Category: Spirit

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Lessons From The Man Who Ate New Orleans Part 3

This is the third post in the series. In the first two posts, I wrote about the cardinal virtues of community, generosity, and resiliency. Today, I want to consider the virtues of diversity and openness to outsiders. New Orleans is a very diverse city. You will find folks from all different walks of life and from all corners of the globe. You can find any kind of food you can imagine, listen to whatever music strikes your fancy, and hear any of a multitude of languages, dialects, and accents. There are many styles of worship, from high church liturgical to storefront.

The body of Christ is similar. People from all over the world follow Jesus. In Revelation we read of people from every tribe and nation gathered around the throne. Christianity is not the possession of any single nation, ethnic group, or language. There are a multitude of ways in which people worship God. A local gathering of the church may be very diverse as well. There may be rich and poor, professional and blue collar.There may be folks who are quiet and reflective alongside those who are more boisterous and outgoing. Young singles may be next to married couples with children, who are next to older empty nesters. Ideally, the church is a body where different sorts of people are accepted and loved. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

One of the reasons for the diversity of New Orleans is the openness of the people to outsiders. New Orleans is a welcoming city to tourists, and to those who choose to stay. Diversity is encouraged and celebrated. No one is told they must be a certain way to visit or live there. This openness brings a unity within the diversity. When Katrina devastated the city, the people there banded together to rebuild it. They see themselves as one and have a mutual love for their city. While there is still much to be done in the rebuilding effort, the unity of the people has brought New Orleans back to vibrancy.

Those of us who follow Jesus should be the most welcoming and open of all people. We are commanded to love others, to do good to others, to show hospitality, to accept others because we have been been accepted. Too many times, that acceptance is not there. Local gatherings of the church tend to be fairly uniform. The natural tendency is to gather with folks who look like us, think like us, worship like us, and are in the same social class as we are. While that may be the natural tendency, the church is a supernatural body. We are the children of a God who has called folks from all walks of life and every nation. Along with the differences, we have some major thing in common. Each of us has been redeemed by the work of Christ, adopted by God, and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. We are not only fellow believers, we are family!

The early church turned the world upside down because they loved each other and those around them. They were one in their diversity. They were open to their neighbors. They lived the Gospel out in their day-to-day and showed the world the truth of the Kingdom of God. The church in America has largely become impotent because we have become more concerned with proving we are more correct than our brothers and sisters, and by waging “war” on those outside who don’t come up to our standards. While there is diversity, there is very little unity and very little openness to outsiders.

May we accept and love our fellow Christians, and be open and hospitable to those in our communities in order to show them the grace of the One who accepts us and who gave his very life for us.  

Part 1
Part 2

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Lessons From The Man Who Ate New Orleans Part 2

Two of the seven cardinal virtues of New Orleans are generosity and resiliency. It may seem strange to put these two things together, but I hope to be able to relate them to each other. In Webster’s dictionary, generosity is defined as freedom in spirit or act, especially readiness in giving. Resiliency is defined as the ability to recover from or adjust to misfortune or change. Both of these virtues are characteristic of New Orleans, and both should characterize those who follow Jesus.

Children of God should be the most resilient people. We should be able to adjust to change and recover from misfortune because we have resources to draw on. First, we have a Father who is sovereign over everything, who loves us with a perfect, everlasting love, and who always does good to us. We also have the Holy Spirit to comfort us and guide us. The third thing we have, or at least should have, is a family, a community of believers through whom God works. It is in relationship to others that we can be loved and comforted, and we can then love and comfort others who go through similar troubles. I don’t believe any of us can become resilient outside of community and relationship with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

We tend to think of generosity in terms of giving money or material things. That is one aspect, but being generous involves much more, and it is in that much more that this virtue is related to resiliency.As we become more resilient through the stuff we go through, we are called to freely give to others what has been given to us. We may give money or other material things. We may give work of some sort. Our gift may be words of encouragement and comfort, or simply a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on. Again, we must be in community. We cannot truly be generous with our resources unless we are in relationship. Without relationship, our words and actions can be empty or they can even cause further harm. The flip side of being generous in giving is being willing to be generous in our receiving. It takes humility to admit that we need help, to let others know what is going on in our lives, and to allow them the privilege of being generous in their giving to us. That is something that is hard for many of us, myself included. But it is a vital part of living in community.

Let us be generous to our brothers and sisters. Let us freely give and freely receive. As we serve one another, let us be strengthened so that we are resilient when tough times come.

Part 1 is here.

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Peace

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)

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Tom Sawyer Christianity

In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer gets Huck Finn and a group of boys together to form a gang of robbers and murderers. Tom gives the gang members a list of rules that they must follow in order to be a part of the gang. When questioned about some of these rules, Tom says that these rules must be followed because that’s what robbers and murderers did in the books that he read. Because it was in the books, that’s what robbers and murderers did, therefore that’s what the gang was supposed to do. Of course, the rules had nothing to do with reality, and the boys ended up doing what you would expect from a group of young boys: they pretended to rob and kill. No one was harmed, and the gang eventually broke up because it got too hard to get together.

