Episode 20

I am beginning to realize that the opening chapters of Genesis are more important than I ever could have thought. They are a poem, an epic poem, that tells the story of humanity. We find our ultimate and foundational identity of “image bearer” described there. In that poem we discover the roots of our fall from that identity and the foreshadowing of our redemption.

Two things have particularly stood out to me in these opening pages of the Bible. First, humanity has a vocation, men and women, to create. This is an idea that has been a part of my understanding of the Christian faith for a long time. What is new is that little word, “vocation.” I have often referred to what God sets up for us to do as a “calling.” But that’s not really the best word. It is a vocation.

Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” (Gen 1:26–28)

Humanity has a job to do and that is to create and care for God’s good creation. I am beginning to understand Jesus’ statement that the law can be summarized into two commands, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; Love your neighbor as yourself,” in light of our vocation as image bearers. When we come to grips with the reality that every person we engage with is an image bearer and we also have as our “vocation” to care for the whole of creation, it begins to make more sense in my mind that we must love others as ourselves. I think in a very real way our vocation as image bearers is to love God and love people.

I think in a very real way our vocation as image bearers is to love God and love people.

The other side of this coin is what happened when humanity set aside its vocation. In that moment when Adam and Eve took and ate they did so because they “wanted to be like God.” They believed a lie. They set aside their vocation, they set down their God-given responsibility and placed themselves above their love of God and one another. The result? Shame and exile.

Up to that point in the story there was no shame. They were naked, they were exposed, and felt no shame. When they set aside their vocation which was rooted in their identity, shame was the result.

God held them accountable for their actions and exiled them from the Garden. This would be his mode of operation moving forward. When his people would set aside their vocation that was rooted in their identity he would exile them. They would experience a separation from God.

Yet, we see God do something interesting. First, he takes animals and creates clothes for Adam and Eve, covering their shame. He frees them from shame so they could once again experience relationship with him and one another. Second, he promises an end to exile. They even get a foretaste of this after they are exiled where God still spoke to them and their children.

Those were lots of words to set up the question, “Why forgiveness?”

Have you ever wondered why God forgave them or us? Why does God cover our shame? Why does God make a way back from exile?

I think we see the reason right back there in Genesis.

They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze… (Gen 3:8a)

In the opening pages of the Bible we see an intimate and personal relationship between God and humanity. When God would go walking in the evening we get the sense that it was a walk with humanity. It says that God called out, “Where are you?” God was expecting to see Adam and Eve. He was expecting to walk with them and talk with them and be with them. There was an intimacy of relationship that God and people had.

Why did God cover their shame? Why did God make a way back from exile? Relationship. God’s desire for relationship with his image bearers was such that he was going to do what needed to be done to restore that relationship. Because God is God he was bound by his perfect justice. Therefore, there was exile. Yet, right from the start God’s first concern was to cover their shame. Before he sent the man and woman out of the Garden into exile, he covered their shame.

God deeply loves his image bearers.

He cares for us.

He wants to be in relationship with us.

So, he forgives us.

At the end of the story we read this,

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:3–4)

Why does he forgive us? Because he wants to live with us. He wants to wipe away our tears.

Episode 19

A missionary who has given his life to serving God and people is diagnosed with cancer. A loving father who is at the beginning of his journey of walking with Jesus develops what turns out to be an incurable infection. The child of a pastor who is highly regarded because of her faithful service to the community and Jesus dies of cancer before his life even begins. A woman with a gentle and quiet faith who prays and serves wakes up one day alone because her husband left her for another.

These brief snapshots are real life stories of people who I love and care for. They are all people who are authentically trying to follow Jesus. These are not people who are false or who simply sit in the back of worship service to be entertained. These are people who you want to be around and whose faith would cause you to stop and wonder about their God. These are the people of who it is said, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

“God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life,” so begins an invitation to follow Christ that I have shared with hundreds of people. Is there anything inherently wrong or untrue about that statement? No. But, at the very least it is incomplete. It is missing something that is very important to an invitation into following Jesus. It doesn’t say anything about what that “wonderful plan for your life” might include. What happens when that “wonderful plan” includes pain and suffering, a cross.

For many years in my ministry I functionally believed that I needed to help the gospel out. I functionally believed that I needed to give it some PR because Jesus was a horrible salesman.

