Tag: Discipleship

Samosas and Pi

Posted on by Heather in Faith and Culture, God, Love, Relationships

I listened to a film critic’s debate about whether current cinema has become too easy for us to watch.  Films like The Help or the Shawshank Redemption were criticized as being too sentimental, too satisfying to watch–providing no deep insight into humanity, moving us nowhere.  A few of the critics lamented how movie viewers need to demand to see more challenging movies rather than seeking movies that make us smile.  While they probably aren’t going to win that argument in the marketplace of stories, I felt properly chastised.  When Netflix surfaced a film called Pi, I thought, “okay, I’ll give something that is ‘edgy’ a try.”

More than once I wanted to turn it off.  It seems that when film pushes the boundaries, it invades the psyche.  I was reminded of the time when all freshmen, including me, who took Humanities Core at UC Irvine had to watch A Clockwork Orange.  It was a similarly unpleasant experience.

The premise of the movie, Pi, is that a mathematician (Max Cohen) finds the pattern that describes the ups and down of the stock market.  Because the number of digits matches a number a group of esoteric Jews seek, they believe that this same number is the one that underlies creation itself–or is the pattern that is God.  Max is already subject to migraines, and knowing this pattern increases their frequency and intensity.  Further, within these episodes are harrowing visions.   In the earthly world, the knowledge Max holds sends bad people after him from every direction.  His solution to all of this craziness? <spoiler alert>  Drill a hole in his head.  <end spoiler>  Who wouldn’t want to watch this for 2 hours?

The movie’s intensity made it into my dreams and woke me up in the middle of the night.  I realized what was missing in this man’s search for truth, what was missing in his search to understand the ultimate code of the universe, was relationship.  There is one friendship, but that too is lost in the search for the numerical pattern of the universe.  When a girl knocks on his door bearing Samosas, he slams it shut.

His compulsive need to find a pattern, to know what the pattern means, made me think about that tree in the Garden of Eden, the one God said not to eat from.  It was the tree of knowledge.   The serpent said eating from it would not kill us but would make those who ate of it like God.  Might this movie be a meditation on what it means to disobey God’s garden command?  For it was the human desire to know what it is God knows that took Max out of all relationship and led him into hell.

After the drilling, there is one more scene:  heaven.  Where, on earth, a young girl can give Max complicated arithmetic problems which he solves quickly in his head, in heaven she sits with him on a bench, gives him a math problem, and he smiles and says, “I don’t know.”

The Bible suggests, from the very beginning, that we are not made to know everything but we are made for relationship.  We are made for relationship–with these words I join a chorus of preachers.  But I will differ from many by saying that the Bible isn’t interested in giving you the 10 ways to make your relationships last or in helping you find your life long partner based on 30 bits of scripture.  The fact that such a message means snipping scripture from its context suggests humans are at play.  Remember that the apostle Paul makes clear that, if we can help it, we should not enter into marriage because it will distract us from following Jesus.  The Bible isn’t interested in helping you find your lifelong love.  But the Bible is intent on inviting you into love.

The Garden of Eden warns when we allow our search for anything to get in the way of relationship with God we lose ourselves.  It isn’t that the pursuit of knowledge is bad.  There was much to learn about in the garden, and God was there to be Adam and Eve’s guide.  But when their search for truth overrides their relationships what is left is scary.  The Garden of Eden story seems less frightening than was the movie in that it describes not one who has literally lost his mind, but how the world really is…pain in childbirth, backbreaking work to till the land, and a distance between us and God.  If we’re looking for something more akin to a nightmare we might recall those scenes from the prophets where God is fed up with loving a people who refuse to love. There the enemy is allowed to enter into the people’s homes, to destroy their place of worship, and to send them away.  The language of God’s ire is vivid and abundant.

