Under God's Fingernails

Whence Healing Comes

“The heart is devious above all else;
   it is perverse—
   who can understand it?” - Jeremiah 17:9

The answer to Jeremiah’s question is, of course, God.  Jeremiah knows that we are in need of healing; the word translated as ‘perverse’ means ‘very sick.’  Our hearts (inmost self, personality, emotions, etc) are not only sick, but very slippery and devious (think about the character Gollum in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings).

 

When I was little, I remember being sick and having to take a ten-day course of antibiotics.  The problem was that I wasn’t very good at taking pills.  They would get stuck in my throat, taste awful, and make me feel like I was going to throw up.  So the easiest way to deal with the problem was to fake it, then hide the un-swallowed pills from my Mom.  Mom, of course, found out rather quickly. To complete the generational circle, my youngest, Joseph, tried the same thing with me recently.  I was on to him in a heartbeat. Why?  Because I knew his tricks.  Hell, I invented his tricks!

How can we attain healing?  We can’t attain it; it can only be given and administered by another.  Jeremiah asks the question, “Who can understand/know it?”  The word he uses for this means “to know by experience.”  How could God heal us?  By knowing what it’s like to be enfleshed and enmeshed within His sin-sick creation.  In Jesus, our humanity was fully assumed and fully redeemed.

Come, Holy Spirit, come.

Fully heal and fully restore,

those whom you have fully redeemed.

The Point of Parables

read  Mark 4:1-20

The point of the parable ^___ any parable ^___ is not to get the point of the parable.  Jesus gives the disciples an explanation later because they ask him for one.  Mind you, an explanation is not a bad thing; it’s just not the main thing.  The main thing is not to “figure out the riddle,” but to hear and understand. 

It’s the experience of the parable that matters, the tectonic shift that happens in the heart when the reality of God’s kingdom crashes over us, “tsunami-style.”  “Hear and understand,” says Jesus.  But to understand, we have “stand under” the story, submit to the story, let it have its way with us…not just alter our life, but live a new one.  It’s an invitation to extravagant transformation.

Humility

“All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” 

                                                                                                                                                                    - Matthew 23:12

There aren’t many people for whom humility comes naturally.  We have to either learn it naturally (rare), have it taught to us (the hard way), or have it modeled for us.  It doesn't come naturally to me, and those times I've been "taught" humility by another usually had something to do with humiliation, which led to embarrassment at best and shame at worst.  I love when it is modeled and I can observe the simple beauty of it all and ask myself what I might look like in that situation.

How do we learn humility?  One way to cultivate it is through serving others.  By serving others, I mean doing simple tasks, with love, as if you were doing them for Jesus.   The Wednesday Lunch ministry here at Christ Church in Bowling Green is a place that offers me lots of opportunities.  In fact, I have a friend who sometimes reminds me, as I'm prepping for the meal, that it is "humble Wednesday."

 

I've pondered for a while why so many folks desire to cook, serve, set up and do the dishes for this ministry.  While people serve for a variety of reasons, one of the hidden ones is the learning and nurturing of humility through service to “the least of these” as well as the “greatest of these”, and everyone in between.  And the greatest product of this ministry?  While full bellies are a good and needed thing, the greatest product is thanksgiving, which is the one, true sacrifice for which God yearns (see Psalm 50:14, 23).

    “The humble person receives praise the way a clean window takes the light 

    of the sun. The truer and more intense the light is, the less you see of the glass.”
                                                                                                                          Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation

Being With

“He went up the mountain and called to him those whom he wanted, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, to be with him,...” - Mark 3:13-14a

What’s the job of one called by Jesus (that means you and me)? Very simply, the primary activity and mark of a true disciple is to “be with” Jesus.

Often, when breaking down the meaning of the gospels into chapters, then pericopes, then verses, then individual words, we lose sight of the larger job and title while gazing at the jot and tittle. In the midst of all our preaching, teaching, and casting out demons, have we overlooked the simple-but-essential relational reality of “being with Jesus?”

We do this in our close relationships all the time, don’t we? We substitute living under the same roof with crafting a marriage. A five-minute drive to school replaces both quality and quantity time with kids. It doesn’t start out as intentional, but it does become habitual. And as any smoker can tell you, kicking a habit is hard.

For me, personally, it means, “slow down!” (and I am preaching to myself today more than anyone reading this blog post!)  Walk slower through the house, and intentionally breathe more deeply. When little annoyances and frictions start to chafe me, I try (notice I said, “try”; I don’t always succeed) saying to myself, “Lord, thank you that I get to minister to my wife/son/friend/fellow-follower in this way.”

