Revelation as the central question of our lives and liturgy

So I'm working with this John 2 text for youth group tonight. It hit me new this time around. On the one hand, I'm dealing with the juxtaposition of this text to the miracle of turning water into wine. On the other, I feel like I've been deeper in the ways that we sell sacrifices in the temple than ever before in my life.


What would Jesus do with our church? There is so much hope in his fermenting water, keeping the party going, encouraging the union of this couple at the wedding. But then he breaks into the temple and starts throwing money, animals, maybe even people around. Josh (my roommate) commented tonight that it seems like every episode in John (and all the gospels, for that matter) has the same point: Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is God Incarnate. Jesus is the Revelation, the Word, Life Eternal.

On Sunday morning this week, we went over Jesus walking on the water in Mark and it is interesting because the text says that Jesus was "passing by" the disciples as they were straining at the oars. He went to help them, but then he just decided to pass on by. Was Jesus being coy? Or was he tired of helping people--he just helped 5,000 men (not counting women and children)! Maybe there's a better answer. Jesus passes by, the way the Angel of Death passes by at Passover, the way God passes by Moses in the cleft of the rock, the way God passes by Elijah in a whisper. Jesus is revealed as the great I Am. In a minor Sea of Galilee squall.

I sometimes wonder if church has anything to do with revelation these days. Are we concerned about revealing the nature of who God is? Do we have it in our hearts to let God reveal God's self in us even as we seek God outside of ourselves? My good friends are searching for a church in the Riverside-Loma Linda area and one of them found herself crying at the emptiness of one of the Nazarene churches they visited. What is the goal of our liturgy? What is the purpose of our free-form worship? Why do we come to the altar and ingest the body and blood of Jesus? What do we do with our time, our interests, our desires? Is it all just a spinning into nothing or is it a search for revelation, for encountering the revealed, passing-by God?

In our encounters, we reflect.

Jesus throws the people out of the temple who have abandoned the thought that God is to be revealed in the temple and have come to use it for other purposes. I remember once at work when a young, confused man came into my office and we talked about his sexuality. He was pretty convinced that he was gay and wanted to know what to think about it. I told him to read John 15 and then we could talk. If he felt like he could remain in Christ and still be gay, then we could start to have a conversation but this whole talk of homosexuality, of capitalism, of feminism, of whatever you want as an issue to be dealt with by scholars and leaders, judged on a spectrum of what the Bible "says about it" leads us into artificial ways of thinking. Even the Scriptures are revelation. Maybe our first question ought to be, "How is Christ revealed in it?"

God is revealed very poorly in exploitative practices, when the marketplace controls the worship place. I'm still really unsure about how God is revealed when two men or two women have sex with one another--committed or not. God is revealed clearly when Jesus climbs into the boat, the winds of opposition dies down, and discipleship takes place. This I know.

These are just some thoughts. Peace and grace.

July 5 sermon--Mark 2:18-22

Mark 2:18-22

Over the past few weeks, I've found myself looking at these stories that have been coming out of Mark and they keep proclaiming that it is God's time. John preaches and baptizes people as a way of preparing them for God's time. We see that Jesus' arrival on the scene and calling of the disciples comes as a way of proclaiming God's time in the world. Jesus is here to do something different and he does it—he heals people, forgives them, preaches and puts all of this under the rule and reign of God. It is God's time. God has come in Jesus Christ and what we're learning here is that we should respond like the people in these stories. The disciples drop everything they have to follow Jesus. A man with leprosy is healed and he can't keep his mouth shut. The paralytic's friends bring him to Jesus and he is forgiven and then healed—and part of what we are supposed to be getting out of this is that we are to respond like this, to be the type of people who will jump up and follow Jesus, who will cast off everything we have to do the will of the Father, to bring those we love before Jesus, and to receive the forgiveness and healing of Jesus in our lives. This is the coming of Jesus Christ, the Chosen One of God who has brought God's presence and Kingdom into the world that we live in. We should live like we are in that Kingdom, not like we are under the authority and rule of the world.

