Lectio: Luke 4:1-13
February 19, 2010
Luke 4
The Temptation of Jesus
1Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, 2where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.
3The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”
4Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone.’ ”
5The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. 7So if you worship me, it will all be yours.”
8Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.”
9The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. 10For it is written:
” ‘He will command his angels concerning you
to guard you carefully;
11they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”
12Jesus answered, “It says: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’
13When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.
The season of Lent, at its core, is very much about seeking God.
The desert fathers understood this very well, and understood Jesus’ example of going into the wilderness to do battle by prayer and fasting- following Jesus in example and heart.
What can I learn from Jesus here?
1) Jesus set the example for us not to do this in our own power, but by the power of the Holy Spirit. Following the Spirit’s leading is our best course of action.
2) Books could be written on Jesus’ answer to the temptations, however, today I will just suggest that though Jesus was the Son of God, He did not serve Himself. By denying the temptations, we see over and over that He denied Himself to ultimately serve others, to serve us.
3) Jesus’ answers “Man does not live by bread alone…Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only…Do not put your Lord to the test…” guide us in our seeking. He gave simple yet profound answers to the distractions that come when we seek.
Jesus also taught us to seek, ask, and knock. God, Our Father, wants to be found!
neurotheology and the biology of spirituality
February 3, 2010
Did you know that there are professionals across the country who are studying the brain science of spiritual experience? They have taken the name ”neurotheologians” – those who research in the burgeoning field of spiritual experience and the brain - and they claim that prayer can sculpt your brain. Seriously, they claim prayer physically re-shapes your brain, and in-turn how your perceive reality. One such “neurotheologian”, Dr. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania and teaching professor of the course The Biology of Spirituaity, has found that those who meditate and pray more have increased brain activity in the frontal lobe – where concentration and focus are centered according to brain scientists – while at the same time decreased activity in the parietal lobe – which is where we get our sense of orientation in time and space according to brain science. Therefore he posits this either aids or explains our experience of prayer, and those who claim to lose track of time and space during meditative prayer. In fact, Dr. Newberg has written a book: How God Changes Your Brain, in which he talks about the following:
- Not only do prayer and spiritual practice reduce stress and anxiety, but just twelve minutes of meditation per day may slow down the aging process.
- Fundamentalism, in and of itself, is benign and can be personally beneficial, but the anger and prejudice generated by extreme beliefs can permanently damage your brain.
- Intense prayer and meditation permanently change numerous structures and functions in the brain – altering your values and the way you perceive reality.
Interesting, eh? But here is the kicker: while these brain scientists/neurotheologians have focused most of their studies on those who pray and/or meditate for several hours every day (like monks and nuns), their research is now turning to more prayer-challenged people (like me!). In fact, Neuroscientist Richard Davidson, of the University of Wisconsin, claims that most anyone can sculpt their brain with some experience and training and something they call neuroplasticity (brain/cortical organization, especially for the sensory systems, is often described in terms of mapping, thus, with training and experience we can re-map our brain…quick question: in faith community circles, is this what we call spiritual formation?). “You can sculpt your brain just as you’d sculpt your muscles if you went to the gym,” he says. “Our brains are continuously being sculpted, whether you like it or not, wittingly or unwittingly.”
In one recent-but-unpublished study many people – who were regular people and not monks and nuns – were very successful in cultivating a spiritual mind-set. According to Dr. Davidson, there were detectable changes in the subjects’ brains within two weeks. Two weeks! Another similar study, where employees at a high-tech firm meditated a few minutes a day over a few weeks, produced more dramatic results. “Just two months’ practice among rank amateurs led to a systematic change in both the brain as well as the immune system in more positive directions,” Davidson claims that the subjects developed more antibodies to a flu virus than did their colleagues who did not meditate.
So, I have been reflecting on all this and asking myself:
- what are the implications for spiritual formation in terms of neurotheology, prayer and neuroplasticity?
- Can spiritual formation and spiritual exercises like centering prayer, meditation and contemplative prayer ‘form’ a well-worn pathway to connect with God?
Lectio: Luke 4:14-21
January 22, 2010
14And Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about Him spread through all the surrounding district.
15And He began teaching in their synagogues and was praised by all.
16And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read.
17And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written,
18“THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME,
BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR.
HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES,
AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND,
TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED,
19TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD.”
20And He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him.
21And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Luke 4:14-21
At first reading, the phrase “…in the power of the Spirit,” jumped out at me. What does that mean and what does that even look like?
Reading this passage several more times, I begin to feel the significance in what Jesus found to read from Isaiah. I’ve often thought that the passage Jesus reads from Isaiah, well, it just doesn’t get any simpler than that concerning our mission. If Jesus – as a good rabbi – says to me “follow me” and then wants me to do what He does, this becomes my mission in a nutshell. Proclaim good news to the poor, release and set free the oppressed, proclaim the favour of God. The significance of this mission is that the Reign of God is being entered, not just by the followers who do what Jesus does, but to the marginalized: the poor, the oppressed, the blind. God’s favour is becoming present and revealed to them. Yet to be honest, while I believe this for others, I sometimes have trouble remembering to believe this for myself. I sometimes don’t believe now is the favorable year of the Lord for me. My debts cancelled? My family returned? My oppressors overthrown? And I also struggle that if I can’t bring myself to believe it, how can I proclaim it to others? Of course, therein lies my own struggle of a season with a famine of faith and a feast of doubt.
“Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” What a spectacular thing to say…and how exciting. As all the eyes were fixed on Him, I can imagine the surge of energy that must have risen from the gathered crowd when Jesus proclaims the fulfillment. And yet, what an unspectacular event. Jesus is the humble person of gracious words here. Humble gracious words…this is what it means to proclaim ‘in the power of the Spirit’…it doesn’t have to be some deep-throated rebel yell (although there is a time and place for that too)…but today I am seeing that this is who He is, incredible power in such deep humility. My God is a humble God…and He calls me to humility with Him.
++Lord, I believe! but in my feast of doubt, help my unbelief. Let me know and experience the power of humility. Let us know You O Lord, and follow You in Your mission here and now. Amen.++
the spirit of the place
January 19, 2010
As technology gets more mobile and your 3G or 4G network gets you “connected” from anywhere on the planet, social scientists are pointing toward the fact that other horizons seem to be disappearing. Nature and green space have dropped off the screen so-to-speak, because in our time-poor culture, we just don’t have time to go to the park or have a garden, because apparently we’d rather miracle-grow our farms in a game on Facebook. Nature is becoming invisible to the virtual eye, one might say. We walk down the street texting or e-mailing or chatting on the phone, and un-noticed is the silent creep of the natural world. Does this call into question the very argument of the erstwhile apostle Paul from Romans 1: “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” Do we no longer take time to notice?
I bring this up, because I think it has an immense bearing on what we call “spiritual formation”. When we speak of spiritual formation, we are talking about what forms us into the people we are becoming. Thus, in spiritual formation, we seek to have the Spirit of the Living God forming us unto Christlikeness, just as Jesus foretold us He would in John 16:13.
Yet a recent article in the Washington Post reported that: “According to a recent landmark study of viewing habits, adults spend an average of nearly three hours a day interacting with computer screens. Add TV viewing and you get a screen time of about 8 1/2 hours. “People are spending more time in media and especially screen media than anything else they’re doing in life,” says Bill Moult of Sequent Partners, one of two organizations that provided the study…But you don’t need numbers to know how absorbed we have become by screens and their mesmerizing qualities. In October [2009], two Northwest Airlines pilots who flew their jet 150 miles past their destination told investigators they were distracted by their laptop computers.”
The more time we spend with something the more it “forms” us, that’s basic spiritual formation 101. The more time with Jesus, the more like Him we become, however we also note that it is not just the content of material going into our brains (input) that forms us – things like scripture reading or memorization - but it is also how we are taking that information in that is just as critical. In spiritual formation studies, we note that the impact of content can suffer greatly if there is no contact – actually interacting relationally with Jesus directly via prayer and indirectly in community with others and our world.
Interviewed about what we are losing in the digital/virtual age, Robert Harrison, a professor of Italian literature at Stanford University, observed that the difficulty is that we are losing something profoundly human: the capacity to connect deeply to our environments. He reminds us that landscape designers talk about bestowing on a garden its genius loci, or spirit of the place, that bubbles up into your consciousness if its presence is strong enough and the visitor meditative enough to receive it. Harrison says a garden truly reveals itself only when its own depths and those of the beholder flow together. But in our present age of rushing here-and-there, we languish in the poverty of both time and attention. Thus in an age of distraction, attention becomes a primary spiritual discipline, along with meditation, which he mentions.