Face-to-Face

read Luke 13:31-35

I grew up in the beautiful state of Michigan.  And in Michigan, like many states, there is a rivalry between the largest state school and the largest private school.  You tend to make the choice when you’re young, and it usually depends on which school your immediate family roots for.  I remember having a hard time choosing when I was a small boy, not because I knew anything about the schools, but because I loved both mascots!  The Michigan State mascot is the Spartan, one of the deadliest warriors in history.  The University of Michigan mascot is the wolverine, an animal legendary for its strength and ferocity.

As brilliant as Jesus is about so many things, he really could use some help in the mascot department.  Today he characterizes himself with a chicken analogy.  And not even some kind of awesome, fierce fighting chicken.  He basically calls himself a mother hen, which to me, means dinner.  It’s not like there wasn’t already Scriptural precedent for better mascots.  How about an eagle or a leopard?  Or maybe the roaring lion of the tribe of Judah? Compared to any of those, a mother hen doesn’t inspire much confidence.^⁠1  After all, chickens aren’t exactly known for bravery.  When somebody backs down from a challenge, we say they “chickened out.”  If a kid gets to the top of the high dive and can’t jump, what do his friends in the pool do?  They make chicken noises.  Why didn’t the chicken cross the road?  Because it was chicken!

Why a chicken?  Especially, when Jesus has just characterized King Herod as a fox.  I know that mothers are very protective of their babies, but if you want me to bet on the winner of the Fox vs. Hen Death-match, I’m laying odds on the fox 100% of the time. 

In order to understand why Jesus chose the analogy, I think we have to get some perspective.  The clue that I got was when Jesus says, “How often?”  As Jesus weeps his chicken-tears over the city of Jerusalem, he says, “How often have I desired to gather your children together…”  How often had it been?  

To understand that, we have to go back in the story.  All the way back, I believe, to Genesis.  When God created all that is, from mice to mountain ranges, God declared it all “good.”  When God formed and fashioned humans, the declaration was “very good.”  God had a wonderfully intimate relationship with Adam and Eve, taking long, garden walks and having long talks.  There was a “face-to-faceness” to the relationship.

When sin entered the equation, that face-to-faceness was lost.  God tried everything:  covenants, commandments, kings, priests, prophets, a temple.  It got so bad that God declared, “No one shall see my face and live.”

In order to get back face-to-face with us, God had to go face-to-face with Sin & Death.  Life had to die.  The Bread of life had to be broken.  The One who miraculously made the wine had to be poured out as an offering.  The good shepherd had to leave the green pastures and still waters to travel further into the valley of the shadow of death than anyone ever had.  

To defend his chicks, to defend us, God made himself defenseless.  No lion’s roar, no eagle’s talons, no leopard’s teeth.  Just a complete willingness to spread his wings wide and shield those he loved with his own body.

No longer would God stand the reality that we could not see His face and live.  It took Jesus, the Blessed Mother Hen, to change that.  Now, no one can really live until they see his face.

________________________________ 

¹ http://aweirdthing.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/size-of-a-hen/

Be Perfect

from the daily eucharistic lectionary:  Matthew 5:43-48

I grew up in a house on First Street in Alpena, Michigan.   It was the rectory of Trinity Episcopal Church, where my father was the rector.  Over the years, I explored every nook and cranny of that house, making it my own, save for one part.  The basement.  That basement had the most creepy old coal closet.  To this day, I am sure there are monsters there.

Jesus says, "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  Most of us would say, “Yeah, that’s about as likely as me learning how to do Bruce-Lee-one-finger pushups.”  But it’s not as daunting as you think (the Father-like perfection part, not the Bruce Lee thing.  Those pushups are never gonna happen...).

As you may already be aware, the word Matthew uses here for “perfection” really means “wholeness” or “completeness.”  It’s not designating some kind of extraordinary, objective standard of excellence.

Jesus calls us to his kind of wholeness in the context of an admonition to love our enemies.  Loving our enemies may be almost as difficult as truly loving those we profess to love (but that’s another reflection, for another day).  Jesus doesn’t tell us to love our enemies for their benefit; the benefit is ours. 

The kind of love that Jesus advocates here opens up a place in us that rarely sees the light of day, let alone the Light of the Son.  But, even though the benefit is ours, it’s still not about us.  Jesus, through the power of his indwelling Spirit, is preparing a place in us for himself, and he wants every corner of every room, even that scary, old coal closet in the back of the basement that you never peek inside.

