives.

    Relatedly…

  6. The “slower frequencies” have the most impact. I’m still unpacking this metaphor for myself, but it works like this: in music, the bass (lowest frequency) drum hits less frequently than the high hat (highest frequency), but sonically it carries the longest and furthest (ever heard a car drive by with some really massive speakers? you get the point).

    Our culture lives life in the high frequencies — statuses and technology pulling us into ever tighter spirals of interaction. Update after update, conversation after conversation. Life lived in moments. While these “high frequency” moments are necessary and even fun, the slow, low frequency of prayer and meditation can have the longest and deepest impact. The “unsexy” traditions of sitting before God in prayer, devotion and meditation are like ripples that spread out through the day of a believer (like me), and they allow you to move through the high frequency interactions of our day with a stillness and peace that is necessary to have a deep life.

  7. Scripture is endlessly fascinating. We are a “people of the book” (along with our Muslims and Jewish cousins), and so we must constantly wrestle with what scripture is and what God is trying to tell us. I find that a lot of what I’ve been taught scripturally isn’t quite correct, or that it’s only skimmed the surface of what God was trying to get through. There are so many resources, so many threads to follow. Jesus was ten times more radical and provocative than you’d ever think, but so much of that has been lost due to the emphasis on faith (and therefore, the Bible) as being all about getting you, as an individual, into Heaven. As deep and amazing as that is, it’s just the surface. Jesus’ (and God’s) agenda is so much bigger than that. It was (and is) “creation-sized.”

 

So that’s really it. That was my 2010. It was an amazing year, all told. Saw God move in pretty amazing ways. Saw “miracles” of the every day variety. Saw a little boy cling to life for weeks in July. Saw faith spring up in people who didn’t expect it. Saw people embrace new calls on their life, to wake up to new visions of their lives. Experienced contentment, peace, and a little freedom.

Let’s see what happens in 2011.

The Song

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Jonathan was born unable to hear. He was unable to hear the words of love from his parents. The comfort that they spoke, the songs that they would sing. No matter how they shouted, how they wept for him, how they sang him lullabies, he would not hear.

His world was an ocean of silence.

But then…

The moment when his face lights up, and he hears the voice — the overture of love — from his parent, is a priceless moment of grace, love and beauty.

It also teaches.

So many of us have either never heard the song and voice of Love. Others of us have heard it, but then have allowed it to fade into the background of clanging traffic, of playlists, of work and the corporate ladder.

But guess what: The Voice is still speaking. It’s still singing. There’s a song out there, singing all of our names, waiting for that moment when our ears and eyes are opened up and we recognize the Voice for ourselves.

What song(s) are you missing? Do you still hear the Voice? Do you still light up with the soft light of grace when you hear it?

Do Yourself a Favor (or two)

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I came home tonight and Shana was finishing up a movie called Bella.

Amazing story of love (and good food, too!).

Not Hollywood love, real love.

The self-sacrificing kind.

The Jesus kind.

So first, rent it and watch it, and recapture some wonder and innocence in your life.

Why not?

Then, go buy Nina Simone’s “Nearer Blessed Lord” (from the movie).

I’m pretty sure you won’t regret it.

The Disruptive Gospel

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As the 20th century drew to a close, a German scientist named Karlheinz Brandenburg was working on a logarithm that would help reduce the size of certain types of computer files; specifically music files. Eventually, he landed on a formula that helped him shrink the size of a standard music composition by about a factor of 10.

Because the file format was designed for a group of scientists known as the Moving Picture Experts Group, it took on an abbreviated version of their name, “mp3.” Aided by the explosion of Napster and websites like mp3.com, the phenomenon of music-as-digital-files exploded.

Music would never be the same.

“Disruptive technology” is technology that enters a given market and, because of its price and or innovation, not only competes in that market, it actually redefines the market entirely. To be concise, it renders “competition” irrelevant, and redefines consumer behavior – it becomes the new standard, the new paradigm.

