That We Might Be One

My friend, pastor, and mentor Eugene Scott recently wrote a blog about the power of intimacy and the danger of isolation (you can read it here). In his work Eugene describes the desperate need we have for each other. I feel this most acutely now that a women who I have cherished my entire life struggles to relearn how to eat a cookie. My aunt Betty suffered a stroke recently and the consequences of that stroke have been difficult to learn of. While I am hundreds of miles from Betty, the strength of her love for me kept her presence close in some mysterious way. But now, I do not doubt her love, but she seems oddly distant. Even though we pray for her to recover and believe she is just stubborn enough to do so, there is pain in the separation from the strong woman we all once knew. When I heard the news of her struggles my response was anger, not sadness. I believed deep within that it was simply not fair for this woman to suffer but also because deep down I feared I might never see her again. She is doing better and I hope to see her soon, and that hope of connection is stronger than all my fears and anger.

As I said before we each of us have not just a desire for connection but a hunger and a thirst. Intimacy with our fellow man is not just pleasant, it is vital. Without each other, though our hearts may still beat, our souls no longer live. Jesus knew this well. Before his death he prays a long prayer in John 17 that repeats the same petition over and over: that we may be one. This oneness is core to his hope in us, to his death with us, and to his resurrection for us. While we often focus on the aspects of forgiveness and new life in Jesus' gospel, we must see that we are forgiven so we may be reconciled to God and each other and that reconciled life is indeed our new life. Jesus also showed that pure unity was central to his gospel message when he summed the entire law of holiness up into two relational commands, that righteousness is found in right relationship with God and with each other, nothing more and certainly nothing less.

Our relationships suffer most severely the consequences of death that our sin produces. In the first instance of disobedience, man runs and hides from the God he walked with everyday and covers himself up from his wife in shame. Our relationships were what defined us in the creation account, God in all his triune glory decides to make us in "our image," the shared image of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in perfect unity with each other. And it is that perfect unity that Jesus uses in his prayer as the model for our oneness, "may they be one as we are one." The day is coming when the groom Jesus will be united with his bridegroom the church and what a celebration of union that day will be. But in the mean time, we struggle to hold on to the beautiful relationships we currently inhabit and fight to repair the broken ones. This is hard work. Never will we open ourselves to more hurt than when we make ourselves vulnerable in relationships, than when we lay aside our fig leaves of shame and dare to live life together, in pure oneness.

All this points to why it hurts so much to hear that a loved one is in pain, because if we truly love that person then their pain becomes our own,that is both the blessing and perhaps the curse of our oneness. The reality is that we are all meant to be each other's loved ones and every instance of isolation, death, and disconnect hurts us to our core even if we do not realize it. But gloriously Jesus became our loved one and on that fateful day he felt our suffering in its fullest and it killed him. But in that act he showed love was stronger than death, that relationships would always win over separation in the end and he burst forth from the divide of death to reconnect all of creation to itself and to himself. Just as he felt our suffering on the cross, we feel his joy in the resurrection. May we find our stories at the intersection of the cross, at the place of Jesus prayer for our oneness, and the birth of our reconciled lives walking anew without shame in the presence of the one we have only dreamed of until now. And that hope of connection is stronger than all our fears and anger.

 May we be one.

The Heavens Declare His Glory, a prayer

Abba,

The heavens declare Your glory.

But what am I?

Do You even think of me?

Why are You mindful of us at all?

And yet You say we matter. I look into the sky and see endless stars, its a joke to even try to count them and I'm reminded in the laughter that they represent your blessings. This sounds nice but even when my life seems so small in comparison with the heavens, my problems and the problems of those I love seem colossal. Why does this distortion of perspective thrive in our hearts?

Maybe, just maybe, it is no distortion. Maybe our fears and pain are as big as creation in Your eyes too. They shouldn't be but I am beginning to believe they are. You have said that Your thoughts and ways are higher than the heavens are from the earth, intrinsically different from all my expectations. And when I pull myself away from the isolated religious speak that says everything will be alright, I find a God big enough to handle my anger. A God so big and yet so intimate. 

Tonight, I have no clue how to pray. I just can't ask for this and that and go on my way, I need to know You care, that You are as close and as strong as You've promised to be. 

Do I dare be noble now?

