Questions

Where's Jesus?

8/23/2014

Where’s Jesus?

I hear that question, and the first thing I think of is Waldo. Do you remember Waldo, as in the title character of the Where’s Waldo books? You know, Waldo, the little, cartoon guy with the candy cane outfit. You had to pick him out of an overstuffed landscape. It was a fad for a while.

Those books annoyed the stuffing out of me. I could almost never find him, and on the rare occasion I did, I always found myself thinking, “There’s Waldo. So what?”

So, the question above about Jesus doesn’t set my heart on fire. Is it a trick question? Is it a pointless question? So what?

And, after all, God’s love in Christ is, in a real sense, out there everywhere. As the book of Acts put it, in God we live and move and have our being.

But, it is perhaps the most important type of question we can ask ourselves as Christians – both as individuals and as congregations. Where is the Lord? Where have we met him? Where have we seen him? Where has someone seen him in us?

Didn’t Mary Magdalene set the whole world on holy fire by saying on a certain Sunday morning, “I have seen the Lord!”

If we are stepping out on a limb and daring to believe Jesus is real, and if we believe he loves the real world we live in, then we gotta run into somewhere and sometime, right?

Jesus said through mysterious words in Matthew chapter 25 that when we meet the most vulnerable people among us – the prisoners, the naked, the underfed, the thirsty, the stranger, the sick – we meet him.

So maybe finding Jesus isn’t a tricky, impossible thing, a confusing picture where we strain to see Jesus’ little red and white hat hidden on purpose in a mess of other colorful things. It may be quite simple, actually. Perhaps if in support and care we go to the most vulnerable people among us (and even within us), we will find Jesus.

So what?

I don’t know but maybe touching God’s presence with your own loving hand is the very reason you’ve been made. Maybe it is the way you become who you were made to be. Maybe it’s the way you fulfill Jesus’ call to love God with everything you are and to love your neighbor as yourself. Maybe it’s the way Heaven comes to Earth. Maybe it’s the meaning of life.

When something happens, like hearing about events in Ferguson, MO for just one example, let us ask God and ourselves where the most vulnerable people are? Then let us go to them in all the ways we are able. There are plenty of people to choose from in just this single example – grieving parents, angry young people, police officers who must feel marooned out on some strange island.

Just go and love and see what happens. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Perhaps Jesus will be met in his strange disguise and we will be brought alive.

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Why Are You Planning to Go Visit Ferguson?

8/20/2014

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I’m planning on going to Ferguson, Missouri next Thursday.

I won’t be able to go for long. My guess is that I’ll be gone just 24 or 36 hours.

I don’t expect to do anything exciting. In fact, I suspect it will be quite boring. I anticipate just walking around, holding my hands in the air, and trying to be as nice as possible to everyone I meet. More than anything else, I want to pray quietly and seek the image of Christ in everyone there – in the protestors, the media, and the police.

My primary reasons for going are not grandiose, and they are certainly not profound.

For one thing, I am white. By giving attention and presence to what is happening in Ferguson, white people can declare that working through what the pain there represents is important not just for black people, but for the future of the nation as a whole.

Also, I identify myself as a Christian. Jesus calls me to seek his presence among those who are vulnerable and bruised in both body and spirit. Over the last week and a half, I have gained the sense that this is a small way I can obey the command of Christ.

Third, I live only four hours away. I have driven that far to visit girlfriends or go to sporting events. It seems to me strange not to be willing to do so for something like this.

Finally, if all goes (reasonably) well, I would like to return home, encourage other people (especially white people) to go, and then return myself at some point in the near future. I believe that examining and then improving the racial, political, and economic issues underneath the intensity seen in Ferguson are critical for our future. I also believe we Americans are great at surfing the news cycle, moving on to the next thing, and forgetting what just happened. In fact, I tend to think we are encouraged to do just that. For the examination to happen and for the forgetting to be avoided, people are going to need to be out there walking around day after day giving their time. This is simply me pitching a little something into that collection plate.

