Hey Family!
Spring is here! Birds are singing. Flowers are blooming. People are spending more time outside. Jim's Dairy Barn is open. And it feels good to be alive. Doesn't it? Doesn't it feel good to be alive? I hope so.
And Easter, more than any other week in the year, reminds us of the beauty and awe of life. This is the week Jesus made his way, willingly, to Jerusalem, knowing what lie ahead. This is the week that Jesus carried His cross, tossed some tables, cursed a fig tree, and let a woman of ill repute anoint Him. This is the week the stone was rolled away. Death defeated. Resurrection promised. Salvation gained. This is the week when the tide of history changed, forever. God became a man and then carried the sins of the entire world on that cross. This is the week of life. Amazing life. Abundant life.
But do we comprehend the power of this life? Do we full grasp the "awe" of Jesus' choice to go to his death, so that we could be saved, all of us? Do we live like new creations, full of joy, peace, hope, and promise? Do we honor Jesus, at all? This week, more than any other week, we must return to our baptisms, return to our vows, and return to the core values of our faith, and when we do, we must examine ourselves and ask, "Do we measure up?"
All too often, i dont. I dont live with devout faith, amazing hope, inspiring joy, quiet peace, or healing love. I live more as the world does, which really isn't living at all. I dishonor the cross, i dishonor Jesus. However, this is also the week of repentance, which means to turn around. I can, we all can, return to the faith and discover our new selves, once again. But we have to leave our old self, the selfish self, the pouty self, the arrogant self, the materialistic self, the hoarding self, the power hungry self, the manipulative self, the lying self, the gossiping self, the afraid self, the dark self, and the sinful self behind and embrace the "NEW" creation Jesus intended. This is the week for renewal and refocusing. We can, and we must.
As we gather for Love Feast, on Maundy Thursday, please do so with reverence and awe. Please, please, PLEASE, do not dishonor the space by just going through the motions or not checking your pride and ego at the door or simply taking the whole worship for granted. Please do not do that. If that is how we approach Love Feast, it would be better for us to not participate. But if we immerse ourselves, humbly, into the worship, and we show reverence and awe for our Savior and our God, and we serve our sisters and brothers out of love, acceptance, mercy, and forgiveness, well then not only will Jesus show up, but that promise of New Creation, yeah it happens too.
Life is hard enough, when we try to drive our own path. Why not let the Author of life take over and find a new hope, a new life, and a new joy, deeper, wider, and more holistic than anything we could have ever imagined. He's here, waiting on us, crying out to us, praying for us, and ready to love on us. Its time for us to surrender and let Him, and then we will know what true life, true hope, true love, and yes true faith truly are. Come and see. Come and experience. Come and be set free. Amen.
Shalom, Salaam, Peace...
In His Name,
Jerry
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Another Month
Wow!
The best laid plans of mice and men really do often go awry. I had all the intentions of reorienting my schedule so i could blog earlier in the week, but we all know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Intentions are not enough. We have to be deliberate. Active. And to avoid being a joke or afterthought, we have to follow through. So. Once again, i apologize, and once again, with all the good intentions i can muster, i am going to make Monday morning my new blog time.
With that out of the way, let's get down to business. We have reached the final letter in our journey through becoming authentic Christians. I named the series C.H.U.R.C.H.: which means to be Christlike, become Hospitable, we are Unleashed for ministry, we must Reach out to those outside the walls of the church, we should Consume Christ, and now we have reached the end of our journey, where every long, eventful adventure should end: Home.
Home. What does a home have to do with becoming authentic Christ followers? Everything. In our Scripture focus: 1 Corinthians 12, Paul talks about how the "Body of Christ" is really a series of body parts, each member connected to the other. We can't have a healthy body without a hand or eyes or ears or nose or even big toes. We need each body part to be healthy, effecient, and faithful to what God calls us to be. And if any part is sick, well that disease and dis ease enters the corporate body and affects us all, if we do not address it quickly and correctly.
But all too often when the body is sick, at least the Body of Christ, we want to ignore what is causing the illness. We want to deny its existence. And what happens when a virus enters the body and is left unattended? It will destroy the host. Perhaps a better analogy is the insidious disease of cancer. Caught early, it can be, in most cases, cured. But if left unattended, if left to run rampant through the body, then the cancer begins spread and eat the healthy host and eventually the host will succomb to the disease. Faith communities or church families are no different. If we do not address what illness has affected the host; the disease will destroy it.
If we are to be the body of Christ, we have to offer space for dis ease to be worked through and issues handled, in a Jesus manner. We must have godly relationships with one another. We must be, with glad hears, connected to each other. Admitting our dependence on the other in our church family. We cannot be a church, a true, authentic church, if we sit back and gossip, allow cliques, ignore power plays, or worse yet, enable the destructive "I" to enter into the conversation.
