Does it glorify God and are you doing it NOW?

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Trinity Seasons

Twisted bunny trail this morning which doesn’t really end up at a final destination.  Just ends up where He has me, today.  Now.

It began with the Epistle and the rub this passage surfaces that goes all the way back to our Christian beginnings.  The rub between faith and works; between righteous faith and declarative faith.   Faith that glorifies God or faith that makes you look good.  Are we right with God because of what we say we believe or because of what we do?

Both and?  Yes and no.  Paradox again.

James’ letter, which is grounded on the principle that once your heart is truly transformed, your behavior will evince the transformation, is often held up in opposition to Paul’s teaching (cited primarily in Ephesians 2.8-9:For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God) that only the profession of belief is required to be right with God.  We are sanctified – some will say, saved – by our faith, alone.

It’s an age-old argument that distracts, I think, from the point.  Indeed, contemporary biblical scholarship has taken the historical interpretation of Paul’s words to task and makes a strong case that the Holy Spirit is teaching us about faithfulness, not belief, in Paul’s letters.  That is, Paul is saying that the people of God must stay in faithful relationship with God and if so, hearts and minds and behavior, will naturally transform.  Christ in us.

With this interpretation the Holy Spirit breathes into the words of each apostle, giving us today space to know that we are right with God when we live in relationship with Him and in relationship with Him what we do will be of, from, with and for, Him.  Our works will follow.

But…a distraction is what I believe the whole faith vs works debate is about – a comfortable distraction.

This passage from James describes what I’m coming to understand as Christians who look to Jesus and the Word as a “behavior-improvement” plan that will get them to heaven.  Behavior improvement and Final Destination Christianity.  Behavior guided by the Law, and professing a belief in Jesus Christ as a personal Savior for salvation.  A formula of sorts.  A program.  Hmm.  I wonder.

This idea is not mine.  It comes from Dr. Andrew Farley, pastor and Texas Tech linguistics professor, and author of The Naked Gospel.

Rather than paraphrasing his take on this particular issue (faith vs works), I am posting an interview here (two parts) recorded a few years ago when Farley’s book was first published.  I think if you were to listen to this interview and then read the selection from James, you might understand it more fully – might be able to see the holy space breathed into the archetypal ‘faith without works is dead,’ passage by the Spirit.

Christianity is not a behavior improvement plan with a final destination.  It is much more and at the same time, much more simple than that.  We love God (glorify Him), love our neighbor.  And we do that now, because the realm of God is now.

Glorifying God?  That is the question before each work, behavior, decision I make.  That is my bar – my litmus test – is this something that glorifies God or is this something that glorifies me?  Makes me look good?  Keeps my reputation in tact as whatever others know me as? Is this work a faithful one?

And the second part of Farley’s idea – the ‘final destination?’….well, Jesus told us, the Kingdom of God has arrived – is here.  Now.

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It is about discipleship, stupid…not salt

Posted on November 13, 2012 by Trinity Seasons

Luke 14:34 ‘Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?* 35It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure heap; they throw it away. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’

This is where I hit the pause button in today’s Gospel reading, at the concluding remarks from Jesus wherein he uses salt, figuratively, to wrap up his teaching on discipleship.  And at this pause I’m momentarily relieved that the Spirit seems to be urging me to go down a ‘what is the significance of salt in scripture’ bunny trail.

I love those bunny trails and the prompts to investigate further.  And I was especially excited to look into the connection between salt and the Word, having read just a few years ago a book that reported the history of salt, biblically and otherwise, (Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky).

But back to the gospel and what I thought was the prompt to unpack ‘salt.’  What has been  one tough teaching on the cost of discipleship,  Jesus ties up with a rather mild warning.  The ‘or else’  – you do this or else you are not a true disciple – is not death, but uselessness.  There’s no use for salt-less disciples in the kingdom.

Hmm.  Down the bunny trail I go and I’m wondering at this point about what he means.  I’m wondering what is behind the reference to salt.  Is he speaking about salt as seasoning?  Salt as preservative? Salt as abundant commodity or a precious mineral?

I go to my library.  I read from Eerdman’s Dictionary of the Bible the explanation of salt.  I find my Kurlansky book on Salt.  I re-read sections of each.  Interesting stuff.  I come back to this blog to ‘edify’, unpack, wonder with you about salt and Jesus and discipleship.

But just as I begin to write, I am struck with a different whisper, an image really that stops me from writing – my eyes averting from this page – and the way I know as a Holy Spirit moment.