Harrison claims that gardens and green space are keys to bringing us back from the virtual world to re-claim our humanity. In fact, in the initial chapters of Genesis there is a word-play in the Hebrew with regard to the Earth and the Man formed out of earth. In Hebrew, earth is ‘adamah and man is ‘ha-adam. The best translation may be ‘earth’ and ‘earthling’, and the earthling is placed in what?…a garden of delight. Thus, Professor Harrison goes on to say: “Gardens are the best place to begin this reeducation,” Without it, he fears that the prophecy of the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in his Duino Elegies, will become so. “Earth, isn’t this what you want; invisibly to arise in us? Is it not your dream to be someday invisible? Earth! Invisible!”
Of course it is entirely possible that Paul nailed it in Romans: we, professing to be wise, became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for a virtual image flickering in HD…
- How do you connect best with God? Nature? Internet? Solitude? Community?
- Have you considered – as an earthling – how you are connected to this earth? I believe there is something significant that we are made of earth, yet the Spirit of the Living God indwells us…I like how Pierre Teilhard de Chardin turns our perspective on its head: We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
- What would you say is the genius loci/spirit of the place in which you inhabit currently?
- Take time to connect with your local environment…meditate deeply on it and look for the bubbling presence of God to reveal the hidden Christ to you; journal your thoughts on this afterwards. Is God saying something to you?
the aggravation of a profound isolation
January 6, 2010
the soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone, for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society. - ralph waldo emerson
I have been contemplating this quote from Emerson, and I think our culture increasingly misses out on the interplay between friendship and solitude. It’s rare that we choose to enter seasons of solitude, yet rarer still having that experience of solitude enrich our conversations and relationships. Our “environ”-ing ourselves in non-obligatory affinity groups has become a wasteland of isolation in shallow community. In this wasteland of isolation, our actual experience of both friendship and solitude is ever-atrophied, even as the desire continues to grow for both of them. We have become lost in our own space - our profound isolation among society aggravated by our desire to be known and to know ourselves. In pursuing to meet our increasing desires for knownness, we have become our own cause célèbre, as our growing pang for real intimacy is merely being aggravated by following someone on Twitter or Facebook: “Steven is sitting with his mug of dark roast contemplating the life of birds in his backyard“…no he’s not, that dark roast is sitting there getting cold as he pauses to type and the contemplation of the life in nature becomes secondary and shallow because he interrupts the moment to tweet about some now non-existent state of being and moment in time that has been interrupted by his own need or felt responsibility for the celebrity of having others know what he’s up to this morning before he even experiences it or digests its significance. In this, I trade depth and significance for a shallow celebrity. And the irony is that in that moment my connection with God or nature or people fades or stops as I set aside the dark roast and contemplating the life of birds to log-in and type it out. Rather than actually experiencing something that can eventually be shared and rather than being present to someone in sharing it, I short-change my experiences and substitute real presence for a distributive and insipid presence that more and more just leaves me exhausted in isolation. This kind of profound isolation eats at many of us, and gets ever-aggravated as we go looking for knownness and intimacy in all the wrong places.
We want to be known, and yet nowadays we impoverish ourselves in a faux knownness – in a virtual connectivity - yet fewer and fewer people actually know us and the experience of presence recedes. Chaundra and I met an old friend at a pub last year, and over a few pints and a lingering meal got re-connected. At one point, I excused myself from the bar to go to the restroom, which was all the way in the back of the place, past the dining room. As I was making my way through the dining room, there was a couple all dressed up and obviously out on a date, and as I passed their table twice I noticed they both had their noses in their iPhones, and at least one of them was on Facebook, probably typing a note about being with the one they love and having a delightful dinner. Except it was only partially true, because they weren’t with the one they loved except in terms of shared spatial coordinates on a map, because they were both lost in their own separate virtual worlds. Admittedly, in arranging to meet our friend for a nice dinner, we set up the experience via Facebook, but we did eventually leave Facebook behind to actually experience relationship.
