Ramblings from one following Jesus on the back roads of life
“Mabvuto was forced to drop out of school because he had nothing to wear but tattered clothes and routinely suffered from preventable illness. Access to basic clothing and medication could make a world of difference for children like him.”
Check this out to find out more.
Today is International Peace Day. All over the world, people are thinking about peace, talking about peace, and working for peace. One of the goals of the day is that there be a day where there is no fighting anywhere in the world. Sort of a global cease fire. In the school where I work, students and teachers were asked what “peace” meant to them. Most of the answers including things like not fighting, no conflict, or treating others kindly. It is all of those things, but peace is also so much more. There is something which underlies all of those ideas. It is the idea of shalom.
The Hebrew word shalom means peace. It is also used as a greeting and a farewell. Shalom means more than just “peace,” more than just the absences of conflict. The word means wholeness, health, completeness, rest, and harmony. It is a concept that most don’t really understand because there is so little wholeness, health, rest or harmony in the world. Every day there is news of conflict somewhere in the world, or crimes committed against property or persons. Much of what passes for political speech is nothing more than arguing and trying to prove how evil the other side is. Even in churches, there is not the shalom that should be there.
Jesus is described in Scripture as the Sar shalom, Prince of Peace. It is in Jesus that true shalom is found. He is the one who brings wholeness, who gives health. It is Jesus who completes us, who gives us rest. Only Jesus brings harmony as he reconciles us with God, and reconciles us with each other. Unfortunately, the world looks at those who claim to follow the Prince of Peace and sees division, arguing and fighting, and sometimes hatred. This should not be. We are told in 1 Peter 3:15 to be always ready to give an answer to those who want to know about the hope we have in us. I believe that means more than just telling people how they can go to heaven when they die. A large part of that hope is the shalom that we have in Jesus. We have something that the world is desperate for. Our problem is that we don’t realize what we have. We don’t realize that in Christ we are whole, we are complete, we are at rest, we are reconciled. If we can grasp that truth and let the Spirit form Christ in us, we can live in shalom. We can live in a way that is truly counter-cultural. We can exhibit the kind of hope that causes others to ask.
“May the Lord bless you and protect you. May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord show you his favor and give you his peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26 NLT)
This is part three of a four part series.
As we are able to claim our blessedness, we can then, “face our own and others’ brokenness with open eyes.” Henri Nouwen ends his chapter on blessedness with these words. The next chapter is on the third word that Nouwen found useful in identifying the movements of the Spirit in our lives. That word is broken.
“Broken” is a term that most of us in the church don’t like to hear or think about. We do love hearing about the “broken body of Christ,” because it speaks to us of what Jesus did for us on the cross. We love to hear about the power of sin being broken, even though we sometimes live as if we were still under its sway. What we don’t like to think about is the idea that we have been, are, and will be broken. But, it is true.
We live in a broken world. All anyone needs to do is look around them or watch the evening news. The creation is broken. It is being restored, but it is still broken. Take a look at the folks around us. They are broken people, and much of the heartache and misery in the world is caused by broken people breaking other people. No one escapes being broken. Nouwen puts it this way,
“Instinctively we know that the joy of life comes from the ways in which we live together and that the pain of life comes from the many ways we fail to do that well.”
I think Nouwen is correct when he states that, just as we claim our chosenness and blessedness, we must claim our brokenness. We must own up the fact that we have been hurt in the past, may be hurt in the present, and will be hurt in the future. That’s part of the job description. After owning up to our brokenness, we then can respond to it. We do that in two ways, by befriending it and by bringing it under the blessing.
Our first response to our brokenness is to befriend it. That seems counterintuitive to us. Our first, and sometimes only response is usually to run away, to avoid that which is causing us pain and convince ourselves that if we ignore it it will go away. The problem with that approach is that it doesn’t bring healing. I believe that our tendency to run from pain is a contributing factor to some of the mental health problems in society, and to many, if not most of our relationship problems. We are afraid of pain, of heartbreak, of suffering. If we do find the courage to embrace our pain we then find that we have started down the road of healing. Nouwen writes,
“The deep truth is that our human suffering need not be an obstacle to the joy and peace we so desire, but can become, instead, the means to it.”
Everything in our lives, good or bad, joyful or painful, can be part of the path we take to being fully human. This is a hard concept to grasp. We can easily see how the good in our lives brings us to glory, but it’s another thing entirely to see our suffering in the same light.
The second response to suffering is to put it under the blessing. Like the first century disciples who asked Jesus if the man’s blindness was a result of his sin or his parents’, we usually look at suffering as an indication that we’re bad people. There are many voices out there that tell us that if we just do things the right way, or if we are really God’s child, then we won’t have to suffer. I wonder what the apostle Paul, or the Christians being martyred for their faith today would say to that. Suffering does not necessarily mean that we are bad people. It does not mean that the negative voices in our lives are right. We must listen the voice that calls us beloved children, the voice of our Father. Our brokenness does not cause God to love us any less, it does not cause him to see us in a negative light.
