"I Want You"

In his timely book, which probably should be required Christmas reading for all followers of Jesus, Christmas is Not Your Birthday, Mike Slaughter quotes Alan and Deb Hirsch who point out in their book Untamed: “Of all the ways culture influences the church, nothing has had more of an impact on us than that of a consumerist vision of society. We have all been impacted by the powerful experience of society that is preoccupied with the acquisition of consumer goods. From good old Santa Claus (a religious symbol co-opted to disciple children in thorough-going materialism from early childhood on) to the complete ubiquity of niche marketing, we are daily being nurtured in the worldview generated by late capitalism of the twenty-first century—consumerism.” (Untamed: Reactivating a Missional Form of Discipleship. Baker Books, 2010, 137).

We could elaborate on how this cultural influence can be seen in the ways that we approach worship, build and equip our worship places, buy “Christian” brands, gauge our success as churches by how many people we get in the seats, etc. But since they mention Santa, let’s just focus on Christmas.

I often get the feeling these days that I am not a very good American, not a patriot, because I am not consuming as much as I should. After all, the daily drumbeat of the news, with its constant eye on the Dow Jones, is a reminder that it is Christmas that makes or breaks the retail market, and, by implication, the health of our economy and country.

I just refuse to play that game. If I read the Gospels correctly and listen to the witness of the church, Christmas is a reminder that in the midst of all the “stuff” the world promises us, gives us and surrounds us with, what we really need is God’s love. First John puts it this ways: “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they've done to our relationship with God. Dear Friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:9-11)

A while back I came across the story of a little girl who had to spend some time in a hospital. She came from a very well-to-do family, and her family show¬ered her with expensive gifts during her stay in the hospital. There were large overstuffed toys, including a 6 foot tall giraffe, dolls and a dollhouse, games of every description. The mother, who was well known in social circles brought something new every time she came to see the little girl. But she never stayed long because she always had to get to some luncheon or party. But she never failed to bring a gift. The nurses com¬plained about the enormous amount of toys that made it difficult for them to move about in the child's room. One day the little girl was particularly unhappy in the midst of all her many gifts, and held desperately to her mother as her mother tried to break free so that she wouldn't be late to a bazaar she was scheduled to attend. The mother tried to divert the child's attention to the new toy she had brought. "Mommy," cried the little girl, "I want you." Surrounded by gifts, surrounded by “stuff”, she wanted the most important thing of all, her moth¬er's presence and her mother’s love

I wonder how long it will take for us to realize that about Christmas, in fact, our total pursuit of the “good life”? What we really need is not just more stuff, but love. What we need most is not the promised security of things, whether it be a healthy bank account or a well-armed military to protect our “stuff”. What we need most is a meaningful personal relationship with the God who loves us and cares for us. And as a result of knowing that love, the ability to love others and to be loved by others.

Christmas IS first and foremost about love. Christmas tells us that God has come into our broken and lonely world to love us and show us what true love is. It is a love that is not based on how good we are or how smart we are, or how well connected we are, but simply because we ARE. Experiencing the love of God and allowing that love to wash over us and through us to others is one of the greatest experiences we can have this Christmas. Will it be yours and mine?

Bypassing Advent

A few years back, Stanley Grenz wrote an article that appeared in Christianity Today entitled “Drive Through Christmas.” Here is an adaption of what he wrote:

“On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me." Tony Bennett's voice wove its subtle magic throughout the shopping mall. How appropriate, I thought, as I watched the shoppers scurry from store to store. The advertisements promised "just the right gifts at just the right price," allowing us to "give like Santa and save like Scrooge."

As I listened, I was struck with how we have turned Christmas around—not so much by commercializing the season, but through something deeper. Our McWorld of drive-through expectations has replaced patient waiting, followed by heartfelt joyous celebration, with the idolatry of instant gratification.

As members of the fast-food generation, we have become so eager to get to Christmas that we bypass Advent. Whereas an earlier generation encouraged fasting and reflection, we try to enjoy days filled with more Christmas festivities than we can endure. Christmas has displaced Advent on our calendars.

But our bypassing of Advent runs deeper—altering our attitude to the story of Christ's birth. We know how the story ends. Knowing the end of the story so well, we want to rush through the long and tortuous details of how God prepared a people—of how "God sent his Son…when the time had fully come" (Galatians 4:4). Rather than entering into the sense of expectation lying at the foundation of the story of Christ's entrance into human history, we read only the story's glorious climax. Rather than savoring the plaintive mood of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel," we immediately want to hear a robust version of "Joy to the World, the Lord Is Come." In short, we have our Christmas early and create a drive-through Christmas."