See, it’s not that the Internet hasn’t been a great tool for social networking and making connections or renewing old acquaintances, it’s that we have substituted actual connections for virtual ones, and also prioritized the virtual ones. Who hasn’t been interrupted in a conversation with a friend by their cell phone as they take a non-urgent call or they tune out from being present to check their Blackberry to see how many e-mails are piling up. We accentuate the virtual at the expense of the real. Oh, sure, people may read my tweets and smile wryly at some comment I make in a virtual community, but they don’t really know me and we are not present to one another. The person they know is mediated by internet access and the virtual masks I construct therein. People imagine that they know me, and I imagine being known, but neither is actually happening to any depth that feeds our souls and sets us on a journey greater than our random comments to no-one-in-particular. We’ve traded an intimacy rich with depth for something shallow and hallow. It’s like my 4 year-old trading her well-worn $10 bill for a shiny new nickel…it’s shiny, but not worth half as a much! Intimacy with others is actually enhanced by the discipline of solitude in our lives, and yet we don’t really believe that to be true or more people would practice it. In fact, as William Deresiwicz insightfully laments, our culture entrains us to never be alone…never disconnect:
“I grew up in the 60s and 70s, the age of television. I was trained to be bored; boredom was cultivated within me like a precious crop. (It has been said that consumer society wants to condition us to feel bored, since boredom creates a market for stimulation.) It took me years to discover — and my nervous system will never fully adjust to this idea; I still have to fight against boredom, am permanently damaged in this respect — that having nothing to do doesn’t have to be a bad thing. The alternative to boredom is what Whitman called idleness: a passive receptivity to the world. So it is with the current generation’s experience of being alone. That is precisely the recognition implicit in the idea of solitude, which is to loneliness what idleness is to boredom. Loneliness is not the absence of company, it is grief over that absence. The lost sheep is lonely; the shepherd is not lonely. But the Internet is as powerful a machine for the production of loneliness as television is for the manufacture of boredom. If six hours of television a day creates the aptitude for boredom, the inability to sit still, a hundred text messages a day creates the aptitude for loneliness, the inability to be by yourself.”
In a culture of constant virtual connectivity, solitude becomes a discipline to be embraced. In a world where friendship has become a comfortable illusion of a virtually-constructed self that merely acquiesces to the Facebook request to be a friend, the challenge of sacred friendship must be met to spur us onward, upward and inward. It’s time for the cultivation of the precious crop of Christlikeness, which embraces both sacred friendship and solitude. But we may ask: OK, but what might this depth look like, how do we do it? The Apostle Paul says it this way: “If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends.” (from Philippians 2 – The Message) I’ll end today with David Benner, who points us toward the essence of sacred friendship in a practical way when he writes in his book Sacred Companions, “Spiritual friends share with each other at the level of the soul. This does not mean that they talk about only serious, personal or spiritual matters…Friends who enjoy soul intimacy never settle for gossip or simple information exchange, [they can be comfortable in silence.] Instead they use the data of events as springboards for the sharing of feelings, perceptions, values, ideas and opinions. The conversations of such friends are never merely about what happened in their lives or the world but move from this to how they experience, react to and understand what happened. Dialogue continually moves from the surface to the depths, from the external to the internal. This is the crucial distinctive of dialogue in spiritual friendships.”
what can we learn from the latest climate “scandal”?
December 30, 2009
If you are a climatologist or even a lukewarm environmentalist, you may have heard the echoes of a storm out of Europe a few weeks ago. An online entrepreneur hacked into the University of East Anglia’s prestigious Climate Research Unit. The result? Apparently climatologists and scientific researchers have been revealed for either the height of arrogance or the stupidity of short-sightedness. As the Washington Post reported:
“They appear to exaggerate their public certainty on disputed issues, shade the presentation of information for political effect, tamper with the peer-review process, resist reasonable requests for supporting data and urge the destruction of e-mails to avoid embarrassment. Other scientists in these e-mail chains resist these abuses. But the dominant voices are ideological. The attitude seems to be: Insiders can question, if they don’t go too far. Outsiders who threaten the movement are “idiots.” This attitude is demonstrated not only by private e-mails but also by the public reaction of prominent scientists to those e-mails. They show “scientists at work.” They are “pretty innocuous.” They are “understandable and mostly excusable.” “We are all humans; and humans come with dogma as standard equipment.” This “kind of language and kidding goes on verbally all the time.” Criticism is based merely on “ignorance” and critics have “more screws loose than the Space Shuttle Challenger.” It is the scientific equivalent of discounting Watergate as a “second-rate burglary.”