Jesus said these kinds of things:

“There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” (Luke 18:22)

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:34–38)

“Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Matthew 8:20)

Who would want to follow someone like this? This hardly sounds like a “wonderful plan.”

You might think that the first generations of Christians would have helped Jesus out a bit. As I read the Bible I discovered that they didn’t. The authors of the letters that were written to churches in that first generation of Christians said “…when you suffer…”

What the heck? What happened to a “wonderful life”? Seriously, suffering and pain and losing my life doesn’t sound much like a “wonderful life.”

How can the Bible writers say things like this and we in the 21st century turn around and say that “God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for you life”? It simply can’t be true, can it? Pain, suffering, loss of life, how can these things be “wonderful”?

My mentor, Bob Smart, has written extensively on Christian identity formation. In his book, Embracing Your Identity in Christ: Renouncing Lies and Foolish Strategies, he discusses the work of Charles Taylor, A Secular Age. Taylor lays out “five conditions of our age.” One of them is that we, as a culture, are “encased in Chronos.” Chronos is simply time, the tick of the clock without a recognition of anything beyond it. There is a second kind of time that Christians have long embraced known as “kairos.” This is when we recognize that God is breaking in and we are able to get a glimpse from a “God’s eye view”, so to speak. When we only see things from a chronos perspective there is no meaning in suffering or pain. It’s just another tick of the clock.

In his little book, How to Survive a Shipwreck: Help Is On The Way and Love Is Already Here, Jonathan Martin writes, “People try to offer us an explanation; God offers us a Eucharist.” What he means is that in our suffering we often are looking for “why” and that “why” can be hidden from us. But, what we find with God is care, empathy, and provision.

Martin writes,

“This fits the pattern of how God responds to human suffering: We come looking for answers; God sends a hot meal through a warm body. We come looking for reasons for our hunger; God sends provision to feed us. We come looking for a sermon that will explain the complexity of the cosmos to us and satiate our desire for understanding; Christ responds with, “This is my body, given for you; this is my blood, shed for you.”

In the Scriptures, the writer to the Hebrews says it like this,

“Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. For it is clear that he did not come to help angels, but the descendants of Abraham. Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.” Hebrews 2:14–18

Suffering is part of our experience it is not something that we can escape. Following Jesus doesn’t pull us out of the world and help us to escape pain and brokenness. The “wonderful plan” of the gospel is that as we follow Jesus, as we bear our own crosses, he who bore the cross of the world is with us and will carry it with us. He is able to empathize not simply look on us with compassion. Because we know that God loves us and that he has a “wonderful plan” a plan that imbues all of life with meaning and purpose we are able to experience a peace that transcends understanding.

We do not simply suffer under the weight of a broken world. No, we carry a cross, we enter in with Jesus and he enters in with us.

A friend of mine reached out to me a couple weeks ago and asked me to train with him for a “Murph Challenge.” This is a physically grueling challenge where you run a mile, do 100 pull-ups, do 200 push-ups, 300 air squats, and finish by running a mile. I’ve never done a pull-up, ever. I currently can’t do a “real” push-up. I don’t know how I can accomplish this. He asked me to do this with him because, “I want to do this…I am so unbelievably far away from this and need someone to embrace the suck of it with me. Keep each other accountable and work towards it together. And then when we are ready meet up and do it together.”

Why do we “carry a cross”? Because as we do we are embracing the “suck of it” with Jesus. It’s not just suffering. There is so much more to it. It is part of a plan and purpose of God. Ultimately that plan and purpose will result in God’s glory and our joy, this is what we call providence.

As I enter into my own suffering and in the suffering of others, I am grateful that I know it is not without purpose and that I am not alone. I enter in with Jesus the one who bore the cross perfectly “for the joy set before him.” The “wonderful plan” is that in that in the midst of the suffering we will somehow glimpse that same joy because we are not alone we are with Jesus.

Communion.

The Lord’s Supper.

The Eucharist.

This meal at the center of Christian worship goes by many different names. Yet, regardless of your tradition Communion is of utmost importance. Some congregations celebrate it weekly, others monthly, and still others less frequently. It begs the question, why communion? Why is this celebration central to the worship of God’s people? Why has it been of such importance?