There are many who draw out that Biblical language and state that they will not believe in any religion with such a God.  They miss the point.  It is exactly because the “chosen people” turned away from relationship with God that God became the one who condemns.  When we turn away from love, from loving, from relationship, we are left, as was Max Cohen, with people, with a God, who just want to use us.  However, when we turn towards love, we experience God’s love.

Relationship is at the heart of faith.  Faith deepens when we choose to love God and love our neighbors.  And faith compels us, when we are struggling, to do the things that allow love to take hold of us.

Practically speaking, from my own experience, this means that when we are feeling low, apart, even attacked, it helps to enter more fully into relationships, to become more vulnerable, and to allow love to act.  It is the opposite of what I want to do when I’m tired, uncertain, or hurting.  My first impulse is to run away, whether it be in imagining a solo road trip or playing on my computer.  I confess, I allow myself a little of both.  But what’s even better…?  Being held tight by my family and holding them tight; sharing some of my life with people I meet at the gym as they share of their lives; allowing the people I meet in church to walk with me and I with them in the ways of faith; writing these messages where I seek to know God’s word for this time and place and reading the writings of others who are engaged in a similar task; reading and watching creative endeavors–some that are satisfying to watch and others which wake me up at night; and prayer.  Some prayers I focus on Jesus, in others I rest in God’s word, sometimes I talk a lot, other times I’m quiet.    None of these are “the way,” but each is an example of how I enter more fully into love at this time of my life.

Thankfully, I suspect none of us are as extreme as Max.  When someone knocks on the door with Samosas we are going to, at the very least, open the door.  But still, the question remains…how will you move closer, be more intimate, love more deeply God and neighbor?  What are the habits you already have or one you might add into your life which allow you to remain open to love?  Within your list, there is your garden where you walk with God.

In Christ,  Heather

Far and Wide

Posted on by Heather in Church, Faith and Culture, God, Jesus, Women in Ministry

In seminary at Yale Divinity School I was awed to find myself in a vast landscape–that of the Christian witness spoken through the centuries.  My perspective, having grown up in the Southern California United Church of Christ, was limited by comparison.  I realized I had only seen faith from one small corner of scholarship in this time and place.  There were more voices to hear, endless voices of faith and ways of understanding God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.  Add to that the Jewish traditions that are woven into scripture, and the totality of the Judeo-Christian witness reaches back to the days of creation.  This faith tradition is varied and beautiful, reaching far and wide, inviting us into a relationship with the living Creator, God’s self.

The vastness of the Judeo-Christian faith starkly contrasts with the image of the temple, the day Jesus arrived, as described in the gospel of John.

“In the temple Jesus found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables.”  (2: 14)

Entering into the space where people came to meet God, Jesus is accosted by the sights and sounds of animals being sold for sacrifice to atone for sin.

In the claustrophobic chaos, the faithful find their way to the stalls in order to buy the appropriate animal as described in Jewish law.  Imagine the sounds, the smells, and the difficulty of holding an animal long enough to carry it to the priest for the altar.  How easy it would be to lose the intent, to lose God’s larger story, in the business of what must be done.

Recall, the Jewish people have come to the Jerusalem temple to celebrate the Passover, the day when God freed Israel from Egyptian bondage.  They remembered a day of blood and horror and salvation.  The night before Passover, each family of Israel was to sacrifice a lamb and put the lamb’s blood on their door.  God passed over the households that had this sign, inflicting the last plague on the rest of Egypt, killing their first born sons.  Only this last plague turned Pharaoh’s head long enough to allow Israel to leave his service and enter into a new life with God.

Israel, the freed people, enters into the wilderness, a vast landscape which opened them to experiences of God they had never before known.  Beautiful experiences, as when they saw God as a pillar of cloud and fire.  Frightening experiences, like a snake rising up from the desert floor.  After a generation had passed away, the new generation led by Joshua, entered, with God, into the land God promised.  God’s presence there is marked by the Jerusalem temple.

Having come to the temple, the symbol of God’s promise and presence, the crowd enters in thinking about what must be done to atone for sin. How small is their view as the din of animal noises and seller’s voices echo off the high walls of the courtyard.  Is this really the freedom that God envisioned long ago when blood was shed in Egypt?

