Live Generously

Sitting at Pier View on a Monday afternoon (man, if I keep doing this so often I’m going to be like Ron Gollner and his St. Arbucks….only with smaller biceps).

I’m reading Stanley Hauerwas for my political theology class, and at the moment I’m reading a chapter out of his book The Peaceable Kingdom. It’s terrific, which is more than I can say for most of the other reading I’ve done this quarter.

As most of you know, a big part of my job is teaching at the college and young adult service at my church on Sunday nights. Teaching the Bible is a funny thing, because no matter how much study or practice I put in, it always seems like I actually have to give the sermon before I’m ever able to really understand what a particular passage said or what I really wanted to say about it. I’ve joked with some friends that I would be a much better teacher if I taught on Mondays. Teaching is also funny in the way that it tends to, quite literally, consume me. My wife knows that from about Saturday evening on I am rarely fully present in conversations I am having. My mind is constantly drifting to the next night’s message. This was true even this last week, as I was standing in a bar in Oceanside sipping a Red Trolley and waiting for Mike’s band to play. By Saturday night I can practically see the manuscript in my head, I can see the faces who will be there, I can even construct imaginary dialogs that I anticipate taking place when I open things up for discussion. Then Sunday night comes and goes, and I end up reflecting on the things that I said or didn’t say for the next day or so. I am a Monday morning (and afternoon) quarterback. I replay the whole thing in my head, scolding myself for mistakes and taking joy in the times when it really seemed like God spoke. More than that, though, I think through the implications of what I talked about.

Mark 11:12-25…Jesus cleanses the temple. It’s an interesting passage. Last night after I got home from church I was listening to a sermon (don’t worry, I don’t normally listen to sermons on Sunday night after attending two church services that day), and the speaker referred to that passage as Jesus’ “temple tantrum”. Say that out loud. Really, do it. It’s funny.

The passage does what so many other passages in the gospel of Mark do. It confronts us with the radical nature of Jesus’ message. And, to be honest, it does a lot to explain the temptation that a lot of Bible teachers (myself included) often feel to water down the message of Jesus to make it more sensitive to our post-modern, pluralistic, meta-narrative rejecting ears. Jesus categorically denounces the ‘appearance’ of authentic spirituality. That is offensive on a number of levels. Our society, sacred or secular, worships at the altar of appearance. Even those who claim they don’t care what people think all seem to rebel in the same ways. And yet here is Jesus, categorically cursing spirituality that is concerned only with outward appearance. Worse yet, he is suggesting that those who think they have it all together are in fact the ones most guilty of engaging in a sort of spirituality for show. That’s scary.

After leaving the temple Jesus begins speaking of things like faith in God, confidence in prayer, and mutual forgiveness. My goodness. If only we could truly learn those things. If only I myself could learn to exercise faith in God that transcends intellectual belief. If only I could manifest a faith in God that would summon in me radical obedience. Obedience beyond Bible reading, prayer, and the avoidance of the more noticeable personal sins. If only that could manifest in me a bigger heart for justice. If only that could manifest in me radical generosity. If only that could manifest in me real love for my neighbor (I realize even the tax collectors do that, but if I’m honest I realize that I need to work on loving my enemies and my neighbors). That is what real faith is. That is the sort of faith that Jesus desires to awaken in his disciples in that day and this. The faith to say mountains can be moved. The faith to say we don’t need to buy into this system of Wal Mart, American imperialism, and systemic economic injustice. Heck, faith to believe that the church need not simply be a place that provides spiritual entertainment for an hour and a half a week, but instead can be a true community of the risen that lives by radical faith and radical obedience.

As I reflect on this passage, and on the things that God has been doing in my own heart of late, those are the things that come to mind. The last thing I mean to do is blog about it as a sort of cathartic release that excuses me from action (imagine Derek Zoolander talking about volunteering to help under privileged children learn how to read), but I suppose all I’m doing is getting my thoughts on (virtual) paper to clarify my own thinking and perhaps see if anyone else is struggling through these sorts of issues.

Two weeks ago I started this post with the intent of finishing it up that evening…needless to say that didn’t happen, but now I’ve got a few minutes before I leave for class so I’m going to try to finish it up here.