Communion Protects Against Disunity

The Apostle Paul wrote extensively about the Lord’s Supper in his first letter to the Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians 10, he is chastising the church about idolatry. As he does so, the Lord’s Supper is central to his teaching. He begins by explaining how communion brings unity to the body.

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. (1 Cor 10:16–17)

When we take communion we are announcing our unity with Christ and our unity with the whole body. By taking the cup we are unifying ourselves in his suffering. Eating the bread means that we are uniting with him and the whole church as his body and uniting with him in his incarnation. Communion is a proclamation that says, “I am with Jesus and with his body, the Church!” It is a line in the sand.

*On a side note check out 1 Cor 11:17–22 for more on unity and how it relates to communion. These Corinthians really had a hard time.

Communion Protects Against Idolatry

The context of that little passage in 1 Corinthians above finds itself in the midst of a larger teaching on idolatry. Check out the broader context:

Therefore, my dear friends, flee from the worship of idols. I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar? What do I imply then? That food sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Or are we provoking the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? (1 Cor 10:14–22)

To embrace communion is to set aside the worship of idols. When we take communion rightly it, necessarily, means that we are forsaking all others. Communion is the physical, right here, right now, reminder of the incarnational and transcendant Christ. He really accomplished something on our behalf. What have idols done? Nothing. Why? Because they are nothing. They are simply figments of our imaginations. We declare in communion that we are going to embody loyalty to Jesus and to him alone.

Communion Protects Against Sin

In 1 Corinthians 11 we see the full “words of institution” for the Lord’s Supper. They go like this,

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Cor 11:23–26)

Paul goes on to say,

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves. (1 Cor 11: 27–29)

In many traditions first the words of institution are spoken and then the warning to “examine yourselves.” When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper it is a time set aside for us to examine ourselves. Is there unconfessed sin? Are we harboring unforgiveness? Have we trusted Christ for forgiveness? The results of taking communion lightly without examining ourselves is to “eat and drink judgment” against ourselves. For those in Christ we must understand that it is not a judgment of exile. Elsewhere Paul makes clear that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. It is a judgment of discipline. We will experience discipline as one who receives it from a loving parent. The Corinthians were so negligent in this that they were getting sick and some even died.

Communion Reminds Us What God Has Done

Finally, communion is the physical reminder of what God has done. He has reconciled the world through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. By the faithfulness of Jesus to God we are ransomed from exile. He reconciles his creation to himself and brings life to those who believe.

Jesus is the God-man. He broke into time and history. He “moved into the neighborhood” and lived among us. To remember the reality of what he has done, we celebrate with physical elements of the cup and bread. The cup is poured out, the bread is broken, and as we partake we are unified with him and one another. It is our time to “taste and see that the Lord is good,” in a very real way.

A Final Thought

Why communion? Ultimately because it draws us into the upper room with Jesus and the disciples on that last night. We find ourselves celebrating with them and yet filled with the same sense of weightiness about the need for the cross. The difference is, that when we take we do so as ones knowing the resurrection and the joy of that reality.

From the beginning of Christianity, communion has been at the center. It is crucial to our worship. Communion calls us to unity, faithfulness, repentance, and awe.

Episode 18

Why do Christians seem to be fascinated with blood? What is going with the cross?

There are some really weird things about Chrstianity. First among them is how we rejoice in blood. We sing songs about blood. Blood this and blood that.

Blood, blood, blood.

I remember one of the first times I heard the song, “Nothing But the Blood of Jesus,” and thinking that it was a little awkward singing about blood.

When we take communion we talk about eating the flesh and blood of Jesus. The first century Romans accused the early Christians of being cannibals as a result. Of course they also accused Christians of being incestuous and atheists too. But, it wasn’t lost on those early folks that this new sect of Judaism had a weird fascination with blood.

When Christianity was beginning animal sacrifice was a normal part of most worship in most religions of the time. Some were even sacrificing their children.

One would think that God, in Jesus, would have figured out a different way of doing this whole salvation thing than through blood.

As I was pursuing my minor in religion at Central Michigan University there was a conversation that took place often about, “the Christian God’s cosmic child abuse.” It showed up in many of my classes. It was one I thought was somewhat silly, yet, as I worked to understand the thinking of my classmates I was able to begin to see where their thinking was coming from.

Is the cross divine child abuse? Are Christians predisposed to violence with our constant talk about blood? Ultimately, what is going on with the cross?

