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Lent Readings v. 2.3
Current mood: enthralled

Lent Readings v. 2.3

 ^{11 -12}As for the rumor that I continue to preach the ways of circumcision (as I did in those pre-Damascus Road days), that is absurd. Why would I still be persecuted, then? If I were preaching that old message, no one would be offended if I mentioned the Cross now and then—it would be so watered-down it wouldn’t matter one way or the other. Why don’t these agitators, obsessive as they are about circumcision, go all the way and castrate themselves!   ^{13 -15}It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?

Galatians 5:11-15 (The Message)

Holy crap, Paul knows how to throw down.

There have been times when I have heard people say things that didn’t sound like the way to live for God and I kept my mouth shut.  If Paul had been around he probably would have called for their castration like he did here.

I guess when you live a life that has been so intensely bound to trying to live as somebody that you’re not, and then you become free of it, you are repulsed by the idea of someone trying to chain your friends up in the same bondage.

I can only imagine what happened when this letter was read publicly to the believers in Galatia.  Just think, the people that Paul suggests castration for were present at the reading.  They must have been furious.  They would have jumped up to defend their teachings.I have the feeling that maybe they did jump up to say something.  I also think that the Galatians underwent a very, very real change of heart while they heard these words for the first time and they probably did not let them speak.

Think about it.

You’ve spent your entire life trying to fit into the model of perfection that your people have passed down for thousands of years.  Every day you wake up and you know that no matter how hard you try that you can NEVER be everything that the law calls for.

You might hit your thumb with a hammer and cuss beofre you had a chance to think about it.

Maybe you ran into that one person that knows how to get under your skin and you let them know what you REALLY think of them.

Perhaps you just don’t feel like going to church and so you don’t.

If any of these things happens, everyone knows about it.  Everyone knows that you have failed.  Everyone looks at you and wonders why you have elected to sin.  If you do something bad enough, they even take you outside of the city and stone you to death.

This law stuff is very serious.

And you can’t do it.

You can’t be perfect.

You can’t get it right all of the time.

You will fail at times.

People will forget to acknowledge your hard work.

You will hurt someone without trying.

It is bound to happen.

So there you are.  Paul came a while back and told you about the way to live a life free in Jesus.  You immediately accepted it.  These new guys come to town, and they start telling you all over again that you have to fit in the mold.  Paul gets word of it and writes a letter.

How do you feel when you hear what he wrote?

I would feel furious.  I hate being lied to, as I’m sure you do.  More than that, I hate being rejected.  The law makes you feel inadequate; it can lead to feeling rejected.Perhaps that’s why Paul was so upset…

Listen, you don’t have to be perfect to follow Jesus.  You don’t have to be something that you’re not.  You just have to be you.

The power of following Jesus is in the realization of the freedom that He gives.  When you understand that He loves you in spite of you, it is like realizing that you have found the one sure thing that there is in life.

Now, as Paul said, this is not an excuse for sin, but it is the key to living without sin.  Look at the passage again.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

…
…

…
…

Okay, did you see what that second paragraph says?

There are two keypoints.  The first one, if you live a life of love, freedom will grow in you.  Spending your life on others causes them to become forgiving of your flaws.  It also causes their love for you to grow.  That’s the amazing thing about love, it doesn’t know how to shrink, when you use it, instead of diminishing, it grows.  The only way that your freedom can be taken from you is if you stop loving people-and God, who consequently, you can’t love without loving those whom you can see-in the perfect love that Jesus has shown.

The second keypoint: what good is it to be free if you can’t share that freedom?  When you withold love from people you are making a brash statement.  What if Jesus witheld His love for you?  Where would you be?  When you, as an heir-nay, a joint heir-with Jesus withold the love that He has given you from others, He is mocked.

But there is something beautiful on the flipside of that thought.  When you share that wondrous love that He has shown you, you make His name famous.

So, here’s to shaking off chains and living with bold love, absolute freedom, and the grace that could only come from the Son of God.

Grace and peace be with you all.

-m

Lent Readings v. 2.0

 ¹ So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law.

Galatians 5:1

Note: This will be the shortest of the Lent Readings selections, but it carries with it a volume of wisdom.  Paul’s statement is simple: if Jesus has come alive in you, then keep it that way.