We've seen that this Kingdom means healing and forgiveness of sins. We've seen that it means Christ's power over the power of the evil one, the dark realities of sin and satanic power in this world. But its here in this passage in Mark 2 that we get a deeper insight into the nature of daily life with Christ. Its all well and good to receive the power of God in our lives one day—but how does that affect who we are and the way that we live tomorrow or in two days or in a week or a year? What is the character of the life lived with Jesus as King? Some people might not want to really give up what they have established for themselves in their lives. They just want to kind of say that now their life is run by Jesus, but nothing really changes. Their lives are too crowded for Jesus. These are people who won't put down their nets and follow Jesus, who hear his call but have trouble letting go of themselves enough to really grasp on to it. But this passage here is focusing on different types of disciples. And so what kind of disciples are we, the church of God? There are a few types shown here. You've got John's disciples and they are the disciples of the prophet, of that extreme guy out in the desert with dreadlocks and animal skin clothing. This guy eats insects for food and is preaching against the heresy of the religious establishment. Its like he's way out there in Potrero and he's crying out that things are wrong, that things need to change. He's this extreme figure. So I'm sure he attracts a certain type of extreme disciple. He attracts someone who wants to be extreme and “out there.” His disciples are probably people who are fed up and tired of the way things are, who are probably a little rebellious and individualist. And they are fasting because, in their view, things are really bad and need to change soon. They want the Messiah to come and save them and so they are fasting for change. If they fast, then maybe their action here will catch God's attention and they will be able to make the world change faster, break oppression and wrongdoing faster, bring God's new Kingdom faster.

On the other hand, you've got the disciples of the Pharisees. The Pharisees are people who generally live out in the smaller towns and they are very concerned that the Jews—God's people—follow Torah. They are not necessarily priests, but they are laymen who study Torah and know it backwards and forwards and who want to see every little detail of the Law followed up on. Their fasting is so that they might discipline themselves to follow every little rigorous detail of the Law. They think that if they deny themselves things that they want—food, entertainment, or whatever it is—that they will be more disciplined and able to follow the Torah. And then, they think, if everyone is following Torah, then that will be the Kingdom of God and God's reign; God's time will come and sweep away the oppression that is on God's people.

So you've got these people who come up to Jesus and they ask him to explain himself. Is Jesus like John or the Pharisees? He's been seen in the desert and he's been seen in the towns. Where does he fit—and why aren't his disciples working as hard as the others? So far, the only hard thing that Jesus' disciples have done is leave everything. They have had it pretty easy, just healing and praying and preaching. And what is Jesus' response? “How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them?” Jesus says, “Look those other guys are fasting and beating themselves up because they are trying to get ready for the Messiah. But what I've been saying is, 'I'm the Messiah!' You don't have to wait anymore because I'm here and this is God's time, so start living like this is God's time.” So the real question is, What does that mean?

God's time is clearly not being down in the dumps all the time, pious and somber and joyless. Jesus leads us into healing and forgiveness and joy and if we think that we are making God happy by being sad and depressed all the time, then we are wrong. Joy is a huge part of the Christian life. God brings us joy and, especially for those who have just come to know Christ, this life should be characterized by joy. This means that at times, we break out the grill and we pump up some music and we celebrate. We go to the beach and bonfire, we swim and hike and run, play basketball and frisbee and soccer, we bike and jog—and most of all, we always make sure that we are eating. The whole reason for eating together so much is that we have joy and we want to share it. If we just came to church, sang, listened to a sermon and then left here, there would be a lot less joy in this place. And if we came and did what we do and then hung around afterwards but didn't have food, we'd be a lot less happy as well. I'm a lot happier when my stomach is full and happy. I'm also a lot happier when I'm playing soccer and frisbee and basketball. These are fun, joyful things that we do together. And they are part of being Christian. Jesus is saying, “Look, people are getting healed and forgiven and you want us to fast? NO! We're going to go eat!” Notice that they just came from Levi's house—it must have been a huge dinner because it got a lot of people's attention.

