sermon on the mount

Mars Hill Michigan is starting a 6 month series on the Sermon on the Mount this Sunday. This is one of my favorite (challenging and encouraging and hopeful) passages in the Bible, so I'm pretty excited to join with them over the next half year. As they like to do on these big series, they'll be publishing a page containing verses, thoughts, practices, and prayers at the beginning of the week so you can be meditating on and wrestling with it before the Sunday teaching. There are always some insightful and beautiful ideas so you should get started.

Here's one section that really stood out to me.

No one in his or her right mind would want to live this "blessed" life, would they? Yet Jesus was doing something different from what his hearers expected. He wasn't giving a spiritual to-do list. This wasn't a self-help teaching about how to achieve blessedness by attaining poverty of spirit.

This was an announcement.

The healing that had just taken place was nothing less than the rule and reign of God coming to rest upon the least likely of people.

In the midst of their poorness of spirit, these people had been blessed;the Kingdom of God had come upon them. In other words, fortunate are the racists because the rule and reign of God can come upon even them. Fortunate are the addicts because the rule and reign of God is only a breath away. Fortunate are those who've blown it. Blessed are the nobodies. Jesus begins his Sermon on the Mount with blessing, and there is nothing anybody can do to earn what he's describing.

God is blessing people for no reason other than the fact that blessing is what God does, and everybody, everywhere, is fair game.

They also have some new art for the series which I'm including a small glimpse of below. Click on it to view the whole piece. Open it up and then read the artist's thoughts about their work:

Sometimes I feel as though God is this invisible abstract idea. A voice in my head that has no face but speaks to me in ways I can't even comprehend or explain... Sometimes the vocal is lost among the swirling messages and instruments of the day vying for attention. [But] the voice, the sermon on the mount if you will, never ceases to speak. The father's face can be seen everywhere, even in the speck of dirt the little girl is picking up."

Two Kinds of Grave

The gospels speak of two kinds of grave.

One was whitewashed, the other was empty.

The whitewashed grave is the symbol of the false facade,
     of the outwardly beautiful appearance that does not last.

The empty grave was the grave of the God-man, Jesus Christ,
     the one who was himself emptied….

Around the emptiness of the grave were born both
     the hope of the future and the Church,
     which was, is and must always be
     the Message of what is to come.

Robert Adolfs | Grave of God

(Thanks to Nate Wigfield for first posting this.)

the Gospel

I believe this is from Nooma 015 | You. This is what we are made, and saved, for.

The Orthodox Heretic: A Parable

I want to share a parable from Peter Rollins, a leader of an experimental faith community in Belfast, Ireland called Ikon. He has a new book coming out in a few weeks called "The Orthodox Heretic: and Other Impossible Tales" that is made up entirely of parables. The video below is Peter reading one of the parables from this book. I think it's pretty interesting. Remember, the point of this parable is not to give an answer, but to ask a question. I have a feeling there will be many different responses to this, so I would love to hear your thoughts after watching this video and check out some of his other videos on youtube as well. He has 2 more parables and a couple other short videos with interesting ideas.

***I can't seem to get the video to work when it's embedded into this page, so watch it here. Let me know if you have any problems.***

ash

a prayer for ash wednesday

O Lord, who hast mercy upon all,
take away from me my sins,
and mercifully kindle in me
the fire of thy Holy Spirit.
Take away from me the heart of stone,
and give me a heart of flesh,
a heart to love and adore Thee,
a heart to delight in Thee,
to follow and enjoy Thee, for Christ's sake.
Amen.
- St. Ambrose

Happy Birthday Mars Hill Grand Rapids!

On Sunday, Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan celebrated 10 years. As part of the service, they had individuals from Grand Rapids and around the world share stories of how much God has done through this community. I didn't hear about it until today as I was a week behind in podcasts, so I didn't send them an email. But if I did, I would have tried to thank them for giving me new dreams about what it means to be a Christian and the Church. I think I would have mentioned some of these things that God has been teaching me through their words and actions.

Love is more than an emotion or vague good idea. Love should be how we look at our friends and enemies. Love is how we should respond to the circumstances that don't go how we expect and the people that hurt us. Love overcomes hate. Love is how God is redeeming everything. Love sacrifices itself. And nothing can stop it, so in the end, after fear and doubt and anger and sickness and death have exhausted all their efforts, love wins.

That when people don't agree with you, or they attack you, or so hurtful things about you, you don't have to defend yourself or prove that you are right, but that sometimes the best response is to smile and say "Grace and peace to you", because the things that separate us are far, far smaller the God who loves all of us.

