The Second Take

Zombies on the Road

8/29/2013

This past Sunday we heard Luke 24:13-35. It’s a pretty famous story often called The Road to Emmaus. In it two followers of Jesus are walking back home from Jerusalem. It’s the Sunday after Jesus was executed as a criminal a cross.

The two disciples of Jesus are depressed. They know Jesus has died, but they don’t know he has risen from the dead. Sure that morning they’d heard stories but, I imagine, they figured what they’d heard just amounted to women making up fairy tales. Understandable conclusion.

Anyway, they meet a stranger on the road who is the risen Jesus, but they don’t see this, at least not at first. What these two disciples do from the first moment they meet the stranger is open the door – literally and figuratively. They open up to the stranger in conversation. They open up their minds and hearts to him as they let him teach them as all three of them walk along the road. And then, most famously, they open up the door of their home and invite the unrecognized Christ to their table, a table he quickly makes his own.

It is through this opening of “their doors” that they recognize Jesus, they feel warmth replacing coldness in their hearts, and they receive a new vigor and purpose for life. I imagine that if they wouldn’t have opened the doors – which would have been an understandable and safe decision – they would have missed out on seeing Jesus and being renewed themselves.

So it is with us – as individuals, as families, and as congregations. It is hard to become more and more open to others, especially if we have been hurt in the past. And, it is often safer and easier if we simply stay closed. But, what do we lose if we move toward becoming more and more closed off instead of becoming more and more open to others as we journey through life?

Recently there was a very good book that became an ok movie. Its name is Warm Bodies. It is a fantastically wild story that’s told from the perspective of a zombie named R. R shuffles about and grunts and eats people when he gets the chance, but inside his head he is active, alert, and alive.

The body and heart of R, and presumably those of all the other zombies he “lives” with in a broken down airport, have been closed down by some unremembered plague. And, for very understandable reasons, the remaining uninfected people left in the world have shut all the doors they could. The uninfected people have closed themselves up in a fortress city. They are, understandably, trying to stay un-eaten while they shoot as many zombies as possible and eke out an existence.

But something unexpected and unexplainable happens. R decides to open up and protect a human named Julie instead of consuming her. This one act of opening a door by caring for a stranger slowly starts a ripple effect that restarts zombie hearts and just maybe creates a new trajectory for the future of the world.

Ridiculous, I know. But true. It was true on the Emmaus road. It is true so often for us.

What is one part of your life, one relationship, one situation, one use of your words, your actions, or your money where you can open up to someone else just a little more than you were before?

You may recognize Christ in the process of opening the door. You may even feel your heart warm and beat with new life.

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Accidents in Ministry

8/21/2013

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This past Sunday we read the following story in worship from Mark 2:1-12:

2 When Jesus returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. 2 So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them.

3 Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. 4 And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. 5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

6 Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, 7 “Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” 8 At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and he said to them, “Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? 9 Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’?

10 But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic— 11 “I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.” 12 And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”

A couple of little things I couldn’t work into the sermon have continued to knock around in my spirit the last few days.

The first has to do with a part of the sermon in which I mentioned that sometimes all we have to give is our vulnerability, and that this is a gift with which Jesus can do great things. You know, according to Scripture, especially places like Philippians chapter 2, Christ’s willingness to be vulnerable might have been the greatest gift Jesus himself had to give.

Anyway, there was this story along those lines that I didn’t share Sunday. A mom told me the story a while back. It went kind of like this…

You see, last school year the woman’s daughter (age range five to eight) had a little accident at school. The accident had to do with the little girl’s pants, if you know what I mean. (And, I bet we all do. It’s happened to each of us and to all of our children at one time or another.)

The woman’s daughter was mortified. That’s not surprising. It even took the girl a while to work through it. But she did.

And the next school year this same daughter found herself alone in the bathroom with a girl from the same grade. The other girl was weeping. She had had an accident in her pants.

The mom’s school age daughter, a little Christian by the way, cared for her crying classmate. She encouraged the weeping girl. She told her that it happens and that it would be all right. And, things did become better.

It was such a little event, such a tiny story to us. But it probably was a big deal to God.

Sometimes, many times in fact, the best thing we have to give is our vulnerability made beautiful by the love of the vulnerable Christ.

The other thing I need to share during this week’s Second Take has more of a wide-angle lens to it. In the sermon I asked us to identify with the four unnamed people who carry the paralyzed man to Jesus. I asked us to wonder how we could simply share what we have to give, even if all we have to give is the ability to carry a stretcher.

