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Turkey Dinners, Breathing, and the Dark Side of the Moon

I got home the other night after a long day at “work.”  I’m a youth pastor and so Sunday is a work day for me.  This last Sunday was particularly long because we had our church Thanksgiving Dinner that evening.

I arrived at the church around 8:30 that morning so that i could get a firm count of the chairs in our church auditorium (yes, if you were a youth pastor then you too would experience the simple joy of counting chairs in a church).  We then had a combined service with the Four Square Church that rents our facility on Sunday afternoons (which is more involved than it may sound).  After the service, we rearranged the auditorium, moving and stacking all of the chairs, bringing in tables to seat 200, table cloths, centerpieces, set up a make-shift kitchen to serve food out of, cooking and prepping food in the actual kitchen…

It was a busy day at Living Waters Chapel.

Lots of labor,

Some serious tension as we decided how the tables were to be set,

Then there was dinner.

AND the clean-up.

I left the church at about 8:45 that evening (that’s a 12 hour work day) being quite tired from all of the labor AND the tension AND the drained feeling that I get after “counseling” with teenagers AND the overwhelming anxiety that I often feel when in a crowded room.  I pulled up to my apartment expecting to see my room-mates’ cars in the driveway, but they weren’t there.  I walked into the apartment, it was chilly, the air was a little stale, and there was a pervading silence-save from the quite sound of traffic driving over the hill on Highway 18-that is uncommon in my apartment.

For a moment, I was a little sad, I had wanted to chat with my room-mates, they ALWAYS have bizarre stories to tell (or at least normal stories that they turn bizarre in the telling) but they weren’t home.  It was just me and a dark apartment.

I decided to do something that I don’t commonly do but realize that I should do more often.

I am a rather hyper-active individual-at least my mind is-and I always need something to do, but I decided to do nothing.

I walked to the refrigerator and pulled out a chilled creme soda, (I love creme soda when it is really cold) pulled a “goblet” from the shelf, (creme soda is always better in a goblet) and poured the sweet refreshing beverage appreciating very greatly the soothing “fizz” sound that any soda makes when you pour it out.

I walked-goblet in hand-into the living room.  I turned on my iPod and decided that I needed to listen to something that would fit the zen-like ethos that I was trying to achieve.

Pink Floyd.

Dark Side of the Moon.

I set my drink on my glass coffee table and leaned back into the large over-stuffed chair that a friend gave to my room-mates and I when we moved in and sipped down my soda as I stopped thinking and simply soaked in the music.

It may sound odd, but I felt as though the whole experience was something transcendent, as though sitting in the dark in my living room listening to Pink Floyd was somehow something bigger.  I breathed deeply and intentionally.  I let my cool beverage sit in my mouth, saturating every taste bud before swallowing.  In spite of the music, I could hear my heart-beat.

Sometimes I feel as though life can suffocate people.  Our economy is unstable and that has a lot of people very worried.  I know a Respiratory-Therapist that is having trouble finding work in his field and who is working in landscaping while he searches.  We have a new President-Elect and I know a lot of people that are unhappy that he won the election and worried that he might erase our freedoms.  Just the other day I had one of my students tell me that he was beaten by his step-dad until he was old enough to defend himself.

Sometimes life can feel like it is suffocating you,

and perhaps it is.

As I breathed slowly, savored every drop of my soda, and let my soul fly with the screaming guitar solos of Pink Floyd, I felt as though I was taking a few moments to lift my head above the surface and take a breath.

I just heard today that children in Africa and other undeveloped regions take an average of 5-6 breaths in a minute.  American children take between 18-20 breaths a minute.  Doctors say that the slower pace of breathing is more healthy, that at 5-6 breaths a minute you get 80-90% of the energy that your body needs to survive, while at 18-20 breaths you only receive about 10-20% of the energy that your body needs.

We all need to breathe.

We need to breathe deeply.

We need to savor every ounce of flavor upon our tongues.

We need to be lost in something beautiful.

We need to shake free the fetters of a culture that would trample us underfoot at a pace faster than the one that we are breathing at.