See. Not profound. Not exciting. But, that’s my plan. It’s on my calendar. I’ll see what happens. I appreciate your prayers, not so much for me but for the community of Ferguson and for all the communities like it across the United States. If you are heading that way at about the same time, give me a shout.

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Isn't the Church Just a Social Club I Don't Need to Be In?

5/23/2013

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When I read this question, I found myself thinking of some of the classic images for the community of Jesus’ followers (a.k.a. the church) in the Bible. I’ll just throw three out there in the interests of brevity.

Body (1Corinthians 12). This refers, of course, to one, living organism made of many different parts. When the Apostle Paul uses the image he highlights that the body as a whole doesn’t live well if all of the parts are the same or if only the “flashier” parts are respected.

(You know how this works. People say, “Oh, you have beautiful eyes.” But, they rarely say, “Oh, you have beautiful kidneys.” Yet many people would argue that it’s actually harder to live well without kidneys than it is to do so without eyes.)

Nation (1 Peter 2). A nation is made of many people. There aren’t many nations (read as “any”) where the sign at the border says, “Welcome to MyLand. Population 1.”

Temple (1 Peter 2, again). In this image the different people in the community are envisioned as the different bricks that only together can become the temple of God’s presence. One brick does not a temple make.

Looking at these images, I can’t escape the fact that God intends the spiritual life to be personal but not private. Religious life is envisioned within a network of relationships. It’s social. A quotation from a house church leader named Felicity Dale captures this well:

"Think of church like family. You don't 'go to family.' Family is what you are wherever you are."

Or this from Terence Grant:

“If we come to church on Sunday with the notion, ‘I’m here to be alone with God, I’m here to do my private devotion,’ we’re living in a dream world. There is no such thing as a solitary Christian.”

The great commandment to love God is fleshed out by the following command to love neighbor as self. In the gospels Jesus doesn’t do any work until he calls your typical, run of the mill people (like us) to do it with him. In the New Testament, almost every time we read “you” it’s intended to be read in the second person plural (“y’all” in Texas-speak). On and on it goes.

And this sociality makes sense. Life is just like that. None of us conceived and gave birth to ourselves. None of us makes it through a day of life after birth without depending on others, even if we don’t typically recognize it. I mean, who made the device you’re reading this on? Not you, in all likelihood.

BUT…

Without the accent on the healing, challenging presence of God, these social images lose their power and purpose, even if they retain their form.

I remember a book on new forms of church life in the 21st century I read a few years back. In it the author wrote about what I’ll term “shallow social life and deep social life.”

He said that the church is designed to be a community of deep social life. That doesn’t mean church fellowship is not often fun or made up of only “deep” religious conversations. It means that the relationships in the church are not simply ends in themselves. The church is not designed to simply be another group of nice people interested in making comfortable lives for themselves in the world.

Their fellowship instead is built around a larger calling, vision, and goal – to represent the coming to earth of God’s presence as seen in Christ. In other words, the social fellowship of the church is designed to represent the words, deeds, and presence of Jesus through its life together. This is what makes it a deep social life.

But, the church is constantly tempted to settle for a shallow social life. In this spiral of shallow social life, the church becomes in-focused and often fixated on its own survival. When it does this it becomes an “anti-witness” to Jesus, if you will.

In response to this “anti-witness” you hear people outside the church say things like “the church doesn’t look like Jesus, so what exactly is the point of church anyway? Behind all the prayers, it’s just a typical social club, and a pretty boring one at that. It’s just another pointless institution looking to suck up money to keep itself going.”

Personally, I identify with that outsider, somewhat cynical perspective. I didn’t become regularly involved in church life until college, so I can image life without being a part of church. Also, as a pastor I tend to see people burned over and over again from times when the church has lost its focus on Jesus.

So, if someone is talking like that, the best response is not to talk at them, but to show them how Jesus (and so his church) has made you a different, more compassionate person.

Criticism like this can also provide a service. It can help the church ask itself a series of important questions like...

Is the church community really interested in knowing Jesus better and experimenting with how to live with Jesus as a model for life? Or is it really just playing the same political games other groups pray?

Is the church more interested in feeding its own bureaucracy, or in feeding physically and spiritually the people Jesus seemed to be interested in?