First I see a line a sort of graph – a horizontal line bracketed on one end by the word Law and on the other by the word Grace and on, above and below the line are an infinite number of dots that I see as portals – as stories – pericopes, if you will.

I’m looking down at this line and I’m sitting somewhere ‘out there’ with Jesus.  Telescope in my hands.

I gaze through the telescope at one little dot focusing in on the gospel story.  I glimpse Jesus wrapping things up with the salt reference.  Then I see Jesus taking my hand and gently pushing it to the left where I am able to focus on the assembled crowd, not on him, and thus onto the first part of the gospel story, and not the concluding remarks.  Not on the whole salt thing.

And I see this crowd – in detail.  I see their earnest, hopeful faces packed in together, all eyes on Jesus of Nazareth.  And in their faces I see stressed, pained, quizzical expressions – not ironic or cynical – but earnestly pained as they try to make sense of what Jesus is teaching, looking at one another for assurance that they have heard him right.

And I see that none of them heard the whole bit about salt because they are all so shook up by the teaching before.  Goes right over their heads as they wrestle with what they know – the Law – and what Jesus suggests they don’t know.

And now I’m there, too.  The whole salt imagery thing has wafted over my head and I realize the Spirit has led me to this pause button, instead.  I am to be thinking about discipleship.  I am to hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people today in the teaching before the concluding remarks.

The teaching in which Jesus says, essentially, following me is not about the Law…I’m here to trump the Law.  The Law was simply a convention that waiting, in God’s time,  to be transcended by grace.

The Holy Spirit pauses me here to remind me I can’t rest on the easy stuff.   I don’t get to go off on a research bunny trail about salt.  I have to go back and deal with what Jesus was saying before.

I appreciated hearing in a sermon once how often Jesus does try to shock, using what we would today consider politically incorrect sound bites to cut through to the heart of the matter.

In that sermon by Andrew Farely, he reminds Christians that much of Jesus’ teaching is directed to people of the Law.  So nearly all his teachings – from the Lord’s Prayer to Beatitudes to today’s moment with would-be disciples, his words  – indeed He – needs to cut through the Law to illustrate His purpose.  Jesus is there to cut through the Law- binding boundaries these God-fearing people had erected in their hearts.  Boundaries Jesus was sent to transcend by Grace.

Hate your mother?  Sell all your possessions?  This is what it takes to be a disciple?  In the absolute sense, no.  But yes, at the same time.

To follow Jesus I can’t rest in the easy way.

The Holy Spirit has me paused here for a reason, today.  Am I a disciple?  Is my heart transformed?  My life transformed by Him?  I wonder.  I wonder why He has me wondering.

Come, Holy Spirit, come.

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Ruth, Kenny Loggins and what loving relationship births in God’s time

Posted on November 11, 2012 by Trinity Seasons

Ruth and Naomi.  What a story.  All about relationship.  Newly widowed Ruth is led by God to follow her mother-in-law, Naomi, to what is for Ruth a foreign land.  Naomi returning to that same land also a widow and a grieving mother who’s two sons have died.  Returning to her homeland all but having given up on life becoming bitter over time.  Ruth, steadfast, faithful, living in the Spirit, by Naomi’s side as her kin.  And this reality goes on for years – the bitter reality of Naomi’s – kin-less in her own eyes,  and the faithful, loving reality of Ruth.  Side by side.

Boaz, the landowner, encounters Ruth in the fields working extra hard for surplus grain for her mother-in-law.  Boaz comes to know and love her as the woman she was. They marry.  They have a child.  Naomi is blessed with ‘kin’ once again and nurses the child.

That child becomes Jesse’s father and David’s grandfather.

And so it goes – the kinship line – the way – onto to Jesus.

The way to Jesus is always paved in relationship.  Loving relationship.  And all in God’s time.

I heard this so loud and clear this morning at worship, perhaps because I personally need to be reminded it seems – over and over – that in God’s time and through Him and in loving relationship, whatever I’m hoping will come, will come.  Naomi thought it would never pass that she’d have kin again.  Nor did Ruth, actually.  But Ruth didn’t get ahead of herself.  She’d didn’t pine everyday over yesterday but lived into the reality of today, of now.  She also didn’t just make it through everyday in hopes that tomorrow would be different.

It is such a challenge to keep the Holy Spirit animating me in the way the Spirit animates Ruth.  To keep me in the moment, letting go and letting God.  To not look at the road ahead and see only thwarts and roadblocks or worst yet, to see no road.