Sitting in a dark apartment, drinking a cold soda, listening to deep music, all reminded me that I need to take the time to stop doing and just listen to the still small voice of a God that wants me to breathe.  Perhaps my dark apartment became a bit of Holy Ground in that moment, perhaps that soda became my Eucharist, and maybe Pink Floyd fell in tune with the chorus of heaven, but whatever it was, it felt as though heaven reached down and for the first time in a while I took a breath of pure oxygen.

Jesus, help us to stop from all of our busy-ness so that we can embrace the simple beauty of the lives that you have given us.

Grace.

Peace.

-m

Matt 10:34

34 “Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth! No, I came to bring a sword.”

NLT

Needless to say, our culture is enamored with competition.  We enjoy picking sides, we like having a favorite; in fact I think that in a lot of ways, we enjoy conflict.

“We enjoy conflict?”

Yes, conflict.

Like most things, competition bears with it the dichotomy of good and evil.  It can be beneficial, and it can be destructive.  On the “evil” end of competition, we find conflict.

Conflict. 

It makes me think about plate tectonics, that principle that you learn in elementary school in California so that you can understand why earthquakes happen.  To sum it up, plate tectonics is the science and understanding of the movement of the various plates that constitute the earth’s surface.

Giant slabs of earth floating over a fathomless sea of bubbling, steaming, magma.  Eventually, these plates begin to collide, or come in conflict with one another.  There are a few ways that this happens.  In one instance, one plate begins to slide under another plate.  In another, the two plates collide and they both reach skyward creating mountains.  Sometimes the plates begin to pull away from each other.  And in the final form of plate tectonics, both plates collide, but this time they slide along each other’s edges, grinding away at their opposing edges.

Whichever way the plates collide, they all cause earthquakes at one point or another.

Because they are in conflict with each other.

And this conflict, though it can be quite violent is natural.

Placing opposing forces in proximity to each other always creates conflict.  Sometimes it is loud and violent, other times, it is so subtle that you can hardly discern its presence.  It is undeniable, when conflicts exist, the feeling is palpable.  The outsider feels the tension of conflict often more intensely than those involved in the conflict.

It is election-day in America and one thing is certain: no matter who obtains the office of POTUS, half of the country will be unhappy.  In fact, I think that the losing half of the country will be more than unhappy.  They will be outright pissed off; feeling as though they have been robbed of what was rightfully theirs.

Whoever loses will have a bunch of angry followers that will feel as though they have personally lost something.  Whether John McCain or Barrack Obama wins the election people all over the country will feel as though they have somehow lost their claim to the White House or that they are entitled to feel as though they have won it.

We take very personally the success and failure of these individuals.  It is vicarious conflict.

We feel the pain of defeat when “our guy” loses and breathe in the sweet aroma of victory when “our guy” wins.  Personally, I feel as though I have already lost the election, it happened months ago when my guy, Ron Paul, was eliminated from the running. 

There’s a very serious problem with this though: I, like most of the country, have never actually met any of the politicians that are running for office but I still somehow feel as though I can lay claim to one of them.  Why do I feel this way?

Idealism.

We have allowed our politicians to become more than mere men running for office, they are somehow more.  John McCain isn’t just an elderly Senator from Arizona; he’s a war hero that represents decades of sacrifice for his country.  Barrack Obama isn’t just some young African American Senator from Illinois; he is the voice of change and inspiration.

Whether you believe these statements doesn’t matter, what matters is that this is how we subconsciously look at these two guys that are after the same job.  We are electing the images of marketing, not the men.  We are electing (or so we think on some level) the embodiment of our ideals, not a President.

And that’s how we have become personally invested in the process.  The office of POTUS doesn’t belong to one of these guys; it belongs to the idea of one of these guys.  We are trying to get our ideas into public office, not John McCain.  We are trying to elect our sentiments, not Barrack Obama.

And this, my friends will lead us to conflict.  Be certain, that no matter who wins, November 5^th, 2008 will be a day when America is divided down the middle and much like plate tectonics, we will be experiencing ideal-tectonics.  Some people will be pushed under the ideals of another, others will be so stubborn that they will push and push against each other until their conflict rises like great mountains from the earth’s surface dividing them forever, others will simply pull away from each other seeing no way to come together again, but most will just continue to quietly slide against each other, creating little disturbances here and there.

