"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." - The Apostle Paul; Gal. 2:20
How would living according to the reality of ‘Christ in me’ change my day to day? How I see myself? How I see other people? Might I look upon my own existence with more hope, more joy, more life, and with more ability to love, were I to be more consciously aware of the life of Christ living in me? Would such an awareness not prove transformative? Would it not draw me into greater Christ-likeness?
Monday, March 8, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Lewis and Clark
Band's in the room
the trumpets tune
violins hold their place.
The silence breathes
expectantly
with frozen feet - no musical sheets.
Come with me
though we do not know the way
to navigate this maze.
I'll follow the song
that's flowing in our veins
written by God's graces, love.
I'll be Lewis
you play Clark
it's a vast frontier, love, opening up.
We'll find our way
our songs intonate
with this symphony of open space
Come with me
though we do not know the way
to navigate this maze.
I'll follow the song
that's flowing in our veins
written by God's graces, love.
Band's in the room
the trumpets tune
violins hold their place.
the trumpets tune
violins hold their place.
The silence breathes
expectantly
with frozen feet - no musical sheets.
Come with me
though we do not know the way
to navigate this maze.
I'll follow the song
that's flowing in our veins
written by God's graces, love.
I'll be Lewis
you play Clark
it's a vast frontier, love, opening up.
We'll find our way
our songs intonate
with this symphony of open space
Come with me
though we do not know the way
to navigate this maze.
I'll follow the song
that's flowing in our veins
written by God's graces, love.
Band's in the room
the trumpets tune
violins hold their place.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
A Reflection on the Gospel
In the eleventh chapter of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, there’s this fascinating story most commonly known as the story of the Tower of Babel. As the author tells it, humanity has rebelled against their creator and subsequently fallen into brokenness and disarray on every level of their existence, and we find them pressing further and further into their own hopelessness and futility with each passing day. As the story goes, rather than recognize their futility, these people decide to take heaven – achieve fame and salvation – by the work of their own hands. "Come, (they said) let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."
It seems to me that, at a certain level at least, these people understand that salvation is what they need; they understand that things are not as they should be. But for these people, the solution to their problem lies in their own hands – in bricks and blueprints: building a tower to reach heaven.
As I read this story, I am struck by how little ‘religion’ has actually evolved since then. We can talk about preferences in the types of bricks and we can argue about the blueprints for the tower, but every religion, at its heart, boils down to a compilation of instruction about what to do in order to attain salvation (or otherwise find the solution to the ways things are messed up): bricks and blueprints. In Islam, for example, salvation is found in living according to the five pillars. In Buddhism and Hinduism, our hope lies in discovering the path to enlightenment. But in Christianity? Salvation is found in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
When we take the time to actually look, I think that this is precisely why a Christian worldview is genuinely radical: when you look closely at Christianity, you don’t actually find a religion at all… you find a story. We don’t find a compilation of instruction about what to do in order to be saved. Instead, we find a proclamation about something that has already been done. Christianity is, at its heart, not saving instruction; it is a saving EVENT. It is about coming face to face with a moment in history: a moment in history which, as discussed in my previous reflection, centers on the cross.
In attempting to describe all that happened between Good Friday (the cross) and Easter (the resurrection), it’s all too easy to fall into philosophical abstracts: an endless maze of figurative and convoluted language. In the end, there’s just more going on there then we really have the ability to understand. Suffice it to say, though, that on the cross, Jesus took on everything and every way that we had messed up and, in the resurrection, made a way through it: doing for us what we could never do for ourselves and providing that solution that everyone, in their heart of hearts, is really looking for.
We are terminally ill; Jesus is the cure. We are rebels facing the consequences of a failed and misguided revolution; Jesus has secured our pardon. We are hopelessly in debt; Jesus paid it off for us… these are just some of the images scripture uses to try and describe the cross and all that follows.
To use the language of an earlier reflection, we, as well as the world we live in, are hopelessly out of tune, unable to participate in the symphony for which we have been created. Jesus is both an embodiment of perfect intonation and the craftsman able to fix the instruments of our own souls. He is the auto-tune that enables us in our feeble attempts to play along in the present moment, and that hand that, if we let him, will skillfully and gradually adjust the tension of the strings of our hearts so that, eventually, we will find ourselves able to make that music we were created to make. Able, finally, to take part in the endless, creative symphony of heaven itself.
