Sermon on the Mount 2: Salt & Light

Scripture: Matthew 5:13-16

Focus: “Trampled”

Reflection: For some reason wit this passage in the Sermon on the Mount, I have had to get over the idea that this passage was some sort of justification for showing off. Here is it, Jesus says we have to demonstrate our greatness in front of other people. We have to show off. Or worse yet, this is the passage that says that Christians are better than others. Furthermore, there is punishment for not being better than everyone else.

Only through a distorted lens could I ever come to such a conclusion. The Christian life is not meant to prove to everyone, especially non-Christians, that Christians are better than everyone else. It is not a lesson plan for a spiritual superiority complex, though that has been taught that in various places. It is something much more humble than that.

Salt makes the thing that already exists taste better. Salt on its own isn’t all that great. Jesus is saying that God placed within each person the ability to highlight the good that already exists. Christians can make things better by being a presence of goodness, civility, kindness, and hope.

Trampled is the word that comes to mind in this passage. Is trampled a punishment? Well, not really. It is simply the natural result of a thing not fulfilling its purpose. If a thing has lost its function out of lack of use, then it will not have any attention paid to it. It will be moved to the margins because other, more useful, things will get the attention of people. The rusty hacksaw I have in the garage just gets left in the garage because the sharp one is the one I choose every time. I am not mad at the rusty one and I am not punishing it. I might even choose it in a pinch, but it is not my go to tool for cutting things. 

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Sermon on the Mount 1: Beattitudes

Scripture: Matthew 5:1-12

Focus: “Pure in heart”

Reflection: What is purity? Where can it be found? My heart yearned for a purity as I read the passage, a known purity, like a faint memory of a time long ago. Purity for me feels to me like it can be found in an archeological soul dig, a thing buried, but still present. I have felt pure and I like the feeling, but it also felt uneasy. It was innocent, tender, and vulnerable. I could be shaped, but I felt somewhat out of control. I trusted, sometimes with little information to go on, sometimes in ways that would forever alter the trajectory of my life. I was like a child…I was a child. I know that purity is still there - there is at least purity potential in me. I want to be pure in heart (again).

Is there purity in everyone? Is it fragile? Are some people pure while others are not? Was everyone born pure and some let it go while others kept hold of it? If purity can be released or let go of, can it ever be regained, recovered, or reborn inside someone? I have wondered this before. Since I cannot experience someone else’s experience, I do not know what it is like to be another person. On the other hand, if there is some sort of image of God that comprises everyone, then there must be some sense of purity in everyone. Or at least it was there at once. I suppose being free people means being free to jettison purity and never look back.

Jesus says that the pure in heart will see God. What does that mean? Are these the people going to Heaven? Does it mean that they will see God in the afterlife? I wonder if that is really what Jesus is getting at. Is it really for the innocent who can wait out this life? I wonder if perhaps Jesus is going for something else. Maybe the pure in heart can see God right now. What appears to be the everyday and ordinary to most people, the pure in heart noticed God in it all. Maybe the pure in heart see God everywhere, all the time.

Do they see God in the beauty of nature?

Do they see God in a larger redemptive work, even in pain and suffering?

Do they see God in the timing of things, whether it is convenient or frustrating?

What is it exactly these pure in heart people are seeing when they see God?

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Reflections Series: Sermon on the Mount

Lectio Divina is an old,even ancient method of reading and reflecting on scripture. It means, Divine Reading, and has been used as a way to engage in, understand, and reflect on scripture. I will be using a form of Lectio Divina in working my way through the Sermon on the Mount, which is the best summation of the teachings of Jesus collected into a single group.

This series of posts will come interspersed with outer posts about other things, but I intend to link these posts together.

What will be posted are my reflections after reading a short portion of the Sermon on the Mount.

Feel free to follow along, make comment, or even do some of your own Lectio Divina.

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The God I’ve Come To Know 2.0: Amazing

Although I do not get specific instructions and a whole lot of indication of what God wants or what I should do, I can’t seem to get away from this God. He never stops communicating. Everywhere I go I can see what this God is up to. At least that is the meaning I have learned to assign to things.

