Advent Meditation 2 - Prepare

There’s a party coming and it’s time to get ready.

At its best, getting ready for the party is almost as good as the party itself.

Clean the house. Set the table. Cook the food – fancy food, hearty food, plain or spicy. Just make sure there’s lots of it and it’s good. Oh, and remember to pull the best bottles from your cabinets and cellars, with lots of glasses and plenty of ice.

Take a bath, polish yourself up, and put on your goin’-to-the-party clothes. Smile and be happy and open the door.

The house will fill with chatter and laughter. The convivial spirit will rise as bellies fill and wine glasses empty. For a moment the ugliness of the world is held off outside the walls and inside you taste just a bit of heaven. It was finally worth all the work and worry of getting ready, because once the party is on, nothing else matters.

That’s how it’s supposed to work. But…that’s not always the case, is it?

Have you ever prepared for a party and found that the preparation was not fun at all? Have you ever been overtaken by “guest anxiety?” You work for hours, perhaps days, in a red mist of hospitality rage, trying to whip things into shape, and woe to the poor fool who gets in your way or fails to pitch in to help.It's a soul sucking madness that takes over the whole house and turn the rest of the family into zombie slaves in the thrall of the rabid hostess, made mad by her party planning psychosis.

Sound familiar?

This is what happens when the host begins to think that the point of the party is to prove what a great host she is. Instead of offering the party as an act of joyful love for the sake of your friends, the party becomes (in the mind of the host) the impending day of judgment -- and the judges are your guests.

This is such an easy mistake to make because we love to make everything into a religion where we think that doing things just right will save us. We tell ourselves that its all for the guests, when in fact the guests are just an excuse to congratulate ourselves on what good hosts we are. We turn the party into a religion and in the process miss the whole point of the exercise.

Now in the second week of Advent we prepare for the party we call Christmas. It's a pretty big deal, in case you haven't noticed. In this layer of the advent season we remember when Jesus was coming and look forward to when he will come again. His coming changes everything. So we prepare.

Here is the question: What are we preparing for? The judgment? Or the Party?

Be careful how you answer. It’s a trick question really, because if you are preparing for judgment, if you think you are preparing to be good enough for the party, you can just forget it. It is simply impossible for us to perfectly clean the cobwebs out of every corner of our spiritual house. We can scrub and polish and sweep and wipe, but we can never banish the stains and dust of our fallen lives, but we can never really make it good enough for Jesus.The dirt is just too embedded. The walls too rotten. The carpet too shabby.

But that doesn’t mean that there’s no party, and it certainly doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t invite him in. On the contrary – that's exactly why we MUST invite him in. You see, this is the Good News. 

Jesus is the guest who, when he arrives, cleans the house for us – top to bottom. Jesus cleans our kitchen, shines our bathroom, scrubs the toilets, washes the floors and deep cleans the carpets. Jesus arranges the furniture, plumps the pillows, puts away all the scattered clothes, polishes the silver and straightens the pictures on the walls. When Jesus arrives he takes your house, and completely remakes it into the best house it could possibly be and then some – spotless, perfect and completely comfortable. Jesus is the original and better Extreme Makoever Home Edition.

Not only that, Jesus provides all the food. More than you could possibly eat, more kinds than you can possibly imagine and better than you ever thought it could be. Whatever food you might have to offer, even if it’s just meager loaves and dried fishes, he will take what you offer and make it into the most sumptuous meal you never imagined.

With Jesus there is no dieting, no diabetes and certainly no anorexia. With Jesus if its feast time then it is time to feast! And when Jesus is in the house, you can bet no wine bottles will ever go empty.

This is Gospel: Jesus brings his own party wherever he goes and nobody – but NOBODY -- throws a better one.

This too is Gospel: Jesus is both the best guest and the most host, all at the same time.

And this also is Gospel: he has invited you to your own party.

So get ready wontcha?.