That the most hurtful and dangerous thing to do is to start dividing people by who is in (or right) and who is out (or wrong), and begin to treat one group of people differently than another- that's hell. We might be terribly uncomfortable one day if we share the wedding feast of the lamb in heaven, and find "those people" at our table.

That Jesus broke himself open and poured himself out as a good gift. And that as Christ-followers, Jesus has invited us to break ourselves open and pour ourselves out to the people around us. To "do this in remembrance of me."

That Jesus thinks we can be like him and do the things he does.

That the Church should be the safest place in the world. If you can't be honest about your failings and struggles with a church community, then something is terribly wrong, because the very point of the Church is to carry each other and love people.

And when you are failing and can only see darkness and have fear and doubt and pain and feel worthless and unloved, you don't have to go through it alone, but there are people who can daily offer you grace and peace. There is no condemnation, only joy, acceptance, every kind of imaginable good, wholeness, rest, all as freely given gifts from God.

That worrying about what will happen tomorrow will choke the life out of today, which is all we have anyway. And that wealth always promises that a little bit more will be enough, and it always comes up empty.

That our purpose and value comes solely from being and never from doing. We need to rest and take time to do nothing, and learn that even then we are still loved and accepted.

That God always hears the cries of the oppressed.

That everything is spiritual, God is not angry but he is Green, Jesus is brilliant and he wants to save Christians, and the Church, man, isn't she beautiful. ;)

That we don't need to know where we are going or why. The central, recurring theme of the Bible is a journey of God rescuing his people from slavery, teaching them how to love him and love each other, and forgiving them and restoring them when they fail so they can try again. And even if our journey hasn't lead us where we want to be, God gives us what we need for today, everyday, and he is walking with us. We can learn to stop obsessing over control of our lives and instead have faith.

That cynicism is a dead end, and the what this desperate, broken, cynical world needs most are people willing to believe that things can get better. That God hasn't given up on his creation.

I can't even begin to think of everything that I've learned since I started walking with Mars Hill 3.5 years ago (and I put up a bunch of my favorite messages here). I have a much wider, deeper, richer understanding of God than I used to. But even more important than that is the deep healing that God has been doing to my heart through this church. I may have only been to one Sunday gathering in those years, but Mars Hill is not about what happens for two hours on Sunday. Mars Hill is a community, and I'm part of that community even if we are separated by a couple thousand miles.

So to you, my brothers and sisters of the Mars Hill community- thank you, and grace and peace be with you.

The Great Emergence 0.1

View the first post in this series here.

To give you an idea of where I'm going over the next few weeks, I'll give you a quick outline of the book. Phyllis Tickle starts with a look back at previous religious and social shifts that seem to be occurring about every 500 years, with the most recent example being the Protestant Reformation. She digs into the causes and effects of these turbulent times, and pulls out some common themes then we can then try to apply to the last 200 years of our history. A lot of time is spent on the dramatic changes caused by the Reformation which have lead to the way we all view the world today. She then looks at more recent shifts that are causing the conflict we are all becoming aware of. A good three-quarters of the book is dedicated to building the backdrop for our modern world, and only the final chapters look at where we might be headed. I particularly enjoyed how she examines the movements in American Christianity over the last century, including looking at some of the "proto-emergence" church movements. She then concludes with some guesses at where the western church is headed, which is extremely interesting and exciting.

I just want to also emphasize that the book and this discussion is not about the emergent or emerging church. It's about a global shift that is happening, and the emerging church conversation is one community that is developing as a result of this. But the idea is not that the Emergent Church is the final expression of what God is doing or where Christianity is headed. Listen to Doug Pagitt's thoughts on that here.

I think this is why there has been so much confusion about the emerging church. Everyone wants to finalize it and decide what's right and wrong about it, but it is only one small expression of a much larger phenomenon. And even this small network or people is still figuring out where it is going and why- nothing is set in stone. It's like a young child still years away from adulthood. Nobody knows how this will turn out, which is why the emerging church leaders always refer to their network as a conversation. They want everyone to be involved in what is happening, not a few powerful leaders.

This is a beautiful example of the "priesthood of all believers". We all have an opportunity to seek God about what he wants to do and where he wants to go with his Church. If there are dreams in your heart about what the Church can be, share them so that we all can dream together. If there are ideas that look dangerous to you, speak up, but do so in gentleness and love. If you don't love your brothers and sisters, which is the most fundamental part of being a Christian, how can you offer worthwhile thoughts on more advanced and nuanced doctrine?