Now I want to take that wondering a step further, and when we do I think we uncover a helpful pattern for relating lots of Bible stories to our lives.

OK, the four guys carrying the mat – that’s where we may see ourselves. And so we wonder how we can carry our mats here and now. How we can give what we have to give.

OK, where do we see our neighbor? In this reading, we see our neighbor in the paralyzed man we are trying to care for? What does that neighbor look like in August 2013?

OK, finally, where do we see God? Well, in the story, we see God in Jesus, of course. In the story Jesus is healing the paralyzed person without demanding the person go on about his guilt and shame. Where do we see God doing that kind of thing in our world?

Do you get it? We ask ourselves as we consider a story: 1) Where do I see God? 2) Where do I see myself? 3) Where do I see my neighbor? And we just play around with it. And, hopefully, in some real, Jesus-shaped way, we act upon what we see.

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The Last Supper, Diapers, & Love

5/17/2013

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I’ve been thinking recently about “The Five Love Languages” popularized by Gary Chapman. The five ways people give and receive love according to Chapman are usually listed as:

Gifts

Quality Time

Words of Affirmation

Acts of Service

Physical Touch

When they were originally shared with me, I was told to become aware of which language was most essential to my wife so that I could work at expressing love to her in that language. And that makes sense, of course.

Lately though I’ve been thinking about how great moments of love likely, without really even intending to do so, speak all five languages simultaneously.

This can go for the “Grand Moments of Christian Faith” like the events surrounding the last time Jesus spends an evening with his disciples before his death. You know, “The Last Supper” witnessed in Matthew, Mark, and Luke and the foot-washing narrated in the Gospel of John.

Is there a gift? Yes, indeed. At the Meal, Jesus famously says that this is his body, his life given for us. He also says that this is his blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins. And the gift is given not only in spoken words but also in the tangible gifts of food and drink.

Is there quality time involved? You bet. This is, after all, understood by the church to be the final hours before Christ’s arrest.

What about words of affirmation? Jesus tells us in John, among other things, not to have troubled hearts and to know that in him his disciples will do even greater works than he has done.

Acts of service and physical touch? I think that washing feet covers both of those easily.

But, it’s not just in epic moments of faith that we can see such a harmony of love languages. It can also happen in the small, oft-repeated moments as well. Coming out of Mother’s Day, right now I’m thinking about a parent changing a baby’s diaper.

Is there a gift? Yes. In an act surely miraculous to the baby, each time the change happens, the nasty poop-defiled diaper is traded for a clean one.

Is there quality time? On the surface of things, it seems that there isn’t. But having changed my share of diapers, it is strange how special the time can often become. How peaceful and full of laughter.

Words of affirmation? Yes, and they are present in ways that seem absurd to an outsider. I recall often looking at a turd and then looking into Reese’s eyes and saying in my sweetest voice, “What a great, great job you have done here, Karyssa! Just fantastic work, sweetie.”

Acts of service and physical touch? Like with the foot-washing (but even more so), nothing more than “diaper change” needs to be said to cross these two off the list.

I guess I’m wondering about moments where all the love languages flow together because I bet when they happen such experiences impact us more deeply than we often realize

And, I pray that as individuals and as church communities we can help create moments (not only for those close to us, but maybe even for strangers) where love is multi-lingual, clear, and memorable. If we can, then there will be more opportunities for the love of God to surround and fill others.

I wonder what such multi-love-language moments might look like? In a family? In an office? In a neighborhood? At a school? In a church community?

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Let's All Be Martyrs!

5/3/2013

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What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word "martyr"?

Maybe you think of someone being annoying about something they don’t want to do but feel they have to do nonetheless.

For instance, I can picture my daughter Karyssa filling the air around the breakfast table with “martyrdom” over having to go to school that particular day.

Or perhaps you think about St. Peter or St. Paul or a Christian missionary long ago or in a foreign land who was put to death for his or her faith. In this sense, the word “martyr” becomes a synonym for death.

But the word “martyr” has its origin in the ancient Greek word for witness. A witness is simply someone who tells and shows what he or she has seen and experienced.

That's it. Of course, that telling and showing can lead to big, even fatal trouble, as was the experience of Peter, Paul, and countless other Christians since then.