We feel as though the conflicts that exist between us are natural, as though if such conflicts didn’t exist there would be something wrong.  The idea of a world at peace sounds wonderful, but the realists will always remind us that it is just not possible.  Why isn’t it possible?

Because of a great conflict.

Mankind is at conflict, not just with itself, but with God, and this ongoing conflict with God has caused us to be broken and cracked, much like the earth’s surface.  Our cracks grind against themselves and we realize that there is conflict in our own hearts and minds and seeing this conflict, it becomes evident that if we are at conflict with our own nature then there is no way in which we can not be at conflict with the world around us.  It is self explanatory really: if we can’t be at peace in ourselves, then we can not bring peace to the world around us.

Conflict.

It’s ugly stuff really.

Jesus, as much as He spoke of peace (and we’ll talk more about this peace at the end) also spoke a great deal of conflict saying things like, “Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth! No, I came to bring a sword.” (Matthew 10:34 NLT)  Jesus makes the claim that following Him will cause you to live a life of conflict. 

Why?

Because living in a broken, cracked world means that eventually you will collide with someone else.

Jesus is making the statement that you will be at conflict with all of those that don’t belong to God, not that you will be picking fights or trying to constantly be working to prove them wrong, but that because your life will not match up with theirs, that there will be conflict.  That your opposing lifestyles, like the edges of the plates that make up the earth’s crust, will grate against, crash into, subvert and pull away from one another.

“But Jesus is all about love, isn’t He?”

Yes, and that’s where the conflict comes from.  Love and hate will always divide themselves like oil fighting to get to the surface of a pool of water. 

“Hate?  Who said anything about hate?”

Well, Jesus is the only source of TRUE love.  Everything else is just hate in comparison.

And that’s the conflict that arises between the followers of Jesus and those who are not.  The true and potent love of Jesus teaches us to live lives that are systematically opposed to the standard lifestyle of the world and this is conflict in its raw, unadulterated form.

It is conflict not because it is hate, it is conflict because it is different and different scares people.

There is good news though, Jesus also said a lot about bringing an eventual peace to the world, a time when we would beat our swords into ploughs, a time when father and son would turn their hearts to one another once again, a time when the broken and cracked world would be remade.

A world brand new, where there is no more conflict, nor more subverting others, no more erecting mountains and divisions between us, no more pulling away from each other, and no more subtle, unspoken abrasions.  This is the hope of the followers of Jesus.  It is also their mission, but it is a mission that is at conflict with the systems of this world.

Perhaps that’s why Jesus said that the peacemakers would be called the children of God…

Because only a child of God Himself can truly bring peace to a broken world.

Grace.

Peace.

-m

Dispatch 1

Sep, 2008

We often say that being a Christian is not about practicing a religion, but rather, it is about building a relationship with Jesus.  If this is true (which I think it is) then we can also say that being the church is not about organizations and buildings but that it is a movement and that it is about people.  This simple philosophy is the driving force behind everything that the new youth ministry of LWC is doing and will be doing in times to come.

The Mosaics (this is the classification given to the generation born in 1984 and forward) have inherited a world in disrepair.

The name Mosaic has been given to this generation as a way to explain their culture.  Mosaics are not individuals with individual ideals; instead, they are members of a global community that fuses together cultures, ideas, and even their ethical stances in order to belong.  This melding of cultures is much like a tile-work mosaic that borrows bits and pieces from many tiles in order to make one picture.  This diversity is the greatest strength of this generation.  It is also the greatest weakness.

The sad fact is that Mosaics are faced with a world that is confused.  Pluralism, over exposure to mass media, consumerism, and the general idea that “if it feels good, do it” have birthed a world so polluted with lies that things like honesty, truth, authenticity, and simplicity are in rare supply.  This rarity has caused new value to be placed on these ideals that were once common place in our world.  Mosaics have grown up in this world where simple goodness is in rare supply.

And the scarcity of truth has caused truth to gain value.

Mosaics are exceptionally cynical, but with good reason.  They are surrounded by a melee influences telling them that their lives are lacking some “thing” and the cynicism that the Mosaics have adopted has come to them as a defensive response to their confused world.  It helps them to identify truth.

And Mosaics are gifted when it comes to identifying truth.

