i read this and thought this2

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Want to meet God? Look into the face of the next person you meet. (Leonard Sweet)

in spending time with God’s word

i will discover the very face of God,

increasingly visible,

increasingly involved

increasingly engaged...

largely because i am.

(psalm 119.5-9 , john 17.17 )

loaded questions and God's redemption jokes

so Jesus challenges his followers with a loaded question.

'what good will it be for a man to gain the world and forfeit his soul?' (matthew 16.26)

he challenges them to think bigger than

he challenges them to dream bolder than

he challenges them to love deeper than

anything they can possibly pull off on their own steam.

unfortunately, he has to die and resurrect himself before anybody actually gets it. he's not joking... or maybe he is. perhaps it's just that these humble followers have such an earthly perspective that a punchline with a heavenly accent fails to register. humour is so cultural- so subjective.

(some further thoughts on God's sense of humour and how we fail to recognize his best jokes can be found here )

whatever the case, years later, paul choses, instead, to lose his life for Christ’s sake (Matthew 10.39) and in so doing, find the realization of God’s purposes for the time he has left.

having been a both a roman citizen AND a jewish pharisee, ‘breathing murderous threats’ against the followers of Christ; having been actively involved in the persecution that ultimately drove Christianity out of its Neonatal ICU of Jerusalem and into the rest of the world (unwittingly spreading the Gospel far beyond the borders of anything that is manageable for temple authorities to suppress... another one of God's jokes) paul meets God face to face on the killing road and lets it all go.

so when, on his second missionary journey, he receives a vision from God, he acts upon it immediately, (acts 16.9-13) to Macedonia. because of its proximity to the sea as well as to one of the major roads to europe, philippi is a commercial centre of macedonia.

once in philippi, paul leads his group down to the river, for this is where praying takes place in towns that have too few Jewish households to erect a synagogue... makes sense: in many places in scripture, but most pointedly in accounts of israel's exodus and ultimate arrival in the promised land and in writings of the prophet ezekiel, the river is a rich symbol of the Holy Spirit as well as God’s cleansing, anointing and life-giving resource and hope.

paul, arriving in town, seeking to plant a church there, waits until the Sabbath and then seeks out the praying people where he knows they will be. his hans landa-type detective skills also serve him well as a church planter.

and God laughs

(NOTE: the comparisons between the apostle paul and fictional nazi colonel, hans landa are really quite strong: The Jew Hunter)

to gain the whole wide world

but what does it mean to gain the whole wide world?

when Jesus uses this phrase (matthew 16.26), he is talking about trying to figure out the plans of God. he challenges those who are following him around to truly follow- to let go of all that might get in the way of being part of God’s larger plan. he reminds us that, while up to our eyeballs in life on earth, our perspective is limited by it and so we are well advised to be eager listeners and learners, living and loving rather than presuming...

God alone knows all the facts, sets all the goals, and determines morality. Nowhere in Scripture are his principles to be replaced in favour of human calculation. He allows us to play the game; he does not allow us to make the rules. (Erwin W Lutzer)

(for some further thoughts on perspective, its limitations and the problem of objectivity, go here )

the enemy line

canadians are known worldwide as a fairly easy-going, self-effacing people. just watch how canadians are charicatured in films and television shows. we dodge the big deal. we avoid banquets held in our honour. we make funny remarks to counter someone else’s thanks... (for some more canadiana, go here)

our self-consciousness is cultural.

and we’re not alone in that.

look within the story of the early church and you will find glaring examples of cultural attitudes that divide the people Jesus had been dying to unite. (Acts 11.1-18)

peter receives this vision from God where real people are relegated to deplorable eats. it's not that God has reduced people to this. God speaks to peter in pictures that peter recognizes and peter's cultural perspective on non-jewish persons recognizes the symbolism of the gross animals. God intends for that to change. the future of the church is at stake, so God paints peter a dream picture and then interprets it for him. after some initial push back, peter gets it and sets out to do what God is calling him to, even though it is culturally uncomfortable for him.

but there is another perspective here: that of the unsavoury animals.

the non-jewish people ('gentiles') would also recognize the symbolism in peter's vision, for they've been treated as such for millennia. even during the times of exile when the rulers of the land have been non-jewish, there has been a sense of spiritual and cultural arrogance expressed in the behaviours and practices of the jewish people. there has been a line drawn that has created an animosity on either side of the line towards the other. this is why God gives a complementary vision of an angel to cornelius, the non-jewish guy to whose house peter is being sent .

because the attitudes on both sides of a line of segregation

are informed by the line itself.

so does this sound like the line between born-agains and non-believers?

see, as long as the people who don't subscribe to the evangelical christian worldview feel marginalized and looked down upon (with gentile-type labels like nonbeliever, heathen, sinner, joe six-pack, unchurched harry etc) there will still be reticence regarding the overtures of love offered to them. when people don't feel beautiful or loved, it's hard to receive love messages without doubting their sincerity...

