huh?

Lattes, Lent, and an empty tomb…
Current mood: alive

I can only imagine what it would have been like.  Three days ago, the Man that was turning the kingdom upside down was crucified and died.  When He died, there was an earthquake, and rumor has it that the veil in the temple-the one that the Ark of the Covenant was behind-was ripped in two and the big secret was out: the ark was gone.  The presence of God was not in the temple.

It was a pretty big deal, the Ark being gone.  How long had it been gone?  When the high priest would go in to the holy of holies each year to sprinkle lamb’s blood, what was he sprinkling it on if the ark wasn’t there?  When Jesus died the whole world learned that the presence of God had left the priests.

Where did the ark go?  Well, if you’re an Indiana Jones fan like me, then you know that the ark is in a warehouse with thousands of other boxes, identical to the one that it is in.

Seriously though, we don’t really know where the ark is.  It is one of those historical mysteries.  We do know something of greater importance though: where the presence of God (which is what the ark was supposed to represent) rests.

When Jesus died, He was reconciling the whole world to God.  That word, reconciling, is a great word.  You can use it in a few ways.  You can speak about friends that need to reconcile, or make amends.  You can speak about a people being reconciled in the sense of justice being brought to those who have not had it.  But my favorite usage has to do with ideas.

I was speaking with my friend Daniel from work the other day about the difficulties that I have had reconciling the common practices of modern Christianity and the lifestyle that Jesus spoke about.  In this sense, the word reconcile means something to the affect of bringing things into agreement.  It is interesting though; the implication of the word is that if things are not in agreement, then they can not be reconciled.  In order to reconcile two things, they have to be able to agree, or get along, or be of like kind.  In order to be reconciled, the items in question must be made up of the “same stuff.”

When Jesus came to this world He was made of the “same stuff” as you and me.  He wore a suit of flesh and bone.  Blood pulsed through His veins.  Emotions filled His heart and mind.  He was in every way human.  He was in every way God.  He was God in human skin: the reconciliation of God and man.

There is a great deal of mysticism in Christianity that we tend to ignore (you should note, that the word “mysticism” means something like, “having to do with mystery”).  The idea of the super-natural walking around in a natural body is very mystical.

The death and resurrection of Jesus, mystical.

That God would love man, any man, enough to enter into the frailty of human flesh, that He would desire to be reconciled to something so inferior to Himself, is definitively mystical to me.

The greatest mystery of the universe: Why would God desire to be reconciled to man?  Why would He want anything to do with that witch had so painfully rejected Him (you should really pick up a copy of “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis and read the chapter entitled, “The Obstinate Toy Soldier”)?

There have been times that I have been rejected by people.  I think the thing that comes most clearly to mind right now is the experience of having a girl (there have been plenty that have done this to me) reject my invitation to a date or a relationship that was more than “just friends.”

The times that this has happened with girls that I barely knew really had little affect on me.  I would be frustrated for a few hours, go listen to something rather “emo” in nature, and then all was well.  No, the times that the rejection came from a girl that I had grown attached to, those were the painful times.

Those experiences would cause me to question myself.

Why was I not good enough?

What did I do to cause her to not feel the same way?

Was this really happening to me?

Again?

Now eventually the heart heals, but in the process of such healing, I have learned that the old saying “’tis better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all” is a load of crap.  Losing someone that you love is the most painful thing that anyone can experience.  Sure, memories of the good times are great, until you remember having your heart served up on a silver platter of rejection.  Yes, there is nothing more admittedly humiliating than having loved and lost; the feelings of vulnerability, the broken trust, the awkward chance runs-ins with your rejecter.

I wonder how God felt when Adam and Eve rejected Him…

The worst part of being rejected is that feeling that you get for the first month or so while you try to figure out ways to get back the love that you have lost.  You know that it is foolish.  You know that even if they took you back that chances are, you would just be rejected by them again somewhere down the road.  But you’re desperate for their love.  You would do ANYTHING to get them back, until finally, your heart heals.

Love endures all things.

I think we fall in love a lot more often than we would like to admit.  The deeper our love for a person, the deeper our ability to forgive rejection and start all over again.  You see, it is love that compels us to want to reconcile with the one that rejected us.  We even try to change ourselves to be made more of the “same stuff” as the one that rejected us.  Is love sometimes misguided?  Absolutely.  Is it at times wrong?  Certainly.  But is is there, and present love is impossible to ignore.

Back to the question of how God felt about being rejected.

