What If Jesus Meant All That Stuff?

I like Shane Claiborne. I do not agree with everything he says or writes, but I believe that he has a firm grasp on what the Kingdom of God looks like. Here is a letter he recently wrote into Esquire Magazine to non-believers. Loved it and would like to know what you all think.

What If Jesus Meant All That Stuff?

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Why Church?

Sorry for the blog delay. I am still getting used to transition from a student-pastor to a full-time pastor in Mertens. I hope that I will be able to blog more in the days to come.

It has become cliche to bang on the church today. Part of that is that we bang on each other within the church and fight over minutia of doctrine in our schools and churches. Part of it is that the church has often aligned itself with some type of politics or politician. I'm not just talking about the Religious Right, but it has been the church's history since Constantine to do so. The church will always have problems. Sometimes (maybe more than sometimes) we focus on the wrong aspects of what it means to be church (such as attendance and building assets). We are full of people who are in the process of being transformed and discipled. We are not on this side of eternity yet.

Yet as I have been more and more immersed in the local church, I have fallen more and more in love with it and more and more convinced that the church of Jesus Christ is the hope of the world, or maybe better said a partner in the healing of the world. The church is a place where you can come and experience resurrection, reconciliation and healing. It's our job, our definition. That is the kingdom vision that Jesus "bought with his blood." But here's the catch, it's not us doing the work. The good news of the church is that we are a people being formed for partnership in God's Mission in the world. God is always at work in the world He created. God is at work reconciling, healing, forgiving, and saving the world He loves through Jesus Christ. The church is invited to participate with God in his work. God forms us for this. The cycle of how healthy church with a kingdom vision works is that God works in us, we work out what God works in, and that cycle continues over and over again. Why church? Because we in the church are continuing to be formed and transformed into Christ's image and to participate in God's mission in the world. What could be more exciting than that?

Words from a Dead Guy

The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
where there is hatred let me sow love,
where there is injury let me sow pardon,
where there is doubt let me sow faith,
where there is despair let me sow hope
where there is darkness let me give light
where there is sadness let me give joy.

For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in forgiving that we are forgiven,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

Everything's Amazing, Nobody's Happy

Found this on my friend Michele's blog! Absolutely hilarious and true.

Gardens and the Kingdom of God

Moving out to Mertens has reaped benefits for me both spiritually and for the food that Sarah and I eat. We live among farmers who grow all this incredible food. They all not only grow food for profit, but they all have personal gardens which grow the best onions and tomatoes I have ever had. When talking to these farmers about their farming and their gardens, I am struck by how much they do and how much they cannot control. Each year the farmer worries about whether or not it is going to rain or if the sun will scorch the crops. Or they worry if a late freeze that is unexpected will ruin a pasture of freshly planted crops. They worry about animals or insects. What they have told me is that they create the conditions for the growth of crops, but they cannot cause growth.

I do not think it was a mistake that the author of Genesis tells us that the world that God created at peace with him was a garden. A garden is something that you work hard at maintaing. A garden is something that you constantly pull weeds, water, till the ground, prune the plants, and plant seeds. At the same time a garden takes incredible faith. No matter how hard you work, you cannot control whether or not you will have good crops or a beatiful bloom.

The kingdom of God and his church is like a garden. We do have work to do. We have seeds to plant, plants to water, the hungry to feed, and a message of new life in the midst of death. However, we cannot control the result. We are not a repair shop. We are a garden. God is the only one who controls the results of the garden. What do we do in the mean time? Keep working, keep praying, keep becoming his people, and most of all keep loving and proclaiming the Christ story with our lives. God will produce the results. Sometimes they may not be what we think or what we hope for, but this is God's world, God's Kingdom, and God's church. God started the world in a garden, and God resurrected Jesus in a garden. God, may your church be your garden where new life is found.

Vacation and New Monasticism

This past week, Sarah and I headed to New Mexico and Colorado for vacation. We climbed a couple mountains and got to visit with Sarah's parents who co-pastor a Disciples church in Albuquerque. We actually got to worship with them on Sunday, which was a huge treat because Sarah and I never get to just attend church together.

While we were in Colorado, we stopped by an incredible book store in Denver called the Tattered Cover. If you are ever in Denver, you need to check this place out! I picked up a book there called The New Monasticism by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, who is an associate pastor at St. John's Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina and a leader within the New Monasticism movement. I've only read the first chapter so far, and already he is controversial but challenging at the same time. His thesis that it is hard to be a Christian in America rings true in my ears. I leave you with a quote from his introductory chapter:

"The sign that marks the life of the church in the world is God's victory over death through death - the ultimate winning by losing. Any church that remembers its identity in the transition from Good Friday to Easter morning has reason to hope, even in the darkest night. Yes, it's hard to be a Christian in America. Indeed, the church we know is fraught with contradictions. But God is able to restore life, giving warmth to limbs that were frozen in death. Even if the church is the dead and broken body of Christ, God can resurrect it."

Muddied Living Theology

My whole life I've stared poverty in the face and either did not know it or did nothing about it. The city I grew up in is notorious for its homeless and poverty-ridden citizens, especially children under sixteen. When I went off to college, I worked at a church and an organization filled with kids living in trailer parks and government housing. While I wrestled through issues in scripture, Greek, Hebrew, and history, 33% of children in the city I lived in knew nothing but absolute poverty. Then I moved onto seminary in one of the most glaringly obvious city's in the world that is divided into haves and have-nots. Every-once in a while growing up I would see a homeless or poverty stricken person come talk to me about how much they love Jesus (always a good way to butter up a person of the church) and how they needed gas money or money for food or rent money. Sometimes I believe them, and sometimes I think they play me for a fool. I live with the tension of wanting to be the hands and feet of Jesus, but at the same time I want to really help and not give money to feed an addiction.

This past week I had my first experience at Mertens with someone coming to my door because I am the pastor and asking for help. She told my wife and I her story brilliantly, and complained about other pastors not helping her out and how wrong that was. I immediately did not believe her. Well, not all of it at least. I do think that some of the story was true, and that she and her husband truly needed help, but she did not have to insult other pastors to feed my ego. Most pastors I know are very generous men and women despite the way we get portreyed sometimes. (In the end we did help her financially. Sarah wisely said that we are called to serve; the people we serve have to decide what to do with it.)

Stories like the lady who visited me this week muddy theology with real life. I believe that Jesus calls us to serve the marginalized and the least of these. I take the verse where Jesus says, "the poor will always be with you," to mean that the poor will always be around you because that is what we are in the business of doing: serving those who are marginalized. Yet here is this woman at my door asking for help and I do not believe her. Muddied. Messy. That's what happens when theology and real life collide. Forgiveness is a great concept to talk about until you have to forgive someone who wronged you. Serving the least of these is heart warming and emotionally captivating until someone shows up at your door asking for help. A living theology is muddy, but somehow I think God is there in the middle of the mud getting his hands dirtied in the messiness of our fallen world.