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death — that is, the devil — and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Hebrews 2:14–18

I think this little passage is really helpful in understanding the cross.

First, a word about blood. Blood in these times was viewed as life. It was often referred to as “life-blood.” This is why Israel was forbidden to eat meat with blood in it (Leviticus 17:11–16).

Blood was life.

When God brought the people out of Egypt from slavery he had them put some blood over their doors during the last plague. The angel of death would passover the homes with blood over the doors, this marked them for “life.” Blood as the symbol of life allowed for them to be passed over and protect the lives of their firstborn sons.

What’s fascinating is that on the day of atonement the scapegoat is not killed (check out Leviticus 16). The scapegoat was a goat that the high priest laid his hands on and confessed the sin of the people over. This goat symbolically took the sins of the people and was then released into the wilderness. This goat took the punishment for the people by being exiled on their behalf. But it was not killed. Blood is not about death, it is about life, blood was needed for passover but not the atonement of the people’s intentional sin. The High Priest did make a “sin offering” using blood, but a sin offering was for the unintentional sin of the priest and the people. The blood in this case brought life where death had snuck in and made it so that God could meet with his people at the “mercy seat.”

If you’ve read this far you’re probably thinking, “thanks for the history lesson, but seriously, can we get back to the original question?”

Why the cross?

From the passage in Hebrews above we learn four things about why Jesus went to the cross for us.

First, he was fully human. He was one of us. He was not a bull or goat or lamb. He was human and as a result he was able to be our perfect representative. A goat was never able to fully represent us because it is not an image bearer. Only a human could be our perfect representative.

Second, his death broke the power of death and the fear of death. Remember, blood is life. His blood brought life where death had held sway. Just like on the passover. Where Jesus’ blood is there is no death. He is our champion. Like David, the champion of Israel, defeated Goliath; so Jesus, the ultimate champion of humanity, defeated the power of death (which is the devil). By defeating death humanity is freed from fear of death. Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:10).”

Third, he became a high priest for humanity. One that is merciful and faithful in service. What was the reason for this? So that he could make atonement for the sins of the people. Remember, atonement was needed for the unintentional sin. Jesus’ act of atonement was not because we were in rebellion but because sin snuck in to kill and destroy. We have all “sinned and fallen short of the glory God (Romans 3:23).” God’s law, Paul says in Romans 3:20 makes us conscious of our sin. We can see it and therefore we fear death. Nevertheless, Jesus, our high priest makes atonement for our sin. Through his blood, which is life, he destroys death and sin, so that we don’t have to be exiled but we can be in the presence of God for eternity. He is our representative, our substitute.

Finally, he is able to help us in our suffering and temptations. We are not alone in a world filled with suffering and temptation. Jesus is not looking at us saying, “Suck it up buttercup.” No, he empathizes with us because he knew what it was to suffer. Through the cross he experienced ultimate suffering. Through his life he faced temptation, “yet was without sin.” Because he knows suffering and temptation he is able to enter in with us not as one who is unfamiliar with our pain but as one who knows it all too well. Jesus is the ultimate “wounded healer.”

I am learning that the Christian fascination with “blood,” rightly understood, is a fascination with life. Jesus is our life, not in some metaphorical sense but in a very real and ultimate sense. He tangibly gave us life by becoming one of us and defeating the power of death. Because Jesus is our representative, our substitute, we don’t have to experience death. Jesus experienced death for us, conquered it, and now gives us life.

Episode 17

Why do I stay connected to the church?

Episode 16

Episode 15

Sundays are a really hard day for many people. Particularly people who have been hurt by the “church.” It’s a day where Christians gather for corporate worship and community. It is supposed to be a day of celebration. Yet, for many it is a day of shame, guilt, anger, self-protection, and anger.

Not long ago there were many people who were writing about their stories of leaving church. They simply stopped going. Some of these folks are high profile Christians. Sunday gatherings were vapid and empty, the community was shallow, and it all “felt inauthentic.”

So, they simply stopped.

Church, they said, could be experienced anywhere. In nature, alone, in a coffee shop, or the pub.

What these people wrote resonated with me in a significant way. I thought, “I could easily walk away. There is more authenticity at the ball field than in the ‘church’ on any given Sunday.”

I stand by that thought.