I've been thinking about this because recently I was reading chapter 21 from the gospel of John. Among the other things going on in the story, the risen Jesus tells Peter that being a witness to Jesus (aka loving Jesus and taking care Christ people) will lead to Peter's death. So, Peter becomes a martyr in the fatal way we often use the word.

But Peter isn't the only martyr in the story. There is this other guy, someone called the Beloved Disciple, someone who also comes out of the story a martyr, a witness. But, unlike Peter, the way the Beloved Disciples pursues his "martyrdom" is not by dying. It is by telling the stories of Jesus that become the basis for the gospel of John itself.

Why is this important? Well, it's saying to me as I write these words that perhaps I need to relax a little.

It becomes easy to think that the only way to represent Jesus well is to do something huge -- to give away our lives in a dramatic way. To become a martyr in the dying a premature death kind of way. And that may very well be the path forward for any of us.

But that might also not be the martyr's path Jesus has in store for all of us.

Our path might simply be telling and showing Christ’s impact on our lives. It may be more like the Beloved Disciple's path. It might be, to use the words of Mother Teresa, a path filled with "small deeds done with great love."

I remember the legendary 20th century preacher Fred Craddock once saying that growing up he was primed and ready to give his life away for Jesus, to pay out his life for God's glory by writing one big check for the whole lump sum. To be a MARTYR!

Craddock said that as time passed it was tough getting used to the reality of the situation. The path Jesus had for Craddock involved giving his life away, but not all at once. Instead, Craddock said he has given his life away in bits and pieces – 25 cents here and a dollar over there.

It occurs to me that Craddock as a preacher is a master story-teller. He has given his life away, not unlike the Beloved Disciple did, by moving deep into old age telling the story of Jesus and how that ultimate story of God has transformed the story of Fred.

I guess, at least, up until this point in my life, that's kind of how I have experienced things myself.

Don’t get me wrong. I have no desire to die (and neither did the sanest among the early Christians), but I long for a big, dramatic, awe-inspiring way to give to Jesus.

Some days I long to give all my money away to the poor or to move across the world to live with people who are on the margins of the world's value, but in the center of God's heart. But instead I have so far been asked to be a martyr of the small payment variety.

Maybe it's best to seek God's will in these things by way of parallel tracks.

Perhaps we should keep our eyes open and aware for the big move that might at some point be in God's will for us.

But, at the same time, may we seek to grow in the smaller acts, and trust that God will use them a little like he used the memories of the Beloved Disciple to give birth to the gospel of John.

Who knows? Maybe one will lead to another.

Maybe you will visit with and hear the story of a homeless person on the street (a small act) and find that it ends up leading to something much, much larger and more dramatic.

Who knows?

So, for you, what is one big act of witness you sometimes wonder about making? Why don’t you?

And what are some of those small acts of true “martyrdom” that you could pay out a little each day?

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The First Day of the Week (Part Two)

4/25/2013

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Last week I mentioned that Jesus rising to new life on a Sunday meant that the power of God busted into a day that was normally given over to grind-it-out, get-‘r-done work. God did resurrection on what we would consider a Monday.

But the first Easter breaking in on a Sunday morning meant even more than that to the early disciples.

For them “the first day of the week” would, of course, have been considered the first day of creation as Genesis told the ancient, mysterious tale. So, it came to be seen very early on that in the resurrection of Christ, God was not just performing some one-off wonder to bail out his Son Jesus.

In Christian spirituality and understanding, the resurrection of Jesus initiates a new creation, a renewal of all things. The basic sense of this is pretty easy to get the mind around.

On a first Sunday back before time, God initiated the creation of all things through his life-giving Word. On a second Sunday rooted in time, God initiated the renewal of all things through his resurrected Word made flesh and bone.

Even if the sense of that idea is actually pretty simple, its implications are enormous and complex.

Try to think about it through an image so common it has become a cliché. Imagine the resurrection of Jesus as the stone dropped into the center of a pond. The purpose for God tossing the stone into the water in the first place is for its ripples to touch and alter every part of the pond.

If you will allow me, God’s intent in “rolling away the stone” of Christ’s tomb “into the water” of our world is to shake up our whole pond, to shake the death out of it, and to shake new life into it.

All of it. This vision is wondrous. And enormous.

However, the part of all this I keep coming back to has to do with how small I often make Easter. For instance, I can make the resurrection of Jesus good but small by seeing it simply as a “thumbs-up” to Jesus and the individual, personal relationship with God he offers me.

But, Easter always means more than little old me and God getting along better, which is great but not the main thing God seems to be doing here.