This is a part of Paul’s letter to the church at Galatia.  This is one of the churches that received Paul’s message quickly.  A group of intensely devout Jews (and non Jews practicing Judaism) received Paul in their midst as a rabbi.  When Paul spoke, he taught them the fulfillment of the law, a life lived in Jesus; a life of simple love for a great God and the people that He had created.

This message was different from the lifestyle to which the Galatians were accustomed.  In order to follow God you were supposed to try and fit into a system of religious rules that dictated every part of your day and conduct.  Being a religious or spiritual person meant that you were a person that was more concerned with living by a set of rules-some of them seemingly impossible to follow-than you were with people.  Following this set of rules could easily become of such a great importance that one would care more to follow the rules than to try and please God.  That is to say that as the rules would come more sharply into focus in one’s life, God could become increasingly blurry.

Paul was familiar with this lifestyle; he had spent the totality of his life living these rules with extreme devotion.  Paul makes the argument that he was a “Pharisee of the Pharisees;” the Pharisees were the one’s that would interpret the law, so being a Pharisee of the Pharisees would mean interpreting the law for the Pharisees.  Paul claims, with absolute assurance, that it would be very difficult to find anyone that was better at following the laws of Judaism than him and no one argued with him.

Paul’s absolute devotion to the law lead him into a most peculiar occupation: he spent his days hunting down the followers of Jesus and bringing them to his form of justice: a swift death.

Paul’s absolute devotion to the law clouded his vision with the density of a London fog.  He could not see beyond his stark perfectionism and that drove him to hate; hate for anyone that tried to “mess up” his systematic lifestyle.

Fast forward.

We’re back in Galatia for the first time.

Paul preaches freedom and grace and peace to the Galatians.

And they take to it like a fish to water.

Freedom is deeply appealing when you have been bound in chains.  In fact, it is even more appealing when you realize that the chains that you thought bound you to God become the chains that bind your soul to hell-fire.

The Galatians accepted Jesus and began living lives of love.  Paul moved on to continue spreading the good news.

Then it happened.

Paul received word that the Galatians had received some new teachers in their midst, teachers of the law, teachers that once again, bound them up in the chains of the old religious system.  They went from freedom in Jesus to bondage.

From lives of love for God and man,

to the self absorption of trying to live a perfect life.

Paul wrote this letter to the Galatians in this context.  He was urging them, pleading with them, compelling them to not forget the great freedom that they received from Jesus.  

Why is it so easy to fall back into doing the thing that you hate?

Chains become comforters.  We desire to carry them around like Linus carrying his blanket and sucking his thumb (thank Jesus for “Peanuts”).  Familiarity becomes more important than truth.  Ignorance is bliss and we are the ignorant.

This is what Paul was talking about.  Why would we desire to live in the darkness of Plato’s Cave (read “The Allegory of the Cave” by Plato http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/allegory.html) when the love of Jesus has loosed our chains and brought us blinking into the light?  Why would we desire to bind anyone else in the same chains that we have been set free from?

If you have been set free, then stay that way.  It’s the very reason that Jesus died.

Freedom in Christ to be who God made you, imperfections and all: this is what living the resurrection looks like.

“On Purity of Mind…”

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think.

When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.

–Siddhartha Gautama

“You are what you eat.” This statement is a reflection of physical fitness. The concept behind it, is quite simple: junk in, junk out. In the instance of becoming what you eat, if you eat fatty, unhealthy foods, then the chances are that you will become a fat, unhealthy person. The reverse is also true: if you eat lean, healthy foods, you will become a much more lean, and healthy person. The statement above is similar: you will become what you think. The major difference in these two thoughts is the source of the output; the former implicates the mind, the latter implicates the food. I think the problem is both. When the mind is constantly bombarded with one type of input, it will begin to reflect that input, we may have the ability to cipher through this outer influence, but ultimately, the mind will begin to be shaped by what is put into it.

Purity of mind is a desirable state. When the mind is pure, it is in a sense
“empty;” empty of thoughts that bring inward destruction; empty of excessive details that cloud decisions; empty of preconceived ideas about life, people, and circumstances. This “emptiness” leaves room for other things; in the vacuum of negativity there is space for clarity. Clarity helps us to see the world with a sort of innocence. This innocence is easily related to as a source of joy. And thus, an empty mind is actually full.