We know that God is love.  While we can have love for someone, God IS love for someone.  It is quite the difference.  You see, God doesn’t just have love for you, He IS love for you.  God doesn’t just love the world, He IS love for the world.  That means that His ability to forgive rejection, His ability to desire to be one with His rejecter, is not just an ability that He has, He IS that ability.

That is why God would desire so intently to reconcile Himself to you:

He IS reconciliation to you.

When the veil of the temple was rent asunder (I LOVE that phrase =), the whole world saw that the presence of God had left the priests.

When the stone that covered the tomb of Jesus was rolled away, the world saw that God’s love for the world did not stay dead.

Where is the presence of God?

Right here, right now.

(I’m sitting at the ’Buck and I am ready to SCREAM with joy…  Literally, I feel like I am “bursting with God-news”)

You have rejected Him.

He IS love for you.

You have walked away from Him.

He died on a cross.

You feel alone.

The tomb is empty and He is present with you.

God has reconciled Himself to you.  Jesus is alive so that He can inhabit you.  He desires to be one with you.  Our perception of God must change from an old man on a giant golden throne to the ever present lover of our souls.  He became like you so that He could be with you.  You are made of the “same stuff” and He wants nothing more than to forgive you and start all over again.  Your relationship to God IS the mysticism of Christianity: when you are in Christ, you are one with the eternal God.

He is Emanuel: God with us.

As I sit at the ’Buck drinking the first Latte that I have had since the beginning of Lent, I am reminded that He is risen.  I am reminded that He has reconciled me to Himself.  I didn’t have to do anything, He died and now He lives forever; forever in love with me, forever forgiving me, forever drawing me to Himself, forever working in me the miracles that only the undying love of my creator can work.

Grace and peace to you as you roll away the stones of your heart and find that what was once dead has been resurrected with Christ.  Today, all things are new!

-m

Currently listening : Minutes to Midnight By Linkin Park Release date: 15 May, 2007

Lent Readings v. 3.0

 ^{5 -7} God saw that human evil was out of control. People thought evil, imagined evil—evil, evil, evil from morning to night. God was sorry that he had made the human race in the first place; it broke his heart. God said, “I’ll get rid of my ruined creation, make a clean sweep: people, animals, snakes and bugs, birds—the works. I’m sorry I made them.”

⁸ But Noah was different. God liked what he saw in Noah.
Genesis 6:5-8 (The Message)

We all know the story of Noah and the Great Flood.  Did you know that historians are actually beginning to concede that this flood must have happened?  It is all over ancient documents.

For example; “The Epic of Gilgamesh.”  This work is acknowledged as the oldest piece of literature ever written.  It is the story of the King, Gilgamesh, and his greatest adventure: he sought the meaning of life, and, if he could find it, eternal life.  He set out on his mission.  His goal was to travel far, far away, across a great see, to meet with the oldest, wisest man that lived at that time.  According to “The Epic,” this man was the one that survived the Great Flood.  He had three sons…

It sure sounds like Gilgamesh went to meet with Noah…

The reason that I bring this up is because I want you to see the fame of Noah.  We talk about him and think of him as merely the man that built a boat, but he was more.  He was the man that built a boat and proved the ENTIRE WORLD WRONG.

In the text above we get a picture of what life was like before the flood.  Did you notice that the word “evil” is used a lot (BTW, I typed that with my pinky at the corner of my mouth like Dr. Evil)?  It is not only used a lot, it is repeated three times.  You may have seen this sort of thing before through out the Old Testament (for example: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord”).  There is a reason for it.  Ancient Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, did not have any qualifiers.

“What’s a qualifier?”

Words like “very,” “most,” and, “best” did not exist in this language, these are qualifiers.  So if you wanted to say that something was very holy you would say, “holy, holy.”  If it was the holiest, you would say, “holy, holy, holy.”  It would be like saying that the very big, very red dog was the “big, big, red, red dog.”  So when the scripture says “evil, evil, evil” we should take note.

It was as evil a time as the world has ever seen.

Evil, evil, evil.

All of their thoughts

evil, evil, evil.

All of their deeds

evil, evil, evil.

Are you getting the picture?

This is when Noah lived.  He was neighbors with someone that was evil, evil, evil.  His friends were all evil, evil, evil.  His coworkers were evil, evil, evil.  His cousins, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles; evil, evil, evil.  All day, every day, evil, evil, evil.

