jason :: Blog

"To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless...We have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world"

I dislike the phrase, "God wants you to be happy."  Because it implies that if you are unhappy, you are somehow outside of God's favor, or living a way that God does not want.  I have no doubt that God blesses us, and promises blessings and gives reasons for hope.  And I don't think that all of those blessings come "afterward".  I myself believe to have been blessed with a job, a car, and a great community/church.  I try to be thankful for these things, but I forget a lot.

There is a lie that wants you to believe that God gives us "the good life", whatever that means.  There's a similar lie that wants you to believe that God wants His "followers" to desire, pursue, and attain power in this world.  There is a lie that wants you to believe that acting a certain way will bring you money and security; that the blessings of God are the same things an insecure, greedy man would desire.

The opening quote is from the Bible, in a letter written by Paul, who, without doubt, gave his life to God and to others.  He spent much of his life in prison.  He wasn't "happy" a lot of the time.  He and his friends were hungry, thirsty, brutally treated, and homeless.  They were the scum of the earth and the refuse of the world.  And yet they were most definitely living the way God wanted them to live, and God was most definitely blessing them, and blessing the world through them.  In addition to the lies listed above, there is a lie stating that if you work hard, you will have what you need.  However, the next sentence after Paul says he is homeless, he says "We work hard with our own hands."

The Psalms, the expressions of God's people, express joy AND anguish, praise AND anger.  We are called to be the Body of Christ, which was broken and poured out for the healing of the world.

A friend of mine says that she does not feel that she has the right to express her religion without the threat of going to prison.  This isn't to say that she doesn't believe in religious freedom.  I take it to mean that, fortunately or unfortunately, expressing beliefs is not an inherant right.  That Jesus said we are to live and love like him, and if we live and love like him, we will be persecuted like him.

We are called to be broken and poured out.  To serve in the Kingdom of God, not to reign in the kingdom of men.  Not to live in clean, comfortable, safe places.  Not to judge the poor and hungry, or those constantly encountering frustrations or attacks, but to defend and love these people.  Many of the followers of God were and are these people.

I don't know if this is an angry post, or if I have a point, or if it has a flow.  I know that I was struck by the words of Paul, saying that he was hungry and thirsty and brutally treated and homeless, and that there are lies that would place much judgement on Paul based on these facts.

I never understood the following parable until last night at church.  I always felt that it showed greediness, or a love for money, or a goodness in getting more money.  It doesn't.  But it is about selfishness.  Jesus told this parable when he was teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven.

   Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability [my bible says that a talent is worth about $1000]. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. So also, the one with the two talents gained two more. But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money. 

   After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. 'Master,' he said, 'you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.'  His master replied, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!' 

   The man with the two talents also came. 'Master,' he said, 'you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained two more.'  His master replied, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!' 

   Then the man who had received the one talent came. 'Master,' he said, 'I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.'  His master replied, 'You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed?  Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.  Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. For everyone who has, will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' 

See what I mean?  It looks like Jesus is advocating increasing your wealth.  But that's not it at all.  This is a parable, about the Kingdom of Heaven, and so it is not at all about money.

We talked last night about the Kingdom of Heaven.  About how it is not necessarily a place.  It is a realm of authority.  It is a place where things are like they were made to be, where God's will is being exerted.  Yes, it refers to what happens when Jesus comes back.  There will be a new Heaven AND a new Earth, and they will be together.  God will make everything "good", like it was in the beginning.  Everything will be renewed and restored.  Healed.

But Jesus said the Kingdom of Heaven is in our midst.  It is within us.  It is now.

So what does that mean?  And why am I so struck by this parable?

Well, it goes back to salvation and reconciliation.  In the letter entitled "Colossians", Paul says that,

"God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in [Jesus], and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross." 

And in the letter entitled, "2 Corinthians", Paul wrote,

"...if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!  And all this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them.  And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation."

So what does this mean?