All of this back-and-forth in the scientific community should probably be an aside for followers of Jesus, because whether one side gains an up on the other in the media, one of the first and primary commissions given to all humans in Genesis is to care for and steward the resources of the earth: that means the environment, the animals and all of the creatures/creations. Yet surely this gives the nay-sayers of global warming and climate change adversaries ammunition for attacks against the scientific evidence of climate change. But even moreso: if this eventually gets into the “public consciousness” it can affect the priority of environmental policy, because Senators and Congressmen – not to mention the President - will feel the scrutiny and pressure of pursuing and spending public resources on something suspect in the eyes of the public that elects them. In fact, it casts such a long shadow on the endeavour of climatologists seeking to understand global warming [since the advent of reliable records in the 1800s, the overall trend goes in one direction: warmer. All 10 of the hottest years on record have come since 1997.] they might find their huge government grants shrinking because of the political fallout. What has happened? Their credibility is in crisis.
What can the Church learn? I’d like to suggest three things we can learn from this “scandal”:
- Integrity matters. It’s as simple as that. Surely – as Ecclesiastes proclaims – there is season for everything – a time to be provocative and a time to be understated - but integrity is never out of season. And if you are pimping your message and if your ideological dogma outweighs the spirituality of the Way, Truth and Life to such an extent that you are willing to sacrifice integrity to garner support or short-circuit community discernment because its “messy” and inefficient or sacrifice the struggle with doubt for shallow certitude…you just might end up sacrificing the most important things that you need in the long haul.
- Discernment matters. Delving deeper into the truth beyond 24-hour-news-cycle media headlines and scandals must take place in the community of Jesus. We have to look deeper and ask the Spirit to empower us beyond of prejudices and to guide us into all truth, in every aspect of truth, including climate change and global warming.
- Grace matters. The truth is we are all fallible and messy people, particularly when we are in community. Mess happens in church, mess happens in community, mess happens in the scientific community. Yet the weight of the glory of the people of God is that we can reach, endure and see beyond the mess via the grace of Christ Jesus so that the Spirit can guide us all into the truth.
lectio: luke 3:7-18
December 11, 2009
So he began saying to the crowds who were going out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ”Therefore bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father,’ for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham. ”Indeed the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; so every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” And the crowds were questioning him, saying, “Then what shall we do?” And he would answer and say to them, “The man who has two tunics is to share with him who has none; and he who has food is to do likewise.” And some tax collectors also came to be baptized, and they said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Collect no more than what you have been ordered to.” Some soldiers were questioning him, saying, “And what about us, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not take money from anyone by force, or accuse anyone falsely, and be content with your wages.” Now while the people were in a state of expectation and all were wondering in their hearts about John, as to whether he was the Christ, John answered and said to them all, “As for me, I baptize you with water; but One is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to untie the thong of His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ”His winnowing fork is in His hand to thoroughly clear His threshing floor, and to gather the wheat into His barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” So with many other exhortations he preached the gospel to the people.
luke 3:7-18
verses 10-14 – so often i ask: what do i do, Lord? what i am supposed to do is very practical, not super-hyped, just plain and simple. share food and clothes with those who have none. be honest. don’t oppress. be content. this is what repentance looks like. so often, simplicity is the answer to my own complexity.
verse 15 - echoing the request of abraham joshua heschel: “i asked for wonder!”; i need more expectation and wonder and awe in my life…which probably means i need to become more childlike again and again…
verse 17 – in prayer and ministry, i overuse the imagery of the Holy Spirit coming as a dove…with gentleness and grace and loving adoption. i need more of the fire of the Holy Spirit…burn away the chaff in me O God!
++O Father, make us into children of abraham, make us children of faithfulness. O Lord Jesus, may we abide in you in such simplicity and trust that we bear the fruit of our abiding. O Spirit, come…come and baptize us with fire that we may spread it upon the earth. Amen.++
lectio: luke 3:1-6
December 4, 2009
Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness. And he came into all the district around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins; as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet:
”THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS,
’MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD,
MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT.