As we live in our blessedness and take our brokenness there and put it in the proper perspective, we find that the burden becomes lighter and the way becomes clearer. We can then see the suffering as a means of purifying us. Ask a grape vine if pruning is something it enjoys. If the vine could feel and talk, it would tell you that pruning is painful. I mean, how would you like to have a limb hacked off? The vine would also tell you that the suffering of pruning is worth it because it produces the abundant harvest of grapes that allows us to share wine with our friends. Sometimes there are things in our lives that need to be pruned away. While it is a painful process, it is also an indication that our Abba loves us, and is forming us into the people he wants us to be.
As the bread in the Communion, we are taken in order to be blessed. We are blessed so that we can be broken. As the bread cannot be distributed unless it is broken, so with us. We are broken so that we might be given.
At the camp I drive for during the summer, we hold a weekly study for the staff. This summer we are looking at Life of the Beloved, by Henri Nouwen. In this book, Nouwen writes about four words that have helped him identify the movements of the Spirit in his life. Nouwen’s idea is that as followers of Jesus we are bread for the world, therefore we are taken, blessed, broken, and given, as the bread during communion. As I read the explanation of these words, I am finding them helpful in my own walk. In this four part series, I am going to share some of my thoughts.
The first word is taken. You could substitute the word “chosen.” We are chosen by God to be his beloved children. He has become our Father, and he is pleased with his children. As Nouwen states:
Unfortunately, we live in a world that tells us that we are nothing, that there is nothing special about us. Those voices bombard us constantly, from advertisements that tell us we must have the latest (fill in the blank) in order to be happy and fulfilled, to preachers who tell us how far short we fall and how much harder we need to work. Those voices do not come from our Father. They come from our Enemy who seeks to steal our joy, kill our spirits, and destroy our lives.
Nouwen gives three ways we can stay in touch with our chosenness. The first is to keep unmasking the world around us for what it is. The world is full of manipulation and destruction. It’s prevailing wisdom is to step on anyone and everyone in the climb up the ladder. When we feel hurt or rejected, we should recognize those feelings, but also recognize that they are not the truth about ourselves. The truth is that the Father loves us with an everlasting love, and has chosen us to be his children.
The second way is to look for people and places where our chosenness is affirmed. These people and places will not be perfect, but as Nouwen writes,
“The limited, sometimes broken, love of those who share our humanity can often point us to the truth of who we are: precious in God’s eyes.”
We need each other, and we need to affirm in each other the precious, beloved children that we are.
The third way is to celebrate our chosenness constantly. We are to be grateful to the Father for choosing us, and grateful to those who remind us of our chosenness. We need to be careful, because occasions for gratitude can also be occasions for cynicism, for questioning motives, even for bitterness. We must guard against this and consciously choose to be grateful.
Rather than making us feel superior or more favored, claiming our chosenness will give us a great desire to help others recognize and claim their chosenness, their place as a beloved child of the Father. This is another reason we need to be in community with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We can build up and encourage one another as we gather together as God’s chosen, beloved children.
One final thought from Nouwen:
” It is only when we have claimed our own place in God’s love that we can experience this all-embracing, noncomparing love and feel safe, not only with God, but also with all our brothers and sisters.”
As I did last summer, I had the opportunity to go see a movie with the kids at summer camp. This year the movie was The Lorax. I’m not going to review the film, just give some of my thoughts. I have heard a lot about the movie being a bit of “environmentalist propaganda.” My brain tends to work differently than most folks (whether that’s a good thing is open to debate), so I came away with some different thoughts.
What I saw was a tale of unintended consequences faced by someone who was not trying to do bad things, but got caught up in things that quickly spiraled out of control. The character named The Once-Ler started out trying to make a name for himself with his invention. He seemed to be a good person and was simply trying to better himself. After the initial tree was cut down, he was willing to change his ways and harvest material from the trees without doing them harm. He was willing to think of others. Then, his family came along. The family which had never accepted him, which had always told him that he was a failure, a disappointment. The matriarch moves right in and shames her son into doing what he had promised not to do – cut down the trees. Things quickly went from bad to worse, and in due course all the trees were eliminated.
I see some things in this tale that ring true in real life. Many of our problems, especially in relationships, are caused by us doing things that have unintended consequences. Sometimes we will do or say something that is intended to help someone, and the opposite will happen. Sometimes this is because we don’t know how to say or do it the correct way, sometimes it is because the other person is not ready. Eventually things are said that cut deeply, and soon, things deteriorate to the point where great damage is done to all involved. You could say all the trees are cut down. Unfortunately, this happens in churches as much as, or maybe more, than it happens in the general population.