What Grenz is lamenting is the reality that for many people there is no time or room for Advent, those four weeks preceding Christmas. It gets in the way. Like kids who just want to get to the dessert, we want Christmas.

But Advent is important. That is why the church for centuries has been observing it. With its emphasis on expectation and hope, peace and joy and the need for and discovery of real love, Advent helps prepare us for Christmas. It helps get us ready to fully appreciate and celebrate the real significance of Christmas and to see it in the grand scope of God’s plan for the universe.

In our home, for decades we have lit an Advent wreath. Each day of the four weeks, beginning with the fourth Sunday before Christmas, we pause in the evening to light the appropriate candle for the week (Hope/Expectation, Peace, Joy, and Love), read a passage of Scripture and a brief meditation on the passage in the light of that week’s theme, and pray. For me, this practice sanctifies time and reminds us that Christmas is more than decorations, parties, hectic shopping and gift giving. It is a time to rest and allow the profound truth that God, the Sovereign God of the universe, because of love, enters into the drama of our human lives and history in the person of Jesus. God comes as a vulnerable baby, dependent on others.

Advent helps me to see that in a world so often devoid of hope, peace, joy and love, that God comes to give us these gifts. Yes, Christmas carols and songs and some of the trimmings of Christmas can remind us of this truth. But spending four weeks reflecting and preparing for the celebration of Christmas can allow us to enter more deeply into the profound joy of the season.

As I write this we are already into the third week of Advent. In those three weeks, Connie and I have enjoyed the opportunity to pause, ponder and prepare. Advent reminds us, through its readings and emphasis on hope, peace, joy and love that no matter how much the culture around us wants to redefine these words through its hype and suggestions that these things come in neatly wrapped boxes from department stores, real love, joy, peace and hope are only found in opening ourselves up to the gift of relationship that God gives us in Christ.

So, let me encourage you to not “bypass Advent.” Savor it. Enjoy the four weeks leading up to the celebration of Jesus’ coming. Let this time bathe your soul and help you to really enter into the joy of the celebration of God’s greatest gift. Happy Advent!!

Incarnation and Wonder

Albert Einstein, one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, once said: “One who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead.” Perhaps we could say, “If we can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, our spirituality is as good as dead.” There is a definite link between having a sense of wonder and living the Christian faith—so much so that it’s fairly safe to say that a sense of wonder is an essential trait of a healthy, maturing spirituality. Wonder is often the prelude to as well as result of meeting God.

The Bible reminds us how wonder can lead us to a meeting with God. For example, there is the story of Moses and his encounter with God in the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-17). Moses is overwhelmed by the sight of a bush that is burning, but not consumed. As he comes closer, God speaks to him and reminds him of the sacredness of life and the holiness of God. Out of that encounter Moses is transformed and called into service. Something happens in Moses’ life. He is sent into the world to bring God’s redeeming, liberating, life-changing word to his people and through them, the world.

We might ask ourselves: what would have happened if Moses had not noticed the bush in the first place? What if he had been so preoccupied with his work of tending the sheep that he never even saw the bush? Or what if he saw it but felt he couldn’t afford to take the time to go and have a closer look? Way too busy watching those sheep! The answer is both clear and sobering: Moses would have missed an opportunity to meet God. I think there is a reminder here for all of us. An attitude that often stifles wonder is one that is too preoccupied or too busy to pay attention to things. Our sense of wonder is nourished by our periodically laying aside our preoccupations and our work in order to pay closer attention to our world and the people around us. It is when we learn to sloooow down, to open our eyes and really look and be attentive to the world around us and especially to the indications of God’s presence in the drama of life that we cultivate and experience wonder.

For me, this is one of the things that happens in the four weeks of Advent and at Christmas when I think about the mystery of the incarnation – God coming to us—God becoming “enfleshed” in the person of Jesus-- “God with us.” This is grace. This is wonder. This is the mystery of Christmas.

That is why at this time of the year, and maybe especially this time of the year, we should slow down, spend time refocusing and giving attention to the spiritual meaning of this Good News about God showing up in our world in the person of Jesus. What does it mean and what can mean for my life and my world? It is easy to relegate this sort of reflection to our Sunday morning worship experiences or to the Christmas Eve or Christmas day service. But as Herbert O’Driscoll reminds us: This paying attention should take “place in the ongoing events of my life. This task I may be doing now, this person I am with now, this joy or pain I am feeling now, this work of art I am experiencing now—each of these can become the context of the spiritual, each can become the meeting place with the extremely contemporary Christ. This is what the mystery we call the Incarnation means, that the Christ comes...in the seemingly ordinary fabric of today’s events and tasks.” (Prayers for the Breaking of Bread, p. 3)

If we can learn to pay attention to the God who not only came, but continues to come, we can cultivate a sense of awe and gratitude and are given a new vision, a new hope and strength to go back out into the world to live and witness to the ever new, ever liberating good news of the inbreaking of God’s kingdom into the world. And when that happens, the wonder of God with us is not just a Christmas experience, it can become an everyday experience of wonder.