But not just identifying truth, they are also gifted at identifying whether or not the person telling them the truth is actually living that truth to its fullest.  And this is of the deepest value to Mosaics.  Growing up in a world that is constantly trying to sell you something causes you to not only value the product (in this case, the truth) but also to value whether or not the “salesman” uses his own product (because after all, this is a global community and Mosaics desire the affirmation of other members of the community).

And that brings us back to the basic philosophy of the youth ministry at LWC.

It would be easy to utilize all of the “conventional, flashy” tools that have been used in youth ministry for decades, but I don’t think that these tools are nearly as effective as they once were.  So instead of building a conventional youth ministry, we are building a movement. 

What kind of movement?

…A movement that rejects the philosophies of a world corrupt.

…A movement that embraces people of all backgrounds in the loving arms of the Pierced Redeemer.

…A movement that teaches its members to live in the Way; the open, honest, loving lifestyle that Jesus lived before God and man instead of the shallow, deceit-filled way of broken, fallen humanity.

…A movement that values genuine, loving relationships over superficial “make you feel good” acquaintances.

…A movement of resistance to the status quo.

Allow me to introduce the new Youth Movement of LWC,

The Resistance.

Our mission is simple:

To connect students to the revolutionary movement of Jesus.

In coming dispatches I will relate what we are doing and where we have been, until then, pray that the movement will grow in strength and numbers.  Pray that Jesus will march ahead of us and that His Spirit will overwhelm us.

Grace.

Peace.

-m

Lattes, Lent, and an empty tomb…
Current mood: alive

I can only imagine what it would have been like.  Three days ago, the Man that was turning the kingdom upside down was crucified and died.  When He died, there was an earthquake, and rumor has it that the veil in the temple-the one that the Ark of the Covenant was behind-was ripped in two and the big secret was out: the ark was gone.  The presence of God was not in the temple.

It was a pretty big deal, the Ark being gone.  How long had it been gone?  When the high priest would go in to the holy of holies each year to sprinkle lamb’s blood, what was he sprinkling it on if the ark wasn’t there?  When Jesus died the whole world learned that the presence of God had left the priests.

Where did the ark go?  Well, if you’re an Indiana Jones fan like me, then you know that the ark is in a warehouse with thousands of other boxes, identical to the one that it is in.

Seriously though, we don’t really know where the ark is.  It is one of those historical mysteries.  We do know something of greater importance though: where the presence of God (which is what the ark was supposed to represent) rests.

When Jesus died, He was reconciling the whole world to God.  That word, reconciling, is a great word.  You can use it in a few ways.  You can speak about friends that need to reconcile, or make amends.  You can speak about a people being reconciled in the sense of justice being brought to those who have not had it.  But my favorite usage has to do with ideas.

I was speaking with my friend Daniel from work the other day about the difficulties that I have had reconciling the common practices of modern Christianity and the lifestyle that Jesus spoke about.  In this sense, the word reconcile means something to the affect of bringing things into agreement.  It is interesting though; the implication of the word is that if things are not in agreement, then they can not be reconciled.  In order to reconcile two things, they have to be able to agree, or get along, or be of like kind.  In order to be reconciled, the items in question must be made up of the “same stuff.”

When Jesus came to this world He was made of the “same stuff” as you and me.  He wore a suit of flesh and bone.  Blood pulsed through His veins.  Emotions filled His heart and mind.  He was in every way human.  He was in every way God.  He was God in human skin: the reconciliation of God and man.

There is a great deal of mysticism in Christianity that we tend to ignore (you should note, that the word “mysticism” means something like, “having to do with mystery”).  The idea of the super-natural walking around in a natural body is very mystical.

The death and resurrection of Jesus, mystical.

That God would love man, any man, enough to enter into the frailty of human flesh, that He would desire to be reconciled to something so inferior to Himself, is definitively mystical to me.

The greatest mystery of the universe: Why would God desire to be reconciled to man?  Why would He want anything to do with that witch had so painfully rejected Him (you should really pick up a copy of “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis and read the chapter entitled, “The Obstinate Toy Soldier”)?

There have been times that I have been rejected by people.  I think the thing that comes most clearly to mind right now is the experience of having a girl (there have been plenty that have done this to me) reject my invitation to a date or a relationship that was more than “just friends.”