But then Jesus says something that reminds us that following Jesus is also a really difficult life. He says, “But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast.” God's time has come here. God's time has shown up and it will rule everything. But its complicated. Jesus is using this image of a wedding feast. Jesus is the Groom and we are the Bride. During and after the wedding is this huge feast, but then he reminds us that there is still darkness in the world. The world is still a broken place and Jesus didn't just come to celebrate victory. He came to fight the battle against darkness. And that means that, like all husbands who go to fight battles of one sort or another, Jesus is going to have to be taken from us. In some ways, Jesus shows up like an invader. He shows up and declares that God's time is here. Then he has to actually fight the battle. And the battle that Jesus fights is on the cross. He fights the battle through self-denial, through sacrifice and love. He doesn't fight this battle by showing himself to be the most violent, but by showing that the power of God is a power that cannot be defeated, even by violence. He shows that God's power is bigger than death, bigger than a Roman cross, bigger than just saying, “I can kill you, therefore I'm more powerful.” Because Jesus goes to the cross and dies but its at the cross that Jesus defeats death. Because even death couldn't keep Jesus dead. Three days later, he rose again and God's power lived fully in him. Its in the resurrection that we really know God's time. God's time is a time where death and sin have no power.

But when we look around us, we know that death and sin still have some power in our lives. So we're left with this complex situation. And that's why Jesus gives the answer that he does. His answer is all about timing. He says, look, you can't fast while the bridegroom is with you. But soon, you will fast. Soon, I will not be with you and you will need to fast. One of the reasons we fast is so that we can change. We fast so that God can change us into the sort of people that live in God's time. Like I said, death and sin still have power in our lives and what needs to happen is that God can heal us, change us, shape us into the sort of people who don't have sin and death in our lives. Now there's the point of conversion, where God works in us and we are forgiven and changed. At conversion, we become a part of God's people. However, we've all still got a lot of business to do. Just because we have converted doesn't mean that everything in us is now right. We still have sin in our hearts, even if it has been forgiven. And so what we do is we do things like prayer, reading Scripture, being a part of Bible studies and small groups where we are honest with each other about how we are doing, and we fast. Change is a long road and a hard one. And it is one that most of us will go kicking and screaming against.

• Rescue Mission—my job is basically to hold people accountable. By having all these rules, we hold the men to a level of accountability that they can't hold themselves to. We cut out a lot of the noise of life and the men are left just with the parts of themselves that they don't like and they have to face that. (This being a loose manuscript, this was my note on what I was going to say. I don't know what I actually said at this point--check southeastnazsd.org for the recorded version of this sermon.
  

This is a lot like fasting. We hold ourselves accountable to something, we cut out noise, so that God can speak to us and grow us and shape us. What happens in Jesus' examples? The new cloth shrinks and the new wine expands. The way I read this, the new cloth and the new wine is fasting. Fasting will grow us or shrink us—but it will change us. We will be different after we have fasted. The world will look different to us. When we fast, which is basically cutting something out of our lives to make room for God in our lives, we are letting God do something in us to be more ready for God's time and God's Kingdom. If you are feeling like you aren't growing in your faith, like God is not speaking to you, I would really encourage you to try fasting. Simply go without food for a meal or two and use that time to pray. God often moves in really powerful ways because of such a simple thing.

But like I said, its all about timing. There are times when we are the new cloth that needs to be shrunk and there are times when we are the piece of broken-in clothing that needs to be worn just like we are. For Jesus' disciples, they needed to be worn just how they were. They were with Jesus and so they needed to celebrate. Sunday afternoons are not the time to be fasting. Weddings are not the time to be fasting. Bonfires and beach parties are not the time to be fasting. But if you need to seek God and need wisdom and discernment over a really difficult decision, then maybe you want to be fast.

A lot of times, we want everything. We don't want discomfort. We don't want anything to challenge us. Sometimes, we talk so much about blessings but we forget to talk about sacrifice and laying yourself down for the people around you. We just want God to fill us up and fill us up and fill us up all the time. We want everything NOW and everything HERE. We're a lot like Mark's audience.