Whether you officially consider mp3 file compression disruptive technology or not, it’s difficult to argue that the innovation significantly changed the entire paradigm of music consumption. It changed forever our thinking about music (music should be portable, free, and easily shared), as well as our behavior (we either download our music illegally, or pay .99 for a single through iTunes, rather than buying a physical disc or tape from a store).

Mp3 technology had a major part in rendering irrelevant everything else in the “market” of music – CDs, cassette tapes, etc. – and eventually contributed to the entire dismantling of the record industry as we know it.

Now here’s the deal: The Gospel is disruptive technology.

Allow the Gospel to enter into your life, and it has the potential — if we let it — to  realign and redefine our values, thoughts, and behaviors. It renders our old ways of behaving — of our need to control, dominate, and/or manipulate — irrelevant. Hang around long enough, submit to it, and it becomes the new standard of our life, not just something that is an “add on” or a part.

Next…

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So we finally reached Easter.

No, I mean… We finally reached Easter!!!!

So let me ask you: what’s gonna be different?

In my community, we walked through the 40 Days of Lent, carefully observing, contemplating, denying ourselves.

During Holy Week, we gathered each night to remember Jesus’ last days, and contemplated what it might mean for our lives, some 2,000 years later. Friday night we reflected through song, teaching, and then visually (through the Passion of the Christ) on his death. Friday night through Sunday we joined together in constant prayer, circling around the Stations of the Cross until, finally, we reached Sunday morning, with its empty tomb, the joyous release of energy from the community, and the celebration of the paradigm-shifting reality of the resurrection.

I think, now, we “get” (as much as possible) Lent a little better. We understand denial, understand a little of what it means to “take up our cross” and follow Jesus. This is a good thing.

But what happens next?

On the strength of some year-old conversations with some good friends, I’d like to suggest that in the same way that Lent helps us understand Jesus sacrifice on the cross, perhaps the Easter season could help us understand what it may mean to “live the resurrection,” and maybe the place to begin is through “engagement”.

If Lent is about denial, let’s let Easter be about engagement; where we ask ourself, “What do I need to deny myself?” Perhaps our question now becomes, “What resurrection activity do I need to engage in?”

To be brief, the resurrection has inaugurated, in some amazing, brilliant way, the reality of God’s kingdom now, on Earth. No need to wait on Revelation (oh but wait don’t get me started on that)! The empty tomb says that the best of what’s to come is possible now, and engagement says that we are (to borrow a phrase from NT Wright) “anticipating” this life-to-come now.

Examples? How about for these next 40 days, you…

  • Engage in service by finding a place to serve the “least of these”
  • Engage in slowing down by eliminating techno-clutter from your life at specific times
  • Engage in prayer by setting an alarm and praying a simple prayer (maybe the one Jesus taught us) four times a day
  • Engage in relational health by reaching out to a good friend for regular meals together

Don’t make it overwhelming; keep it simple. Just ask yourself, “What will life in the Kingdom look like?” and begin “practicing that life now.”

… Because, you know, the Resurrection isn’t only an event…

… It’s a lifestyle.

What Kind of Deal Is This?

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Last week a family in our faith community lost a baby. The baby had come too early, and was born with some chromosomal problems, and after one week, Campbell Joy crossed into eternity. The memorial service was one of the saddest scenes I’ve ever encountered: a small coffin over a grave, friends and family huddled in a cold pouring rain.  A Hollywood director couldn’t have thought up a more apt setting.

Today, some other friends got news that their baby (due in about 5 – 6 weeks) was too small, and may need to be “delivered” (the doctors said, “taken”, but I’m not comfortable with that language). Because the docs are going to wait a week, I have no idea how serious this could be, and my mind goes to the some less-than-optimistic places. I imagined myself having to walk through the loss of this child: what would I say, how could I be there for them in their pain? I thought of all the other ways that we experience loss in this life, and the roads I’ll have to walk through with my friends, regardless of where they are and when it happens.

To a great degree, I think that love actually is defined by our reaction to others’ pain. It certainly is revealed by it, brought into focus. Engagement with someone else’s pain = love. Retreat away from that pain, and you are retreating from love. I like to tell people, “As a pastor, you don’t get paid for the good days; you get paid for the bad ones.”