Like Once-Ler, we many times act out of things in our past. Good things can affect us, and so can negative things. Unfortunately, many of us have wounds from our past that we have simply covered up and not allowed to heal. We do things to try and win the approval of others, or to “show them.” Sometimes, buried hurts rise up and cause us to hurt others. Sometimes, we are driven because someone once told us we were not good enough, or did not accept us. Many times those past experiences can get such a hold on us that it seems like things are out of control. We think, “I’m not bad,” and we’re right. We’ve just been caught up in things that have overwhelmed us. Don’t think that I’m saying that a Christian never sins. We do, but it’s not because we’re bad people. It’s because sin, which is still hanging around in us, takes advantage of things that we often don’t realize are there and causes us to act in ways that are contradictory to who we are as God’s children. Before we realize it, things have gotten out of control and are damaged seemingly beyond repair.
In his book, Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen writes, “It is only when we have claimed our own place in God’s love that we can experience this all-embracing, noncomparing love and feel safe, not only with God, but also with all our brothers and sisters.” The key is fully accepting and claiming the love of our Father and trusting him to redeem our past and present mistakes, and to heal and restore us.
At the end of the film, Once-Ler redeems himself by giving the last seed to a young man who wants a tree. The seed is planted and things are made right once again. As children of God, we can have hope that one day all will be restored when Jesus returns. Possibly, God will redeem our situations in this life.
May we fully receive the Father’s love and grace in all areas of our lives.
In How God Became King, N.T. Wright states that the death of Jesus Christ on the cross was the inauguration of the kingdom, that “The cross serves the goal of the kingdom. just as the kingdom is accomplished by Jesus’ victory on the cross.” Jesus’ victory was accomplished by taking the worst the kingdoms of this world (symbolized by Rome) and the one behind those kingdoms (Satan) could throw at him, and coming out the other side, having conquered death and hell. The establishment of this kingdom was not what everyone expected. It was a kingdom based on sacrificial love, rather than a kingdom like all the other kingdoms.
Wright goes on to state that Jesus followers saw themselves as participating in Jesus’ kingdom through their suffering. Jesus was very clear that following him meant suffering. We here in the West seem to have forgotten that. One one side are “Job’s friends,” who see any suffering as a result of some sin in the individual’s life. On the other side are those who see all suffering as coming from Satan, so all we have to do is have enough faith to “speak” the suffering away, in effect pretending the suffering doesn’t exist. Of course, if you don’t have enough faith to speak the trouble away, then it is your fault just as it is on the other end of the spectrum. I believe both ends of the spectrum miss the boat.
I was having a short on-line discussion with a friend the other day about an article I had read about a theology of suffering. The article stated that we need to teach that God doesn’t always heal, but that he is always present with us in our suffering. My friend made the comment that it can be as damaging to believe in a God who is present but doesn’t heal as it is to have a God who can heal but lets us suffer because of our lack of faith. I agree with that. This is where the idea of suffering as the means by which God’s kingdom comes to earth changes a lot of our thinking and practice. If we suffer, and the kingdom advances through our suffering, then we can say with Paul, “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:3-5)
Paul also stated that he wanted to know Christ, to know the power of his resurrection. We have no problem wanting that as well. But then Paul goes on to say that he wanted to participate in Christ’s sufferings, becoming like him in his death. We have a hard time getting hold of that. But if the suffering of the followers of Jesus advances his kingdom, then we shouldn’t see it as a result of our sin or an attack of Satan (although those may be contributing factors), but rather see it as something that will bring glory to our King and good to his kingdom.
This post, The Forgiveness and Reconciliation Train, is a must read. Any comments I might make would be superfluous. Read the entire post yourself (HT: Alan Knox).
Some of you have read my recent post about finding myself in a cave. I’m now out of the cave, although still not far from the entrance. I now find myself in the middle of a thicket, sort of like a stand of rhododendron or mountain laurel, so thick that you cannot see out of it. It is still somewhat dark, and the direction I should take is unclear. I see many paths out, but don’t know yet which one to take.
There is the path that would take me back into the church world I left a few years ago. Next to it is the path that would take me to the land of the mega-church. Here I could find a place to hide and lick my wounds. One path seems to go in circles, and looks as if it would leave me no better off. Yet another way out continues in the search for community. That is the path that interests me the most, and the way that I have learned most about in the last couple of days.
You see, I have learned something about community, and about myself. I think I’m beginning to learn why I spent time in the dark cave. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am a pretty laid back individual, but that when I am passionate about something, I tend to go all out. As I learned more and more about the God’s desire for his children to live as brothers and sisters because of Christ, I became more and more passionate with living in community. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.” As I look back on the past year, and my desire to have and fight for community, I realize I inadvertently pushed it too hard and may have been part of the cause of its destruction. I know that my heart was good, but I think I may have wanted community so badly that I didn’t see the problems that it was causing. Even though I tried to sacrificially love those around me, I think that I didn’t leave room for God to work, thinking that as long as we spent enough time together, growth and maturity would automatically happen.