Above all, we need to put aside our desire to be right and make sure everyone else knows how right we are. You can't have a very good conversation with people if you only talk to the people who agree with you, or if you will only talk and never listen. You can't love your enemy if you won't associate with the people you have conflict with. How can we say we love the world, like Jesus did, if we can't even love other believers? So please offer your ideas on here, but I ask that you do so with gentleness and respect. I want to talk this out with my friends because I value all of you and know God is speaking to you in ways that are sometimes similar and sometimes different from what he is saying to me.

Finally, I'm going to label all of the posts in this series under “The Great Emergence”, so if you get behind and want to view them all, just click the link of “The Great Emergence” from the list of labels on the right.

my new church!

I've been visiting a few churches out here, trying to find a good fit. It's been tough. I really want to be a part of a community that values worship. I'm finding that often worship has been reduced to 3 happy songs where everyone stares blankly at the worship leader, and maybe sings. Everybody has the full band and sounds great, but passion, awe, humility and, er, worship, seem to be missing. That was really hard for me.

Then I visited a church called Origins on Sunday night. It is in Long Beach, which is about 40 minutes south of me. Ben is the one who pointed me in there direction, and after checking out their site I figured the church was aimed at 20-30 years old crowd who are looking for a more organic, community-focused expression of church. That is really exciting to me, but part of me is still a little skeptical about it as well. There are many people trying to wrestle with these ideas, and how they put it into practice can be drastically different (which is part of the point...). So you never know what to expect until you are there.

To say it simply, I absolutely loved it. Before I could get in the doors they welcomed me and connected me with a guy who is gonna be at Fuller next quarter. We talked for about 10 minutes, and I could see genuine humility and hunger to love God and people. Worship was simply an acoustic guitar and 2 singers, and we started the service with 10 minutes of quiet reflection on our week and allowing God to enter into those times, healing and refreshing us. The worship time was so simple and raw, it was so easy to connect with God and re-orient ourselves around Him.

AJ, the pastor, is a really great guy. He spent some time in the Sermon on the Mount, really digging into Jesus' teachings on anger. He took it a lot further than I'd heard before, asking hard questions and refusing to stop at superficial answers. Then we split up to talk about it in small groups. We immediately were talking about serious issues, like "People close to me are lying about me to discredit Christians. How can I not be angry with them?" As we opened up and shared, we all were able to help each other see a different point of view, to understand more about forgiveness, and how hard but necessary it can be to love others.

After, they invited me to Chipotle. It's a weekly tradition. How can you not love that? (BTW, I thought you should know that Chipotle is widely loved by everyone I meet from all over the country, and they ALL understand quite well that imitators like Qdoba fall far short. It saddens me that in Colorado, Chipotle's home state, there is far more disrespect for Chipotle's loving gift to us.) AJ spent the whole time talking with me. We had a great time sharing stories and backgrounds. I already feel like I'm part of the community!

So that's really great! I'm excited about it. The only downside is that it is a good distance from Pasadena, so it will be a little harder to build friendships. But I think that will take care of itself in time.

Sunday is the new Funday. Or something???

So tomorrow should be cool. I'm getting up early (not so cool) to go visit Newport Beach Church and then at night visiting Fusion, Christian Assembly's version of the Mill. Newport is a Hillsong plant that has been around for about a year or so. They actually have 3 evening services at 5, 7, and 9! But I'm going in the morning so I can visit the other church at night with a couple guys from the apartment here.

I'm really excited about Christian Assembly, cause a certain guy who graduated from Fuller a few years back who I read and listen to a lot used to go there. He describes it as a community exploding with creativity and life, full of people who seemed to like nothing better to do on a Sunday morning than go to a church service. This church helped him and his wife to start dreaming about what a church could be (Tassels 097). Sounds pretty good to me.

And in between, I think I'll grab lunch and watch the Chargers play, then play guitar or read something that isn't a school book. I'm determined to relax on Sundays now. No excuses or emergencies. No unpacking (yes, I'm still digging through boxes) or studying. And no stress pr frustration even if the Chargers fall apart again!

I think that is a big reason why God led me here. I knew for a couple years that I needed to implement more balance and rest in my life, and even though I was exhausted and overwhelmed I kept adding more and more to my schedule because they needed me or it was a good thing. I loved all those opportunities I had to serve and love people, but I'm still trying to recover. It almost burned me out. Maybe sometimes it did... And since I couldn't learn moderation, maybe now that I have nothing extra to do and no way to take on new responsibilities I can figure it out.