The reason the Bible calls this ‘Good News’, and not just ‘good instruction’, is that this tuning and repairing work is something that must be done to us and for us. Apart from the hand of the craftsman, all the good instruction in the world will ultimately only serve to frustrate and alienate; we instruments cannot tune ourselves. The good news is that this HAS been done for us. The death and resurrection of Jesus is that event, that moment in history, where the craftsman entered the scene, placed humanity on his workbench, and did for us what we could never do for ourselves.
Before we are able to move forward with Jesus, it is this reality, this story, with which we must come to grips. It isn’t until we lay down our religious bricks and blueprints, until we stop attempting to fix ourselves with our own resources or abilities, stop trying to behave ourselves into heaven, and come to grips with the good news that Jesus has already done the work on our behalf that we will be free from the crushing weight of our own brokenness and the burden of religious moralism, finally able and free to make a genuine difference in our world.
In the end, to step from brokenness into the life that we’ve been created for is simply to come face to face with Jesus – the healer, tuner/fixer, and ultimate source of life – and say, “Yeah… I want that.” As to what follows? That’s a journey; one that I am even now still in the midst of, and expect to be for a long, long time…
It seems to me that, at a certain level at least, these people understand that salvation is what they need; they understand that things are not as they should be. But for these people, the solution to their problem lies in their own hands – in bricks and blueprints: building a tower to reach heaven.
As I read this story, I am struck by how little ‘religion’ has actually evolved since then. We can talk about preferences in the types of bricks and we can argue about the blueprints for the tower, but every religion, at its heart, boils down to a compilation of instruction about what to do in order to attain salvation (or otherwise find the solution to the ways things are messed up): bricks and blueprints. In Islam, for example, salvation is found in living according to the five pillars. In Buddhism and Hinduism, our hope lies in discovering the path to enlightenment. But in Christianity? Salvation is found in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
When we take the time to actually look, I think that this is precisely why a Christian worldview is genuinely radical: when you look closely at Christianity, you don’t actually find a religion at all… you find a story. We don’t find a compilation of instruction about what to do in order to be saved. Instead, we find a proclamation about something that has already been done. Christianity is, at its heart, not saving instruction; it is a saving EVENT. It is about coming face to face with a moment in history: a moment in history which, as discussed in my previous reflection, centers on the cross.
In attempting to describe all that happened between Good Friday (the cross) and Easter (the resurrection), it’s all too easy to fall into philosophical abstracts: an endless maze of figurative and convoluted language. In the end, there’s just more going on there then we really have the ability to understand. Suffice it to say, though, that on the cross, Jesus took on everything and every way that we had messed up and, in the resurrection, made a way through it: doing for us what we could never do for ourselves and providing that solution that everyone, in their heart of hearts, is really looking for.
We are terminally ill; Jesus is the cure. We are rebels facing the consequences of a failed and misguided revolution; Jesus has secured our pardon. We are hopelessly in debt; Jesus paid it off for us… these are just some of the images scripture uses to try and describe the cross and all that follows.
To use the language of an earlier reflection, we, as well as the world we live in, are hopelessly out of tune, unable to participate in the symphony for which we have been created. Jesus is both an embodiment of perfect intonation and the craftsman able to fix the instruments of our own souls. He is the auto-tune that enables us in our feeble attempts to play along in the present moment, and that hand that, if we let him, will skillfully and gradually adjust the tension of the strings of our hearts so that, eventually, we will find ourselves able to make that music we were created to make. Able, finally, to take part in the endless, creative symphony of heaven itself.
The reason the Bible calls this ‘Good News’, and not just ‘good instruction’, is that this tuning and repairing work is something that must be done to us and for us. Apart from the hand of the craftsman, all the good instruction in the world will ultimately only serve to frustrate and alienate; we instruments cannot tune ourselves. The good news is that this HAS been done for us. The death and resurrection of Jesus is that event, that moment in history, where the craftsman entered the scene, placed humanity on his workbench, and did for us what we could never do for ourselves.