The times that this has happened with girls that I barely knew really had little affect on me.  I would be frustrated for a few hours, go listen to something rather “emo” in nature, and then all was well.  No, the times that the rejection came from a girl that I had grown attached to, those were the painful times.

Those experiences would cause me to question myself.

Why was I not good enough?

What did I do to cause her to not feel the same way?

Was this really happening to me?

Again?

Now eventually the heart heals, but in the process of such healing, I have learned that the old saying “’tis better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all” is a load of crap.  Losing someone that you love is the most painful thing that anyone can experience.  Sure, memories of the good times are great, until you remember having your heart served up on a silver platter of rejection.  Yes, there is nothing more admittedly humiliating than having loved and lost; the feelings of vulnerability, the broken trust, the awkward chance runs-ins with your rejecter.

I wonder how God felt when Adam and Eve rejected Him…

The worst part of being rejected is that feeling that you get for the first month or so while you try to figure out ways to get back the love that you have lost.  You know that it is foolish.  You know that even if they took you back that chances are, you would just be rejected by them again somewhere down the road.  But you’re desperate for their love.  You would do ANYTHING to get them back, until finally, your heart heals.

Love endures all things.

I think we fall in love a lot more often than we would like to admit.  The deeper our love for a person, the deeper our ability to forgive rejection and start all over again.  You see, it is love that compels us to want to reconcile with the one that rejected us.  We even try to change ourselves to be made more of the “same stuff” as the one that rejected us.  Is love sometimes misguided?  Absolutely.  Is it at times wrong?  Certainly.  But is is there, and present love is impossible to ignore.

Back to the question of how God felt about being rejected.

We know that God is love.  While we can have love for someone, God IS love for someone.  It is quite the difference.  You see, God doesn’t just have love for you, He IS love for you.  God doesn’t just love the world, He IS love for the world.  That means that His ability to forgive rejection, His ability to desire to be one with His rejecter, is not just an ability that He has, He IS that ability.

That is why God would desire so intently to reconcile Himself to you:

He IS reconciliation to you.

When the veil of the temple was rent asunder (I LOVE that phrase =), the whole world saw that the presence of God had left the priests.

When the stone that covered the tomb of Jesus was rolled away, the world saw that God’s love for the world did not stay dead.

Where is the presence of God?

Right here, right now.

(I’m sitting at the ’Buck and I am ready to SCREAM with joy…  Literally, I feel like I am “bursting with God-news”)

You have rejected Him.

He IS love for you.

You have walked away from Him.

He died on a cross.

You feel alone.

The tomb is empty and He is present with you.

God has reconciled Himself to you.  Jesus is alive so that He can inhabit you.  He desires to be one with you.  Our perception of God must change from an old man on a giant golden throne to the ever present lover of our souls.  He became like you so that He could be with you.  You are made of the “same stuff” and He wants nothing more than to forgive you and start all over again.  Your relationship to God IS the mysticism of Christianity: when you are in Christ, you are one with the eternal God.

He is Emanuel: God with us.

As I sit at the ’Buck drinking the first Latte that I have had since the beginning of Lent, I am reminded that He is risen.  I am reminded that He has reconciled me to Himself.  I didn’t have to do anything, He died and now He lives forever; forever in love with me, forever forgiving me, forever drawing me to Himself, forever working in me the miracles that only the undying love of my creator can work.

Grace and peace to you as you roll away the stones of your heart and find that what was once dead has been resurrected with Christ.  Today, all things are new!

-m

Currently listening : Minutes to Midnight By Linkin Park Release date: 15 May, 2007

Lent Readings v. 3.0

 ^{5 -7} God saw that human evil was out of control. People thought evil, imagined evil—evil, evil, evil from morning to night. God was sorry that he had made the human race in the first place; it broke his heart. God said, “I’ll get rid of my ruined creation, make a clean sweep: people, animals, snakes and bugs, birds—the works. I’m sorry I made them.”

⁸ But Noah was different. God liked what he saw in Noah.
Genesis 6:5-8 (The Message)

We all know the story of Noah and the Great Flood.  Did you know that historians are actually beginning to concede that this flood must have happened?  It is all over ancient documents.

