Animate Faith 3 | Jesus: A Revolution of Love

Jesus was a doer.  Jesus was never about just getting the facts right.  Jesus invited fisherman to leave their businesses to follow him and go after a bigger cause, a bigger catch.  He invited himself over to a successful tax collector’s home for dinner – a serious statement about grace – which had to make the disciples wonder is there was anybody Jesus would ever refuse in his presence.  Earlier on the same night he was arrested he ate with the disciples – the Passover meal, perhaps – and did the unthinkable: he cleaned the disciple’s toilets.  Well, actually, he washed their feet, but it would be the same as if you invited Jesus over to your home and he took time out before dessert to grab a brush and a bottle of bowl cleaner to take care of your business.  On another occasion, he dared to take on even death as he called for the stone to be rolled away from his good friend Lazarus’ tomb – was there any place too sacred or too defiled for Jesus?  Early in his ministry, he spoke with a Samaritan woman who was scorned by her community, sentenced to isolation and shame.  He showed her compassion as he engaged her in meaningful conversation.  The disciples could not believe he would stoop so low as to talk to someone like her – someone south of their border, a woman, and one with a questionable past.

When the disciples witnessed Jesus doing these crazy things, it wasn’t a spectator sport.  It was basic training.  What they saw Jesus do was instructive – it was what they were then called to do.  Jesus didn’t call the disciples to spend their days in a classroom; the world and her inhabitants was the classroom.  Broken, hurting, rejected, lost people provided the laboratory for them to discover the power of love to neutralize and transform the lives of the powerless.  Servanthood would be the methodology for this higher learning more than reading and studying the Law.  Jesus was clear: to walk with God required doing, not just sitting and thinking and pondering.

Jesus had an identity: the disciples knew who they were following.  There is a balance to be struck here.  While they were following and emulating Jesus, they were working out what they thought about Jesus.  I wonder if sometimes we think we need to get Jesus figured out first, before we dare to do what Jesus calls us to do.  That’s not how Jesus led his original disciples, and I doubt if Jesus’ methodology has changed much since.  Jesus is an on-the-job-training kind of leader.  Are you stuck in the classroom?

What would Jesus be up to if he showed up at your home, or your job, or your neighborhood, or your town?  If history is any indication, he would certainly draw a crowd – maybe we could book him at CrossWalk?  But he wouldn’t wait for people to come to him, would he?  Nope – he would be in the middle of life.  He would be speaking healing and forgiveness into the lives of those who were bleeding from their pain.  He would be in your family room and at your kitchen table doing what God needs done.  He would be in your neighborhood mending fences and building community.  He would be helping those who need help to get it.  He would be challenging those who hoard resources to steward them wisely.  He would call out greed, self-centeredness, lust, hatred, cronyism, and apathy.  He would make it to his speaking engagements just in time after a long day of getting done what God was calling him to do.

I don’t think Jesus has changed, which leads us to an important question…

What is Jesus calling you to do?  If you were Jesus, what would you be speaking and doing in your key relationships?  What would you move toward in your workplace?  What injustice would you champion?  What leadership would you hold accountable?  What hopeless person would you reach out to?  WWJD isn’t simply a catchy acronym for a silicon bracelet, and it isn’t simply a mental exercise.  wondering what Jesus would do is a step toward orthopraxis – doing what is right – and right in front of us.

Where do you most long for change?

What might you need to risk?

The promise of the Jesus’ teaching is that we can learn a whole new way to be human. To live without worry, fear, greed, lust, or anger. To live a life animated and empowered by love. – Mark Scandrette

Animate Faith 2,Religion, Spirituality is not enough...

Note: I am currently taking the church I pastor through the Animate: Faith curriculum (wearesparkhouse.org).  I am using some lift-outs from the facilitator guide and participant journal in my blogs and teachings.  If something sounds smarter than usual, that’s probably why…  If you would like to know which things are from the Animate resources, you’ll just have to buy them!  You won’t be disappointed!

Have you ever considered yourself spiritual but not religious? Why or why not?  What is it about organized religion that turns people off?  What makes being spiritual but not religious attractive?  According to most research, 90% of the people on the planet believe in a divine being and make sense of this belief through some kind of organized religion. So why do people tend to reject “organized religion”?

The term, spiritual but not religious, has been with us for several decades now.  All by itself it makes a statement.  In my experience, when people use this term, they want to convey that they believe in God (or Higher Power or some other term), but do not feel the need to incorporate religion into their practice of faith.  Here in northern California, I believe identifying oneself in this way is the new normal.  I think there are many more people who see themselves as spiritual, but not religious, than those who would first identify themselves as Christian.  This is a shift that is sweeping the Western world. 

When I was a pastor in a small town in northern Illinois, some people would use this term, but not many.  It was more of a fringe term then, reserved for those who would use the term boldly to make a statement about their fringeness.  Not anymore.  Now, especially here in the Bay Area, you are looked at differently if you identify yourself with church and Christianity.  This has massive implications for how we engage the culture, by the way.  Whereas there was once at least subtle support for religious practices, there is none now.  Worse than none, actually – there is negative association with religion and being religious.  The reality is so pervasive that some evangelism strategies seek to distance Christianity from religion!  Religion is about rules.  Christianity is about relationship.  Religion is about what we do, whereas Christianity is about what has been done.  You may have heard this or read it in a tract.  But is it helpful?