It is astounding how much our outward world influences our perceptions. I watch the news, learning of the atrocities committed by some ignorant warlord in a far away place, and realize the world is a truly sad place to live. I pass a homeless woman on Higuera St. in San Louis Obispo and have the sense that somewhere down the line the people that loved her, have forgotten her. I sit at Starbucks and watch young lovers break apart their relationship; he’s ready to break the windows of every car in the parking lot,she’s wondering if she will ever meet a guy that will treat her with the same kind of affection that she gives to him. All of these things can cause the mind to dwell on the impure.

If things that are broken are impure, does that mean that things once broken and now mended become pure?

Again, I watch the news, and rather than feeling helpless, I feel a need to change the world around me, perhaps I am motivated to do something about children in Ugandan refugee camps (www.invisiblechildren.com). I pass the homeless woman and realize that even though the people that once loved her have forgotten her, it doesn’t mean that you and I can’t love her; she’s the same woman, her position has just become less desirable; that’s all. I watch the young lovers remember that, even though their time together has come to an end, their lives have not. They rise again, starting afresh, he learns to control the wildness inside of him; she learns that even though things went bad with this guy, not all guys are bad. Soon, they even become friends again. Impure things becoming pure, it all happens when the mind is pure.

Often, the things that are put into our minds are things that we can not control. A friend tells us some bad news, we over hear a conversation, we begin to-as a result of being gradually worn down-believe all of the advertising that is overwhelmingly shoved in our faces; the purity that we desire for our minds is stolen from us by uncontrollable immersion in a broken world. Once again though, mending brokenness is the source of purity.

Recalling that all people bear the image of their Creator is the source of pure thinking. From this place, our thoughts shift and we realize that these troubled souls are just like us. Hopelessness is the beginning of impure thinking; the feeling of being totally incapable. Recalling that we are image-bearers helps us to see brokenness as a situation that can be mended. It is a source of hope, and hope is a beautiful thing; the possibility of a better tomorrow. Gandhi said that if we desire to change the world then we must, “Be the change that [we] want to see in the world.” In a world impure and broken, people with a desire to be pure and mended are the solution.

“You are what you eat” may be the fate of us all, but it doesn’t mean that we have to keep eating the same tripe. Just as we have the ability to choose what we eat, we have the ability to choose how we think about the world around us, and when we change our thinking, we change our actions. And if enough of us change our actions, then maybe, just maybe, we will bring a bit of mending to this broken world.

Lent Readings 1.7
Current mood: On a journey…

I found this an approproiate supplement to this week’s Lent reading…

Psalm 125 (NLT)
¹ Those who trust in the Lord are as secure as Mount Zion;
they will not be defeated but will endure forever.
² Just as the mountains surround Jerusalem,
so the Lord surrounds his people, both now and forever.
³ The wicked will not rule the land of the godly,
for then the godly might be tempted to do wrong.
⁴ O Lord, do good to those who are good,
whose hearts are in tune with you.
⁵ But banish those who turn to crooked ways, O Lord.
Take them away with those who do evil.
May Israel have peace!

The reason that I selected this passage is simple: this is a “song of ascension.”

“A song of what?”

A song of ascension, as in ascent.

A big part of Judaism, and likewise Christianity, is the idea of pilgrimage.  There are numerous feasts celebrated by the Jews and a big part of these feasts is traveling from your hometown to Jerusalem.

They would often say, “Come, let us go UP to the House of the Lord.”

All along the journey to Jerusalem parents would tell their children the stories of their ancestors.  “Do you see that well?  Our father Jacob dug that well when…”  And after a few days of stories and “Are we there yet?” they would arrive at Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is a city that you literally have to go ‘up’ to.  It was built on a hill, and the Temple of God was up there, on this hill.  The people quite literally would travel with the anticipation of going ‘up’ to the House of God.  In fact, you find all throughout the Jewish tradition, stories of the great men of God going up on the mountain to pray (Abraham, Moses, Elijah, just to name a few).  Going up, it’s sort of a metaphor for going to a place above the world and its problems to be with God.