For example; “The Epic of Gilgamesh.”  This work is acknowledged as the oldest piece of literature ever written.  It is the story of the King, Gilgamesh, and his greatest adventure: he sought the meaning of life, and, if he could find it, eternal life.  He set out on his mission.  His goal was to travel far, far away, across a great see, to meet with the oldest, wisest man that lived at that time.  According to “The Epic,” this man was the one that survived the Great Flood.  He had three sons…

It sure sounds like Gilgamesh went to meet with Noah…

The reason that I bring this up is because I want you to see the fame of Noah.  We talk about him and think of him as merely the man that built a boat, but he was more.  He was the man that built a boat and proved the ENTIRE WORLD WRONG.

In the text above we get a picture of what life was like before the flood.  Did you notice that the word “evil” is used a lot (BTW, I typed that with my pinky at the corner of my mouth like Dr. Evil)?  It is not only used a lot, it is repeated three times.  You may have seen this sort of thing before through out the Old Testament (for example: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord”).  There is a reason for it.  Ancient Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, did not have any qualifiers.

“What’s a qualifier?”

Words like “very,” “most,” and, “best” did not exist in this language, these are qualifiers.  So if you wanted to say that something was very holy you would say, “holy, holy.”  If it was the holiest, you would say, “holy, holy, holy.”  It would be like saying that the very big, very red dog was the “big, big, red, red dog.”  So when the scripture says “evil, evil, evil” we should take note.

It was as evil a time as the world has ever seen.

Evil, evil, evil.

All of their thoughts

evil, evil, evil.

All of their deeds

evil, evil, evil.

Are you getting the picture?

This is when Noah lived.  He was neighbors with someone that was evil, evil, evil.  His friends were all evil, evil, evil.  His coworkers were evil, evil, evil.  His cousins, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles; evil, evil, evil.  All day, every day, evil, evil, evil.

I know that there have been times when I have decided just to follow the crowd, good or bad, it was just easier to do what everyone else was doing.  It’s something that we all do.  If the people that influence us are doing one thing, chances are that we will too.  We will at least start to think about things that we wouldn’t normally think about.  Influence is powerful.

Think about how much advertising you take in during a day.  How much of it is true?  If you buy that body spray are girls going to literally hurl themselves at you?  If you buy that car are you really going to be happier?  If you buy that exercise machine are you really going to look like the model that is selling it?

We would probably all answer these questions with a resounding “No.”  Yet, we buy the body spray, we buy the car, and we buy the exercise equipment.  Why?  We are influenced.

Noah was surrounded by nothing but evil, evil, evil.  All of his influences were evil, evil, evil.

But Noah was good, good, good.

And God noticed, noticed, noticed.

Due to the absolute evil that had consumed the earth, God, was wrestling with whether or not He should scrap project earth.  He was trying to decide whether it was worth it or not.  He was beginning to regret making mankind.

But then He noticed, noticed, noticed.

The point of the story is really simple: because of one man’s goodness, God saved mankind.

That sounds familiar…

This is what Jesus did, He came to a world that was consumed in evil, evil, evil and He gave His life to make it good, good, good.

“But Matthew, the world is a messed up place.”

It is.  That’s why you and I are here.  The whole idea behind this Lent thing is to anticipate the celebration of the resurrection on Easter.  I can only think to do this by being someone that helps bring resurrection to a world that is dying all around me.  What if, in a world that appears broken, broken, broken we became like Noah?

We could be the people that bring life to a dying world.  That’s what Christianity is about: bringing resurrection wherever there is death.  When your friend is broken and hurting and you take the time to listen, you are bringing resurrection to a dead situation.  When someone on the street is begging and you feed them, you bring resurrection into their dead situation.  When you remember that you were made to live this day as a love letter to a Savior that gave you His life, it brings resurrection into the dead parts of your life.  

Why is the story of Noah important?  It is because this story proves to us that God will do whatever it takes to love us, that He has an undying hope in us.  He has looked at you, and seen something that He liked.

Remember, He loves, loves, loves you and has hope, hope, hope in you.  Just live in the resurrection this week, and see how things change, watch dead things come back to life.  

Grace, grace, grace and peace, peace, peace to you.

-m