Why is this worth thinking about?  Because the cultural current is guiding people to simply embrace the spiritual but not religious mindset not only as normal, but also right.

If you are on a quest to discover and relate to God more deeply, looking to religion may not even hit your radar.  And that brings us to an important question: If you were a plant, what stage of spiritual development would you say you are in? Just a seed or mature plant? Growing or wilting?

If you are reading this, it is likely because you are wondering how Jesus engaged this question.  You look to Jesus as an expert on getting life and faith right.  Was Jesus spiritual but not religious?

The truth is that Jesus was deeply religious from the very beginning of his life all the way to the end of it (and beyond).  His deeply religious parents presented him at the Temple as an infant according to Jewish religious tradition.  Jesus certainly went through the religious paces as a Jewish boy, and when he became a man, he stuck with the religious tradition that so powerfully shaped him.  He attended church (synagogue) religiously.  He went to Jerusalem to celebrate various Jewish religious feasts.  He so valued and knew the Jewish religious scriptures that he was invited to speak at church a lot.  To suggest that Jesus was not religious is to showcase ignorance about who Jesus was and how he lived.  And he never suggested that his followers do otherwise.

Some of you may be freaking out at this moment, because you really don’t like or want to identify yourself with religion.  You may even feel a bit betrayed by me, because you know that I have shared passages from Jesus about his distaste of religiosity.  Doesn’t that qualify him as being spiritual but not religious?

Take a few minutes and read the following passages (chapter:verses), all from the Gospel of Luke.  Luke 9:1-6; 11:1-4; 11:37-44; 13:22-30; 14:1-6; 17:11-19; 18:9-17; 21:1-6; and 24:13-35.  What do we have in this assortment of verses?  How do these passages help us assess where Jesus was in relationship to the spiritual but not religious dialogue?

Anyone can find God alone on a picturesque mountaintop, hiking trail, or the sunset. The miracle is that I can find God in the company of other people who are just as annoying as I am. – Lillian Daniel

Take a look at Hebrews 12:1-2 (New Revised Standard Version): Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.  What if we thought about religion – the great cloud of witnesses – as the framework on which our faith grows? It holds us up, helps us make sense of our experiences, it connects our story to the stories of the past and the stories of the future. How would that language change the way you think about religion?

It’s pretty easy to play by the rules of a religion in which you write your own script. Much harder to find meaning in the words of a book that we did not write for ourselves, from a very different time. – Lillian Daniel

Jesus loved his Jewish religious tradition.  What he didn’t love was religiosity.  He loved the rhythm and connectedness that the Jewish religious framework provided.  What bothered him was the abuse of religion to control and manage people in ways that constricted the Spirit’s flow into the lives of the people who needed that flow the most.  When Jesus pops his cork in Luke’s chapter 11, that’s what he is upset about – not religion in general.  Jesus knew that deep, vibrant, meaningful, transforming, healing, non-self-centered spirituality is developed through religious practices.  That’s why he maintained them.

By the way, I have been part of many church services where there was so much focus on being religious that there was little room for the Spirit.  I think that form of religiosity puts a kink in the hose through which the Spirit wants to flow.  A “dead” worship service should be an oxymoron.  Deep religion doesn’t cause that death, though – it rather facilitates the life and health and beauty God wants to usher into the world.

How have you put work into your religious tradition?  What kind of pruning or fertilizer do you need to put down roots and bloom in the Christian tradition?  Maybe it’s time that we begin confessing and proclaiming that we are deeply spiritual and deeply religious because that is the way toward a deepening relationship with God.

The beauty of a long tradition is that it is bigger than anything we could do by ourselves. These days it is somewhat countercultural to suggest that one might possibly benefit from the company of others in the life of faith. Particularly those who have gone before us in faith… I wanted more than just an intellectual epiphany… something with a longer shelf life than my own latest opinion. – Lillian Daniel

Animate Faith 1 | God: Faith is a Quest

Note: I am currently taking the church I pastor through the Animate: Faith curriculum (wearesparkhouse.org).  I am using some lift-outs from the facilitator guide and participant journal in my blogs and teachings.  If something sounds smarter than usual, that’s probably why…  If you would like to know which things are from the Animate resources, you’ll just have to buy them!  You won’t be disappointed!

A woman steps up to the window at her local post office and tells the postal worker that she wants to buy some stamps.

“What denomination?” asks her attendant.

“Good grief!  Has it really come to this?  Well, ok, I guess I’ll have 20 Baptists, 20 Methodists, 20 Presbyterians, 20 Episcopalians, and 20 Catholics just for good measure…”

Aah, pastor humor.  Funny anywhere at any time…

There was just a group of people on the Way in the beginning of this movement we call Christianity.  No denominations.  No Protestants and Catholics.  No Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses.  Just people following Jesus.