***

When the church fails to break the cultural barrier, both sides lose. Those who need the gospel message of hope and the reality of love, don’t get it, and the isolated church keeps evangelizing the same people over and over until its only mission finally is to entertain itself... When the church transcends culture, it can transform culture.
(Charles Colson)

new stuff

And he that sat upon the throne said,

Behold, I make all things new.

(Revelation 21.5)

what does the word 'new' mean when Jesus says it?

i mean, at first glance, Jesus seems to be very much about redefining things in new terms. however, perhaps he isn’t redefining so much as redeeming the original value and intended meaning of things. taking familar passages of scripture from moses and the prophets and delivering them with such spin that the scriptures themselves ae revitalized and the standard for behaviour is raised beyond the parameters of traditional expectation, Jesus’ work on earth is to purposefully exalt this human experience of living... to resurrect it.

and so, within the teaching part of his ministry, he often takes direct questions from the gallery on the simplest of truths, and uses them to radically rework his listeners’ paradigms and deepen their understanding of that which they think they already know...

• matthew 22.35-40 "greatest commandment"
• luke 6.27-31 "golden rule"

note how, in both of these instances, Jesus reminds the people that their own perspective is valuable. “as yourself” and “to you”... it's not enough to debate- to speak in logic and abstracts. he doesn't simply invite his listeners to think right. these words of truth only matter when placed in the context of human experience and lived out there.

there is the real challenge, however.

see, Jesus seems to hold that we already know ourselves implicitly and treat ourselves well... but what if we don’t know these things? failing to love ourselves appropriately, failing to take care of ourselves conscientiously, do Jesus’ words here have any meaning to us at all?

unleashed

it may just be cheesy wordplay, but i find it very interesting that a group of lions is called a 'pride'... not a herd or a flock or anything else that has come to mean 'followers'. a pride carries with it all the pomp and power that befits the king of the jungle. (for more thoughts on this one, go here)

saul of tarsus belongs to a very elite pride of lions... and it is that same pomp and power that characterizes saul's movements in the early chapters of the book of acts.

as a jewish roman citizen, raised in a family of means and consequence, saul has attended all the best schools and received top marks for diligence in his studies. he probably has the torah, the books of the prophets and even the hymnal of his people committed to memory by the time he begins breathing murderous threats against those belonging to 'the Way'... the latest religiopolitical anarchist group to rise up in palestine following the teachings of the rabbi Yeshua Ben Yosef (Jesus, son of joseph)

murderous threats?

how does all that attention paid to the scriptures somehow lead to murderous threats and, ultimately, murderous action? well, let's face it, saul's case is neither the first nor the last time a little knowledge has or will become a dangerous thing, nor is it an isolated incident where religious fervor results in many lost lives. as poet and troubadour mark heard once cynically penned:

'everybody loves a holy war'

all throughout our history and into our fiction, both past and future, the Word of God (as coming to many cultures through many representatives of many gods... but that's probably a whole nother blog) is something that gets misused by men and women in order to realize personal ambitions and justify committing great offences against each other and against our planet.

saul's story is just one of these.
but he is no lion.
he is a man.

this man has a lion on a leash, however, which accompanies him everywhere. in fact, because the leash is so strong and the lion is so powerful, it is probably more accurate to say that saul accompanies the lion everywhere. that's just the way it is.

yes, saul belongs to a very elite pride of lions.
belongs, not in terms of being part of,
but rather in terms of being owned by.

for saul, the law is the leash that ultimately keeps him tied to this lion and its pride. the pride tells him he is in the right and the lion that drags him from place to place, seeking out the weak and the scandalous, carrying out its own little inquisition about a millennium before the spanish one, tugs so hard at its leash that saul has no control over it. he is a kept man, his eyes being used by the lion of the pride to hunt down and destroy its prey. the leash keeps him bound to this task.

so Jesus’ confrontation on the road is epic- complete with flashing light, loud noises, symbolic blindness and two complementary visions thrown in for good measure.

the point?
he needs to break the leash.

break the leash and you set the man free.

set the one man free and all those who are subjected to his disease will taste freedom as well. just ask anyone in a twelve step program who has endured 'family day.' this is how it works.