I left off in 1:9, having just looked at the phrase, “…asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding…”, and I had talked about how the practice of community with God and the practice of spiritual disciplines fills us with a sort of “spiritual wisdom and understanding” that can then be applied outwardly in our daily lives.  Continuing on now with verse ten…

“…so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work…” wow, that’s a lot.  That being said, it nicely answers the question “what’s the point?”, or, more specifically what is the point of the things that we do in our lives to ‘grow in our relationship with God?’ The reality is that truths that we pick up from the Bible, from theology books, from sermons, etc., isn’t meant to just be brain candy, but instead is meant to inform the way that we live our lives (yes, I know, I’m the first person ever to come to that conclusion…that’s a profound insight ;-)). I mention that simply because I think the temptation exists to see our spiritual lives as a sort of lesson in obligations that don’t really mean anything.  When we fall into that trap, spirituality becomes stale and religious, and we deny ourselves the privilege of allowing  God’s Word to actually inform our lives in the real world.

Perhaps the word that most catches my attention in verse 10 is the word “worthy”.  That seems crazy to me that Paul is even implying that “walking in a manner worthy of the Lord,” is possible.  And yet that is his prayer for these people, that their lives would be something worthy of their Savior.  That is a high calling, to be sure. Paul goes on to say that evidence of a ‘worthy’ life is that it is  ‘bearing fruit in every good work’. We must remember that, as it says in Ephesians, “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Thus our commission is not to condemn the ‘works’ of others, nor is it to embrace a sort of hollow ethereal spirituality that makes us feel good but doesn’t really make any sort of difference in our lives.  Instead, our call is to simply do good works.  Failure to do so is failure to tap into the purpose of our lives.  This shouldn’t be something that causes us guilt, but instead it should be something that is at once empowering and liberating.

The verse ends with the phrase, “and increasing in the knowledge of God.” Part of the Christian life as well is actually increasing in what we know to be true about God.  I can say with absolute certainty that I think differently about God now than I did when I was a silly 18-year-old fundamentalist (and that is being generous).  I feel I have a better understanding of God’s heart for social justice, God’s heart for peace, and God’s heart for issues including but extending far beyond personal holiness. Furthermore, I understand God’s Word a lot better than I did then.  I’ve got a long way to go, but I’m making progress  I look forward to continuing to increase in the knowledge of God for as long as I have breath.  But, just as increasing in the knowledge of anything else takes some effort, it takes effort to increase in the knowledge of God.  it doesn’t just happen.

So then the final answer to the question of “what’s the point?” is that there is external value in cultivating an internal relationship with God.  Such a relationship is meant to inform practically the way that we live, and it is my strong conviction that when we fail to do that we fail to fully engage ourselves in participation in the Kingdom of God. That being said, it is pretty phenomenal to know that God does call us not only to be filled with the knowledge of his will, but also to put it into action in a way that both pleases God and blesses the world.

This is the second entry in an occasional series of reflections that I am doing on the book of Colossians.  The first entry, along with a brief explanation for why I am doing this, can be found here.

I will admit that I often find myself asking the question “what’s the point?”, when it comes to church.  Not in the why-do-we-even-bother sense, but more in the what-sort-of-a-difference-is-all-of-the-stuff- that-we-say-and-do-and-talk-about sense.  I suppose that comes from my desire to do more than just play church, and to instead really do work necessary to think through what sort of a difference church activity, spiritual disciplines, and other such activities are supposed to make.  Whether or not those sorts of questions that were on his mind when he was writing Colossians, Paul addresses them nicely in chapter 1, verses 9-10.

“And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”

What an amazing prayer that is.  Allow me to take one part of it at a time.

“…asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will…” The idea of ‘the will of God’ gets a lot of play in church, as it should.  On some level, all of us want to know the will of God.  Obeying the will of God may be a whole different story (too often it is for me), but I believe it would be fair to say that all of us who believe in the God of the Bible are at least marginally curious as to what his will is, particularly for our lives.  While I certainly have not cracked the code on how to determine the will of God (and would be slightly suspicious of anyone who claimed that they have), I would suggest that the choices we make, and the way in which we control our influences effects how accurately we can know and understand God’s will.  That, in my view, is a major reason why spiritual disciples such as Bible study, prayer, meditation, and church fellowship are important.  It is in those contexts that our curiosity regarding God’s will is transformed into a revelatory searching for God’s will. From those disciplines comes a sort of “spiritual wisdom and understanding” that I believe can hardly be found outside of such communion with God.  It is in our willingness to devote ourselves to these disciplines that the rubber meets the road, so to speak.  In other words, they are an indicator of our desire to know, understand, be transformed by, and apply God’s will.