Jesus gets angry…very angry.

“Making a whip of cords, [Jesus] drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle.  He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.  He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here!  Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” (2:15 – 17)

I’m sure Jesus’ actions confused the temple leaders of the day.  They were only doing what was expected.  Maybe the root of that which would debilitate the churches of this day is similar.  It is all too easy to get into a business that, in its essentials, is quite similar to selling sin offerings: we do what has always been done in order to placate what someone has said is the Holy Way instead of seeking to invite all people into God’s grace.

Jesus was angry because the temple had created a way for people to placate the Holy One instead of opening the doors to a relationship with His Father and our Father.

Church practices are rarely questioned, indeed, just as in Jesus’ time, there is always a scripture to point to defend them.  Every such practice can be justified through tradition…and will continue to be as long as we are trading in our earthly temples.

Would that Jesus enter in, whip in hand, to tell us to get out.  Stop selling your doves here, your narrow way to peace with God.  This is my Father’s house.

In Christianity, we come to know God through Jesus.  When Jesus saw the faithful confined to buying sin offerings, he overturned the tables.  Given this, is it not possible that God is unhappy with tradition bound rules even if they can be justified by a small portion of scripture?  Isn’t possible that, even now, God continues to overturn the tables of our limited understanding that we might better know God’s way?

When Jesus saw that the temple, the place where one could come to enter into God’s presence, had as its first and foremost concern making people act according to tradition, he told them to get out.

Then, he pointed to himself as the temple which would be destroyed and in 3 days raised up.

Of course, the temple faithful had no idea of that which he spoke.  For it required leaving behind expectations in order to imagine God in a new form, one who would not kill, but would die to set us free.

May we allow God to make us free to enter a faith which is varied and beautiful, which reaches far and wide, and invites us into a relationship with the living God.

In Christ,

Heather

Faith of Jesus

Posted on by Heather in Faith Activity, Jesus

One of the seasons of the Way–the earliest name given to Christianity–is Lent.  The season’s beginning is marked with a worship service known as Ash Wednesday.  As the name suggests, ashes are central to the imagery and the ritual where the sign of the cross, put on the forehead with ashes, is a sign of our mortality.  This is not a service everyone chooses to attend, for the focus is often inward, the worship prayerful, and the leaving in silence.

Yet, worship is a way to make you available to God.  Sometimes it is in the quietness that God can most effectively speak.

My ponderings today come after attending a delightful Ash Wednesday service which, along with the usual scriptures from the Psalms, featured an image of a Phoenix (the mythical bird that becomes flame when it dies and is reborn out of his ashes).  This image of resurrection led me to ponder about the faith of Jesus.

Pastors and theologians often talk about having faith in Jesus.  Jesus is our Savior, the one sent to allow us to become close to God.  In this theological imagining Jesus is a type of Intercessor, one who, like Moses, frees us from the slavery of sin and allows us access to God’s words and ways.

Given this vision, Lent regularly features an honest self examination to see where sin has a hold on us.  Ash Wednesday is an occasion to read a familiar parable of Jesus about the Pharisee and the tax collector in the temple.   Both men come to pray.  The Pharisee prays, “Thank God I’m not like that tax collector over there.”  The tax collector prays, “Forgive me… for I am a sinner.”  In his telling, Jesus makes the hated tax collector the hero, highlighting the humility necessary for one who wishes to truly know God.  Plenty of ink has been spilled on the need for us to admit our sin in order for God to enter in. Continue on with this penitentiary practice for all of Lent and you have an experience that fits within the vision of the Council of Nicea (325 AD) where the Lenten season was established.

But the Bible provides more of a multifaceted voice than did the council that met so long ago.  There is room to re-imagine Lent–these 40 days (not including Sundays)–before Easter as a time when we are called to a faith like Jesus.   This theological imagining leads us not just to the cross but to the resurrection.

