2023
“Jesus dies “for” us not in the sense of “in place of” but “in solidarity with.”” - Richard Rohr
This struck a chord with me.
I have been thinking a lot about the crucifixion and how cheap it often feels to me. The idea of it being nothing more than a payment for services rendered, so to speak, a mere transaction, has sat less well with me over the years.
Thinking of it in terms of Jesus dying in solidarity with us, changes the perspective a bit. Particularly as I connect this back to the Christmas idea of God with us in my mind.
Jesus’ death on the cross is the ultimate display of incarnation, the divine being in the flesh. We do not typically think of the Divine suffering and dying. Yet, here is Christ suffering and dying. Here is Christ demonstrating, in solidarity with us, what it is to suffer well and to die well.
His suffering was purposeful. His death was meaningful.
God dying to God’s self and God using that death to reconcile all of creation to the Creator.
This is indeed Good.
Amy and I had an absolutely marvelous time tonight! Our neighbors, Noah and Kandice, invited us and a few other neighbors to their home for the Passover Seder. It was just beautiful on every level. So thankful!
Scored some new vinyl today. What a beautiful album not just musically but also in physical presentation.
“No child is just a child. Each is a creature in whom God intends to do something glorious and great.”
Currently reading: Run with the Horses by Eugene H. Peterson 📚
Sitting in the garage with a pipe of really nice tobacco, a book that is blowing my mind, and watching a storm roll in?
This fantastic.
In August, Amy and I are participating in something called, The Mammoth March.
You hike 20 miles in 8 hours.
Training starts now.
My daughter’s sorority, Pi Beta Phi, is raising money for the Spartan Strong Fund. If you’ve wondered how you could help after the shooting at MSU, this is a tangible way to do so.
Karma? Nah... Grace!
“Karma’s a bitch.”
Did that get your attention? 😏
I am sure it did. Pastors are not supposed to use that kind of bad language.
This little sentence is something that we hear often in our world isn’t it? It points to this sense that “what we put out into the universe will return to us.” If we do bad things, then we get bad things in return, so the thinking goes.
Karma can be useful as an answer to the age old question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Well, you did bad things in a previous life and those bad choices are being visited on you in this life, so the thinking goes.
Karma can also challenge us to do better. If we believe that any bad action will ultimately be returned to us in some way, we will likely try to choose the better.
In a nutshell, karma argues that every action has consequences.
That resonates, does it not?
We like the idea that when a bad person does a bad thing that they will face consequences of their bad action. But, what do we do when we are that bad person? Most of us don’t really think we are bad. We are able to see how those people have bad karma, we don’t really see how we deserve it.
I think this is something that I love about grace. It breaks us out of the karma cycle.
A real and true grace is not cheap. A real and true grace has two key components. First, it acknowledges the bad. Grace is not naïve. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in his seminal book, The Cost of Discipleship,
“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”
Grace needs a cross. What wrong has been done must be dealt with. If you offer a cheap grace it is not truly grace, it is simply looking the other way. Cheap grace, a cross-less grace, is nothing more than ignoring one’s bad actions for the sake of avoiding conflict. Grace necessarily engages conflict because it refuses to ignore brokenness.
Second, a real and true grace deals with the bad. What do I mean by this? I mean that a grace that simply acknowledges the bad but doesn’t actually deal with the consequences of that bad is no grace. This is often why we find so many public acts of confession to be hollow. Their words are nice, but we see no resulting action that supports the words. Grace is costly precisely because it demands a cross. It demands for justice to be restored.
At the core of our bad actions we ultimately become purveyors of injustice.
When we hurt another in word or deed we are practicing injustice by demeaning the image of God in them. Too often there is a doubling down by not redressing the issue. Then finally, we try to pretend as though we were maintaining our moral uprightness.
Grace seeks to set this right.
Unllike karma that is ultimately retributive in nature, grace goes a different way.
What we see God do through Christ is to deal with the bad at its most fundamental level. For justice to be restored the bad ultimately has to be dealt with. At the deepest level, injustice is an affront to God. What we see throughout the Scriptures is that separation from the divine presence is the ultimate consequence for the bad. In the cross, we see God through God’s own self-sacrifice meet the requirements of separation but then overcomes it in resurrection.
The cross and the resurrection of Christ not only restores justice at the most fundamental level but also opens the door for all of creation to be redeemed, restored, and reconciled.
This costly grace frees us from the consequences of our bad actions and intentions.
But more than this, it frees us to live as agents of the very same reconciliation!
Grace is amazing because it frees us. We no longer look over our shoulder. There is a freeing to follow in the self-sacrficial-loving way of Jesus.
Grace drives us beyond our ego and self-concern. Karma locks us into primarily worrying about self.
A cold day at the ball field, wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
Currently reading: Deep Work by Cal Newport 📚
I’m going back through this book and creating a list of questions to process. As a pastor, I feel like I need deep work and somehow maintain connection via modern digital network tools.
Curious what others think…
Fridays are leg days for me at the gym. They are always hard. They always hurt. Amy asked, “Since they always hurt, maybe you’re doing them wrong?”
“I’m pretty sure they always hurt because I’m doing them right,” I said.
What do you consider to be the ideal length for a solo #podcast with no guests? 🎙️
Pastors, what rhythm do you have for creating space for deep work and at the same time being connected and available through the digital networking tools at our disposal?
I am really liking using Obsidian to craft blog posts. It’s a nice interface and makes it easy to drop onto micro.blog.