Of course, the temptation to define oneself based on particular belief was there at the beginning, too.  The Apostle Paul had to call people on the carpet for organizing themselves into a pecking order.  For some, it was based on who baptized them.  For others, which spiritual gift they had.  We seem to have a deep-seated leaning toward comparing ourselves with others and figuring out ways to elevate ourselves above others we feel don’t quite measure up the way we do.

The truth is, I have lived in this tension for a long time.  In college, I experienced an awakening in my faith, but I didn’t fit in with the religious crowd.  They would challenge me now and then on certain concepts and positions.  I think they kind of wrote me off.  While in seminary, I was on staff at a church in suburban Chicago.  Once sunny summer Sunday, Lynne and I attended worship.  I went casual (anyone surprised?).  It was too nice to wear socks that day, which really set off a member who let my wife know – when I wasn’t present, of course – how inappropriate it was for me to be in the house of God showing complete disrespect for God.  I pointed out to the member the stained glass window of Jesus that adorned the front wall of our sanctuary.  He wasn’t wearing socks, either.  Why should I?

In my first full time pastor gig in a small town in Northern Illinois, I taught about equality between men and women as evidenced in Jesus’ words and actions and even in Paul’s words and actions.  A woman came to see me that week.  She was not comfortable with this equality, and was sure I was leading the church astray with my liberal teaching.

The gender equality heresy was an issue for some here, too, and some found that they could not be under my teaching because of my apostasy.  Others have had a difficult time with our taking the Great Commission seriously – helping more and more people come into relationship with God through the teaching of Jesus.  One board meeting I have recounted often was heated over what this meant in terms of our approach.  A board member said, “I don’t’ give a damn if those people (non-Christians) go to hell in a hand basket.”  Ah, the good old days…

I found myself feeling like a salesman about five years in here, and really wondered if I could continue as a pastor anywhere.  Then my doctoral work took me to a deep study of the salvation God really wants to extend to all people everywhere.  My mind was blown and my heart expanded as I discovered how much larger and more beautiful a thing God is trying to do than the sales-pitch approach that is sometimes used and believed. 

Over time – as I think it should be – my understanding of God has grown.   As Paul said in his letter to the Corinthian church, he put away child things to embrace more adult things.  This is what happens when we continue to be bothered by our language for understanding God.  So, a word of warning: if you have your theology all worked and God all figured out, you probably have been living with a dead faith for at least as long as you have felt that way.  We like our means of differentiation.  But if the end result is division and rivalry and angst in the Church, we are producing the wrong fruit – not the fruit of the Spirit Paul talked about.

A huge part of my faith experience is being touched by the Holy Spirit.  First in High School, then again in college, and since then innumerable times, there are no words that can describe the inbreaking of God into my life or why it happens, really.

Some friends saw it as an indicator that I was really in – not quite speaking in tongues but close enough!  For them, it was another part of the Kataphatic drive.

But many others really resonate with the idea of God’s presence moving about us all the time.  In fact, some are so focused on it that they just want to grasp for the spiritual, and distance themselves from anything remotely religious.  For them, it’s all about being led by the spirit of God.  There is no need for study or reflection, because they have the spirit.  Of course, what they do not realize is that without reflection and study they will inevitably discover that their God conveniently validates much of their value system and rarely challenges their thinking.  This is a sign of truth for them, but a red flag for those around them. 

Is God interested in a fight about who is more right about one word or another?

Is God interested in being kept in a fog – keeping God fuzzy and basically irrelevant?

For we explain not what God is but candidly confess that we have not exact knowledge concerning him.

For in what concerns God, to confess our ignorance is the best knowledge.

– Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, in his Catechetical Homilies

Maybe you think this is all semantics.  You are fine right where you are in your faith.  Leave well-enough alone, right?

What if the biblical norm for faith isn’t just a mental trip?  What if it isn’t just spirit?

The reality is very clear from the beginning of the Bible all the way to the end: there is a constant tension present between knowing and unknowing, between the Kataphatic and the Apophatic, between being able to describe God with some certainty and yet not finding words that can really do the job.  I dare you to find me an exception.  I might give you a stick of gum or something if you can find an example of healthy faith where this tension does not exist. 

You will find examples of extremes, where people settled for their box where they kept God.  Never turned out good for them.  You can also find examples of “just the Spirit, please” folks.  Same bad ending.  The heroes, however, find themselves thriving in the tension.

Paul was no exception.  He had his mind – and vision – blown by the resurrected Christ.  Whatever box he had got recycled.  But not forgotten.  He continued to be an incredibly thought-full leader even as he was open to the Spirit’s leadership.  Because he lived and thrived in the tension, the life-changing good news of Jesus spread.  We are here today because he chose to have a living, thriving faith.

Are you settling?  Are you stuck?  Consider McLaren’s points in his video.  Reflect on the questions in the bulletin.  Buy the journal and use it to work out your response.  Show up at a group and see how others are faring. 

But please, for your sake, as well as a world that needs Good News, don’t settle.  Instead, embrace the fact that, as Blaise Pascal noted, “you are embarked.”

God is the wind in the sail and the sea we sail upon; the source and goal of our quest.