Three times in the gospel of Mark, Jesus says something like this…

“The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.”  (Mark 9: 31)

In all three times that Jesus talks about dying, the disciples choose to not understand.

In fact, when Jesus first says these words, Peter rebukes him, trying to stop what was to happen.  And Jesus responds, “Get behind me Satan!  For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” (Mark 8:33)

The final reference to death and resurrection opens up a heated argument between the sons of Zebedee about who gets to sit on Jesus right when Jesus enters “into glory.”  (Mark 10:35)

While the disciples couldn’t hear Jesus, because they were likely so afraid of losing the way they’ve come to experience God, perhaps we can.

Notice when Jesus speaks about his death, he also speaks of his resurrection.

This is the key to having the faith of Jesus.

Jesus never talks about his death without speaking about his resurrection.  We might even speculate that Jesus kept going, kept doing the difficult things, because he believed in the resurrection.

To have the faith of Jesus, then, is to believe that, even when you are living in the ashes of what once was, resurrection is possible.  And, to push it one step further, when you are heading into the fire because it is the way God has called you to go and even your friends sound like the enemy, go anyway, believing God will have the last word.   Lent reminds us to stop playing it safe.  It is time to let go of what we fear losing and instead follow the one voice that gives us life.

Such a faith did not make Jesus superhuman, unaffected by the hostility of those who would send the “King of the Jews”  to the cross.  Jesus still cried out in the Garden of Gethsemane for another way.   Yet, Jesus’ faith allowed these words…”Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.”  (Mark 14: 36)

During this Lenten season, those of you who like to mark the season with a offering can still give up  candy and eat fish on Fridays.  But as you do, as those cravings come, use the feeling to allow your vision to go beyond your own failings.  Look up!  Listen.  Listen carefully.

What is it God would have you do?

 

In Christ,

Heather

If

Posted on by Heather in Faith Activity, Faith and Culture, God, Jesus

My daughter’s school assigned her fifth grade class to create a poetry notebook, to contain both poems she wrote and those she found and enjoyed. To further this I read a poetry anthology from my childhood with her, and we came upon Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “If—.“ On revisiting this poem for the first time in a long while I began to feel both connection—and unease. The words read, on their face, as sage advice. And, yet, it feels wrong–like it is pointing in a direction that is, in some sense, different from the way God, my life, and my faith has made me. It made me want to figure out just what makes it troublesome. Perhaps that reflection would help me to see and proclaim the truth that guides me.

Here’s the poem: If—

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, not talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you have your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them:  “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fell the forgiving minute
With sixty seconds; worth of distance run—
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling

There are, indeed, golden lines here. Pondering which is your favorite will tell you something about you. They are verses to carry, a voice that recognizes what it means to be sane in the midst of brokenness. Wouldn’t we hope that ups and downs and twists and turns wouldn’t take away our purpose or our finely cultivated adult selves? Wouldn’t we like an iron will, an ability to hang on, despite the fatigue?

Henry Morton Stanley, dubbed by those he met on his journeys “The Breaker of Rocks,” had such an iron will. In 1887 he went into Africa seeking Dr. Livingston, and as would befit a man of his nickname, Stanley survived to tell the tale. An extraordinary man to be sure, but what caught my eye was how the authors Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney chose to use his example to explore what helps humans have an iron will. They quote various studies, the last one of which tells how the will is strengthened by a “focus on lofty thoughts.”

Researchers including Kentaro Fujita and Yaacov Trope “found that self-control improved among people who were encouraged to think in high level terms (Why do you maintain good health), and got worse among those who thought in lower-level terms (how do you maintain good health)…. The results showed that a narrow, concrete, here-and-now focus works against self-control, whereas a broad, abstract, long term focus supports it (Smithosonian, December 2011, 86).”