’EVERY RAVINE WILL BE FILLED,
AND EVERY MOUNTAIN AND HILL WILL BE BROUGHT LOW;
THE CROOKED WILL BECOME STRAIGHT,
AND THE ROUGH ROADS SMOOTH;
AND ALL FLESH WILL SEE THE SALVATION OF GOD.’”
Luke 3:1-6
verses 1 and 2 - as one trained in the craft of history, i appreciate the context-setting that luke does here, giving us the international, national and local context of those who wield power; and yet in the midst of all these ‘power people’, the word of God comes to john in the wilderness…not in the palaces and temples of power, but the wilderness. the wilderness has often seemed like a dry wasteland and the absence of God to me. but i testify that it has been in the wilderness seasons of my life – when i was athirst and my soul dried up – that is when God has given me his word, like a sudden rainshower…utterly refreshing and life to one in the wilderness; this also reminds me that it is into the wilderness that God – in the exodus – led the former slaves of Egypt to make of them a covenant people, ready to embody His Way…
verse 3 – stunning: ‘preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins;’ it strikes me today that i often rush through these words, assuming so much, because i have heard sermon-after-sermon about them. but today as i re-read them over and over, what strikes me is that john isn’t preaching a repentance [greek: metanoia/"change you mind"] about your sins, but it says change your mind about “the forgiveness of sins”. these people knew they were sinners; they lived in a culture seeped in the teaching of torah and if that wasn’t enough, the pharisees are there to provoke them. but what john offers is a word about forgiveness…and this strikes me as a good word for myself as well: how often am i trying to convince people about the sin in their lives that they all ready know about? i need to begin speaking much more of forgiveness, and practicing it. the significance of forgiveness can be lost on me sometimes, but if preaching forgiveness gets john in trouble with the temple authorities, then it should probably get me in trouble as well; and it reminds me of the situation of the apostle paul: if we are not being accused by the pharisees and temple authorities of our day of having too much grace (like paul was in romans 6) then we probably are not really practicing the radical way of forgiveness and grace; but, like paul, in taking the radical way of Jesus, we will likely need to explain ourselves, because it is not cheap grace nor easy forgiveness, but it is scandalous!
verses 4-6 – again, reflecting what had happened in verse 2, a voice proclaiming – crying out – in the wilderness; the echo of the word of God spoken in dry, lonely places is heard round the world. there will be no obstacle to God coming to redeem and deliver His people…chills run up my spine as i read: “and all flesh will see the salvation of God.” even so, come Lord Jesus.
++Lord Jesus, help us to embrace the way of forgiveness. Help us change our minds concerning the forgiveness of sins, and see that we cannot do it, it is only in You that we may find the deep grace of a delivering God. Let us see Your salvation, O God Most High! Amen.++
lectio: luke 21:25-26
November 27, 2009
Luke 21:25-26 (Today’s New International Version)
25 “There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. 26 People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken.
The advent readings begin with a slap across the face, a cold splash of water, a shrill alarm.
Wake up! Change – deep change – is afoot!
The practice of lectio divina asks that we listen to the text and pay attention to the word, phrase, perhaps concept which jumps out and catches our attention on first hearing it.
My breath is caught by ‘anxiety’, and more from ‘apprehensive’. I read this passage on the eve of a job interview after three months of unemployment and dozens of closed doors. To say that I’m fighting apprehension and anxiety would be a dramatic understatement; mostly I’m trying not to drown in them.
I read again, once or twice. I know that the context of this passage is Jesus predicting the destruction of Jerusalem, but I hear it in my own context, my time, my situation, and the arrival of Advent.
Jesus’ words are immediate, harsh. This is no new-agey, kumbaya Jesus; this is Jesus the prophet.
No answers are given, no three-steps-to-peace. Jesus wakes me up, makes me sit up straight, pay attention, and listen.
Listen!
time is of the essence (2)
March 22, 2009
“Smoke, nothing but smoke. [That's what the Quester says.] There’s nothing to anything – it’s all smoke. What’s there to show for a lifetime of work, a lifetime of working your fingers to the bone?”