Mark was writing this for Roman Christians, Christians who lived in a huge, rich city full of people who had tons of food and resources. Rome was really wealthy because everybody had to pay taxes to Rome. So Mark is writing about Jesus of Nazareth to Roman Christians and Nazareth is this tiny little poor town in the countryside of Israel. In fact, all of Israel except for Jerusalem is “country” compared to Rome. See, Rome was a place of plenty, a place of overflowing wealth. Israel was small and insignificant compared to this. Most of the people were farmers and fishermen. These were people to worked with their hands, who knew the seasons. They knew about farming and fishing and how the seasons worked into all that. These people understood time different from the way we do. They didn't have punch-cards or clocks or wristwatches. They understood in a really different way that there are seasons in life. Sometimes fasting is appropriate and sometimes feasting is appropriate. But in God's time, we have to find a balance between fasting and feasting.

God wants us to love each other and God with everything in us—joy, sorrow, rejoicing, pity, fear, peace, wonder, frustration. These are all human emotions and God created them in us so that we could live fully with all of them. We have to have these feelings and emotions or we are not loving God with all that we have. In the same way, we cannot love God only with our emotions. We have to live lives of sacrifice and love, of caring for each other and for those who have been forgotten by others. We have to learn to put ourselves away and put others before us. And we need to put seasons back into our lives. We need to understand the give and take, that there are good times and there are hard times and its good that things go that way. Planting, caring, pruning, harvest, dormancy. There are so many times in life and I hope that we see these different times as bringing us a really rich, full life instead of one that is always one way.

As we come to take communion, I think we should see that communion is both a celebration of life—it was the Last Supper that Jesus ate with his disciples—and it is also a reminder that Christ poured himself out for us, that he suffered and died so that we could live in God's full and good life. It is both, emptiness and fullness. I pray that God will lead us as a congregation, as families, as the people of God, and as individuals to respond to God' time. I pray that we will have the courage to live under God's rule in this complex and difficult world.

Cloth, Wine, Berry, and local economies.

I belong to a vast group of Americans my age who are beginning to realize a few things. On the one hand, we are beginning to see that the old way of doing things (which is really the new way) with impersonal products produced and packaged by completely impersonal entities within the context of an economy based around the created need for these products is very, very false.

Let me give an example. In this old (new) way, I might drive my Honda Civic to the store--let's say it is Vons grocery store--to buy cold medicine, vegetables, and mustard. These are all products which could be just as easily purchased with virtually zero variation in Jacksonville, Florida or Madison, Wisconsin or Brookings, Oregon as here in San Diego, California. They are owned by massive corporations--Pfizer, Monsanto Foods, and Heinz, for ezample. I drive and therefore support oil companies because the Vons is too far away to ride my bike to and I feel that owning a car is important for me so that I can go places and take things with me whenever I need to, no matter the distance (within reason). This satisfies my need for diversity and freedom, for convenience and readily available food and medicine, and contributes to the same economy which provides me with work and therefore allows me to contribute back to the economy in which I find fulfillment and purpose. Except that the ultimate goal of that economy is the deep pockets of those far outside my community.

But my question and the question of so many of us that have been raised right in the heart of all this without even the hint of a question as to whether or not this is acutally the best way to live is, "Is this really the best way to live? Were we really so wrong all along?" In the new way that is being envisioned and acted out on a small scale, which is actually an old way dating back 80 to 100 years (I think) in my part of the country, less and more in others, I would walk or catch a ride on a cart to a store that would be owned by someone I probably know or at least know of. The food that I buy would need to be bought more often--forcing me into contact with people around me--but would also be from nearby farms or industries that served a nearby market. My money and my relationships would be found within a small locale. My life would be smaller, but I would have more say in the production of food and the workings of the local economy, if only because of a closer relationship to the land. This closeness would provide me with my sense of freedom that comes from belonging to a place and a people--not freedom abstracted out from anything that is nothing more than an idea. Life would be more complex as it would be more connected to the actual goings-on of life: growing food, giving birth, witnessing death, working deals, holding responsible, confessing faith.