The lofty goal of Rudyard Kipling’s poem is to become a man. The poem suggests when we can gracefully negotiate misfortune and fortune alike, we have arrived at adulthood. I suspect his words are of a piece with the time and culture in which he writes, a place where one could believe in the possibility of humans to overcome the vagaries of our own soul. Unfortunately, at this moment in time adults are often portrayed as a Simpson or Kardashian, whose dirty laundry is put out on the (internet) line for all to see. Far from the humanist vision where adults are able to put away childish pettiness, to be an adult today is to be able to share in the laughter around our own ineptitude.

While Jesus speaks about welcoming the children, Christian theologians have another way to talk about what it means to be human. The answer most often given goes something like this…when we desire and seek to come into relationship with God, when our will is aligned with God’s will, we come into our fullest humanity. To be human is to be in relationship with God. You can’t get any loftier than that!

So Kipling’s focus on what it means to be a Man is akin to a focus on the “how” to maintain good health rather than the “why.” As such it feels awfully heavy, like being told to read the list of exercises one must do every day. It makes me wonder, do I really want to be a Man*

But if to be a Man (or Woman) means to be in relationship with the Creator of all things, the one who imagined and spoke the world into existence, and from clay and breath gave life to humanity, I’m interested. To be able to hear God’s word for me through scripture—and through prayer–is an amazing possibility, an amazing experience. God really can speak to us! To be guided by a divine will that understands and creates possibilities beyond our own psyches sends us out on new journeys–new adventures. Morton was to find Livingston, but Livingston went first because he was sent by God.

Finally, this image of human will holding on is seems to conflict with the motto of those that follow the twelve steps, “to let go and let God.” Their first step is to connect with their higher power, with God as they understand God.

Connect, not with your will, but with the will of God. They may not be identical.

The reason why the poem “If” has resonance is it too talks about surrender, not holding on to what has been lost, or seeking retribution for wrongs done. It acknowledges that much will be broken and we won’t have the perfect tools to fix them, but there will be tools. It preaches that neither triumph nor disaster make you what you are. But the Will… and if it is not mine but thy will be done… if it is God’s will that holds on, that gives us the courage to hold on… if I am surrendering to that which seeks to hold, guide, and love me… then…

Take my life, and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee;
Take my moments and my days,
Let them flow in ceaseless praise.

And, may we be Man and Woman enough for God.

*Irony (his and mine) intended.

Life-giving Transformation

Posted on by Heather in Faith Activity, Faith and Culture, Forgiveness, God, Gospel of John, Gospel of Mark, Jesus, Uncategorized

Before Jesus begins his ministry, people from all over Judea go out to the wilderness to John the Baptist.  There they hear John’s message to “repent,” to turn toward a new direction, and receive a baptism for the forgiveness of sins (Matthew 3: 1- 6, Mark 1: 2 -6, Luke 3: 1-6, John 1: 19-23).  John is pictured as a wild man wearing camel’s hair, eating locusts and honey, announcing to all who come that “there is one coming who is much greater than me.”   As scripture focuses on John’s role of being a herald of Jesus, it is easy to overlook that a multitude of people left the city and went away from the temple in order to have a spiritual experience with this wild man that they could no longer get through their religion.

They wanted something new–something to shake up their traditional ways.  Perhaps their experience of the temple had become too much like their experience of the world around them.  That some of the religious elite were in partnership with the Roman government to keep the peace is made clear from the battles Jesus would soon fight.

And, yet, the river Jordan is not a pictured as a place of a political rally, but rather as a place of transformation: a place of personal new beginnings, and a place where Jesus comes before he calls his disciples.

Transformation is at the very heart of Christianity.  Two ways scripture leads to it are through the ideas of repentance (to turn around) and forgiveness of sin (release from the past).  It is the releasing of what has kept us apart from God that allows God to move us in a new direction.  The multitude came to the river Jordan.  There they heard John the Baptist affirm their intuition—it is good to turn around and try a new way.  Enter the water, be cleansed of all that holds you to your past, that you may be free to go with God.