now, we've already said that this lion of the pride needs saul's eyes to hunt. it's pretty significant, then, that Jesus engages saul with a fairly symbolic wonder: the light in which he enshrouds himself is so bright that saul is blinded by it.

saul's exposure to the light has left him blind.

great metaphor, isn't it? the revealed word of God in scripture is described in the psalms (119.105) as 'a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path' and saul has been so exposed to this light that he has become blind to anything that is not light itself. it's much easier to kill people this way.

so to undo what has been taking place for awhile in the spiritual realm, Jesus accomplishes the same in the physical realm: saul is stricken blind through exposure to light.

this sets up some real problems for the lion that's dragging saul around, for the lion needs saul's eyes to hunt. without the use of his eyes, the lion no longer has use of the man. humbled, the man finds himself all alone- abandoned by the pride that once controlled him.

Many people begin coming to God once they stop being religious because there is only one master of the human heart. (Oswald Chambers)

hmm... okay, enough allegorical posts about zoo animals.

effervescing elephant

in john 21, Jesus returns to find a rather tormented leader out on the water with his crew once again. it’s as if everything and nothing has changed. peter’s elephant is in the boat with them.

elephant?

yes, the one that followed him home on the night Jesus was taken away. now it goes with him everywhere. he knows it's with him and so does everyone else. he takes good care of the elephant- he takes care of it the way all good pet owners do. he feeds it, takes it out for exercise and, most importantly, he pays a lot of attention to it. peter takes better care of his elephant than he does of himself.

don't we all.

so there they all are, out in the boat. peter's been a bit preoccupied of late- more so since resurrection day when he ran to the tomb and saw with his own eyes that Jesus was not where they had left him. truly a holy moment, especially since this was probably the only time since it began following him around that peter's elephant wasn't there with him, somehow informing everything by its presence. the thing just couldn't keep up with the hope that had driven peter to the empty tomb.

sadly, once the endorphins abated, the elephant was right there... imposing, demanding, controlling. the picture of codependence.

so now, peter's perspective has become so dark and tormented that, upon announcing to everyone that he is going out on the water, he finds his closest friends deciding to join him. see, they just don't trust peter these days, out on the water, alone with his elephant. who knows what might happen?

and into this scene comes Jesus with his almost taunting greeting from the beach: "have you caught anything?"

no doubt there are those in the boat thinking
perhaps if we didn't have to try to work around this elephant here in the boat we'd have more of a catch- but thanks for asking!

but no one says anything... not even peter, who is known for having no difficulty in this area. quite the contrary, in fact. he is, of course, tending to his elephant again and hasn't really been listening.

so Jesus tries again.
‘you're throwing your nets on the wrong side... throw them on the right side of the boat and you might actually catch something!'

this one pokes peter. it pokes his elephant too. way back in their shared memory, there was a time when somebody claimed to know more about fishing than peter did. that somebody seemed to not only know about fishing, but about pretty much everything else, including the time and place that peter would go about procuring for himself one rather large and obtrusive pachyderm that is now becoming a bit cumbersome to have around.

he looks up at about the same time one of the others shouts out in triumphant recognition: the master! peter jumps into the water and enthusiastically swims to shore. the elephant remains in the boat with the others who paddle in.

as they eat breakfast, there’s a certain indescribable tension in the air. Jesus allows the elephant to remain there with them on the beach. he does not feed it. he does not tend it. he does not, however, chase it away either.

see, God seems to be okay with a little dramatic irony. apparently it is we who are in this big hurry to resolve every conflict and explain every mystery in a timely fashion.

There is nothing miraculous or mysterious about the things we can explain. We control what we are able to explain. Consequently it is only natural to seek an explanation for everything. (Oswald Chambers)

when the teachable moment is ripe, Jesus strikes up some casual conversation, flatly reinstating peter. after all, enough is enough. three times Jesus challenges peter to confess with his lips in greater measure than the original denial and in these moments of restoration, Jesus calls peter beyond the basic undoing of a wrong and into a new day, a new identity.

with Jesus’ resurrection and peter’s confession of love, the elephant in the room is finally put down.

The work that Jesus called Peter to do was the work of shepherding the flock of God... There could only be one motivation. Love. Not a love for the open fields. Not a love for shepherding. Not even a love for the sheep. It had to be more than that. It had to be a love for the Shepherd Himself. Everything had to come from there. Every sermon. Every prayer for the sick. Every search for someone who was lost... All of the work, even the lowliest part of it, had to come from there. (Ken Gire)