The ease with which I could walk away and never again enter into a building with the word “church” on the shingle could be unmatched, by anybody, anywhere. I’m not even kidding.

Over the last 18 months I have become so disgusted with much of my spiritual family. It horrifies me to watch a man who sexually assaulted a teenage girl to receive a standing ovation in his church. I am astounded by those who “go to church” that were willing to set aside their integrity for “a seat at the table.” The arguments and conversations that I have been witness to have left me in shock at how many people place their agendas over their commitment to Jesus.

Even though I would love to walk away I won’t.

Quite simply, I can’t.

Why? How? What? This is the typical phrase I hear talking with friends outside of the church who simply cannot understand why I won’t leave.

If “church” was simply a worship gathering I would be long gone. But “church” is not a worship gathering. “Church” is not a building. “Church” is not an experience. “Church” is not something you do or go to.

“Church” is a people. “Church” is a who. They are a people who have become my family. You see, God the Father adopted me. He adopted me into his family and made me his son. I didn’t do anything to deserve to be adopted into this family. I was part of another family. The family of “self.” In a very real sense I was living an existence of exile. I lived for me, even though I was a good person, my life was selfish. I was moral. But, that morality was driven by self and not by anything more.

My family of origin is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. On both my Mom’s side and my Dad’s side there is messiness. We are a people of big personalities and desires. We drive hard in all we do whether that is work or play. This results, unsurprisingly, in lots of success, fun, and brokenness. Some of our family stories will make your eyes water with laughter and sadness.

It turns out that this new family that I’m a part of is similar. It’s called, “Church.” The “called out ones” and from the beginning it has been a mess of a people. Just give Genesis a quick read, particular the stories about Abraham and his son and grandsons. Oh my…

Just like I would never walk away from my family of origin, I can’t walk away from this family either. I will fight for them both.

I have to.

You see “Church” is often referred to in the Bible as the “body of Christ.”

This new family of mine is more than some sort of social gathering. It is to be the ongoing embodiment of Jesus in the world. If this is the case then, I have to fight for it. I have to fight for it because, in some sense, it is where Jesus is.

To fight for this family, this church, means that I must speak into it and challenge it when it begins to go wrong. As someone who has been called as a pastor, it means that I have to lead the change that needs to happen. It also means that I must celebrate it when it does right! It means that I embrace with joy when it is beautiful.

Over the last 18 months or so the failures of the last thirty years have been exposed. We have traded discipleship for showmanship. The church has offered its soul on the altar of power. We are reaping what we have sown.

The choice before me, before us, is this: Stay and fight or walk away. I understand people walking away. But, this is my family. I can’t. So, I will stay and fight. I will challenge the structures and institutions that are broken. Where modern day Pharisees show up, I will call them to account. Where sin seeks to devour and destroy, I will preach grace and live mercy and embody truth.

Why Church? It’s my family. But more than that, it’s where Jesus is. So, that’s where I want to be too. It’s just that Church needs to look more like the table at Matthew’s house (check out Matthew 9:9–13) than a sanctuary (or the synagogue of Jesus’ day). But, like Jesus I need to be present in both, because in both are where my family is and in both the gospel needs to be proclaimed.

In high school I participated in something called Summer Institute at Eastern Michigan University. It was a great experience. For two weeks I lived on campus with a group of other high school high achievers from various disciplines. I was there for music. It was an amazing time. I learned a lot about writing and creating music. While we were there we had to do some “electives.” One of them was meditation. I remember sitting on the floor on a squishy mat, that was surprisingly comfortable. The instructor spoke in a calm quiet voice and guided us through a time of meditation. I don’t remember anything after the first fifteen minutes. Why? Because I fell asleep!

My experience with prayer has been pretty much the same as that first time I tried to meditate. It has been one of the hardest spiritual disciplines for me to embrace. I know that I shouldn’t say that. I am a pastor and pastors are supposed to be really spiritual and prayer warriors. I confess, I’m not. I really struggle in prayer. I have figured out over the years how to do public prayer. I know the scripts and the words and such that need to be said. But, when I sit down to pray I often find that I either get sleepy or my mind wanders.

I can identify with the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus asked them to keep watch and they fell asleep. Keeping watch in prayer is really, really hard.

If it’s so difficult, why do we do it?

For me it’s simple, because Jesus did it.