Have you ever received an incredible gift?  A gift that was almost too big?  A gift that somehow implied responsibility?  I have.  My amazing friend Adam gave me a car.  He told me that he didn't feel comfortable with the fact that he could afford a new car while his friends didn't have one at all.  And so God arranged things so that I could get the car.  I didn't know how to respond.  It happened very suddenly.  I didn't know what to say to Adam, his mom, or God, but thank you.  And that seemed so hollow.  I knew that I wanted to use this car the way I had received it: as a gift, a free gift.  I wanted to use it as something not my own, as a tool to bless people, as a constant opportunity to help.  This was how it was given, and I felt that it was how I was supposed to use it.  That didn't last very long.  I am presently in the process of reclaiming that mindset.

But that is what this parable is all about.

The Master has given to his servants.  They have been entrusted with something.  Two of them go out and increase two-fold what they've been given.  They please the Master and are rewarded.  One of them takes what he has been given and hides it.  He buries it in the dirt.  He keeps it to himself.  He does not go out and try to increase the blessing he's been given.  He has been entrusted with something, and he is selfish with it.  He is thrown outside the Kingdom.

We have received a blessing.  Our sins have been forgiven, and we are welcomed into the Kingdom, the Kingdom which is now, within us, and forevermore, everlasting.  The Kingdom which is life more abundant, life without boundaries.

But we are not to be selfish with this blessing.  It was freely given, and we are to freely give it.  We are to increase the blessing, increase the Kingdom.  We are not to hide it, not to be selfish with it.  He has committed to us the message of reconciliation, and we are not to deny it!  Paul also says in 2 Corinthians "As God's co-workers, we urge you not to receive God's grace in vain." and again in 1 Corinthians, "This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed.  Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful."  He has given us the ministry of reconciliation.  We are not to be satisfied with our "ticket into heaven", with our gift, our blessing, and bury it in the dirt, and forget about the rest of the world.  To do so is to be "wicked and lazy".  To do so is to be a "worthless servant".  To do so is to deny ourselves the Kingdom.  God has called us to something.  He wants us to partner in this reconciliation.  Yes, Jesus died as atonement for our sins.  He paid a price that we cannot.  But to skip straight to his death and what that means for our sins is to skip his life, which was spent showing us how to live, showing us what the Kingdom of Heaven was.  We are called to live a certain way.  We are called to be the Body of Christ.  We are called to heal and reconcile and love.

We are to pour out the blessings of the Master onto the world.  We are to spread this message of reconciliation.  We are to increase the Kingdom, the abundant life, the Love.

The Bible (John 17:3+) says that eternal life is knowing God, and knowing Jesus, whom God sent.  Also, it says several times that if we love, we will have life.  We are to pour out the love of the Father we've been given on to all those who need to feel that love.  We are called to be a living part of this reconciliation.

So at church we talked about the Kingdom of Heaven, which I have a feeling we will be exploring for a long time.  It is not a simple concept, and yet its manifestation can be almost invisibly simple.

Somewhere during the discussion, my friend Dan said that the phrases "saved" and "salvation" get perverted and can actually point away from the Kingdom.

Which got me to thinking.

The term "getting saved" is, by it's nature, self-centered.  It is about one's self being spared something.  Even getting rescued, as great as that is, is about one's self.

"Getting saved" implies the image of someone in a pit, and Jesus comes along and takes them out of that pit.  Which is beautiful, and it does happen.  This is a wonderful blessing and miracle that is so much at the heart of what God wants for us, and unfortunately gets skipped a lot.  We forget that we were sinners, and that Jesus has cleared all that out.  That we are now a new creation.  The old has passed away.

However, it is in this idea of the old passing away that we encounter a problem.  People preach and accept the idea of "getting saved" as "Alright, I'M out of MY pit.  MY sins have been taken care of.  I'm on my way to accept MY reward in Heaven, just as soon as I die, or as soon as Jesus comes back."  The message ends at the person climbing out of the pit.

So there's this image of a person getting saved from a pit.  And ending there.

I prefer the idea of being called.