When I ponder the hugeness of the galaxies and the distance between stars or when I explore the smallness of chemical and neurotransmitters between my nerve cells, I am amazed. When I see something grow I wonder how it grows. I wonder why it grows. Science has some responses to all this, but it does not hold the answers. Science does its best with the tools it has, but it fails to get to why things happen. Science is just a way to ask questions.

Being amazed at something is a curious state. Why am I amazed? Even if there is a neurotransmitter that can be assigned to the experience of amazement in a human, what does that matter? Why does it happen? Why am I taken by a sunrise, the clouds pink and orange? Why am I so very curious about the roley poley bug and the little sphere it can curl into when threatened? How does a roley poley bug know it is threatened? Why am I so taken with black holes? Why do I want to know where they lead?

Now, I do not believe the state of amazement is any sort of proof of God. There are all sorts of ways to narrate amazement. But I do believe that God has got to be in play. It is the narration that makes sense to me. Creation, whether through a rapid 6 days initiation or a slow billions of years unfolding, is to me an amazing communication from God. It is not God merely whispering, but God demonstrating in a massive presentation his identity.

When I ask God what do you want? it is sort of like I am interrupting what He was already saying. He was already answering the question before I asked it. I wonder if God is revealing Himself always and His answer is that He wants me to 1) know Him through his intimate revelation of Himself through creation, and 2) for me to be as intimate with Him as He is with me.

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The God I’ve Come to Know (to this point)

I look to Heaven, I utter my prayers, I speak to a God I cannot see with my eyes and I ask Him what He wants from me. I expect an answer. I expect to be told. My willingness to be told what to do seems humble enough. And yet the silence is difficult to handle. It is not vacant silence, like speaking into nothingness. It is patient silence. In time I come to understand that God will not be contained in my assumptions.

I assume God wants to tell me what to do. I assume this because I have read about Moses and the burning bush. I assume this because I have read about Abraham. I assume this because I have read about Noah. I have documented proof that God tells people what to do and then they do it, perhaps with some resistance at times. So, I follow the pattern with a promise of compliance. And yet every bush I see is a normal bush. There is no sense of impending flood. I do not get a word from God about what I should do.

I look to God and ask Him what He wants and all I can figure is that He is looking back at me and asking me the same question. It is a most unsettling question. Really? Is this a test? Is there such a freedom in living with God? And if so, what is the responsibility that is joined with it? No. NO! Tell me what to do. Then I can know what to do. I can be certain I am doing the right thing.

And then I am confronted with the reality that God wants to relieve me of my lust for certainty. If God were to tell me exactly what to do, then He would be feeding my lust for certainty, He would feed my idolatry. For God to obey my command for exact commands would be for Him to accept my request for Him to no longer be my God.

Yes, I know to love people and to love God is the general command. It is a command because it is how this world best operates. Genuinely loving God and people is to make this world a better place than it is. But everyone gets that command. I want a Moses type of command. One with clear instructions. And still I get nothing. The more I want it the more silence I get. My soul rages with lust for certainty and God will never give it to me because He loves me too much to quit being my God, which is what He would have to do in order to answer my prayer how I want Him to.

It is a complicated prayer that I pray, ironic and self-defeating. The pray looks honest enough, God, what do you want? but it is selfish in its core. At its core it denies the freedom, creativity, and abilities that have already been placed within me. It denies my sense of agency, initiative, and courage that cannot be expressed in robotic compliance. In short, my prayer is for God to help me deny being made in His image. My prayer is really, God, help me be less like you.

The God I have come to know loves me too much to put forth efforts to help me self-destruct in this way. He answers my prayers by refusing to answer my prayers.

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If There Were No Hell…

Would Heaven be any less Heaven?

Would you change your moral character?

Would God be any less just? Any more just?

Would you lose your faith in God? Consider having faith in God?

Would you be disappointed in God if someone got Heaven that you believed deserved Hell?

Would you lose your desire to make the world a better place?

Would you increase your desire to make this world a better place?

Would you lose your evangelistic leverage?

Would you be motivated differently to do good things?

Would it be a relief? A threat?

Would you have different conversations about God, spirituality, Christianity, and faith?