As I read I thought how much this is like a large segment of Christianity today. Folks gather in buildings every Sunday and listen to what essentially is a list of rules that they must follow in order to be in the gang. These rules range from behavior codes regarding dress, music, etc., to principles and steps to follow to be a better _______________. The unfortunate thing is that some in those buildings think they are part of the Body because they made a decision and are following the rules, but are deluded. While determining whether someone really belongs to Christ is way above my pay grade, a good look at the fruit shows a problem.
The rules and the principles and steps are like the rules in Tom Sawyer’s gang; they do not correspond to reality. What is real is that Jesus has finished it. He has done everything that needed to be done. Christ has accomplished everything we need. When he said, “It is finished,” on the cross, he meant it. He has called us to follow him, and has given us everything we need to do that. Christ did not call us to give assent to a set of propositions about him. He did not tell us to follow a set of rules, to get our act together, or to “get right” with him. He called us into relationship with him.
It is true that a relationship with Jesus will bring about changes in our lives. We are a new creation, and we are called to live as people who are different. Those changes that make us different will come about by the Spirit of God in us, not from following a set of rules or steps. We are not only saved without human effort, we also live in the power of the Spirit, not our own power. We can not get any closer to God by our efforts, we can not please God in our own strength. Everything we do must be done by God’s power. Tom Sawyer’s gang failed because they were trying to be a gang like Tom had read about, but had no ability to do what those gangs did. How many Christians flounder in their lives, and how many congregations are powerless because they are trying to be what they have read about, but are doing it in their own power.
Tom Sawyer’s gang was playing at being a gang. I wonder how many of us who claim Christ are playing at following him. What would it look like if churches were made up of people who were fully committed to following Jesus in the power of the Spirit?
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Lessons From Easy Rider

The other night we watched Easy Rider. Even though the film has been out for 41 years, it was the first time any of us had seen it. As we watched, Jan and I were both struck by the idea of freedom, although in slightly different ways.

Jan saw the characters as people looking for freedom. Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper) traveled across America free to do whatever they wished. The folks at the commune wanted to be free to live off the land as they saw fit. George (Jack Nicholson) saw traveling with Wyatt and Billy as a chance for freedom. What Jan said is that while they were looking for freedom, or thought that they were free, all of them were bound by something. I think that’s true. All of the characters were bound, by drugs, prostitution, prejudice, the weather, or the actions of others. That’s true in real life as well. People are bound by any number of things. As Jan said, everyone who is outside of Christ is bound by sin. Only in Jesus do we have freedom.

That brings me to my thoughts as we watched the film. There was a section where George talks about freedom:

“They’re scared of what you represent to them….

What you represent to them is freedom….

But talking about and being it, that’s two different things.

Don’t tell anybody that they’re not free, because they’ll get busy killing and maiming to prove to you that they are. They’re going to talk to you and talk to you about individual freedom. But, they see a free individual, it’s going to scare them. Well, it don’t make them running scared. It makes them dangerous.”

There are a lot of churches that loudly proclaim grace and freedom. “By grace are you saved” is a common theme. Some put grace in their name. They will tell you that they are all about grace and freedom. If you take a closer look, however, you will notice that the folks in those churches are like the characters in Easy Rider. They are bound. Bound by the expectations of others, by their pursuit of the American Dream. Bound by rules handed down from the pastor or group of leaders. Bound by a system of theology or a tradition of worship. Bound by guilt or prejudice. Just don’t tell them that they are not free or let them see an individual who is living free in God’s grace. That’s when they become dangerous.

People who try to truly live in freedom are looked upon as “backsliders.” They are “lawless” and “they need to get right with God.” They are removed from leadership roles, or expelled from institutions. People who live in freedom are ostracized. Some are even branded as “heretics,” and are denounced in writing or on blogs. Christians are scared of grace and of the freedom that we have because of grace. It’s nothing new. Paul was accused of promoting lawlessness because he preached grace.

I think we are scared of freedom because freedom is a dangerous thing. It causes us to rely completely on the Holy Spirit to guide us, rather than a law handed down from an authority figure. If we live in freedom we have to think, and we have to be willing to make mistakes and then own up to those mistakes. We even have to be willing to sin. Yes, I said that we even have to be willing to sin. Face it, we are going to sin. Instead of trying to hide it and pretend we don’t, we should own up to it. We shouldn’t live our lives constantly looking around for some sin to jump out from the shadows and attack us. We shouldn’t go through our day worrying about avoiding sin. We should flee temptation when it presents itself, but we shouldn’t be anxious about it.

We are called to live in freedom. Christ has fulfilled the law, and it is for freedom that he has set us free. Learn from Jesus. Let his Spirit fill you and teach you. As you grow more and more in the grace of God through Jesus, and let Christ live through you, the more you’ll be able to live in grace, and the more you will be truly free.

You might be scary to some. But, that’s a good thing.