I dont want to suggest that God doesn't want each of us, in our own unique way, to be who He created us to be. That's not what i mean. What i mean when i suggest that "I" can be destructive is this: when we say, "I will not let that happen." We are really saying that our thoughts, our opinions, our wants and desires trump anything else in the church. It might not be our intentions, but remember what the road to hell is paved with.
We have to find ourselves subjecting and surrendering our will to that, first and foremost, of God's. It is God's will we seek. Not mine. Or yours. But it is God's. And then we seek the common voice of the church community. God will speak through a common belief, a common goal, a common mind. It is in the community we receive our revelations and answers. Not as some isolated voice. And then if we question the validity of the communal response, we test the idea, answer, revelation with Scripture. What does God's Word say? If what we have been given is validated in Scripture, then we know it is of God and we can have peace by moving forward. If it is not, or if Scripture confronts and refutes the revelation, well that lets us know that what we have discovered is not of God. But it must always happen in the community, in the corporate body.
We were created to live in community with our sisters and brothers. Moses and the Ten Commandments point towards that truth. The exiled Jews in Babylon lived it. Jesus illustrated it with the Twelve. And now, in 1 Corinthians, Paul reaffirms the role of community in the journey of Christians. We were created to live together. Peacefully. Simply. Together. Amen.
The best laid plans of mice and men really do often go awry. I had all the intentions of reorienting my schedule so i could blog earlier in the week, but we all know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Intentions are not enough. We have to be deliberate. Active. And to avoid being a joke or afterthought, we have to follow through. So. Once again, i apologize, and once again, with all the good intentions i can muster, i am going to make Monday morning my new blog time.
With that out of the way, let's get down to business. We have reached the final letter in our journey through becoming authentic Christians. I named the series C.H.U.R.C.H.: which means to be Christlike, become Hospitable, we are Unleashed for ministry, we must Reach out to those outside the walls of the church, we should Consume Christ, and now we have reached the end of our journey, where every long, eventful adventure should end: Home.
Home. What does a home have to do with becoming authentic Christ followers? Everything. In our Scripture focus: 1 Corinthians 12, Paul talks about how the "Body of Christ" is really a series of body parts, each member connected to the other. We can't have a healthy body without a hand or eyes or ears or nose or even big toes. We need each body part to be healthy, effecient, and faithful to what God calls us to be. And if any part is sick, well that disease and dis ease enters the corporate body and affects us all, if we do not address it quickly and correctly.
But all too often when the body is sick, at least the Body of Christ, we want to ignore what is causing the illness. We want to deny its existence. And what happens when a virus enters the body and is left unattended? It will destroy the host. Perhaps a better analogy is the insidious disease of cancer. Caught early, it can be, in most cases, cured. But if left unattended, if left to run rampant through the body, then the cancer begins spread and eat the healthy host and eventually the host will succomb to the disease. Faith communities or church families are no different. If we do not address what illness has affected the host; the disease will destroy it.
If we are to be the body of Christ, we have to offer space for dis ease to be worked through and issues handled, in a Jesus manner. We must have godly relationships with one another. We must be, with glad hears, connected to each other. Admitting our dependence on the other in our church family. We cannot be a church, a true, authentic church, if we sit back and gossip, allow cliques, ignore power plays, or worse yet, enable the destructive "I" to enter into the conversation.
I dont want to suggest that God doesn't want each of us, in our own unique way, to be who He created us to be. That's not what i mean. What i mean when i suggest that "I" can be destructive is this: when we say, "I will not let that happen." We are really saying that our thoughts, our opinions, our wants and desires trump anything else in the church. It might not be our intentions, but remember what the road to hell is paved with.
We have to find ourselves subjecting and surrendering our will to that, first and foremost, of God's. It is God's will we seek. Not mine. Or yours. But it is God's. And then we seek the common voice of the church community. God will speak through a common belief, a common goal, a common mind. It is in the community we receive our revelations and answers. Not as some isolated voice. And then if we question the validity of the communal response, we test the idea, answer, revelation with Scripture. What does God's Word say? If what we have been given is validated in Scripture, then we know it is of God and we can have peace by moving forward. If it is not, or if Scripture confronts and refutes the revelation, well that lets us know that what we have discovered is not of God. But it must always happen in the community, in the corporate body.
We were created to live in community with our sisters and brothers. Moses and the Ten Commandments point towards that truth. The exiled Jews in Babylon lived it. Jesus illustrated it with the Twelve. And now, in 1 Corinthians, Paul reaffirms the role of community in the journey of Christians. We were created to live together. Peacefully. Simply. Together. Amen.
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