True, the Bible does speak of being saved.  And like I said, that's an important idea.  But it also uses the term "called" (just go to biblegateway.com and search for "called".  pay attention to how it's used after the book of acts).  In the first chapter of Romans, Paul says we're called to belong to Jesus, called to be saints, and later, in another letter, he tells us we're called to live in peace.

The idea of calling implies to me the idea of someone passing through a town or field, ringing a bell or singing a song or shouting at the top of their lungs.  It's an idea of calling people out of something and into something.  An idea of people coming together.  The idea becomes communal.

And when you say to yourself that you've been called, you have to ask what it is you've been called to.  Where it is you're going.  Who it is that's calling.  Who all these other people are answering the call too.

Yes, we've been called out of something, but we've been called to something.  This is a communal calling, a calling that brings people together, a calling that heals.  We've been called to follow, to do, to live, to love.

Maybe a better image is that of a trumpet calling people to action, to a mission.  But not a mission to add numbers to "the church", not a mission to convert, not a crusade.  But a mission to go and lay yourself down, pour yourself out.  A mission to step out into this abundant life and overflow and spill out life and love.

When you're in a pit, you're separated.  And when that beautiful amazing event of being saved from the pit happens, you have to realize that you are now free to be connected.  To run towards the Caller and to gather with the Called, to go out and fulfill the Calling.

Jesus said:

I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.

My church, or at least, the part of the Church, the Body of Christ, that I am a part of, is striving for community.  We're hoping to embrace the connection, community, and family that comes with the reconciliation being made real through the sacrifice of Jesus.  His sacrifice is reconciling not only us with God, but us with each other.  The new creations we are becoming are all a part of the gathering together that God is doing.  And we want to see this, and live this, because this is how we were created to live.

Jesus said, in the quote above, that if we follow Him, even at the cost of losing everything, we will gain family.  We will have brothers and sisters.  And I can attest to this truth.  I love my church family.  I feel incredibly blessed to have them.  I am nurtured there, and tried there, and I am pushed to embrace and share my salvation and my calling.  It is an encouraging place that brings connection.  It is a home, full of brothers and sisters.  But this New Family is not limited to the people here.

A couple weeks ago, I went to my favorite coffee house, where my friend (who happens to be my pastor) works.  I was going there to do some reading and to see him.  He started talking to a guy he knew that was there, Anthony, and introduced us.  Anthony is also part of a baby church.  He is planting a "sattelite" of his church here in town.  We sat with him and had a very good, long talk about church and related stuff.  It was great.  Now, there was no one else in the shop except an older couple about 8 feet away.  When we were wrapping up our conversation, the husband of the couple asked us if we were christians, and we said yes, and he smiled.  He said he was too.  By the way, their names are John and Karen.  Anyway, he told us that his wife wanted to take a cross country trip, and he was "tagging along".  When I asked where they were from, he said "Red Bluff, California" and then said he wanted to give me a gift.  He untied a hoodie from around his neck and gave it to me.  The hoodie had the name of his town on it.  I was a bit shocked and overwhelmed, and very grateful.  Anyway, he told us how he thought they were all alone out here, when God had brought brothers to him.  He then asked us about church stuff, and encouraged us to continue in our mission.  He said it was our job, the next generation, to heal the church.  Jon (my friend/pastor) asked him to pray for us, and he did, and was so honored that he got a little choked up doing so.

Later, Jon showed me that this is the Kingdom of God manifesting itself.  It is brothers and sisters coming together, being in communion, being one as God is one, Jesus in them and they in Jesus.  This is God telling us to realize the family that is all around us.

A few months ago, a young married couple joined our community.  Dan and Evey.  They brought much with them, and added an air of excitement to our family.  They encouraged us to pay closer attention to all of God's creation, including the environment, and also had creative ideas on how to build community and heal people here in St. Charles.  They played fun games with us and shared incredible food.  They had great insight and encouragement.  They fit perfectly.  Our community was changed by them, as it should be.