Let’s be clear that transformation is as crucial for those who have tried to live pious lives as it is for those who are doing the things their mothers would cry out against.  For all of us there are times when our lives have become too close to what the world expects and, in those times, we lose touch with God.

As a result, the life that once was ours seeps away.  Often, our religion, whatever it is, urges us to do the same old things that have become polluted by community expectations.  We go to church because “good wholesome people” go to church and it is good for our children.  Even spiritual practices meant to help us hear God’s voice can become too familiar, or a way to brag about our spiritual prowess, rather than allowing God the opening to take us on a new journey.

When our way of being which fed our strength and mission has run its course–and it will–to find a new way requires transformation.   Just as it is not easy for the caterpillar to turn into a butterfly, so it is not easy for us to choose to enter into the effort of change.

It takes God to move us.  God-given insight comes in innumerable ways.  After all, God is the Creator, and thus there is no limit to God’s creativity in engaging us.  It could be with a change in employment–or a word from a stranger.  It could be an opportunity that has come your way–or a remembered dream.  The call to take a new path on your journey with God happens more than once in a lifetime.

There were two doctors, one the head of family medicine at UCI, and the other the head of geriatrics in the Presbyterian hospital in New York, who spoke on the radio of the need to continue to keep the brain flexible as we grow older…stay engaged, try new things.  When I was in school they warned us our generation needed to be flexible because the work world would change as we grew older.  Expect to have more than one career, the experts told us.  Even the secular world understands: our ability to walk a new path keeps us alive.

Still, if you are anything like me, when you feel vulnerable (and the need to change yourself makes you feel vulnerable, indeed), your first reaction is to go back to the strengths you’ve developed over the years whether or not they are of God.

It often takes a “God movement” to lead us beyond insight into action–to help us let go, turn around, and walk a new path with our God.

The ministry of Jesus begins with a God movement.  Multitudes came to the river Jordan because there they received a baptism which sanctified, made holy, their need to let go of the familiar and to try a new way.  Jesus began his ministry in the same water.  The baptism in the river Jordan empowered people to turn and follow God’s voice into the wilderness and beyond.

Perhaps today you would like to join in with this God movement of transformation.  Knowing we all need to splash in the river Jordan every now and then, to prepare for what God wants to do with us next, use your imagination and washing time to prepare not just to meet the day, but to find a new mission with God.  Perhaps you can use your day off to find one of the many flowing rivers in the nearby mountains and touch the cold water to your forehead as a sign of your desire to turn around.    Or use the pastor you know or the church to which you belong to take a moment to confess what it is you want to let go, hear the words of forgiveness, and turn a new direction.  However you enter the waters, understand that you don’t go in alone, but in your action you join with the multitudes of the centuries who come to transform their ways,

You go with Jesus.

Heather

The One Voice that Matters

Posted on by Heather in Faith and Culture, God, Gospel of Mark

We Christians are a strange lot. 

In my mail the other day, on top of the advertisements was one of an unhappy man and an unhappy woman sleeping in the same bed but turned away from one another. A friend of my husband’s, shown this flyer, thought it was probably advertising a linen sale. Closer inspection reveals that this carefully chosen image with the “My Pillow and Me” text was actually for a start up church.

Back to the pile of advertisements, just underneath the unhappy couple, was a rather different image…the cover for the first Victoria’s Secret Valentine’s Day catalog.

Maybe Victoria’s Secret has an alternative way to approach the couple’s challenges.

We Christians have a problem. It doesn’t look like fun to be a Christian. Even the church advertised on the sleek post card, which I’m sure uses fun contemporary music and preaching from a young, engaging family man, looks like its seeking unhappy people to fill its chairs. Come and bring your problems to us and we will make you into happy, wholesome people. The Bible tells us how.

While Jesus wasn’t advertising lingerie, I always picture him with eyes that, when they look at me, make my heart flutter. It is good to walk with Jesus. 