Prayer: Lord, we admit that so often, as we make our way toward Christmas, we are distracted by the busyness that is taking place around us and the stress and chaos that is happening within us. The period of waiting that is Advent and the celebration that is Christmas often leave us without a real sense of wonder. Instead of looking for your wondrous coming to us in the events of our daily lives, we are more focused on presents and deadlines, busy schedules and all the trappings of the shopping season. We find ourselves resentful of all the pushing and shoving, and before we know it, Christmas has come and gone. We missed it. We missed the wonder of “God with us,” of the reminder that you so value us and our world that you entered it in Jesus. We are sorry and ask that you might help us to pause, focus, and pay attention to the wonder that is all around us – in the world, in the people that we meet, in the silence through which you speak peace into our hearts. Amen

“This is a difficult moment to treasure!”

Charlie Brown’s team is behind 98-0, and he is standing on the pitcher’s mound, talking to himself: “Boy, I must be stupid to stand out here and take a beating like this! The other team is laughing at me; my own team hates me; I’m a lousy pitcher; my stomach hurts. I don’t know why I play this game. I must be really stupid!”

Lucy comes over to console him: “Charlie Brown, you can’t go on like this. You’ve got to change your attitude! The years are going by, and you’re not enjoying life at all! Just remember, Charlie Brown, that the moments you spend out here on this pitcher’s mound are moments to be treasured! We’re not going to be kids forever, Charlie Brown, so treasure these moments!”

Then Charlie Brown, with determination on his face, tugs at the bill of his cap, rears back, and fires a pitch toward the plate. The batter swings and rips a scorching line-drive back through the pitcher’s box, knocking Charlie Brown off the mound. His cap goes one direction; his glove goes another. Knocked right out of his shoes and socks, he lands flat on his back. Lying there, Charlie Brown studies the situation and says: “This is a difficult moment to treasure!”

Charlie Brown expresses what we all have experienced sometime in our life, maybe many times, —that many moments in life are “difficult to treasure.” Life can be painful, and no one is exempt from the pain. And when those times come – times of such pain and anguish that they grab our hearts and squeeze them until we want to cry out or break down in tears, we are confronted with the question of faith. Do I have a faith that will sustain me? Do I have a faith that sees beyond the pain and sorrow and darkness into the light?

To have this kind of persevering faith is something that needs to be nurtured long before the storms come. It doesn’t just come. That is at the heart of the spiritual journey and why we are called to give attention to the spiritual life. In our spiritual journey, we are creating the resources that will enable us to not just cope with the daily stresses and strains and challenges of life and the potentially life-crushing moments, but will also help us to live abundantly. We can admire Charlie Brown’s persistence, but we need more than persistence, we need persevering faith. And so the question is: Am I/are you developing that faith? The care of the soul is a life-long process. Is it important to you? Do you spend time working on it? And if we are, even in those moments that we feel overwhelmed or feel completely inadequate to face the challenges, we will find that God gives us the resources to cope and even grow.

Flora Slosson Wuellner, in an article entitled “When the Stars Begin to Fall”, reminds us that “The moment of our greatest fear, the moment when the ground shakes beneath our feet, is the very moment of God’s deepest presence and power within us. It is the moment of our new beginning.” But we might not recognize that presence and the giving of that power if we haven’t been seeking to walk with God in the sunshine and the daily routines of life. One of the things that prayer does is give us perspective and awareness.

Let me invite you to take some time to stop and reflect on your faith journey. Are you building up the spiritual resources you will need when the storms come?  Would you be able to recognize God’s presence and power in the dark night of your fear or when your foundations begin to shake?

Prayer: Dear God, like Charlie Brown, we all face moments that are hard to treasure. In fact, there are some things that we encounter in life that scare us, cripple us, and leave us dazed and confused. We ask that you will help us to cultivate that depth of relationship with you that not only lives gratefully in the sunshine, but can also recognize your presence and power in the darkness. We are weak people and we know that left to ourselves, that even in spite of our courage and persistence, we will fail. We thank you that you are always present and that your grace undergirds all of life. Help us to grow in the awareness of that gift so that at all times and in all places and in all circumstances we may experience its life-enabling power. Amen.