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Another Lesson Learned

This morning, after our gathering, we were waiting for some food to be delivered. I was on the front porch of the house talking with a friend. Partway through the conversation the food that we were waiting for arrived, and help was needed to carry it into the house. Without thinking, I immediately left in the middle of the conversation to help. There were others there who could have helped, so it wasn’t like it was absolutely necessary for me to get involved. A bit later I thought about that and realized that I had abandoned my friend right in the middle of our conversation, and I wondered why I did that.

Part of it could be that I’m not a great conversationalist, so it was more comfortable for me to help out in a way that didn’t require talking. That’s something I need to continue working on, although I am better than I was. Part of it could be that I feel like I have a reputation as a servant to uphold. That is one of my gifts, and I do feel more comfortable behind the scenes than out front, so of course I don’t want people to think I’m being lazy. Regardless of the reason, I should have stayed on the porch and not abandoned my friend.

I think that a bigger reason is something that most of us deal with in our walk with Jesus, and that is the tendency to feel that we have to do something all the time rather than just be in the moment. I know that I sometimes will let things to do draw me away from spending time with the Father or with my brothers and sisters. A lot of evangelicalism, especially the fundamentalist branch, is built on “doing something for God.” Great churches are built on the efforts of the leaders and members. Christians are made to feel guilty if they aren’t involved in one of the programs of their church. Pastors burn out because they feel that it’s their job to build a great work. In the midst of all this busyness, churches find that their members are not being discipled and are not growing in their walk with God.

The thing is, many of the programs and things that we try to do for God can be done without the Holy Spirit. Huge, “successful” churches and ministries can be built completely on human effort. Some of those come tumbling down, some get even bigger, but they really don’t have much impact for the Kingdom. We bemoan the fact that people aren’t knocking down the doors of our churches, and young people are leaving as soon as they are able. I think one reason is that we have presented a gospel that claims to be all about grace and a relationship with God, but is really about working. Not for salvation, but to please God.

God invites us into relationship with him. He tells us to be still and know that he is God. God is our Father, not our employer. It is true that we serve God and others. It is true that there are things that each one of us is called to do. But, do we do them in our own strength or in the power of the Spirit coming from just being in a close relationship with the Father? It is out of that relationship that we walk in God’s love through our day-to-day. It is in that relationship that we learn the Father’s heart and find out where he is working so that we can join in. The closer we draw to our Father, the more sensitive we will be to his agenda, and the more we may realize that we need to let our agenda go. Our efforts will be to join God’s work rather than trying to get him to bless ours.

Joining in God’s work might just mean that we continue a conversation on the front porch and let someone else help with the other stuff.

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The Dancing Spirit

John Fischer posted this at his site. I thought I’d share it with you.

The Spirit of God dances. He can’t be tamed. He won’t be contained. He refuses to be confined to a weekend retreat, an evening meeting, or a moment of devotion. He doesn’t follow schedules, programs, or agendas, and He doesn’t wait for His name to be called.

The Spirit of God dances. He dances right under the noses of those who don’t believe in dancing; and He dances right on by those who do. He dances through the assemblies of the keepers of the dance, and right on out the door—and no one sees Him go. And as the dancers continue their pantomime, the Spirit of God dances in the streets.

His favorite dancing places are those where the keepers of the dance don’t want Him to go, like on smoky stages with microphones that smell of whiskey. The Spirit of God loves sinners and dances best where life spills out on the floor.

Occasionally He dances on the clean, sweet-smelling stages of the keepers of the dance—but not as often as He would like. He dances there when there is pain or grief—whenever life spills out on the floor. But usually the floor is clean and the dance is simulated, carefully choreographed by the keepers of the dance to use only those steps with which they feel secure.

The Spirit of God refuses to be choreographed. His dance is raw, new, and jerky. It’s not always pleasing to the eye, but His dance is fresh in the lives of those whose floors have not been cleaned up. It isn’t well rehearsed, polished, or perfect; it slips and slides, sometimes innovative and shocking and at other times just exhilarant, but it’s always real.

Sometimes the dance turns to mourning, but always there’s the dance. Happy dance or sad dance… the Spirit of God always dances.

Most people, even those who pride themselves in their dancing, are afraid of this unpredictable dance. They’re afraid of anything they can’t control; and His dance is wild, unmanageable—even mad. But most important, it’s vulnerable, open to criticism—the quality they fear most. So they must create their own dance of predictable steps and prescribed routines and send all their people through dance school—or outlaw dancing altogether.

But this should come as no surprise. It has always been this way. The Lord of the Dance himself was here once, and it was the same way then. He danced on the keepers’ holy days and broke their holy laws. His timing—if not His whole dance—always seemed offbeat. He wanted to turn their empty religious movements into heartfelt, joyous dancing. He wanted them to exchange the grip of the Law for the freedom of the dance. But they thought He was a clumsy dancer, always bumping into their traditions and stepping on their toes. He even danced with the wrong crowd, in smoke-filled rooms, with messy floors.

Once, describing His generation, He declared, “We played the flute for you, but you would not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn. For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ “

…and the Spirit of God dances on.