Easter means that in Jesus’ resurrection, God is beginning the process of making all of creation better, and I am a beloved part of that wonderful, massive redemption.

There is a very popular Bible verse from Paul’s second letter to the churches of Corinth, Greece. We usually hear it as something like this: “If anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creation. The old has gone and the new has come.”

And that is awesome, but kind of small when I think about myself and the then I ponder the whole world (literally “the cosmos”) for which John 3:16 declares God’s love.

The preferable reading of that verse from 2nd Corinthians is likely something more along these lines: “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone and the new is here.”

It is subtle, but the sense is that all things are being made new by the Living Christ. Me – my sins being forgiven, my new start with God, my renewed purpose for living, etc. – all of this is part of a much bigger whole, a grander salvation that I get to be a part of. That’s the Good News.

God loves me, but also has bigger fish to fry. I (any of us really) get to be a part of “The New Creation.” And that New Creation includes transformation for people on the other side of the world, for the groaning earth itself, and even for galaxies across the oceans of time and space that I will never see.

I know that is pretty trippy, but if you get what I’m saying, even just a little, then tell me this…

What is one way you think you might have made Easter too small, too much about you and your faith and not about what God is doing in the larger world?

Or this…

If God is beginning to make all things new in the resurrection of Jesus, what is one clear, concrete way that changes the way you think and act toward other people? Toward the world itself?

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The First Day of the Week (Part One)

4/20/2013

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Easter keeps coming around.

But it seems to me that each time it circles back, I settle upon something different. Each go round I focus on a different element of what it means for Jesus Christ to be alive and risen from the dead.

What I keeping returning to during Easter season 2013 is how the rising of Christ happened on a Sunday, on the first day of the week in the Jewish reckoning of time.

One thing that this meant for the first disciples was that the day the stone was rolled away was also a day they were expected to roll out of bed and go to work.

The Sabbath, the God-formed day of rest had just passed in silence. The Sabbath, the day God’s people were to take it easy because the Lord had set them free from slavery…well, that day had come and gone. Sunday wasn’t it.

It was their Monday. Grief aside, it was a typical day of ordinariness and toil. A day of work.

And into this world Jesus walked anew.

The resurrection of Jesus on a Sunday is why followers of Jesus settled onto Sunday morning as their primary meeting time for worship. Every Sunday thus became a “little Easter” and each Easter, I suppose, was a great big Sunday.

It remained a typical workday for folks, at least for hundreds of years after Christ. So, followers of Jesus squeezed worship into a day of work. The most profound, life-altering event in the faith – the rising of Jesus from the dead – sits side-by-side with the workaday world.

Actually it sits inside the workaday world. It does not sit in some gilded day set apart from the rest of life and the money, sweat, unemployment and grousing from the boss that fills it.

So I wonder…

How can we let the Risen Jesus transform that workaday world for us here and now?

When we start to answer this question, and put those answers into action, we often begin to see our faith flow in ways that we might not have previously imagined.

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Barriers

3/28/2013

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Recently we looked at the part of Acts chapter 8 where Philip meets an Ethiopian eunuch. (An eunuch is someone who has had, ahem, his testicles removed for various reasons).

I suggested that really all Philip does is allow God to take down barriers through him.

Martha Grace Reese and George Hunter III both know a lot about the ups and downs of congregations like ours and the barriers people face when trying to share Jesus in word and deed. As you read what’s below, simply see which stand out to you and ponder how God can lead people over, under, or through these barriers.

The first two sets of barriers are based on Hunter’s work. The third is based upon Reese’s.

Connection Barriers

            Image Barriers – In the world beyond those who follow Christ, the church is perceived as irrelevant, boring, focused on the wrong things, greedy, cruel, only for the intellectually or emotionally weak, etc., etc.

            Language Barriers – The church has its own slang for prayer, conversation, and interaction that people outside the church are expected to know without being taught it. This is unnecessarily alienating. People familiar with church life speak in this slang and assume everyone understands it.

            Cultural Barriers – Hunter suggests that to reach non-Christian people, it is necessary for a church to become culturally reflective of its ‘mission field’ – whether that field is in Asia, Africa, or a certain part of the US. To not do so puts an undue burden on non-Christians and can also suggests that Jesus is uninterested in certain places, languages, musical types, and artistic traditions.