I know that there have been times when I have decided just to follow the crowd, good or bad, it was just easier to do what everyone else was doing.  It’s something that we all do.  If the people that influence us are doing one thing, chances are that we will too.  We will at least start to think about things that we wouldn’t normally think about.  Influence is powerful.

Think about how much advertising you take in during a day.  How much of it is true?  If you buy that body spray are girls going to literally hurl themselves at you?  If you buy that car are you really going to be happier?  If you buy that exercise machine are you really going to look like the model that is selling it?

We would probably all answer these questions with a resounding “No.”  Yet, we buy the body spray, we buy the car, and we buy the exercise equipment.  Why?  We are influenced.

Noah was surrounded by nothing but evil, evil, evil.  All of his influences were evil, evil, evil.

But Noah was good, good, good.

And God noticed, noticed, noticed.

Due to the absolute evil that had consumed the earth, God, was wrestling with whether or not He should scrap project earth.  He was trying to decide whether it was worth it or not.  He was beginning to regret making mankind.

But then He noticed, noticed, noticed.

The point of the story is really simple: because of one man’s goodness, God saved mankind.

That sounds familiar…

This is what Jesus did, He came to a world that was consumed in evil, evil, evil and He gave His life to make it good, good, good.

“But Matthew, the world is a messed up place.”

It is.  That’s why you and I are here.  The whole idea behind this Lent thing is to anticipate the celebration of the resurrection on Easter.  I can only think to do this by being someone that helps bring resurrection to a world that is dying all around me.  What if, in a world that appears broken, broken, broken we became like Noah?

We could be the people that bring life to a dying world.  That’s what Christianity is about: bringing resurrection wherever there is death.  When your friend is broken and hurting and you take the time to listen, you are bringing resurrection to a dead situation.  When someone on the street is begging and you feed them, you bring resurrection into their dead situation.  When you remember that you were made to live this day as a love letter to a Savior that gave you His life, it brings resurrection into the dead parts of your life.  

Why is the story of Noah important?  It is because this story proves to us that God will do whatever it takes to love us, that He has an undying hope in us.  He has looked at you, and seen something that He liked.

Remember, He loves, loves, loves you and has hope, hope, hope in you.  Just live in the resurrection this week, and see how things change, watch dead things come back to life.  

Grace, grace, grace and peace, peace, peace to you.

-m

Lent Readings v. 2.3
Current mood: enthralled

Lent Readings v. 2.3

 ^{11 -12}As for the rumor that I continue to preach the ways of circumcision (as I did in those pre-Damascus Road days), that is absurd. Why would I still be persecuted, then? If I were preaching that old message, no one would be offended if I mentioned the Cross now and then—it would be so watered-down it wouldn’t matter one way or the other. Why don’t these agitators, obsessive as they are about circumcision, go all the way and castrate themselves!   ^{13 -15}It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?

Galatians 5:11-15 (The Message)

Holy crap, Paul knows how to throw down.

There have been times when I have heard people say things that didn’t sound like the way to live for God and I kept my mouth shut.  If Paul had been around he probably would have called for their castration like he did here.

I guess when you live a life that has been so intensely bound to trying to live as somebody that you’re not, and then you become free of it, you are repulsed by the idea of someone trying to chain your friends up in the same bondage.

I can only imagine what happened when this letter was read publicly to the believers in Galatia.  Just think, the people that Paul suggests castration for were present at the reading.  They must have been furious.  They would have jumped up to defend their teachings.I have the feeling that maybe they did jump up to say something.  I also think that the Galatians underwent a very, very real change of heart while they heard these words for the first time and they probably did not let them speak.

Think about it.

You’ve spent your entire life trying to fit into the model of perfection that your people have passed down for thousands of years.  Every day you wake up and you know that no matter how hard you try that you can NEVER be everything that the law calls for.

You might hit your thumb with a hammer and cuss beofre you had a chance to think about it.

Maybe you ran into that one person that knows how to get under your skin and you let them know what you REALLY think of them.

Perhaps you just don’t feel like going to church and so you don’t.

If any of these things happens, everyone knows about it.  Everyone knows that you have failed.  Everyone looks at you and wonders why you have elected to sin.  If you do something bad enough, they even take you outside of the city and stone you to death.

This law stuff is very serious.

And you can’t do it.

You can’t be perfect.

You can’t get it right all of the time.

You will fail at times.

People will forget to acknowledge your hard work.

You will hurt someone without trying.

It is bound to happen.