Fireside Coffee in Flint, MI for the win! This Brazilian “Sweet Yellow,” is dang good! ☕️
Today marks my favorite weekend of the year. It is #OpeningDay for MLB ⚾️! There is hope and expectation and a dream of warm summer nights at ball park or sitting on the patio with a cold beer and the game on the radio.
Just started a new, to me, book by Eugene Peterson. The opening sentences:
“The puzzle is why so many people live so badly. Not so wickedly, but so inanely. Not so cruelly, but so stupidly.”
This book is going to be something else.
Currently reading: Run with the Horses by Eugene H. Peterson 📚
Trying out a coffee shop in Eastern Market in Detroit, Anthology. My guy The Beard loves it and recommends the Coffee Tonic. He’s right on the money. Delicious!
Pistons game with some of the fellas courtesy of our guy Noah (not pictured). 🏀
This book was really insightful and helpful. I am excited to begin putting some of Dr Li’s insights into practice. For instance, today I began drinking green tea.
Finished reading: Eat to Beat Your Diet by William M. Li 📚
If you’re in the Ypsilanti area, I’d love for you to come out and join me for some intentional conversation tomorrow night at Tap Room.
Amazing Grace? Oh, OK
I remember sitting in the living room of my friend, mentor, and pastor, Bob Smart. There were about ten of us sitting in a circle for a Koinonia Group. Koinonia is the Greek word that is roughly translated as “fellowship” in English. He asked a simple question, “What is grace?”
I answered quickly because I knew the answer!
“Grace is unmerited favor, Bob!” I said.
“What’s so amazing about that?” He said.
I sat dumbfounded. Silenced by a simple question that demanded more of me than an intellectual response.
Bono of U2 once wrote about grace this way,
Grace
She takes the blame
She covers the shame
Removes the stain
It could be her name
Grace
It’s the name for a girl
It’s also a thought that
Changed the world
And when she walks on the street
You can hear the strings
Grace finds goodness
In everything
Grace
She’s got the walk
Not on a ramp or on chalk
She’s got the time to talk
She travels outside
Of karma, karma
She travels outside
Of karma
When she goes to work
You can hear her strings
Grace finds beauty
In everything
Grace
She carries a world on her hips
No champagne flute for her lips
No twirls or skips between her fingertips
She carries a pearl
In perfect condition
What once was hurt
What once was friction
What left a mark
No longer stings
Because Grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things
Grace finds beauty
In everything
Grace finds goodness in everything
This paints a picture well beyond something cold like, “unmerited favor”. I am struck by the emotion of what Bono has written.
At the time that I responded to that question by my friend, Bob, I don’t think that I understood that emotion. Grace hadn’t made it down from my head to my heart.
Why?
There’s an ancient story that resonates deeply in my soul.
One of the Pharisees asked him over for a meal. He went to the Pharisee’s house and sat down at the dinner table. Just then a woman of the village, the town harlot, having learned that Jesus was a guest in the home of the Pharisee, came with a bottle of very expensive perfume and stood at his feet, weeping, raining tears on his feet. Letting down her hair, she dried his feet, kissed them, and anointed them with the perfume. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man was the prophet I thought he was, he would have known what kind of woman this is who is falling all over him.”
Jesus said to him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”
“Oh? Tell me.”
“Two men were in debt to a banker. One owed five hundred silver pieces, the other fifty. Neither of them could pay up, and so the banker canceled both debts. Which of the two would be more grateful?”
Simon answered, “I suppose the one who was forgiven the most.”
“That’s right,” said Jesus. Then turning to the woman, but speaking to Simon, he said, “Do you see this woman? I came to your home; you provided no water for my feet, but she rained tears on my feet and dried them with her hair. You gave me no greeting, but from the time I arrived she hasn’t quit kissing my feet. You provided nothing for freshening up, but she has soothed my feet with perfume. Impressive, isn’t it? She was forgiven many, many sins, and so she is very, very grateful. If the forgiveness is minimal, the gratitude is minimal.”
Then he spoke to her: “I forgive your sins.”
That set the dinner guests talking behind his back: “Who does he think he is, forgiving sins!”
He ignored them and said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.” (Luke 7:36-50, The Message)
For a really long time I thought of myself as good. If I’m really honest with you, I thought of my self as being really, really good. So, while in some sense I knew that I needed grace, I was much like Simon in the story above. I didn’t realize that my shadow, my sin, my own brokenness was deep.
I don’t really know when it happened that I began to get it.
Perhaps it was with the birth of our first child and I began to see the deep seated selfishness that reigned like a tyrant only to be demolished by a toddler tyrant supreme?
Perhaps it was beginning to see how I responded to various stressful situations where my go to was anger and rage (heck, that happened yesterday!)?
Perhaps it was acknowledging that my sin-sickness was not somehow less than any other person’s?
As my own need for grace moved from head to heart it stopped being an intellectually rooted concept. It became something else.
Grace had become the thing that “makes beauty out of ugly things.”
What is grace? Grace is the fundamental reality that we are loved, accepted, embraced, reconciled, and cherished by a sovereign and good God because we simply are.
There’s nothing that we do to earn the love. There’s nothing we can do lose the love.
The only thing we bring is ourselves and God loves us.
God chose to love us by lavishing a grace on us that is overwhelming when begin to think about it.
It truly is amazing.
Absolutely killed my workout today! Good start to my off day.
My first day with an Apple Watch that I got just for fitness tracking and I definitely just went for a one mile walk at 9 pm to close all my rings. #challenge #fitness
Tuesday nights I host a conversation called, Tap Room Tuesday. We meet at 8 pm and have an intentional conversation around three questions. Here are the details for our upcoming gathering.