Jesus prayed and I want to be like him. So I pray. It’s hard though.

How do you do it?

In a movie about C.S. Lewis’ life he is quoted as saying, “Prayer doesn’t change God, prayer changes us.” I suppose that’s true. Prayer is like spiritual weightlifting. When you start it hurts. It hurts for days. You feel weak and in some sense you even get sore.

I know some people who can pray for hours. I mean, literally hours. A number of weeks ago I was at a meeting with some pastors and one of them prayed, out loud for a solid twenty minutes. My times of private prayer typically last shorter than that.

Over the last few months I have become completely fascinated with the Lord’s Prayer found in Matthew 6. I find myself praying it and often times simply thinking on one phrase of it for periods of time. As I do, different things come to mind that relate to that particular phrase and I talk to God about them. When I say, “I talk to God,” it’s not an out loud kind of thing but more a thoughtfulness. An intentional focusing of my mind on that particular idea and at the same time seeking to be mindful of the presence of God.

As a result of this, my times of prayer are short. They are very focused but very short. There are also multiple times of prayer throughout the day.

But, really why?

I think that there are two reasons I pray. Primarily it’s because I want to be like Jesus. I find Jesus to be the most fascinating person to have ever lived. He was full of grace, love, truth, wisdom, and brilliance. Jesus gave all of himself for his friends and it is beautiful. I want to live that way. I want be a person of grace, love, truth, wisdom, and brilliance. I want to be someone who is willing to empty himself for his friends. When I look at the life of Jesus I see that prayer was a fundamental aspect of his life. Therefore, I am going to make it a central aspect of mine.

The second reason is that when I pray with people I experience a sense of intimacy with them that I don’t in other ways. As we turn our attention to God together there is a connection that we make with one another that is intangible. I don’t close my eyes often when I pray because I want to see my friends pray. I want to see their body language. I want to experience that with them. I pray because I want to enter in with people in a way that I can’t by just having a conversation.

You will notice that I didn’t say that I pray “because it works.” I have come to realize that prayer is not some sort of magical incantation that forces God to do something. He will do as he wills. I have become convinced of that. There is room within the will of God for our choices to matter. I don’t believe in fatalism or ultimate determinism. Yet, I am firmly confident that God has a sovereign will and that can do as he pleases. Prayer is not about the pragmatic. Too many people have prayed for great suffering to end. If that’s all it took then we wouldn’t have had the holocaust. Prayer apparently doesn’t work that way. It’s something different. I don’t really know what that “something different” is though. I wish I did.

At the very least prayer is something that Jesus did and that when we pray together we connect more deeply with one another. That’s enough to keep me praying.

The Bible. It’s one of those books that people tend to have a very strong opinion about. People either love the Bible or hate the Bible. There typically isn’t a middle ground. Some people in the Christian faith venerate the Bible. They worship it like it is a god. Some outside the Christian faith believe it to be nothing more than a collection of fairy tales.

Even now, you probably have a reaction building in your mind. Your thoughts are starting to boil up. You are thinking this guy is about to break liberal and set aside the Bible. You might be thinking that this guy is just another evangelical who is going to say that the Bible is perfect in every way and science is stupid.

You’re wrong. Both of you.

The Bible is, I think we can say with certainty one of the greatest collections of writing that humanity has ever produced. The letters, the history, the poetry. There is beauty in the text in a way that has been rarely been found in any other collection of texts.

At the very least, the Bible is the story of a people who believe in God. At the very least it is their story and it is beautiful.

This is the very least that it is.

For those of us that follow Jesus we embrace the Bible as something a little different. We believe it to be exactly what it says it is. The Bible, we believe is God-breathed. What does that mean? What it doesn’t mean is that we somehow believe God dictated it to people. We believe that mysteriously, through the Holy Spirit, God inspired people to write.

There are a whole lot of technical things that we can talk about regarding the Bible. Things like inerrancy and infallibility. These are debates and discussions that people within the church are really interested in (and a few outside it).

Those debates are great. I enjoy them. The conversations are really interesting and they make me think. Often they leave me in a state of wonderment at the God I believe in.

Yet, for the follower of Jesus they ultimately mean very little. Why? Because at the end of the day the only question that matters for the person who has embraced Jesus as their Messiah and King is this, “Do I believe the Scriptures to be authoritative?”