            Gospel Barriers – It takes time to become a Christian and have life shaped by Jesus. God’s love freely offered through Christ is shockingly immense. And, Jesus is also demanding of those who call him “Lord”. One of the reasons for trying to reduce the barriers above is so that folks can wrestle with Jesus himself and the hard parts about following him.

Personal Barrier Types

            Ignostics – Literally, people who know nothing. These are people who have no Christian memory. People long connected to church can find this hard to believe, but it is a growing part of American society.

            Notionals – People who assume that simply because they were born in a certain place (the USA) or at a certain time (the 1950s) they are Christians in thought, word, and deed by those factors alone. Or, they at least have a sufficient notion of who Jesus is and what following Jesus is about.

            Nominals – People who may have certain patterns of Christian life, but the implications of the good news and following Jesus go over their heads or are kept at arm’s length. This can be a trap for people who have considered themselves Christians for a long time.

Potential Barriers to a Growing Faith Quiz

            Do you say yes to any of the following statements?

1.      I’m living a faith that doesn’t make me buckle my seatbelt when I reach for my Bible.

2.      I’m living without Christ guiding me through the meetings, conversations, and choices of my day.

3.      I don’t feel a deep sense of repentance (seeking to turn life around in certain ways) or of forgiveness (seeking to let go of pain, blame, and shame).

4.      I am seldom aware of God’s Spirit leading me.

If you answer yes to any of these, please ask God to help you find resources – friends, books, and/or communities to help you overcome the barriers you are facing and take the next step into a richer faith life.

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Trying on Different Skins

3/26/2013

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Recently my congregation looked at a story from the Gospel of Luke – Luke’s telling of Jesus’ Transfiguration. We acknowledged the obvious, well-known, awesome blessings the passage shares. But, then we took some time to look at a couple that Luke puts in there but can sneak by us if we aren’t watching out for them.

Looking for the hidden treasures is actually a fun way to read Scripture, especially something as well-written as the Gospel of Luke. Here’s another famous, famous, famous story from Luke. And, this one is only in Luke’s gospel:

The Parable of the Lost Son

11 Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

13 “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. 14 After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. 16 He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

17 “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ 20 So he got up and went to his father.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

21 “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

22 “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

25 “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 27 ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

28 “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

31 “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

There is so much here that stokes the imagination, especially when we do what we are usually taught to do and read the father character as a stand-in for God.

We can hone in on how at the beginning of the story the younger son basically wishes his dad dead: “Dad, I’ll take the inheritance you owe me when I die right now thank you very much.”

We can focus on the cycle of living it up, crashing hard, and realizing that we want to return to the safety of home again.

We can rejoice in the jilted father’s compassion (literally his hurting guts) for the renegade son whom the father sees shuffling up the path to the family home.

We can remember that the father actually shames himself publicly by running to greet his useless, unappreciative, deadbeat son.

We hear all of this and more and it is awesome. It’s gospel, especially when we picture ourselves as that younger son. It’s that amazing grace energy that has fueled hymn lyrics like this:

Love lifted me! Love lifted me!
When nothing else could help
Love lifted me.

And, of course, this:

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.

But there’s another son, an elder son. And he gets 8 whole verses, almost as much screen time as the rebellious, younger son. Yet the older son is easy to forget, even though he’s where Luke is focused at the end of the story.

Even more than that, the elder son’s story is left open-ended. It’s with the elder son that Jesus in Luke breaks the wall of the story, looks at us, and asks, “So, what do you think? How do you believe the story will end? Do you think the elder son who has been wronged by the amazing grace of his father will let it go and join the salvation party? If so, can you live out of that conviction?”

In this angle on the story Luke unlocks another aspect of grace – amazing, perplexing, and Jesus-shaped grace. We are great at coming up with contemporary versions of the story of the younger son, maybe even stories from our own lives.

But, what about casting ourselves as the character of the elder son who is incensed by how his father seems as wasteful with love as his younger brother is with money? This role actually hits much closer to home for me based upon my life-experiences during the first 40 years of my life. What about you?

I even think that the father winning over the elder son is a much harder miracle than reclaiming the younger son. But, what if the father does it? What if he and his love pull it off?

How does amazing grace look to you in the role of the younger son?

What does it look like to you in the role of the older son?

And, if you dare, take on the role of the prodigal father for a moment. How does graceful love look then?

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Zombies on the Road

Accidents in Ministry

The Last Supper, Diapers, & Love

Let's All Be Martyrs!

The First Day of the Week (Part Two)

The First Day of the Week (Part One)

Barriers

Trying on Different Skins

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