So there you are.  Paul came a while back and told you about the way to live a life free in Jesus.  You immediately accepted it.  These new guys come to town, and they start telling you all over again that you have to fit in the mold.  Paul gets word of it and writes a letter.

How do you feel when you hear what he wrote?

I would feel furious.  I hate being lied to, as I’m sure you do.  More than that, I hate being rejected.  The law makes you feel inadequate; it can lead to feeling rejected.Perhaps that’s why Paul was so upset…

Listen, you don’t have to be perfect to follow Jesus.  You don’t have to be something that you’re not.  You just have to be you.

The power of following Jesus is in the realization of the freedom that He gives.  When you understand that He loves you in spite of you, it is like realizing that you have found the one sure thing that there is in life.

Now, as Paul said, this is not an excuse for sin, but it is the key to living without sin.  Look at the passage again.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

…
…

…
…

Okay, did you see what that second paragraph says?

There are two keypoints.  The first one, if you live a life of love, freedom will grow in you.  Spending your life on others causes them to become forgiving of your flaws.  It also causes their love for you to grow.  That’s the amazing thing about love, it doesn’t know how to shrink, when you use it, instead of diminishing, it grows.  The only way that your freedom can be taken from you is if you stop loving people-and God, who consequently, you can’t love without loving those whom you can see-in the perfect love that Jesus has shown.

The second keypoint: what good is it to be free if you can’t share that freedom?  When you withold love from people you are making a brash statement.  What if Jesus witheld His love for you?  Where would you be?  When you, as an heir-nay, a joint heir-with Jesus withold the love that He has given you from others, He is mocked.

But there is something beautiful on the flipside of that thought.  When you share that wondrous love that He has shown you, you make His name famous.

So, here’s to shaking off chains and living with bold love, absolute freedom, and the grace that could only come from the Son of God.

Grace and peace be with you all.

-m

Lent Readings v. 2.0

 ¹ So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law.

Galatians 5:1

Note: This will be the shortest of the Lent Readings selections, but it carries with it a volume of wisdom.  Paul’s statement is simple: if Jesus has come alive in you, then keep it that way.

This is a part of Paul’s letter to the church at Galatia.  This is one of the churches that received Paul’s message quickly.  A group of intensely devout Jews (and non Jews practicing Judaism) received Paul in their midst as a rabbi.  When Paul spoke, he taught them the fulfillment of the law, a life lived in Jesus; a life of simple love for a great God and the people that He had created.

This message was different from the lifestyle to which the Galatians were accustomed.  In order to follow God you were supposed to try and fit into a system of religious rules that dictated every part of your day and conduct.  Being a religious or spiritual person meant that you were a person that was more concerned with living by a set of rules-some of them seemingly impossible to follow-than you were with people.  Following this set of rules could easily become of such a great importance that one would care more to follow the rules than to try and please God.  That is to say that as the rules would come more sharply into focus in one’s life, God could become increasingly blurry.

Paul was familiar with this lifestyle; he had spent the totality of his life living these rules with extreme devotion.  Paul makes the argument that he was a “Pharisee of the Pharisees;” the Pharisees were the one’s that would interpret the law, so being a Pharisee of the Pharisees would mean interpreting the law for the Pharisees.  Paul claims, with absolute assurance, that it would be very difficult to find anyone that was better at following the laws of Judaism than him and no one argued with him.

Paul’s absolute devotion to the law lead him into a most peculiar occupation: he spent his days hunting down the followers of Jesus and bringing them to his form of justice: a swift death.

Paul’s absolute devotion to the law clouded his vision with the density of a London fog.  He could not see beyond his stark perfectionism and that drove him to hate; hate for anyone that tried to “mess up” his systematic lifestyle.

Fast forward.

We’re back in Galatia for the first time.

Paul preaches freedom and grace and peace to the Galatians.

And they take to it like a fish to water.

Freedom is deeply appealing when you have been bound in chains.  In fact, it is even more appealing when you realize that the chains that you thought bound you to God become the chains that bind your soul to hell-fire.

The Galatians accepted Jesus and began living lives of love.  Paul moved on to continue spreading the good news.

Then it happened.

Paul received word that the Galatians had received some new teachers in their midst, teachers of the law, teachers that once again, bound them up in the chains of the old religious system.  They went from freedom in Jesus to bondage.

From lives of love for God and man,

to the self absorption of trying to live a perfect life.