Is worship self-fixated and self-congratulatory, or is it centered on hearing from, encountering, and following the living God met in Jesus Christ?

Any congregation worthy of asking people to give money “to keep the doors open and the lights on” should be working regularly through those types of questions with fear, trembling, and hope.

If it does, if we do, then the church can be more than a social club and worth being a part of.

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I like Jesus but am not too comfy with the whole “organized religion” thing. What to do?

3/26/2013

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It’s always hard to know exactly what people mean by “organized religion”. Usually it seems to mean the way a well-known religion is practiced by groups who often have buildings and budgets, rules and responsibilities, successes and struggles.

As a Christian it is important for me to say right off the bat that Jesus was not “too comfy” with organized religion.

In Luke’s Gospel, for instance, early in his ministry Jesus went to his hometown church (the synagogue), preached before the congregation, and was promptly almost thrown off a cliff. That sets a trend. Jesus is always wrestling verbally with the leadership of God’s people, with “organized religion” – the scribes and Pharisees. And these battles, coupled with Jesus’ actions, lead ultimately to his death.

But the strange thing is that right after he’s almost tossed off the cliff, Luke says Jesus insists on continuing to preach in such places. He insists on returning to the halls of “organized religion” with reform in mind. Also, Jesus starts calling disciples to follow him by forming a community. In other words, Jesus starts organizing them.

Plainly put, Jesus lives in a tension – he isn’t too comfy with the organized religion into which he’s born, but he acts in such a way which realizes that God works through it, especially through its renewal.

God works through social bodies of people, their relationships, their actions, their stories, and their resources. A life of faith, at least Christian faith, is not just about God relating to an individual off alone by himself saying and doing whatever he or she pleases.

In the words of the Apostle Paul, following Jesus is about being a living part a body of people all connected to one another through Christ. Faith is a personal but not a solitary, isolated affair. To use a cliché, there are no Lone Ranger Christians. Even if I’m alone with my Bible, a whole community of people down through the ages has sweated, bled, and died to put the book in my hands.

I’m a pastor and so a daily part of “organized religion”, but I’m not altogether comfy with it either. I’m sickened by how often its focus has been lost and its power misused. Hopefully, this discomfort, and the discomfort of others, is a force that God uses to help refine the message and life of his people so we can better fulfill our calling to represent Jesus well here and now.

Try replacing the word “religion” in “organized religion” with all sorts of other things and see what you get. In each case, I notice a tension that can’t be removed.

Try “organized family” for instance. Who isn’t sometimes driven near to insanity by their family, but how else do we come into the world and learn the hard work of love?

What about “organized sports” for another? Goodness, a football team can be a mess – a sour stew of competing egos, a collection of silly rules, a series of damaging collisions. But how else is football to be played?

And what of “organized military?” “Army of One” might have been a good slogan, but I’ve never heard a soldier talk as if the military could exist in any other way than as a “band of brothers” (and sisters, of course). Without organization, it cannot be.

We are made for relationship with others, for working with others, for leaning upon others. We cannot exist without such “organization”.

But we also live in a broken world where such relationships can easily be abused. There is a deep power, a deep magic perhaps, that can be used for good or for ill.

There is a question that is the natural response to the question asked above: Why is someone uncomfortable with “organized religion?”

Has the person been damaged by it? Then I pray the person will seek healing and become a Christ-like agent of reform for the sake of all involved.

Does the person think it’s ridiculous that something as flawed as the church might have something to teach? Then perhaps arrogance is coming into play.

Does the person think that the church is horribly out of touch? Then introduce it to the people you care about – the poor, the old, the young, whomever. That is exactly how the focus of the church can be regained.

From time to time, I have been able to answer yes to all the questions above. But there is good news. There is no individual or organization under heaven that doesn’t have room to grow more healthy under the power of Christ’s self-giving love.

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Where's Jesus?

Why Are You Planning to Go Visit Ferguson?

Isn't the Church Just a Social Club I Don't Need to Be In?

I like Jesus but am not too comfy with the whole “organized religion” thing. What to do?

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