Letting go. Hmmm.

So, I hear this once again in worship this morning, and then the Spirit had more for me.

Getting into my car to make the short drive from church to the local Peets, my specialized Pandora radio station pumps out a Kenny Loggins song (Wait a Little While) – one which I have always enjoyed pop-melody wise but not listened to for the lyrics in a very long time. Yet the second it started to play, I began to sing, recalling the lyrics from some deep well of my youth.  And once I began to sing, I began to cry – a guttural, yes Lord I get it – in your time – cry.

Loggins took the words right out of  – first – my mouth…

Here’s a sweet September morning, there’s the sense of Autumn on the rise
He steps into the wind and sadly sighs
“Why does it always seem to be, there’s a cold December wind in front of me?”
The more he fills his empty evenings
The less he feels that there’s a chance to find
Something that can bring a peace of mind
Is there a place where you can go?
A little something you should know to turn the tide to your favor?

…and then from the mouth of the Holy Spirit’s…

Wait a little while to welcome what you’re after
Give it the time to find its way to you
And soon as you no longer try, you’ll turn and find it standing by your side
Come and get it, when you let it, it’ll come to you

The Spirit was saying to me – one of God’s people, like Naomi and Ruth – wait a little to welcome what you’re after…give it the time to find its way to you.  God has to make way for His way with and for me.  And that way is paved in loving relationship and in His time.

I typically don’t post on Sundays preferring the silence of the Lord’s day to unfold as He ordains.  But this I had to share.

Read about Ruth and Naomi.  Their story teaches us so much about our abba Father and his son, and amongst other things, our God of loving relationship and His time.

Letting go and letting God.  As soon as I no longer try, it will surely find its way to my side.

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May there be peace in our days

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Trinity Seasons

The readings from Sirach end this week in this year’s cycle.  Interesting.  First, recall that Sirach (also titled, Ecclesiasticus) is not included in Protestant bibles.  No, it was excluded, along with other Old Testament books, by Luther and the Reformers whose framework for all things theological was Sola Scriptura.  That is, believers were to rely only Holy Scripture to understand God’s will for us, to know Jesus and His message for us. But Sola Scriptura based theology is theology in opposition to the Catholic Church, not to God’s Word.  God’s revelation is holy, wholly, infinite and found in Creation, in the Church, and in the Word.

That Sirach is not considered part of God’s Word means that entire generations of believers are deaf to the what the Spirit may be saying to them and the world through Sirach.  Generations that include believers today, here, in this country.

I find the mixture of these contextual facts so interesting – first and foremost the fact that Sirach was being read during a time in our country when Wisdom seemed to elude the politicians, the pundits, and the people.

With all that has taken place in our country in the past weeks – unemployment numbers that stagger, national debt that gets deeper by the second, tenuous foreign relations, the natural disaster that hit the eastern part of the country and the shifts in the political ideology of the electorate surfaced by the national, state and local election results – its a wonder that God could get a word in edgewise.

But He did if you were listening.

From Sirach.

I didn’t hear myself praying these verses, rather I heard them being prayed by many I know who have been so distraught by the election results.  Those who believe they witnessed for the first time in their lifetime a seismic shift that has forever altered the landscape of this country and impaired its ability to live into and offer to future generations a citizens’ life grounded first in Him and secondarily in the country’s founding principles.

The Spirit took me to an image of these folks gathered together to pray to the Most High, stepping back from a shared anxiety that the world they know has unalterably changed to seek God’s wisdom for how they shall then now live in this changed world.

But it hasn’t changed.  God’s world hasn’t.  The Word hasn’t.  The country may have.  But the world, the universe, the creation hasn’t changed and this prayer that the Israelites prayed is ‘proof text’, if you will – that God IS in everything, that the world IS His, now and forever.

22 And now bless the God of all,
who everywhere works great wonders,
who fosters our growth from birth,
and deals with us according to his mercy.
23 May he give us* gladness of heart,
and may there be peace in our* days
in Israel, as in the days of old.
24 May he entrust to us his mercy,
and may he deliver us in our* days!

May he give us gladness of heart.  In His time.  And His time is now.  The Spirit speaks to us now, assures us, now, gives us pause to know that all is well.  The world is His.  Not changed. His.   Now and forever more.

Praise Him.

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Biblical Bumper Sticker to attach to my shoes….

Posted on November 5, 2012 by Trinity Seasons

..so that with each step on the road I remember that He has me die to live and fall to fly…over and over and over, again…each step of the way.