Paul wrote this letter to the Galatians in this context.  He was urging them, pleading with them, compelling them to not forget the great freedom that they received from Jesus.  

Why is it so easy to fall back into doing the thing that you hate?

Chains become comforters.  We desire to carry them around like Linus carrying his blanket and sucking his thumb (thank Jesus for “Peanuts”).  Familiarity becomes more important than truth.  Ignorance is bliss and we are the ignorant.

This is what Paul was talking about.  Why would we desire to live in the darkness of Plato’s Cave (read “The Allegory of the Cave” by Plato http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/allegory.html) when the love of Jesus has loosed our chains and brought us blinking into the light?  Why would we desire to bind anyone else in the same chains that we have been set free from?

If you have been set free, then stay that way.  It’s the very reason that Jesus died.

Freedom in Christ to be who God made you, imperfections and all: this is what living the resurrection looks like.

“On Purity of Mind…”

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think.

When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.

–Siddhartha Gautama

“You are what you eat.” This statement is a reflection of physical fitness. The concept behind it, is quite simple: junk in, junk out. In the instance of becoming what you eat, if you eat fatty, unhealthy foods, then the chances are that you will become a fat, unhealthy person. The reverse is also true: if you eat lean, healthy foods, you will become a much more lean, and healthy person. The statement above is similar: you will become what you think. The major difference in these two thoughts is the source of the output; the former implicates the mind, the latter implicates the food. I think the problem is both. When the mind is constantly bombarded with one type of input, it will begin to reflect that input, we may have the ability to cipher through this outer influence, but ultimately, the mind will begin to be shaped by what is put into it.

Purity of mind is a desirable state. When the mind is pure, it is in a sense
“empty;” empty of thoughts that bring inward destruction; empty of excessive details that cloud decisions; empty of preconceived ideas about life, people, and circumstances. This “emptiness” leaves room for other things; in the vacuum of negativity there is space for clarity. Clarity helps us to see the world with a sort of innocence. This innocence is easily related to as a source of joy. And thus, an empty mind is actually full.

It is astounding how much our outward world influences our perceptions. I watch the news, learning of the atrocities committed by some ignorant warlord in a far away place, and realize the world is a truly sad place to live. I pass a homeless woman on Higuera St. in San Louis Obispo and have the sense that somewhere down the line the people that loved her, have forgotten her. I sit at Starbucks and watch young lovers break apart their relationship; he’s ready to break the windows of every car in the parking lot,she’s wondering if she will ever meet a guy that will treat her with the same kind of affection that she gives to him. All of these things can cause the mind to dwell on the impure.

If things that are broken are impure, does that mean that things once broken and now mended become pure?

Again, I watch the news, and rather than feeling helpless, I feel a need to change the world around me, perhaps I am motivated to do something about children in Ugandan refugee camps (www.invisiblechildren.com). I pass the homeless woman and realize that even though the people that once loved her have forgotten her, it doesn’t mean that you and I can’t love her; she’s the same woman, her position has just become less desirable; that’s all. I watch the young lovers remember that, even though their time together has come to an end, their lives have not. They rise again, starting afresh, he learns to control the wildness inside of him; she learns that even though things went bad with this guy, not all guys are bad. Soon, they even become friends again. Impure things becoming pure, it all happens when the mind is pure.

Often, the things that are put into our minds are things that we can not control. A friend tells us some bad news, we over hear a conversation, we begin to-as a result of being gradually worn down-believe all of the advertising that is overwhelmingly shoved in our faces; the purity that we desire for our minds is stolen from us by uncontrollable immersion in a broken world. Once again though, mending brokenness is the source of purity.

Recalling that all people bear the image of their Creator is the source of pure thinking. From this place, our thoughts shift and we realize that these troubled souls are just like us. Hopelessness is the beginning of impure thinking; the feeling of being totally incapable. Recalling that we are image-bearers helps us to see brokenness as a situation that can be mended. It is a source of hope, and hope is a beautiful thing; the possibility of a better tomorrow. Gandhi said that if we desire to change the world then we must, “Be the change that [we] want to see in the world.” In a world impure and broken, people with a desire to be pure and mended are the solution.

“You are what you eat” may be the fate of us all, but it doesn’t mean that we have to keep eating the same tripe. Just as we have the ability to choose what we eat, we have the ability to choose how we think about the world around us, and when we change our thinking, we change our actions. And if enough of us change our actions, then maybe, just maybe, we will bring a bit of mending to this broken world.