Would you have to answer to someone who believed there was a Hell?

Would it confuse you?

Would it clear some things up?

Would it take away your point?

Would it give you a point?

Would you find friends where you once found enemies?

Would you find enemies where you once found friends?

Would you have to hide it from your grandparents?

Would you have to change churches?

Would you be any less saved?

Would you be any more saved?

Would there be a down side?

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Storying Toward Discovery

I am writing some stories of my life and learning a whole lot by writing them rather than telling them. I’ve told many of these stories to many people and often at family gatherings. Some of them have never been told. None of them have ever been told in the ways I am writing

them.

Originally I wanted to write these stories as a way to self-disclose to my therapy students about my own course toward becoming a therapist.  I wanted to demonstrate my own self of the therapist work I was doing. It is possible these stories could still work that way, but they have evolved quite a bit from the original intent. They’re turning into a love story, but not a romantic love story. They’re turning into a love story between me and my father.

One thing I am realizing in writing these stories with the trajectory of redemption is that I don’t really know these stories that well. It is not until I reflect on them and work hard to select the right language that I begin tom know these stories. I am also learning how connected these seemingly unconnected stories can be.

Another thing I am learning is that these stories change as I recall them. They change on their own, but I can change them as I write them. My memory is suspect and that is certainly permission for interpretation. How cold, how hot, how much rain fell, how much it hurt, what I knew, what I didn’t. It is all important to tell it right, not factually.

Finally, there is a lot of meaning to these stories that I could not possibly have been aware of when I was living the stories. Only in recalling the stories is it possible to even begin to unpack the meaning. This has been the most amazing and rewarding part of this. When I sit at the keyboard and think, what did that mean, I find “that” could mean lots of things. I have context to view myself.

Writing is perhaps the most healing thing a person can do.

Technorati Tags: memoir,story,family

Reflections on my 41st Birthday

Today I turn 41 years old and I sit quietly on my couch in my new house in Nolensville, Tennessee. It is still hard to believe I live here and have not found a way to call it home. It’s not that there is so much that is wrong here, but rather so much that remains unfamiliar. Home is where the heart is, they say. I wonder though, how one decides where to locate a heart. I find my heart scattered in pieces or perhaps stretched across a nation of places I’ve lived. My heart is also located in the memories I have and sprinkled into the people I love. Those memories evolve over time as some are highlighted and some obscured. Those people move around and thus take a little piece of my heart to the mountains, to Europe, to Africa, and all over. I do not feel home here. I must make routine this geography. I must create and deepen relationships. I must create memories. Home, if this place will ever get a piece of my heart, must emerge in these ways.
For my whole life there has been this desire to arrive. I never do. I want to arrive at being grown up and mature, I want to arrive at happiness and satisfaction, I want to arrive at being smart, I want to arrive at a place of no loss, pain, fear, anxiety, I want to arrive at a place of certainty – I want to arrive at a life where no more effort and striving are required. And yet, four decades and a year of disappointment of one kind has provided other sorts of blessings I would not trade for anything. Everything good that has ever happened, happened on the way.
One thing I have learned is that my great desire to arrive is the desire of a fool. Life is not about one great arrival. Perhaps Heaven is some sort of great arrival, but even my hopes for Heaven being a place of arrival are now tarnished. I cannot believe that Heaven could be so great a place if it is the permanent end to things and a static eternity. Arriving means the end of something and the beginning of no change. Arriving means whatever is at this moment freezes and nothing else ever emerges. Change evaporates. In short, there is no other way to describe arrival than in death. I am not prepared to die. Although I have come to learn that the line between this life and the next may be thinner than previously believed, it still feels impenetrable. I cannot cross it for a few minutes to be with my father and the return.
Thus, I have intellectually come to the understanding that I will not arrive and that this lust for arrival is a foolish desire. However, I still feel this yearning inside for it. Perhaps someday I will come to learn a way to more fully embrace this journey I am on and not long so deeply for its end. Perhaps I can make an effort to imagine how desperately I would miss this journey were it to be over right now. Perhaps the journey would miss me, who knows?