Furthermore, I would suggest that this “spiritual wisdom and understanding” is something that can be applied in virtually every arena of life.  It can aid us as family members, as employees, as employers, as students, and in virtually any other situation.  I am realizing more and more that as a college pastor it is my desire not to get the students in our ministry to do more things, but instead to engage in determining what it looks like to be Christian in the contexts that they already find themselves in.  In other words, I want them to work through (as I try to do myself) how being Christian effects the way you go to school, or manage a grocery store, or work in a city parks and recreation office, or manage a golf course, or perform any of the other vocations that are represented in our community on Sunday nights.

And now I’ve got to go to class, so I’ll have to finish this post later…hopefully later on tonight…

Over the past several months I have studied the New Testament letter to the Colossians fairly extensively. It has emerged as my favorite of Paul’s letters, and I find myself reading at least a passage of it (usually from the third chapter) nearly every day. I am preparing to produce an audio devotional series based on Colossians, and may even make a meager attempt at a devotional book some time down the line, but before I do that, I wanted to take some times to simply reflect on whatever the text of this jewel of a letter brings to mind. So then, periodically over the course of the next month or two, I will devote a post to my reflections on certain texts in Colossians. I won’t be using commentaries, Bible dictionaries, New Testament introductions, or anything of the sort (that will come later), I’m simply going to talk about my own reaction to the text itself, for better or for worse.

Colossians 1:3-4: “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints.”

I have used those verses (or the several like them found in other NT letters) in countless devotionals, Bible studies, mentoring groups, and sermons over the course of the last several years, and yet I am still struck by them every time I read them. Paul is likely hundreds of miles away from the church is Colossae, and what has he heard about them? He has heard about their sweet sound system and their pastor who tells funny stories. He has heard about how pristine their lobby is and how well their $20 million building campaign is going. He has heard about how the church is a hip cool scene where people have, like, tattoos and piercings and stuff. Or he has heard none of those things. He has heard that the people in the church have faith in Jesus and they have love for one another. That was what most struck whoever brought the report to Paul.

Passages like this always make me ask myself, “what do you want to be known for?” The reality is that I want to be known for a lot of things. Many of which really don’t matter that much. On a corporate level, we can ask “what do we want our church to be known for?” And again, if we’re honest we admit that there are a lot of things that we want our church to be known for. One thing I appreciate about my church is our professed desire to be a church that is a good neighbor to its community. In a world where, more often than not, churches have become eye sores and inconveniences to the unbelieving world, I can’t help but wonder how the public reputation of the church was that it was a place where people had faith in Jesus and truly loved each other.

I’m reminded of a quote from Cardinal Avery Dulles in his brilliant little book (with an admittedly boring title), Models of the Church. In it he writes, “In the early centuries, the Church expanded not so much because of concerted missionary efforts as through its power of attraction as a contrast society. Seeing the mutual love and support of Christians, and the high moral standards they observed, the pagans sought entrance into the Church. If the same is not happening today, this is largely because the Church no longer appears conspicuously as the community of the disciples, transformed by its participation in the new creation.” (italics mine…it also bears mentioning that ‘pagan’ is not meant to be a derogatory term, it simply means non-Christian and non-Jew)

In other words, it was the reputation of the church, not its cool buildings, not its consumer products full of pictures of beautiful and trendy people, not even its amazing missions program, that gave the church its vitality in its early years.

I think about that and then I think about Seven24. The way we teach, the things we emphasize, the way our worship services are designed. And of course that causes me to wonder if people would speak of our community in the same way that whoever was informing Paul spoke of the church at Colossae. The answer is most certainly no.  That’s not to say that we don’t have faith in Christ (we do), and it’s certainly not to say there isn’t a deep sense of community (there is), but I do believe we still have room to grow in those areas.

I am challenged by texts like this to work towards making our community one with that sort of reputation. I should say that I don’t really like that last sentence, as it seems to imply that I consider this to be something entirely up to me, or entirely under my control, which I don’t. The real issue it seems is being willing to ask the question, “what kind of people are we becoming?”, because the reality is that our actions reflect our values and produce our reputation. What would it look like for the church, any church, to be laser focused on having faith- not just professed faith, not just the sing-worship-songs faith, but I’m-really-going-to- wholeheartedly-follow-the-radical-way-of-Jesus faith- and truly genuinely loving one another?

The reputation would be different. That much is sure.