Before we are able to move forward with Jesus, it is this reality, this story, with which we must come to grips. It isn’t until we lay down our religious bricks and blueprints, until we stop attempting to fix ourselves with our own resources or abilities, stop trying to behave ourselves into heaven, and come to grips with the good news that Jesus has already done the work on our behalf that we will be free from the crushing weight of our own brokenness and the burden of religious moralism, finally able and free to make a genuine difference in our world.
In the end, to step from brokenness into the life that we’ve been created for is simply to come face to face with Jesus – the healer, tuner/fixer, and ultimate source of life – and say, “Yeah… I want that.” As to what follows? That’s a journey; one that I am even now still in the midst of, and expect to be for a long, long time…
The Cross of Christ
Perhaps the most central - and challenging - facet of a Christian understanding of the world, is to come to grips with the role which the death (and subsequent resurrection) of Jesus Christ plays in dealing with the dissonance of sin and evil that both surrounds and infiltrates us as human beings. To do business with Jesus is, ultimately, to do business with his execution, and to wrestle with the reality that Jesus claims to have endured that suffering willingly, and for our benefit. From the outside looking in, this is the real puzzle of the Christian faith; it all seems a bit over-dramatic and unnecessarily grotesque. If all we’re looking for is a good example, or some helpful teaching, all this talk of blood and suffering and sacrifice just muddies and complicates things for us. At the end of the day, however, this is the very heart of both who Jesus is and what he sought to accomplish in the world. To deal with Jesus is, ultimately, to deal with the cross; there’s just no avoiding it.
To understand the significance of the death of Jesus, we must first understand something about the nature of death itself, and how it affects us. On a basic level, death is the void – the abscess, the black hole – at the center of our existence. Through the ages people have tended to personify death, to relate to it as a force or a presence. In reality, though, death isn’t a presence; it is an absence. It is, really, nothing at all; death is not a thing in itself, it is merely the hole where something else ought to be. Simply put, death is the absence of life.
Much as the sun is the ultimate source of energy which makes biological life on our planet possible, scripture tells us that God is the source of life itself; the true center of all reality and that which holds it all together. Our story, as human beings, is that of a rejection of God as the center and source, attempting to play god rather than be with God; essentially locking ourselves in a dark room and attempting to be our own sun. Walking away from our creator and source, we rejected God as the center of our reality. The trouble was – and is – that we have nothing in our own hands with which we are able to fill that void. Where there was once a life-giving sun, there is now only a black hole – an emptiness, a chaos – a void, consuming and draining life rather than giving it. We walked away from the source of life and, in that moment, as a people we discovered death.
The destructive power of nothingness is an awesome and terrible thing to behold. And, though we’d rather not think about it most days, it is the fear of that great void that is the engine of much of our day-to-day existence. Like astronauts, separated from the vacuum of space by a paper-thin sheet of Mylar, our carefully crafted lives tirelessly strive to give us the illusion of security, in the face of an awesome emptiness and futility that we can’t really bear to think about seriously, lest we just go nuts. Whether it’s nations warring violently over natural resources or the more subtle interpersonal warfare of jockeying for recognition, influence and financial status, we people kill each other – literally and figuratively – in our efforts to just hang on for a little bit longer to that life that we feel so inevitably slipping away. For all our posturing and grand esteem for ourselves, we are frail and afraid. The world around us behaves and feels as if it is spinning apart as a result of our cumulative insecurity and the attempts to combat that insecurity with our own resources. This is the reality and the power of death.
Even death itself would not so affect us were we not painfully aware of how tragic the whole situation is. There is something at the soul of humanity that just cries out that we are not meant to be temporary and futile beings. There is just something about humanity, however much we may attempt to deny it, that echoes with eternity. This is the beauty in the midst of the brokenness; the beauty that the world most deeply longs to be restored.
It is in this context that we can begin to understand the mystery and the significance of the death of Jesus. Death – this void in existence created as a result of our desire for self-sovereignty – is a real problem. It has real consequences. If we are to ever get past it, then, it follows that we need a real solution. God, in his inexplicable desire to see humankind restored to rightful, life-giving relationship with himself, offers the only solution possible: death must be defeated. The void must be filled. The emptiness must be overcome. As we lack the resources to do so, God furthermore proceeds to accomplish this himself, on our behalf.