Not because Jesus is going to make you into a good person. To be good is too small a goal, too determined by what those around us call good. Such a quest keeps our ears listening to the wrong set of voices.

In college I earned some of my keep by refereeing basketball and baseball games. We were cautioned against having “rabbit ears,” a term for hearing all the grumbling, shouting comments made about our calls. The good news for the basketball referee is that the 24 second clock starts five seconds after you hand the team the ball, automatically limiting the length of appeals. It is much harder in a game like baseball when the screaming fits of the one who thinks they’ve been wronged continue indefinitely. To be a good referee means your goal is not to please all the voices on the court or the field or the crowd. To be a good referee is to make the calls that allow the game to be well played.

When you are a player, if all is going right, you don’t even think about the referee. You have the opportunity to leap and run and tackle and block. I didn’t referee football, but it’s the playoffs, so bear with me. You have the ability to use all of your natural gifts, and all the gifts of those on the team, to create moments of pure bliss. A football spectacularly caught and run into the end zone; a no look pass that leads to a slam dunk; a tackle of the running back behind the line of scrimmage; a block high in the air of the superstar’s shot. Aren’t these the moments that make the game worth watching?

It is good to walk with Jesus because when he sends the ball your way, he believes you will catch it. When you do, when you have those moments when you know you’ve done something that is pleasing to God, is that not bliss?

For those worried if there’s a place for them on the team, you should know there doesn’t appear to be any kind of tryout. In the gospel of Mark, Jesus just says, “follow me.” And James and John put down the net they were focused on mending, get out of the boat where their father and servants remain, and follow. They don’t show any natural ability. Just get up and follow. 

Now, I suspect there were some voices raised in spirited protest at that moment. But the gospel’s ears have tuned them out. The gospel is not interested in what the servants or the dad has to say. Instead it records only Jesus’ voice, and I quote from the King James Version because the words are so familiar…”Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men.”

Spoken by just anyone, these cryptic words would not have moved anyone out of the boat. But some have served under a commander. You knew his voice. Is it not true that you would follow the voice of the one who is there to keep you alive?

A cacophony may surround you, there may be shouts and cries, there may be your own stubborn voice making it clear that you don’t like what you are being asked to do, or another’s voice who is telling you what you need to do. But there’s only one voice that leads us to life everlasting.

What keeps us alive, what keeps us in the game, is when we, upon hearing Jesus’ voice, get out of whatever boat we’ve been on for a bit too long. Christianity is not a settling down type of faith. It is rather a faith that calls us to go and fish people out of the small worlds they are swimming in to show them Jesus’ way: sometimes by example, other times by words and prayer, and yet other times by opening up and sharing your God story with one who is eager to hear.

I will make you to become fishers of men.

Call these words from Jesus a mission statement and notice how it is big enough to encompass wherever you are in your life. It is not dependent upon your job, or role, or age, or health.

And now notice that Jesus says “I will make you to become….” There is some training involved. Jesus plans to show us the way. These words come at the beginning of the gospel of Mark. There is much scripture yet to be told before we enter Jerusalem, see Jesus nailed to a cross, and look into the empty tomb. There are many disciples to be gathered, people to heal, demons to expel, doors to knock on, and bread to be served. There is much to learn.

We don’t learn how to be a master fisherman or fisherwoman in a day. Even when we do know some of the basics like how to put a lure on a line or a worm on a hook, how to cast out and reel in, how to share our story, how to pray, how to listen, and how to challenge, we still sometimes let the big one get away.

The great thing about a Jesus mission is that it continues on beyond our failings, beyond the world’s failings. When we accept Jesus’ mission we don’t suddenly become superstars, but we enter into a new arena where the rules beckon us to see beyond the challenges of this world.

So take the ball and run. With Jesus, there’s always an opening. With practice, each one of us has a chance to break out into those blissful moments when we know we have pleased God.

Pleasing to God

Posted on by Heather in Faith and Culture, God, Gospel of Mark, Paul, Psalms, Uncategorized

When the firm ground shifts, praise God.