Ecclesiastes 1:2-3 (The Message)
[If you missed part 1, check it out here)
we have been thinking about time, both our relationship to it and use of it. let's begin today with a slightly different but related question and then come back to our conversation about time.
what is life really about?
a few years ago – while i was chatting with friends during one of our breaks in class at the baltimore hebrew university – when my friend aaron gave me an etrog
[aside: an etrog is an oval-shaped citrus fruit given out during the jewish festival of sukkot (also known to us as the feast of tabernacles) which is one of the autumnal feasts.]
this led to one of those great conversations that i took a lot away from…certainly about sukkot, but in fact it changed my perspective about life. sukkot is said to be the most joyous of jewish festivals, in which the people of God are supposed to purposely include (‘gather-in’) the gentiles to dwell and celebrate with them (ok…tell me that’s not prophetic Kingdom of God stuff!).
my friends at baltimore hebrew also pointed out that when they celebrate the festival of sukkot, it is tradition to read through qohelet, which is hebrew for ecclesiastes. i wondered at this, because at that point my experience with ecclesiastes was that it seemed very depressing…’life is vanity’ and all that jazz.
many contemporary readers of qohelet are left with a depressing/despairing impression of the overall message rather than something uplifting; it also seemed atodds with the joyous nature of the festival of sukkot. yet, the very theme of ecclesiastes is joy from their perspective. ecclesiastes reminds us of the real nature of joy, which is the same as that of sukkot: dwelling together in the presence of YHWH.
thus, apart from Jesus, His Heavenly Father and the Holy Spirit, we might be persuaded that our material possessions, our positions in life, work, pleasure, power…are more important than relationship with each other and with Him; yet too often our life shows those other pursuits are exactly our priorities.
we make ourselves more available to our jobs, careers and possessions than we do to our wives, husbands, children, parents, friends and other persons, even our precious Lord Jesus. we need to change our perspective and our priorities. we need to learn the lesson of qoholet that my friends now remind me of every year: we need to make time for the joy of fellowship in our shared lives…we need to dwell in joy.
commit the insight of qohelet/ecclesiastes to remembrance: The value in living is living!
strip away the illusions! the way of life in which the world trains us in effect say that meaning can be found in power, money, fame, pleasure or industry. ecclesiastes says: celebrate life by living; as i follow Jesus, i say it this way: embrace Jesus and His abundant-living Way; seek the Invisible God while much of the rest of the world prefers to rest in the security of their nip-tuck looks or precarious stock options or big house or whatever makes them feel secure.
which brings us back to time. if life is about living, then how do we redeem time?
sacred scripture speaks of “redeeming the time”…but we may ask: what does that even mean? perhaps there are some disciplines we can put into practice in order to detox from the cultural experience of the worship of time and efficiency and the merchants of time management that have fully commodified time for us (so much so that the language we engage and conceptualize time is as a commodity: we “spend” time, we “lose” time, we can “manage” time, etc.)
what i want to say is that in redeeming time, we free time and free ourselves…take this off the altar of our lives…and one way that i have found helpful is to relational-ize your time and your time management.
now there are many quite useful tools – action plans, activity logs, critical success matrices, etc. – that your garden-variety time management books give you (with the understanding that almost all emerge from a paradigm of the culture of business and ‘busyness’. they are achievement-based, results-oriented; which is what is needed in the business world, yet while useful, perhaps we need some discernment in applying them to our own lives. Remember the subtlety of Jesus: while the public saw Jesus busy all the time, the disciples saw that he arose early or late at night and went of for some un-busy time with His Father.)
thus, while useful for what they are, these tools place the emphasis away from people and toward personal gain, power, check-off lists and inanimate results.
i want to suggest a different way that eventually can make these other tools redemptive (that may sound arrogant, but the word-nerd in me cannot think of a better way to put it); the key emerges from a more ancient relational pattern of being: boundary markers
stones marked the boundaries of land allotted to people in the ancient near east, and specifically in our hebrew scriptures. instead of a hard-and-fast fences or a wall, the boundary marker was there to provoke awareness of where you were…they spoke of something…they witnessed to something…they were part of a discipline of remembrance (serving in some way like the ‘Lord’s Table’; ‘do this in remembrance of me’). Can we imagine an alotted ‘field’ as our life? And then perhaps we can also imagine the ‘seasonal crop’ as time that we are harvesting and putting to use in God’s Kingdom? i wonder if it would be helpful to change the typical paradigm of boundaries as ‘fences’ and move on to ‘boundary markers’…take down the razor-wire fences and let people and God into our lives.