The biblical sticker today comes from Psalm 56

 I will render thank-offerings to you.
13 For you have delivered my soul from death,
and my feet from falling,
so that I may walk before God
in the light of life.

Praise Him.

 

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How Surely Gravity’s Law

Posted on November 3, 2012 by Trinity Seasons

Very often when I read Psalm 55 I am prompted to say to the psalmist, “Just stop already. Your prayers won’t be answered as long as you insist that God do it your way.  Let go and let God, for heaven’s sake!”

It’s a bit of any angry response that is evoked.  I know I am reacting to the self-righteousness I judge the psalmist to be.  A black and white thinker.  Dualistic.  Either-or.  Presumes to know God.  No hint of an appreciation for mystery.  No room for doubt.  No humbleness before God. I know – not a fair opinion of the psalmist.  And certainly not loving.  But, I have to be truthful with myself and its these conclusions which erect a barrier of entry of sorts to anything the Spirit could teach me with this psalm.

I have just finished reading another Richard Rohr book, The Art of Letting Go, so there was really no chance I would hear anything different from the Holy Spirit than what I did.   With this psalm and many others – especially those that not only tell God what to do, but also presume so much about the so-called enemy – the ‘other,’  my ego, my self gets in the way.

I’ve been working on this trying to learn evermore how to pray, read, live in the mystery – in the questions.  There is, indeed, an art to letting go and falling into our abba Father’s heart, from whence we came.

Rohr’s teaching is this – letting go.  And he uses as a model for ‘how to’ the life of St. Francis of Assisi – the most venerated and revered saints among all Christian denominations and even non-Christians.

Early in the introduction to Rohr’s book he provides the history for why Francis found in the natural world – in the birds, trees, sky, animals – a connection with God that felt pretty close to direct.  Mystery experienced.  Holy Spirit infused.

And in expanding on the notion that the natural world does reveal God and provide access to the mystery of God’s will, God’s plan, God’s faith in us, Rohr points us to the cycles of life and death so readily observable in nature.  Things die to give birth – as in grain.  Things have to fall to fly.  Things have to go dormant to survive.  Things have to change to grow.

Easily observable but not so easily understood – rather – so easily accepted as part of God’s way for us.  Dying to live?  Falling to fly?

Rohr includes in this introduction a poem from the God-loving Austrian poet Ranier Maria Rilke.  It speaks so powerfully to Rohr’s teaching about letting go, integrating the natural world and the Holy.  On first hearing the poem my breath was taken away – literally.

It hasn’t left me since last week when I first heard it read by Rohr.  And then this morning’s psalm, so entrenched in its dualism – its either/or, its judgment, its blindness to the ‘other’ and stubbornness in accepting that God has him where he has him for a reason, the focus outward instead of inward, and the presumptive petition to God to solve his problem by doing it his way – that were it not for Rilke’s poem lingering in my head and heart, I would have spent very little time on the psalm today.

But the Spirit had me here – lingering – letting go and letting God and ending my reflection time with a heart for the psalmist and a deeper understanding of his desire to please God.

What he describes in his petition is what Rilke perhaps means by ‘things’ and ‘entanglements’. Perhaps the psalmist is just momentarily distracted – overwhelmed – by his circumstance to let go.  And perhaps just the act of describing what looks to him to be a dire situation is what God needs him to do in order to get real and trust that his abba Father has intended only a true self, best life for him all along.

So with no more being said, I gratefully share Rilke’s poem, How Surely Gravity’s Law,  that the Spirit breathed into Psalm 55, taking me deeper in my understanding of how to let go and let God.

How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.
Each thing –
each stone, blossom, child –
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we belong to
for some empty freedom.
If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left him.
This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~
(Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God,
translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)
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Old School, New School, Law and Grace, Both-And

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Trinity Seasons

I had a short conversation with a dear friend yesterday that stuck with me all day long and through a long drive in which I listened to an audiobook of Richard Rohr’s, thereby inviting him into the conversation going on in my little ‘ol head.  My friend and I had raised questions with each other about the motivation behind prayer  and what prayer looks like.  We talked about the in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit.  Transformation vs. performance and where the former comes from, and how.  Rohr’s contributions to the discussion concerned the 9 stages of Spiritual Growth (what I’ve come to label this as going from a church-goer to disciple).  So with all this, I went into my prayers for the night.