All of that lead me to the question, “Why do this community thing?”, which really isn’t the right question. The question is, “Why do this love thing?” If all love will — almost by definition — lead to pain, then why do it at all? I started listing out all of the ways we can experience pain in community:

  • Break ups
  • Death
  • Injury
  • Aging
  • Separation
  • Failure
  • Infidelity

All of these things will, nearly inevitably, accompany each relationship. And what can we place on the other side of the equation? What balances out this terrible list? “Life” and “Love”? What does that mean?

I think it means a lot, actually. I think that to the degree we weather the pain of relationships, our love and life expand, grow larger and more abundant. To the degree we retreat away from the pain, we shrink a little, atrophy away, grow dimmer. I believe we were designed as “lovers”, that is, to expand and grow into great engagers of humanity, and do you know why?

Because our Creator is the same way. God shows us the way love and pain works: As the very definition of love, God doesn’t shrink away from pain; he engages it, looks it full in the face, and as he does (or did) that, he shows that love overflows and extends in welcome embrace to the other. Ultimately that dialectical embrace of love and pain spilled over to the person of Jesus the Messiah, who simultaneously engaged our pain and revealed the abundant life we are called to.

Engaging pain is a tough deal, but the expansive, abundant life of love on the other side of the equation more than balances scale.

Billy

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This morning I stumbled across Billy Corgan’s “faith” blog (Twitter is a wonderful thing).

Being an artistic “child” of the 90s, I have a certain soft spot for Corgan and the Smashing Pumpkins. They’re responsible for some amazing musical/emotional moments, some of which will always be hardwired into my soul.

It’s also been refreshing to watch, from a distance, Billy Corgan’s journey through faith and spirituality, which really seemed to break through with his brief project of 2002 – 2003, “Zwan“. Billy is just one of those interesting guys in rock and roll, equal parts pretense and honesty, brashness and vulnerability (not to mention he was a neighborhood “homey” from Wrigleyville). For all his faults, he wasn’t afraid to put his search out there for people to see, and that means a lot to me as a fellow “pilgrim” and musician.

So I was glad to find his blog. I make no claims to know exactly where Billy is, faith-wise. There certainly seems to be an acknowledge of the “One God” (and I assume Billy agrees his name is Yahweh), and occasionally Jesus gets thrown in for some extra good measure, but there’s also a lot of “everything else” in there as well: Native American/First People spirituality, some pan-Eastern approaches. It’s definitely a bit “Everything-but-the-kitchen-sink”.

At one point he says this: “Jesus Christ never said to build a church, so enough said about the God system. The real God machine is you. God made you to know to understand, to feel, to grow, to enjoy, to remember. He did not make you to grovel at the feet of another human… Man is lost.”

I had two immediate reactions. First, from a Christian worldview, Billy, you are so close! Yes, God made us to know and understand and feel and grow and enjoy and remember. A thousand times yes! I believe that God’s message to us (through Christ) is one of deep affirmation and love of who we are at our most basic level. It is an affirmation of our humanity (as part of redeemed creation).

But I have to push back (Billy, are you listening? Ha.) on his second point, specifically that Jesus Christ never said to build a church. Yes, in a sense Christ never said to  build a church, and if you read the gospels from an ahistorical, non-contextualized point of view, you can throw all kinds of things into Jesus’ mouth (a lot Christians are experts at this, by the way). Because, even though Jesus never said to build a church, the assumption throughout the entire bible–and the context that Jesus was speaking in–was that God would always have a people for himself to help bring about the redemption of the creation. Jesus never said to build a “church” (how about the definition of church as “Called-Out-Ones”) because, um, he was speaking to the original “church” (called the nation of Israel!).

Simply put, rejecting “church” is like rejecting Jesus. You can’t divorce one from the other. Now, the expression of “church” is another topic altogether, and much more fluid and creative. But unfortunately, Christianity can never, ever be reduced to a hyper-individualized, atomized faith experience. It’s simply another consumer product of the west, masked in a bunch of new age Eastern pop mysticism. You have to have others. You have to participate in the body. You have to be part of the “Called-Out-Ones.”