 Jesus has both come and is yet coming. We are both waiting (preparing) and enjoying his presence now. So prepare out of joyful overflowing love and in prescient thanksgiving. Forget fear and judgment – he has done away with it. Know that when our own preparations fall short (and they always do), Jesus makes up the difference, completely, joyfully, perfectly. 

Make sure you understand what I am saying. Get ready. Clean yourself up. Make your place beautiful. Do all the things you would do to prepare for the most wonderful guests - but do it all out of love and thanksgiving for the host, and the party He brings. That is Gospel. 

So for Christ’s sake (really, I mean it literally) stop worrying and get ready to party. Jesus is on his way.

A Day in the Life

Chaplain Mike over at Internet Monk recently wrote an astounding piece called Tell Me about Your Day. 

It's astounding for two reasons. First because the suffering of the people about which he writes is deeply deeply moving, troubling and real. Second, because we so seldom stop to think that this sort of thing is going on around us all day long, every day, in the lives of the people we meet at work, on the street and in church. Every day. Everywhere.

This is not the exception, I think. It is more like the common human experience. We just hide it better than most cultures.

This is real life. I am struck hard when I ponder it, aware of how close it is to being my life, and afraid that I lack the compassion to face it in the lives of others.

It's Not About You

A few weeks ago, I had another opportunity to speak at a retreat, this time to the student body of Jesse Remington High School. We had a group of about 40 students who gathered at the Horton Center on Pine Mountain, overlooking Gorham, for a few days focused on building their life as a learning community. Yeah. I know. But that's just the kind of school Jesse Remington is.

As with my previous retreat experience, I tried simply to open up the Gospel to these kids, trying to help them see it through fresh eyes. Rather than expound the text, I tried to read the text. Rather than preach the 3 point sermon I worked at telling the 3 chapter story. Rather than set forth the three propositions, I tried to frame 3 pictures of the Gospel from what I hoped was a fresh new perspective.

I say this because when I approach speaking or preaching on the Gospel, I stay away from a scholarly approach because I am not a scholar, a philosopher or a particularly deep thinker. I just don't have the training for it. My approach is more pastoral -- what in this text will feed His sheep?

And even taking a pastoral approach, I still tend to avoid the heavy lifting of exegeting the original languages to make a fine theological point. Again, partly because I lack the training. But even moreso, the most useful thing to feed the flock isn't a new insight into the aorist tense in the original Greek. Nor is it another insight into the Pauline logic of the doctrine of justification.

The most useful thing for feeding the flock is pictures. Clear, powerful, visceral, emotionally charged pictures that teach us about who God is and what he has done.

That's at least part of the reason why Jesus left us with two basic practices around which he builds his church -- baptism and eucharist. These are first and foremost living pictures of him and his grace. Even better, they are not pictures that we merely gaze upon. They are pictures in which we partake -- we are included in the picture.

Chew on that.

I kind of wish I had this video a few weeks ago. I would have shamelessly stolen from it, because it makes the point I worked so hard to make to those students in the mountains.

Birthday Parties for Whores

Lots of people have lots of trouble with Tony Campolo. I get that. People just love to get all bent out of shape over Campolo. Mostly they think he talks too much about loving people and bringing our social structure in line with the gospel's call to care for the poor and outcast. By the same token, he seems to not talk enough about consequences and responsiblity and all those concepts beloved of the moral bean counters. This shapes his politics and his analysis of our society. I get that, but I don't have a huge problem with it. It takes all kinds, and I love Tony because his ideas grow organically out of his love of Jesus and his Good News. The Good News just makes the bean counters' heads explode.

I will say that at a few key points in my life I have read things by him or heard things from him that have been very influential.

This video is exactly the kind of story that gives fits to the bean counters - the people who have a seizure whenever they hear the name of Tony Campolo.

My favorite line?

"Naw....I'd GO to a church like 'dat."