Really, the crux of our exchange was about law and grace and the BOTH AND nature of these two attributes of our Abba Father found in the Word.  Not either-or but both-and.  We touched on the question of quantity – of how much- how much of the law was trumped once for all by Jesus?  As the ultimate and final fulfilment of the law how much of what preceeded Jesus’ life on earth informs our lives and choices – our hearts and minds – on a practical, daily living, kingdom-of-heaven-is-NOW, basis.  How are we transformed to the true self by anything other than grace?

Interestingly enough, the first reading from the Psalter this morning could not have been better for keeping me mindful of the overall question.  Psalm 119 exposes the tension between LAW and GRACE  – at least for me.  Old School. New School.  Old Testament.  New Testament.

What I found myelf doing during the reading  was subsituting – at times unconciously – ‘the law or statutes’ with the words LOVE and GRACE.  For God is LOVE and by his grace we live.  And here are a few of the verses that jumped out:

52 When I think of your   ordinances from of old,
I take comfort, O Lord.		 52 When I think of your LOVE   and GRACE, I take comfort, O Lord.
71 It is good for me that I was humbled,
so that I might learn your statutes.		 71 It is good for me that I was humbled,
so that I might learn your LOVE and   GRACE.
64 The earth, O Lord, is full of your   steadfast love;
teach me your statutes.		 64 The earth, O Lord, is full of your   steadfast love;
teach me to see your LOVE and GRACE.

I’m not asserting that this is how this psalm or any of the Hebrew Scriptures should be read now that Jesus has come and died for all of us, once for all.  No, rather it was just what the Spirit had me do as a way to further unpack the question my sister in Christ and I were trying to answer together.

Both-And. His Word.  His truth.  His love and grace.  Both schools – old and new.  Both-and.

Praise Him.

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The Broad Place – God’s kingdom – has no boundaries

Posted on October 30, 2012 by Trinity Seasons

FB post by Trinity Seasons on Tuesday, October 30, 2012 at 7:33am

The Gospel reading today continues in Luke.  Jesus has been teaching his disciples and an ever growing crowd how to pray, he has been casting out demons and illustrating how to distinguish a heart for God from an evil spirit.  He has been teaching in parables and from Scripture.  In short, he has been packing a punch and I suspect those fortunate enough to walk with him were awe-struck.

So, I wonder what it would have been like to the woman in this passage who is rebuked by Jesus in front of everyone.

 27 While he was saying this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!’ 28But he said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’

Surely, she offered her praise of Jesus’s mother genuinely.  And also, she must have offered it with some level of confidence that Jesus would not only accept, but also approve her praising Mary.  And so too, her – Jesus would see her as a God-fearing, loving, dare I say, obedient woman of God.   The Law, after all,  is clear about ‘honoring’ mothers (and fathers).

But Jesus turns the compliment and the praise and blessing, back on the woman.  He turns it around.  And it shocks, reminding me of another instance reported in Luke in which Jesus shocks, saying to his disciples,

26‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.

I am sure the retort shocked, stunned and even hurt the heart of the woman.  “What is he saying?” I think she would ask herself.  “I AM obeying God by showing you, Jesus, how I honor your mother!  If not this, then what is the sign that I am, I do, obey God and am following you, Jesus?”

Jesus turns the question back around once again.  Jesus turns over the tables.  Jesus breaks through the Law.  As he does over and over and over again.

Jesus forces us – forced this woman – to see that “boundaries,” like motherhood, are simply “conventions waiting to be transcended.” *  Boundaries are simply conventions waiting to be transcended.  The Law is replete with boundaries.  And Jesus came to transcend all of them.  All of them.

In the open, broad place – in God’s kingdom – there are no boundaries.

 

*The most powerful line in an otherwise weak film, Cloud Atlas, totally jumped out at me then and came to mind this morning as a whisper from the Spirit in the Gospel reading.  Boundaries are simply conventions waiting to be transcended.

 

Readings for today:  AM Psalm 45; PM Psalm 47, 48 Ecclus. 24:1-12; Rev. 11:14-19; Luke 11:27-36

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I beg to differ…

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Trinity Seasons

…as the brilliant Piraro illustrates here.   But not with anything of scriptural substance.  No, today I beg to differ with those who convinced me to switch from a PC to an Apple Macbook.  I’ve been at the conversion for a few days now and see that it is going to take some time.

Meanwhile, I will post short thoughts on the readings as they are whispered on the Trinity Seasons FB Page.

Pax.

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Posted on October 26, 2012 by Trinity Seasons

Biblical Bumper Sticker

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