I've been wrestling with this identity of mine for a few reasons. The first is that I have been reading some Wendell Berry. And the second is that I am preaching Sunday.

Regarding the first point, I will not explain Berry to you--the first few paragraphs are my take on what he is saying translated into my life. Regarding the second point, I have found myself with the passage of Mark 2:18-22. I will post my sermon when I have finished it in a few days, but the way that this has been working in me (Its the passage where Jesus says that his disciples do not fast because he is still with them--that would be like sewing a patch of unshrunk cloth on old clothes or pouring new wine in old wineskins!) is that I am coming to see us as the cloth, wine and wineskins. Fasting grows us or shrinks us and it is in the presence of Jesus--in the celebration of Eucharist, in the acknowledgement of Jesus' presence, that we come to know Christ as fully God. In this knowledge, we ought not be fasting--which is emptying so that God might fill us with Godself--but we stay put so that we can absorb the presence of God as much as possible. This is a sort of not-growing where we are simply the pupils who absorb God, a filling but not a expanding or contracting.

It all connects to Berry, too. I'm still working on that part, though.

Procrastination and Gnosticism

So maybe this won't prove to be relevant but I believe I have stumbled across something which has helped me immensely in my understanding of ministry and, I suppose, life in leadership. The problem with leadership to me is that there is all of this other junk that comes along with it that I'm not all that keen on. For example, announcing events, collecting money, pulling weeds, filling out forms, etc.

There's no reason in particular that I hate these things, but I do and I hate them passionately. I love hanging out, talking, teaching, researching for lessons and the like, but I hate these bodily, boring, tedious tasks. I was thinking about this recently when it hit me that such a hatred of these things is really a hatred of what it actually takes to be with one another. In other words, I have this great love for the idea of being with people and of transformation and all these sorts of good-sounding things but I hate even the thought of doing the things that it takes to actually be with people. I love the idea of presence in a neighborhood but do not want to deal with taxes and properties and problems. I just want to come into a place and have everyone trust me and we can all get on with our transformation. But it doesn't work like that. In fact, it works nothing like that. Instead, things are messy and don't work the way that we want them to. People sin and leave things out, do things they shouldn't do and neglect to do things that they should. It is important to organize so that people can function together in a way that is healthy and productive. Forms are important because insurance is important; money matters, taxes and all of that matters because these things are the substance of what it means to be in a community with people. To exist is to rub up against others and this friction causes the necessary structures of society.

I put all of these very bodily and not glamorous or exciting things off to the side because I don't want to see the forms or the taxes or the cost or any of that crap which is far from what we're really trying to get at with ministry, right?

Unfortunately (for me), to ignore these bodily and normal everyday events and neccesities is to be a gnostic. What? how can that be? What's a gnostic?

A gnostic was an ancient Greek who believed that humanity is a (good) soul trapped in the (bad) material world. When they interacted with Christianity in the first and second centuries, they had a lot of trouble with the incarnation and their wrong teachings explain much of what is behind the New Testament's writings. How could a good God take the form of a material body, which is obviously flawed and evil? The gnostic tendency is to remove the divine from the actual bodies and materials of existence. This is a constant struggle in the Christian church and in Western society in general. There is always an urge to disconnect, to idealize, to create a utopian society. This, I believe, is the same tendency that makes us desire not to be engaged with real lives and therefore to run away to the academy and read our lives away or to come into a place and expect everyone to just change on their own without relationship or struggle. It is what causes me to put off the administrative tasks of ministry and forget that all of these tedious tasks are the mark of God's redemption of the material reality of creation.

God took on human flesh and entered into the boredom, the tediom and despair of our existence that we might know God's redemption in the fullness of time. Is it mine to reject that redemption and turn to my own desires for fulfillment to define the work of ministry? May it not be so. Rather, faithfulness in the small things will lead to more responsibility and the hope of God's glory pervading all the mundane and frustrating details of the world. I am turning my heart and disposition that I might hope for the glory and redemption of all of creation--even the boring, lame and the inexcusably dull. God took on the form of a human and it is in the fullness of that form that the minister and Christian ought to live.