Death – and all the present consequences of chaos and brokenness that it yields all around us – could not be ignored. It couldn’t be passed over, explained away, or walked around. It had to be entered… and overcome. In Jesus, God did what would otherwise be impossible for God to do; namely, die. Stepped directly into our own black hole and was, if only for a moment, overwhelmed by it. As it turns out, however, the fullness of life that is inherent in Jesus was too much: having consumed life itself, the emptiness was no longer empty, the void found itself filled. What we could have never accomplished on our own, Jesus accomplished on our behalf.
Jesus died the death we were already dying in order that we might have the life we could never live on our own. As such, the cross of Christ stands as the turning point of human history, and the moment which all people must ultimately do business with, determining for ourselves how we will respond.
To understand the significance of the death of Jesus, we must first understand something about the nature of death itself, and how it affects us. On a basic level, death is the void – the abscess, the black hole – at the center of our existence. Through the ages people have tended to personify death, to relate to it as a force or a presence. In reality, though, death isn’t a presence; it is an absence. It is, really, nothing at all; death is not a thing in itself, it is merely the hole where something else ought to be. Simply put, death is the absence of life.
Much as the sun is the ultimate source of energy which makes biological life on our planet possible, scripture tells us that God is the source of life itself; the true center of all reality and that which holds it all together. Our story, as human beings, is that of a rejection of God as the center and source, attempting to play god rather than be with God; essentially locking ourselves in a dark room and attempting to be our own sun. Walking away from our creator and source, we rejected God as the center of our reality. The trouble was – and is – that we have nothing in our own hands with which we are able to fill that void. Where there was once a life-giving sun, there is now only a black hole – an emptiness, a chaos – a void, consuming and draining life rather than giving it. We walked away from the source of life and, in that moment, as a people we discovered death.
The destructive power of nothingness is an awesome and terrible thing to behold. And, though we’d rather not think about it most days, it is the fear of that great void that is the engine of much of our day-to-day existence. Like astronauts, separated from the vacuum of space by a paper-thin sheet of Mylar, our carefully crafted lives tirelessly strive to give us the illusion of security, in the face of an awesome emptiness and futility that we can’t really bear to think about seriously, lest we just go nuts. Whether it’s nations warring violently over natural resources or the more subtle interpersonal warfare of jockeying for recognition, influence and financial status, we people kill each other – literally and figuratively – in our efforts to just hang on for a little bit longer to that life that we feel so inevitably slipping away. For all our posturing and grand esteem for ourselves, we are frail and afraid. The world around us behaves and feels as if it is spinning apart as a result of our cumulative insecurity and the attempts to combat that insecurity with our own resources. This is the reality and the power of death.
Even death itself would not so affect us were we not painfully aware of how tragic the whole situation is. There is something at the soul of humanity that just cries out that we are not meant to be temporary and futile beings. There is just something about humanity, however much we may attempt to deny it, that echoes with eternity. This is the beauty in the midst of the brokenness; the beauty that the world most deeply longs to be restored.
It is in this context that we can begin to understand the mystery and the significance of the death of Jesus. Death – this void in existence created as a result of our desire for self-sovereignty – is a real problem. It has real consequences. If we are to ever get past it, then, it follows that we need a real solution. God, in his inexplicable desire to see humankind restored to rightful, life-giving relationship with himself, offers the only solution possible: death must be defeated. The void must be filled. The emptiness must be overcome. As we lack the resources to do so, God furthermore proceeds to accomplish this himself, on our behalf.
Death – and all the present consequences of chaos and brokenness that it yields all around us – could not be ignored. It couldn’t be passed over, explained away, or walked around. It had to be entered… and overcome. In Jesus, God did what would otherwise be impossible for God to do; namely, die. Stepped directly into our own black hole and was, if only for a moment, overwhelmed by it. As it turns out, however, the fullness of life that is inherent in Jesus was too much: having consumed life itself, the emptiness was no longer empty, the void found itself filled. What we could have never accomplished on our own, Jesus accomplished on our behalf.
Jesus died the death we were already dying in order that we might have the life we could never live on our own. As such, the cross of Christ stands as the turning point of human history, and the moment which all people must ultimately do business with, determining for ourselves how we will respond.
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