Caring Like Jesus

Shane Claiborne is a young Christian activist whose mission is to take Jesus and the message of the gospel seriously. Shane is one of the founding members of The Simple Way,  a Christian community in Philadelphia. Their mission is: "To love God. To love people. To follow Jesus." Shane has taken the gospel beyond the streets of Philadelphia to places the slums of Calcutta and the war zones of Iraq. In his book The Irresistible Revolution  (pp. 50-51), he describes how God revealed himself through the homeless.

I saw one woman in a crowd as she struggled to get a meal from one of the late-night food vans. When we asked her if the meals were really worth the fight, she said: "Oh yes, but I don't eat them myself. I get them for another homeless lady—an elderly woman around the corner who can't fight for a meal."

      I saw a street kid get 20 bucks panhandling outside of a store and then immediately run inside to share it with all of his friends. We saw a homeless man lay a pack of cigarettes in the offering plate because it was all he had. I met a blind street musician who was viciously abused by some young guys who would mock her, curse her, and one night even sprayed Lysol in her eyes as a practical joke. As we held her that night, one of us said, "There are a lot of bad folks in the world, aren't there?"
      And she said: "Oh, but there are a lot of good ones too. And the bad ones make you, the good ones, seem even sweeter."
      We met a little 7-year-old girl who was homeless, and we asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up. She paused pensively and then replied, "I want to own a grocery store." We asked her why, and she said, "So I can give out food to all the hungry people."
      Mother Teresa used to say, "In the poor we meet Jesus in his most distressing disguises." Now I knew what she meant.

The sad, but also wondrous, thing is that sometimes those outside of the church reflect the spirit of Jesus better than those in the church. What about us and our church? Do people see Christ in us? Do we care like Jesus? Do we serve like Jesus? Do we live like Jesus? This is what it means to be a follower of Jesus. It isn’t really complicated, but it is hard and it challenges our safety and security. It reminds us how much we need and are dependent on God’s grace. It is easy to fall into the routine of only looking out for ourselves or those who are closest to us. But Jesus calls us to be revolutionary and radical and inclusive with our love. Are we?

 Reflect: Who, in the church and outside of the church, most challenges you to live like Jesus? Why? As you look at your own life, what makes it hard to live like Jesus? Would you say that you care like Jesus? Love like Jesus? In what ways do you need to depend more on God’s grace and allow that grace to melt your heart and change your life so that you are more Christ-like? Why not start today?

 Prayer: Lord, it is hard to love! In fact, sometimes, it is even hard to care. Our lives are often overloaded and focused on other things. We ask that you will teach us to see through your eyes; feel with your heart; reach out and touch with your hands. Thank you for not giving up on us. Help us not to give up on ourselves or those around us. Reveal your love through me and through my church. May all who meet us know the reality of your grace. Amen