I watch Sierra, now 12 and Canaan, now 10 growing and moving at rapid speed toward adulthood and try hard to keep up. If my life is moving fast, theirs is moving faster. I see them growing and changing in so many ways that it would be hard to record them. I have found that they each have a unique sense of humor that is growing more sophisticated and intellectual. I am pleased with this. Some people may see sense of humor as a secondary or peripheral attribute that may accent or augment something else in their life – a bonus. I see it differently. A sense of humor is about survival. How do humorless people make it through the hardest parts of life? To laugh by seeing the humor in life is one of the great expressions of humility. The ability to see oneself in context or to see the world as it is and then tell the truth of that reality is often hilarious and provokes laughter. Humor has a way of unraveling the lies we find ways to cuddle up in and get comfortable. I love that my children have a sense of humor. I hope they hone this skill the rest of their lives.

I am more in love with Gail than ever. It is a seasoning love that would have been impossible 14 years ago. This is a good trajectory to be on.

There is so much more to say, but I will end with this: I am so grateful for the life I am living. I know that so little of its goodness, if any, can be traced back to me efforts or how I in any way deserve it. I was situated well in life before being born and have had so much privilege training into my life since that these good things cannot be accredited to me. I do not deserve a life so good. I am grateful to have it. I give thanks to God. May I become better at giving this life away while I still have the choice to do so.

Minnesota in December Memory

The smell of recently bundled newspapers filled the entryway of our split-level house as my older brother and I spent another late Saturday night stuffing the comic and classified sections together. Four hundred Sunday newspapers had to be stuffed in preparation for dad’s journey out to deliver them early the next morning. We always put it off as long as we could, mortgaging sleep as we had to be up in time for church the next morning. The smell of one newspaper brings a familiar and nostalgic comfort; the smell of four hundred newspapers is nauseating. The slick and sore feel of ink-stained, dried, and cracked hands that no amount of hand washing could resolve was the way I went to bed every Saturday night.

We usually stuffed papers in the garage – even in the cold Minnesota winter. It is a difficult thing for a Minnesotan to admit to being cold. However, when the temperature hits 28 below zero, most of us relent and say something like, “It’s getting a little nippy out there,” which in general can be translated, “My bone marrow is frozen solid.” In mid December, the night comes early, intruding on the afternoon like an invading army. The cold barges in and owns the air, turning it crisp and mean. With no clouds to hold in the hapless and so-called heat, the cold sank in under the bright starry sky and had its eye on 30 degrees below zero. Ice was already forming on the inside of the windows and a clever frigid draft found it way into the house and onto my bare skin.

The 18th Haiku (Happy 14th Anniversary)

The 18th Haiku

Lone
Last star fades. Dawnshine.
Night gave way. Illuminate.
Lone shadow stretching.

One
Arms open wide. Hope.
Call of desperation. Pause.
Lone call; no echo.

Burnt.
Jump into flame. Fool!
Balm of Gilead. Soothe. Heal.
Why did I do that?

Bye.
Empty midnight grief;
Cry every last tear away;
Wander like Alice.

Love.
Heart throbbing thunder,
Flung to arms of Heart-Catcher;
Co-creating love.

Run
Horizon view. Sprint!
Light speed dash. Exhilerate!
Some things cannot wait.

For
Lovestruck. Meant to be.
Arriving at each other.
Puzzle piece embrace.

The
Distinct perfection;
One fixed point well defined;
Skeptics refuted.

Hills!
Up, down, journeywise;
Adventures are successful;
In good company

Wait!
Learn how to be here;
Snail and sloth educate. Slow.
Rose smelling lessons.

Look!
Fixed gaze. Full view.
Invisible to the world;
Transparent to you.

Smile.
Irrepressible;
Irresistible glow - Burst!
Faceshine scatters dusk.

Chris
Man of many words;
Indescribable woman;
Harmonic union.

Fell
Gravity lurks. Pounce!
Plummet into feathersoft.
I don’t want to move.

Hard
Truthtelling – eyes wide;
Perched ears hear everything –
Unignorable.

For
Empty space given;
The purpose of these passions –
Mutual fulfill.

Gail.
Gift! Always In Love.
Go After Intimate Life.
Great Allies In Love.