Sadly (for us), Dan and Evey are moving many states away.  Dan has been offered a job to manage a coffee shop, and he is taking it.  He said that he will miss us very much, and that we're the hardest part about them leaving.  Our community will miss them very much, and it will be different when they are gone, as it should be.  Hopefully, the creativity and encouragement they brought will live on.

As sad as this is, I see it as an opportunity.  I see it as a chance for our Family to grow.  I belive they were greatly encouraged by our community, and they are being sent out to share that, and everything else they have, with the new brothers and sisters they will meet.  They have plans to meet up with churches there, and they will spread this connection there.  And when they come back, or when we visit them, they (and we) will have new family members to tell them about.

Dan and Evey said a few poignant things on the day they left.  They mentioned that they feel we are a sister church to a church that is states away, whose "members" we don't know, because we share in their spirit and with their teachings (they make them available online).  They also expressed how much they loved the community here, how it is "it".  They said many people have a broken and distorted sense of community and family, because of this culture and the family ills that are so prevalent.  And it's hard with all this going on to find community at a meeting of hundreds or thousands of people, but here, it came more naturally.

So I am a little sad, but I'm excited, too.  I'm excited for Dan and Evey, and for the family members they will meet.  I'm excited for the new connections that will be made.  I'm excited to hear the directions God will give to us.  I'm excited to meet new brothers and sisters, to find new homes, and to continue in this connection that God is working out.

The other night, my church watched a video called "Breathe", put out by a company called Nooma.  They make short videos of biblical teaching, and they're done very artistically.  So far, the only teacher they've had has been Rob Bell, but in the future, there will be other teachers.

Anyway.

At one point in the video, he talks about God creating man, that God took the dust of the earth, which in hebrew is the word adama, and made man, which in hebrew is the word adam.  To paraphrase, he says that we are fragile, we come from the dust, but we have had our life breathed into us by the Creator of everything.

That connection of adama and adam got me thinking.  We are, in our very creation, in our nature, connected to the earth.  The bible says that all of us come from the dust, and all of us will return to it.  Not only that, but Eve, Adam's wife, was made from him.  We are, in the very way we were created, connected to each other and the earth.  We were created out of each other.  Essential to our being is the idea of connection.

We were made to be connected.  And yet we strive for disconnection.  And then we are lonely.

The Bible speaks several times of God's creation speaking; relaying messages about God, about His nature.  Psalm 19 expresses this blatantly (The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.  Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.  There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.), as well as parallels God's creation with his Law.  These are ways God communicates.

So then we go and cover this creation, this living communication, with cement and asphalt and buildings and towers, and we cut up parts of it and divide it out.  We cover it up and ignore it.  We turn away from it, and to our own devices.

This doesn't mean that we need to all go live under trees (although, really, is that such a bad idea?).  It means that God has made this wonderful thing that is constantly, always saying something about Him, and then we go and cover it up with stuff that says something about us, and then we complain that we can't hear from Him.

Not only that, but there are groups of people who would discourage people from trying to hear from God in nature.

And then there's the connection to each other.  Not only are we created out of each other, but we are part of Creation as well, which means we are a channel of communication.  And then people try to disconnect themselves from each other.  We focus on attaining things for ourselves, things to prove our worth.  We allign to parties, and draw lines on maps, and we don't accept each other's churches, and worst of all, we hold so much in (when we are called to be broken and poured out).  One thing the people of my church are trying to do is attain community.  Our pastor has expressed several times his frustration with the ole sunday morning greeting of "Oh, how are you?'' "I'm fine".  Everybody's always fine.  But they're not.  If you are, then that's wonderful, and I want to rejoice with you in that.  But if you are not, then I want to feel and lament that with you.

The Gospel, the good message, is all about communion; about coming to a place of common union, of community, of repairing and restoring things that are broken and separated.  The great curse of the fall was of separation, and we continue to choose and encourage that separation, instead of work against it.

One more thing.  Not only are we, by nature, connected to all of creation - the earth and other people - but, by our nature, we are connected to God.  Our life, our very breath is from Him; we are even created in His image, and we should not try to fight that connection by silencing His voice or by severing our ties.

"Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land."