Real Healing, Real Transformation, Real Jesus

I never heard of Todd Bentley until a few days ago. Apparently he's some kind of widely(?) known charismatic healer. Apparently he did something bad, and now he is in trouble. As usual in these sorts of cases, his failure is causing many to question their (apparently misplaced) faith.

Regardless of the particular incident and person in question, there is a most excellent commentary on the blog THE JESUS PARADIGM.

It asks a great question about people who are carried away by such "ministries" as Bentley's -- i.e. did anyone involved "actually READ the Gospels?"

He doesn't say it in the article, but it occurs to me that it warnt for nothin' that Jesus often healed people and then told them to keep their traps shut about it. As I mentioned earlier, I had not heard of Todd Bentley until I read about him on Jesus Shaped Spirituality. But, I know his type very well. The observations are dead on. Where is Jesus in all this, other than using his name a kind of magic incantation babbled incessantly? If you really heal like Jesus healed, then you'd be telling a lot of people to get up and walk, and don't tell anyone how you managed it. I haven't seen much of that.

Transformation is painful by nature, and usually involves enormous amounts of sweat and blood. And it is risky. In my experience one goes into a trans formative period blind and full of fear, because it seems as if it could as likely end up in your death as in new life. I recently experienced such a crisis, and it is still working itself out in my life. All I had to hold onto was Jesus and his transformative work in me and in my wife. I couldn't see the other side, but I could hope - and in the midst of it Jesus came to us and is changing us now.

Meditating on Jesus himself, and HIS transforming power helps me understand what is happening and how YHWH can still use even stupid, weak, and blind little me to advance his Kingdom.

What going on?

There are days when whole essays emerge fully formed from my head, like Athena leaping from the head of Zeus. Then there are days (or weeks) when I seem to muddle around, juggling half-formed ideas, unlinked trains of thought, and unfocused outlines. I am in just such a time right now. I don't suppose this should be surprising, given that I am reading 4 books at once, attempting to break a personal record in my business, improve the current state of my house in preparation for guests, attend to a number for fairly pressing personal matters and still make time to love my family. My attentions and my energy is focused in directions that don't include a blog. No different from anybody else I expect, but I am finding that having a blog is a good thing. It actually makes me think more about writing down my thoughts and publishing them. Ultimately I believe that will be a beneficial discipline for me. Nevertheless, I'm still trying to figure out my personal blogging rhythms.
So here are some of the things I am juggling:
Christus Victor - This is another way of understanding what happened when Jesus dies and refused to stay that way. It's not so much the sacrifice, it's the victory that matters.
The Emerging Church - I have had several conversations about this maddeningly slippery concept. There is much to like and much not. I owe much of my developing thinking about this phenomenon to Assistant Village Idiot. His conversations are challenging me to sharpen my questions and answers about who these people are and what exactly they are doing. I'm finding that while much of my thinking actually seems to parallel much of theirs, I would never actually take on their label.
The Secret - I'm in the business of personal and professional development. "The Secret" is a film and book that may be one of the biggest events in this kind of business in decades. It's becoming in and of itself a huge pop culture phenomenon. While at a certain level, I applaud and agree with much of what it puts forth, for many people, it will become ( or has become) their substitute for true religion. What should I think about it?
Goals and Grace - In more general terms, I would like to explore the relationship between the American success philosophy and the Gospel. They are not the same, but they also have some fascinating points of intersection.
The Sacraments and Worship - This has been bubbling around for a long long time. My theology of both baptism and the Eucharist have undergone almost complete overhauls over the last several years (decade?). In part, this means that these holy rituals have become much more central to my thinking. I'm very excited about this, but it also has created some problems in terms of figuring out how to work out my new understanding.

These are some of the bigger items in development. There are others that are too unformed to really include here. I find it fascinating how much of this is specifically Christian in nature. I guess I spend more time than I realize thinking about this whole Jesus business. Go figure.

Well...check back every once in a while. Eventually I'll develop some of this stuff into something more complete and informative. It might even contain something worthwhile.