Regardless of one’s worldview all of us yield to an authority. That might be ourselves. It might be other people. It might be a religious leader. It might be a church. For some of us it is the Bible. I’m one of those people.

When we say these things it forces us to look at the mirror that is the Bible. It demands us to look at ourselves. The Bible challenges us to look at our institutions and to challenge them. It is a constant journey of change. We look into the Bible and in particular we look at the person of Jesus. The way we can best learn to be like Jesus is in the Bible. For me, that is why I embrace it as my authority. You see, I don’t love the Bible for itself. I love the Bible because it is the best means I have to get to know Jesus.

More than anything, I want my life to reflect Jesus. For that to become a reality I have to keep turning to the Bible.

A Thought About Advent

Have you ever been through a dark night of the soul? A time when there seems to be no voice from God? A time where you feel a bit rudderless and your soul is downcast? Dark nights of the soul are well attested to in the history of the Church. Many folks have experienced them. They can either destroy us or they can take us deeper in our relationship with God and his people. In today’s parlance we might call this, “deconstruction.” We question everything and doubt much. Our faith seems to be coming apart and we cannot wrap our minds or hearts around it.

With so many having this experience it makes me wonder if this is something that is a necessary part of our spiritual formation. Could it be that we need our dark nights of the soul? What if these seasons of doubt and questioning are seasons that help us become more like Jesus?

Advent has begun. We are in the weeks leading up to Christmas, the season where we celebrate the coming of the King. For many years I simply lumped Advent and Christmas together in one thing. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I began to think more deeply about the Christian calendar (and I am still learning and thinking about the various seasons) that I started to realize that my understanding of Advent was shallow or just uninformed.

I always liked Advent. It was really cool to light candles, something we Protestants don’t do much of. In the churches that I have been a part Advent meant that a different family would read the selected passage and light the candle. This is always a beautiful time, particularly if there are little ones involved. There is just something sweet about having people read Scripture. Advent was the time that the churches always looked most beautiful with the greens hung.

One thing I never really understood about Advent was why the songs we sang during that time were largely in a minor key. Musically, the minor key gives you a sense of sadness or despair or even fear. It always seemed weird to me and out of context. Everything around us seemed to counter the sound of the music. You’re singing this sad song and the church looks like it’s decorated for a party. The messages that I heard (and gave!) didn’t jive with the Advent music either. It seemed a bit disjointed.

It wasn’t until I started looking at the context of the passages for each week’s Advent reading that it hit me how much I was missing the mark in my understanding of this season of the church. Most of the readings for these weeks are from the prophets. These guys were prophesying about the coming fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Their messages were not happy. They were calling people to faithfulness or experience exile. Yet, in the midst of their preaching there were the reminders that there would be a remnant and a messiah. There would be one would come to set things right. One who would embody faithfulness and bring the people of God out of their exile. Yes there was hope but it was a hope in the context of sadness and heartbreak.

Prior to Jesus’ birth, the people of God were experiencing a period of silence from God. This period had lasted 400 years! The whole of the people of God were experiencing a dark night of the soul. There were many who tried in their own power to become the messiah, but they inevitably failed. I am beginning to understand that Advent is when we remember this time. We remember this time of darkness. It is a time when we recall the reality that there was a time when God was apparently silent.

Darkness.

Silence.

Separation.

Exile.

These are the words that mark Advent. Each week we light another candle. Each week the light begins to break through it begins to win. Until that day, Christmas, when the light defeats darkness completely and we celebrate to coming of the King!

I wonder if many of us experience debilitating dark night’s of the soul and deconstruction because we are out of rhythm? Could it be that by lumping Advent in together with Christmas we lose an opportunity to wrestle through the darkness? I have begun to think that Advent is critical in our faith formation to have a time each year where we wrestle with the brokenness of ourselves, our communities, and the world. What if each year we stepped into the darkness of Advent and questioned, doubted, wondered, and wrestled with God? Could we avoid the crushing weight of a major dark night or deconstruction?

This year, I am trying to embrace the darkness and quiet of Advent. I am using it as a time to evaluate my heart and soul. To seek God and ask how do I need to become more like Jesus? Where am I falling short? How am I embodying the darkness instead of the light?

The darkness of Advent is necessary so that we can see more clearly the light of Christmas.

Episode 14