Its Not About Me

We live in a complex world and there are many, many things that compete for our affections. Sometimes the temptation is frontal, heads on; sometimes it is much more subtle. But either way, our hearts easily become divided or filled with things and affections other than God. It is not that we don’t want to follow Christ and be a Christian, it’s just that we want to do other things as well, and God falls to second place or below. It’s a consumer world and God is just one more commodity, and he often isn’t very high on our “I want” list. Marketplace thinking permeates every aspect of our lives, having the power even to shape our commitments – our marriages, our family time, how we use our money, time and resources. It shapes our perception of what is valuable and important.     
      We live in a world that is preoccupied with SELF. It’s all about ME: my goals, my wants, my needs, my preferences. Some of us may have been socialized not to say it out loud, but it is there nonetheless. For almost all of us, it is all about taking care of number one and those who matter to me. This means security and happiness and satisfaction and joy. Or so we think and act.
       But the truth is that being busy producing, pursuing, and consuming can be a substitute for facing the deeper questions and realities of life. The testimony of Jesus and the Scriptures and countless millions of others is that, in truth, God is the only reality that ultimately matters. The real antidote for the busyness of our lives and the answer to our deepest questions has to be sought outside the consumerist world. God is the only one that can really satisfy life’s deepest hunger and desire for meaning and contentment. All the other idols of life will ultimately fail. And they fail because all of today’s false gods—pleasure, success, entertainment, popularity, wealth, etc.—bring momentary happiness but impoverish and fragment the soul.
       Early in his ministry Jesus described this focus on God when he said: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8). For Jesus, the “heart” was not simply a pulsating organ inside your chest, but the truest self. The heart is that part of you that desires, feels, grieves, hungers, delights. The heart is that place where you exercise your freedom, where you decide. The heart is the place where you meet God or avoid meeting God. Purity of heart means that our primary focus and allegiance is to be given to God and God alone. The pure of heart do not let themselves be torn apart in a thousand different directions; they are singular, they are focused on one thing. As Brother Lawrence wrote so long ago: The heart must be empty of all other things, because God will possess the heart alone; and as he cannot possess it alone without emptying it of all besides, so neither can He act there, and do in it what he pleases, unless it be left vacant to Him.
       Recognizing that it isn’t all about me, that life is about what place God has in my life and how my life is lived in relationship to God brings liberation and clarity. It breaks the bondage of consumerist thinking and opens us up to the wonder and the awesomeness of life. Purity of heart is not doing good things or avoiding sin, it is about cultivating a relationship with God that touches every area of life.
       There is a story, probably just a legend, but a powerful one, that when Thomas Aquinas, one of the most profound theologians the church has ever had, was on his deathbed, a voice was heard from somewhere above: Thomas, you have written well of me. What reward would you ask for yourself?” And Aquinas replied, “Nothing but yourself, O Lord.” The pure in heart love God and want nothing more than to grow in that loving relationship. And as they do, it is reflected in the way they treat others and the world.
       Reflect: Does God seem distant and irrelevant in your life? Have you ever prayed for God to show himself to you, to let you know that he is in fact at work in your life? When God seems absent or shrouded in mystery and we can’t seem to feel or know God’s presence, we have to stop and consider whether it is because God is absent or because our hearts are not pure. This doesn’t mean that we have to be sinless to have the blessing of God’s nearness and friendship. That is not what the Gospel says. But if we want to know God, we need to ask God to search our hearts. He knows what’s there – do we? Are we willing to have him show us what stands between us and him, whatever it may be? To those who pursue God wholeheartedly, God promises the greatest of all blessings: Himself.
      “Lord, you have examined us and you know us. You know everything we do; from far away you understand all our thoughts. You see us, whether we are working or resting; you know all our actions. Even before we speak, you already know what we will say. Examine us, O God, and know our mind; test us, and discover our thoughts. Find out if there is any evil in us and guide us in the everlasting way. Create in us a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within us.” [Psalm 139:1-4, 23-24; psalm 51:9-10 (Adapted)]

Choices

“Holiness” is not a word that many of us use very often. It has a sanctimonious sound to it and makes us uncomfortable. But the word, for the follower of Jesus, basically means becoming like Christ. And it begins in recognizing that it is achieved over time, through training, a long process of little decisions and adjustments of thought. C.S. Lewis onc...e wrote these words in Mere Christianity:

People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, “If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.” I don’t think that is the best way of looking at it. I would rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all of your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.
 
“Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.” This is an awesome and somewhat uncomfortable picture of what it means to be human. It means that I am responsible before God for what I do with my life and for what I am becoming. Granted, some people find themselves in extremely difficult circumstances created by the decisions of others. But even there, I am able to choose – free to choose to play the victim or the fighter. The problem is that most of the time we don’t recognize the power of our choices and the way they may be taking us. Other times, we know how serious decision-making is, but we refuse to make a choice (of course, this in itself is a choice). Karl Barth once wrote: “Better something doubtful or overbold, and therefore in need of forgiveness, than nothing at all.”
      For the believer, to become a heavenly chooser, to grow in holiness, to become more and more like Christ is something that must be learned and practiced. Worship is one of those places where we learn what it means to please God, to have the mind of Christ, to find our deepest satisfaction and meaning. Other resources are prayer, bible study, community, discussions with friends, etc. But this training in holiness is a process, a process that requires our choice and commitment. Notice that it doesn’t mean that we will be perfect or that we will never fail in this journey. Thank God for forgiveness (1 John 1:9). I think that fundamentally what God desires from us is the turning of our will in his direction. This desire to please God does please him. And if we will accept it, God places at our disposal all that we need to continue on the journey. Second Peter 1:3-4 says: “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” Holiness, a life pleasing to God and us, is not impossible. God has made available all the resources that are necessary. But the choice is up to us.

Reflect: What kind of choices am I making and what kind of person am I becoming? Do I make a conscious effort to understand what a choice that honours God really looks like? When I look at my life, do I find that in my heart of hearts I really desire to please God in all areas of my life? If I am a follower of Christ and God has made available all the resources I really need to live a godly life, am I making use of those resources? If not, why not? If so, what progress have I seen in my life?