boundary markers are signs that make us aware of something…thinking of it this way may help challenge us to raise our awareness, our sense, of time as we practice other principles of time management. for instance, when God gave the hebrews financial management instructions (see Leviticus 19), the paradigm that He seeks to train His people toward is His paradigm of the Kingdom of God…His reign; thus, in terms of Kingdom-economics, one of the instructions was to not reap your whole field, but leave margins as benevolence for the poor and the stranger and the outcast; i wonder if we cannot apply this principle of ‘leaving margins’ in our own ‘time management’, thus intentionally creating marginal space and time for reflection in our daily rhythms, for openness to the marginalized and the stranger and the outcast? Take a moent to linger here and imagine what that might look like in your our ‘field’, your own life.
sacred scripture also gives us a warning at this point. i think the biblical caution regarding people moving the boundary markers of others might be illustrative here as well…people can enter our lives and may move our boundary markers, if we are not careful and discerning, they can take time away from us in an unhealthy way…again, the call is to deeper our awareness. also recall the biblical instructions on gleaning/harvesting your field: do not glean to the margins. therein lies wisdom: save some cushion at the edges of your life;
in the previous post, we spoke of reflection begetting awareness, awareness begetting discernment, and discernment being crucial to preserving the essence of something good. Well, in training ourselves toward reflection, boundary markers can be essential in our discipline of remembrance, provoking us toward reflection, awareness and discernment.
ok, so what would these boundary markers look like?
i’ll answer that question, but you may want to sit down for this one, because the biggest tool, the best boundary markers are totally counter-intuitive to the typical time management tools of our day. i would like to call us to a more ancient paradigm: people as boundary markers…that’s right, people
…lose the inanimate watch/time-piece; place yourself in the situation of ‘not knowing’ what exact time it is; perchance, in this vulnerable position, you just might have to raise your awareness to know what time it is…although you may have to catch the time on a public clock or actually engage someone and meekly ask: pardon me, but do you have the time?
i personally witness that although it may take the disciplines of attention and remembrance, this has made me more aware of time rather than less…i have not owned nor wore a watch since high school (and even then, although i owned one i never wore it)…and yet i don’t miss meetings, am not chronically late, nor does insecurity overwhelm me because i do not know what time it is.
can i get a witness? by placing myself in the vulnerable position of not knowing what time it is, i have found that this supposed weakness has turned out to be such a rich source of strength…(although in the day-and-age of blackberries and cell phones the ‘actual time’ is not far from any of us, in case of an immediate crisis or emergency, etc.)…but the point is to place us in an environment where we are in a place of humble need for other people to make us aware of time…we need to ask for the time (when was the last time someone refused you when you asked: ‘what time is it?’)
[experiment: have you noticed that when you don't know something, you unconsciously raise your awareness of it? for instance, if you are used to having a watch, and forget to wear it, you can become more aware of time, because you don't know what time it is. try this experiment that i have done in the past: try to feel what the passage of time "feels" life. get in a quiet place by yourself and take a time piece with you for reference. sit and seek to spend 5 minutes in silence and solitude...just being...and try to check the time after you think 5 minutes have passed. this practice will raise your awareness of time in an experiential, experimental way. stop and try it right now. how did it go? how close are you to getting it right? what did 5 good mnutes feel like to you? begin training yourself in this awareness and see what the fruit of it might be]
now, i realize, this might be really hard for some people; this is really counter to how the culture is training us, because you might have to put your rugged individualism aside and get off the self-reliant, independent bandwagon, yet doing this reminds me of 2 corinthians 6, when that erstwhile apostle paul says: we own nothing, and yet we have everything.
further, can we see that this reflects the relational aspect of the Trinity? remember what we said about the value of living? relationships are of the essence of our lives; when we ‘relational-ize’ our time and time management, we join our awareness of time to the very essence of our lives…both ourselves within and ourselves in relation to others.
in ‘relational-izing’ your time management, you just might find that:
• you’re more aware of time because you don’t have easy access to find out precisely what time it is;
• humility creates in you the desire to listen to and really hear others, not just talk at them;
• people are quite nice and really friendly and happy to give you the time;
• you might make new friends and neighbors;
• time – hopefully like the truth – is free;