“Matthew’s rambling again…”

You have to figure that as you were traveling, remembering the great stories of your ancestors, seeing all of the sites that you have heard the rabbis talk about in synagogue, you would begin to get very excited about arriving in Jerusalem.  After all, God is there.

And that’s why this song/psalm was written.  It is a song that would be sung by the people as they arrived in Jerusalem.  This song would comemorate the experience of meeting with God.

There is something to note here though: God was only in the Temple in Jerusalem.  Thus the need for these regualr pilgrimages.

Fast forward a bit.

A child is born in Bethlehem.  They call Him Jesus, but He has this God-given nickname, Imanuel, God with us.  The idea is simple: you no longer have to trek up to Jerusalem to be with God, in Jesus you can live in this place that is above the world and its ways.

And that’s our new pilgrimage.

We don’t necessarily make a pilgrimage to a great Temple, but rather, we live our lives like pilgrims.  We are to live with the same sort of steadfast anticipation.  We walk through life telling the stories of what our God has done and we anticipate eagerly the day when He returns, the day that Job spoke of with a greater desire than the desire for life itself (”…Yet with my eyes, I will see God.”).

This ancient song is our song.  Let it settle in our hearts.  Let it over run our thoughts.  Let our desires be shifted from the paradigms of this world to the “upward” paradigm, the one that anticipates the restoration and resurrection of all things.

As we anticipate the day that we celebrate the resurrection, let’s remember that we are just pilgrims on a journey.  Grace and peace to you,

-m

Death, complaints, and the ’Buck
Current mood: peaceful

So this is day two of Lent, and so far, the experience is proving to be insightful.

To let you in on my “Lent List” (which is not normally something that I would do, but, it seems applicable today), I am fasting a few things: 1) soda, 2) coffee (which by the way, has been the hardest thing so far, do you have any clue what it’s like walking into the ‘Buck-this is a term for Starbucks that I learned from my good friend Josh the minstrel-and ordering an Iced Tea instead of, well, anything made with the blessed bean?), 3) the use of bad words, and 4) complaining about my current circumstances (actually, I take that back, not complaining is the hardest one).

What I am realizing is that those first three items, while I miss them, I can easily live without.  The fourth one, well, I don’t like living without it (even now you’re probably thinking that I’m complaining, I promise I’m not, I’m getting to a point).  I have come to realize, within the first two days of Lent that I am a complainer.

I don’t want to be a complainer.

Nobody likes a complainer.

Or do they?

It occurs to me that I like to listen to people complain.  I like to sit back, listen, and then respond with an answer to their complaints.*  It makes me feel important.  It makes me feel better about myself.  It makes me feel like I’m in control.

And I know that I’m not the only person that feels this way.

Have you ever fealt good about being the “Bible Answer Man” (or woman)?  Have you ever fealt like people are better because of you?  Have you ever fealt like you needed to hear someone else complain for a while so that you can feel better about your situation?

I’m not proud of it, but I have fealt that way before, especially that bit about feeling better because of hearing the complaints of another.

I can be very selfish.

Thanks for agreeing with me so quickly on that…

Not complaining has forced me to confront my complaints, and as I do, I am seeing that while some are justifiable, none of them are of any value.  They are all an annoyance.  Every last one of them, annoying

to me,

to those of you that have had to listen to me complain,

but mostly to God.

In the beginning God made the world and He said that it was good.  The first people messed the good world up with sin and now it could be considered bad.

Jesus.

He’s the key.

Even though the world was messed up, Jesus came to bring life back into the world full of death.  Once again, He has called it good (I am reminded of a scripture that says that it pleased the Father to bruise the Son…  He called it good).  When I complain, I am embracing death, because all that complaining does is talk about how bad things are.

I want to be like Jesus.

I want to call things good.

So, as I sit at the ‘Buck, doing everything I can to keep from complaining, I will embrace the death of my complaining past and embrace my hopeful future.

Peace and Grace to you all as you learn to embrace the death of your complaints as it leads to a new life.

-m

*I want to make the note that there is a difference between complaining and asking for help or advice, and that it is possible to hold a different attitude while listening to someone than the smug, “Let me solve your problems” attitude.