Persistence

‘Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you." - Jesus

Ask.  Seek.  Knock.  Jesus uses action verbs to instruct his followers in this section of Matthew.  There is good reason for this: actions cause us to pay attention.

This short passage causes me to consider how often I ask God for something, seek the Spirit in a given situation, or give a quick rap on a door that hides something my heart desires.  The problem is that my actions are usually quick and very short-lived.  I ask quickly, then move on to the next thing.

 

But the verb tense Jesus uses for these three verbs have the sense of continuous action:  “keep on asking,” “keep on seeking,” “keep on knocking.”  In doing so, we pay more and better attention.  Ad, hopefully, we’ll begin to pay less attention to the thing we want and more attention to the One who provides it.

In Remembrance

On Ash Wednesday I found myself kneeling in front of our altar at Christ Church while reciting Psalm 51.  I was face-to-face with the inscription carved across the front apron that quotes Jesus at the Last Supper:  “Do this in remembrance of me.”  Remembrance is key for Christians, not just because Jesus told us to do it, but because it’s so highly valued.  Don’t believe me?  Just ask a family how important remembering is when grandma is suffering with Alzheimer’s disease.

I read a book last year called Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer.  It details how he researched, trained for, and won an international memory competition.  Fascinating stuff.  Josh Foer just spoke at the TED Conference where he gave a talk called “Remembering to Remember.”  I think it could have been written with Christians in mind.  He talks about the importance of living a life remembered.  I’m not sure what Joshua Foer means by that, but I know what I mean by that phrase.

The Christian life is a life of relationship with Jesus developed and nurtured by prayer.  While at least 50% of prayer is listening, what about the other 50%?  Chances are, much of that latter half is comprised of petitions, asking God for things we want/need.  Here’s where remembrance comes in.  I think we not only need to remember the past, but also remember the future.  God knows what’s to come, and, if we corporately have the “mind of Christ” and our wills are knit together with God’s will, then I think we will have glimmers and inklings and Spirit-tweaked intuitions about what is to be.  In those moments, we are both remembering and re-membering into the future.  I’m not sure how to say this well, but here’s what I came up with:

The best prayers of petition remember what God does before it happens.

The Sign is Seeing You

Read: Luke 11:29-32

The problem with being a sign is that there is a distinct lack of semioticians out there. At least, that’s what I used to think. Now I think differently; the signs now need to pay attention to the prospective sign readers, not the other way around.

Jesus says that Jonah (my beautiful wife’s favorite prophet) became a sign to the people of Nineveh. Jesus said that he, himself, would be a sign to his own generation. And those of us who compose and comprise the Body of Christ? We are to be signs in this generation as well. The problem, though, is the lack of sign readers (semioticians).

Jonah, apparently, was an effective sign, in spite of himself; the entire city repented. Jesus met with somewhat more resistance than Jonah in his efforts, pointing to a decline in folks’ general sign-reading abilities. And what about now?

I’d argue that, while there is more interest in signs (especially the bright, shiny, attractive, moving and blinking sort), most people have lost their ability to look at those things toward which the signs point. How can we 21st-century disciples help?

Maybe it’s time to be a sign, to point, with much more intention and attention and less flash and splash. Maybe it’s more about attention paying and less about attention getting.

A practical discipline to try today: When you look at someone and listen to them, imagine that you are looking at them with Jesus’ eyes. Actually, you don’t have to imagine that; you ARE looking at them with Jesus’ eyes. Hopefully, you’ll notice Jesus looking back.

On Earth as in Heaven

from today’s daily eucharistic lectionary: Matthew 6:7-15

The Lord’s Prayer is a difficult prayer about which to think.  It’s tough because we know it so well.  Or perhaps I should say we have it memorized so well.  My hunch is that not terribly many people know that prayer in the intimate, biblical sense of knowing.

Jesus instructs his followers to pray in the manner of the Lord’s Prayer, which calls to mind a parent teaching a child a prayer before bedtime.  While bedtime and childhood might be the context for most of use concerning this prayer, the content of this prayer should make us shudder.

I’m thinking here about the phrase “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  God’s will is the most potent and powerful thing that is.  God’s will is capable of summoning out of nothing every quark and every quasar while simultaneously keeping count of every hair on every head.  Yet, in this prayer, God makes his will a collaborative endeavor, inviting the likes of us to be the stewards of his will.  It’s akin to giving us the “big red button,” only the power is creative and reconciling rather than destructive.  And we teach this to our kids!

Perhaps this is why Jesus told us that with God, “all things are possible.”  I wonder what the world would look like if we believed it.