As I started to prepare for my next preaching assignment (North Long Beach Christian Church, January 22, 10:45), I turned to this week’s lectionary texts–a set of readings used by many Christian churches across denominations.  They struck me with full force.

“If riches increase, do not set your heart on them.” (Psalm 62: 10)

“For the present form of this world is passing away.” (1 Corinthians 7: 31)

And, in describing Jesus’ calling of his disciples, Mark writes:

“As he went a little farther, [Jesus] saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets.  Immediately he called to them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.” (Mark 1: 19-20)

These scriptures remind us that family, riches, and our current work do not last.  God’s mission for us must be large enough to move us beyond our current roles.  “For the present form of this world is passing away.”

Paul’s summation:  “Let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it.” (1 Corinthians 7: 29-31)

Stop everything!  Paul shouts.  Seek only to please the Lord.

Stop worrying about finding one who will love you, stop fretting over the possible loss of your job, let go of your anxiety about what you will eat, drink, or wear.  “Follow me,” says Jesus.  Come and please God.

In the word of our culture:  Really?  We look around and see what others have and what we do not.  When someone else has what we most want–what we have spent years faithfully preparing for–how can we not feel jealous and angry?  When we’re losing our job, when we’re graduating from college into a hopeless job market, when we’re losing our home, when we’re betrayed by the one we thought loved us–when what we thought we could count on is no longer, how can we go on believing that God is on our side?

While the Bible expects us to cry out as in the Psalms, the word given to us who are experiencing personal landslides is not an answer to our torment, but an action:  cling to God.  Join with the Psalmist to praise God.

On God rests my deliverance and my honor;  My mighty rock, my refuge is in God (Psalm 62: 7)

And yet, perhaps because they are so often used, these words are too easy, providing a vision of comfort and stillness.  It doesn’t have to be that way.  The word from Mark is not to be still, but to move out with Jesus–to please God.  A more contemporary song of praise–Matt Redman’s “Blessed be the Name,” puts at the end of the song’s crescendo these words:

You give and take away, You give and take away, My heart will choose to say, Blessed be the Lord.

Redman’s lyrics are, to the mindset of many, downright offensive.  They are strong enough to get my attention.  What do you mean God gives and takes away?  Before them comes…

Every blessing you pour out, I turn back to praise; When the darkness closes in, Lord Still I will say…

Blessed be the name of the Lord, Blessed be your name; Blessed be the name of the Lord, Blessed be your glorious name.

When the football player who became a houshold name in the past few months lost his playoff game and entered into the realm of reporters, was he not trying to do just this?

Couched in all the imperfections of a man, we don’t believe it.  It offends.  It is easier to find fault, discount him as being naive and insensitive.  And he may be both.  And, at times, we may be both.  But as the ground beneath our feet moves, it may be better for our souls to let go of the judgment and instead join our voice with one who is trying his best to hold onto his God when the road, for now, has ended.

Let us join with the Psalmist and offend this world’s sensibilities when, having lost something great, we joyfully proclaim God has another way.  Let us shout out that on God rests our honor:  Join in…”My heart will choose to say….”  Let us be prepared to follow Jesus.

Long ago, the sons of Zebedee sat in a fisherman’s boat, mending their nets with their dad looking on.  How small is their world.  How tiny their expectatoins.  Hunched over, their mission, which seemed as essential to them that moment as breathing, is simply to fix their tattered net that it might once again hold fish.  The hired men wait for them to finish.  Their dad, knowing only what he has always done, is fixed in place.

How often do we get caught up in our own net mending?

Praise God who puts an end to that.  Our lives are not meant to be so narrowly defined.

If the ground under our feet is sinking sand, it is time to rise up, leave the mending to those who need the work, and use our gifts–the gifts that no one can take away–to please our God.

Blessed be the name of the Lord, blessed be your glorious name.

In Christ,

Heather