I now realize that community is something that has to happen naturally, as God’s people learn to love one another. It is something that cannot be forced, and the Holy Spirit must be the one to form it rather than humans whose motives can be tainted by our own needs. I also realize that a particular form of community may not last as long as I think, and that I need to be willing to let it go when it is time. For those of you reading this who have been on the receiving end of my misguided efforts, I am sorry. I put the ideal of community ahead of my brothers and sisters. I was wrong.
As to what is next in this journey along the back roads, only God knows. I know that Jan and I still desire to share our lives with some fellow Christ-followers. I also know that it may not take any form that we expect. It may be in a regular gathering. It may take place in just getting together with one or two who share our desire. What I also know is that I want it to be something that happens as Christ’s Spirit moves, not when I think it should happen.
I’m learning to trust my Father. As I leave the thicket, I want to be hear my Shepherd’s voice and follow him wherever he leads, whenever he leads, and to whatever he leads. I would appreciate your prayers.
Papa! Papa! Where am I?
How did I get here? It’s so dark. I can’t see a thing!
I remember walking along the path with my friends. Next thing I know I’m waking up here in the dark. I think I remember the path passing near the entrance of a cave. Is that where I am?
How do you feel?
Everything hurts. I feel like I got hit by a truck. Now I remember. We were walking along when I was hit by something. Who would have done something like this?
An Enemy has done this.
Papa, it hurts so bad! I don’t understand! I’m all alone here in the darkness and I feel like everyone has abandoned me!
You are not alone. Your most trusted long time companion is near, waiting for you. I am here.
How did this happen? Everything seemed good. There was some loose rock on the path at times, and there were some places where part of the path had washed away. but I thought we had gotten past them. I thought this part of the journey was going well. I thought we were together.
Papa?
I’m broken. I feel like I can’t move. I’m afraid to try because I can’t see and I don’t know if it’s safe. I don’t know what to do!
Do you remember the time you spent in the desert learning to trust me rather than what you expected me to do?
Yes, I do. That was hard.
You still have more to learn.
Does it have to be so painful? I’d rather lose a job again than feel so hurt and rejected!
Papa, what do I do?
Stay here for awhile. Don’t move. I know it’s dark and you’re scared, but I’m here with you. You are broken, but my love will heal you. You are safe here. Learn again to trust me. No matter what.
When the time comes, I will lead you out of this place, and you and the person who truly loves you will continue on in your journey with me.
Papa, help me! I have no strength.
I know. I am your strength. I love you, son.
Sin is a popular topic in many Christian circles. Some constantly preach against it. Most agree that it is a problem, and it is. I see a problem with the way a lot of Christians see sin and our relationship to sin. Some believe that we are “just sinners saved by grace.” Many others believe that there are two natures living in us, and that the one we “feed” the most is the one that is stronger. I believe Scripture shows us a different way of looking at sin.
Sin is the force that ruled us before we came to Christ. We were indeed, sinners before we came to faith. Now though, we are a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). We have become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21). We have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16), we have a new spirit (Rom. 8:16), and the Spirit of God is in us (1 Cor. 3:16). We are God’s workmanship (Eph. 2:10), we belong to God (1 Pet. 2:9), and we are dead to sin (Rom. 6:11).
Yes, but we still sin! True, but that doesn’t change who we are. Sin is still a force that remains in us, but it is no longer part of our nature. Before we came to Christ, sin told us what to do, and those ways of thinking and seeing the world were ingrained in us. When we become a child of God, sin still dwells in us (Rom. 7:17). It is still there, whispering in our ear and seeking to influence us to act in a way that is incompatible with who we truly are. When we sin, it is not because we are still sinful, but it is because we still sometimes do things according to the old way of thinking.
If I am angry with someone and continue to dwell on that anger and not give it up to God, it is not because I am an angry person, but is because I am acting out of an old script in which I was an angry individual who did not forgive and held on to my anger. I need to realize that kind of anger is not compatible with who I am as a child of God. I need to allow the Spirit to transform my thinking in this area.
When I am proud and think that I am better than others, when I fail to see others as God’s image bearers, when I am selfish in my interactions with others, it is not because I am sinful. It is because I fail to see these sinful actions as not fitting with who I am in Christ. Again, I need to have my mind renewed. The same is true when I fail to trust the love and goodness of my Father. Any time I sin, it is because I have not taken my thoughts captive and run them through the filter of my identity as a child of God.
May the Spirit renew and transform our minds so we increasingly live as the new creations we are!