I remember when all seemed lost not long ago, when every door slammed in my face except for the love I found in the Pierce women, my family. And in their love, their stories, their prayers, their cooking, I found a home and peace. Now life has led me away from that home and I am afraid that I will never again taste the sweetness of those days. And the truth is I never will, that is why it is so special and why it hurts to even consider losing any of it. But maybe You have another door waiting for me, and this time I know it will be more painful but it will lead me home.

So, lead me, lead us home. 

Amen

Overflow of the Heart

As we approach Holy Week, I find myself reflective upon this season of Lent. Part of me wonders if I even tried at all to engage with Jesus as our local church has defined Lent. I at least set up a goal for myself, to study and practice the speech ethics of Jesus. To aid me in this I have been reading Eugene Peterson's book Tell it Slant, a study of Jesus' parables as he travels through Samaria on his way to Jerusalem and to the cross. In many ways, this season of Lent has mirrored that journey, as I've walked with Jesus through a foreign land. I wish that I had the same flare for the dramatic as Jesus, that I could interpret people's spiritual situations into well-crafted metaphors that people would be repeating two thousand years later, that I could set aside my agenda to be well-liked and to merely speak words that give life. Yet in my quest to see my tongue changed, I found God working on a very different part of me, my heart. Its often like this, I think, with God, we simply want to change our behaviors but He seems to care far more about who we are at our core. I found that to speak like Jesus did not mean learning smooth rhetoric but to be changed by his words.

And so as Jesus is preparing for his Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem he tells a story about the life he is bringing us into. He tells of a master who entrusts ten servants with some investments, talents. When the master returns a King, he surveys how his tenants spent their talents. One especially daring servant risked his in high-stakes investments and doubled the King's returns. Another held tightly to his, afraid of losing it and is scolded by the master who subsequently takes the servant's little and gives it to the daring one. In this story Jesus is illustrating what it means to live in and move in his coming Kingdom. We are to throw caution to the wind and risk all.  He has given us tools to use and what he most desires is for us to go to work, without fear and with great hope.

So often I find myself like the last servant, keeping my talents to myself out of fear. I am so often afraid of failure that I fail to act at all, a failure in and of itself. Yet I see Jesus telling me that anything worth anything is going to take risk. He knew this keenly as he rode that donkey into the death trap that was Jerusalem. He knew what was on the line and he risked it all, even his life for his dream, for our dreams. He died and in that act of bravery he freed us all to do likewise. This season of Lent has challenged my heart at the basic level: I am coward, yet Jesus looks deep into my eyes and sees far beneath and proclaims that my name is "Courageous" and "Victorious." He bids me, and perhaps us all, to follow in his steps of daring even if it costs me my life, for the reward is doubly, even infinitely, greater.

God, The Beloved Enemy

"Power, success, happiness, as the world knows them, are his who will fight for them hard enough; but peace, love, joy are only from God. And God is the enemy whom Jacob fought there by the river, of course, and whom in one way or another we all of us fight - God, the beloved enemy.  Our enemy becauase, before giving us everything, he demands of us everything; before giving us life, he demands our lives - our selves, our wills, our treasure." -Frederick Buechner

Tonight, on the eve of my 27th birthday, as I dream and worry about the next year of my life, I am faced with the reality of my motives. So often, I disguise my cravings for safety with holy masks that resemble wisdom.  But if I am honest, if I take my mask off, I am rather afraid of tomorrow.  This tormentor of mine, fear, has been wrecking havoc in my soul for far too long. The odd thing is that I am far from being certain just what it is that I fear. Is it failure? Rejection? Pain? Death? Of course it is these things, but it is also something else, something that I cannot name no matter who hard I psychoanalyze myself.

FDR said that the only thing worth fearing is fear itself and he may be quite right.  He said this in the face of the Great Depression, not just an economic disaster, but also a crushing of the nation's collective will.  Roosevelt stood firm in his bootstrap-pulling mentality and demanded that his country not bow to this cowardly enemy called fear. Yet I am afraid that I cannot live up to his level of courage.

The reason FDR cautioned us against giving into the demands of our terrors is that fear is a crippling foe.  It stakes claim over one's decisions and taunts us in the midst of our conflicts.  Fear calls to us to consider what we will lose if we truly turned our back on him.  Fear reminds us that he keeps us safe and illuminates the dangers in our paths. But too many of us know that a path lit by fear is a highway to hell. We put on our blinders and fall in line with the other cattle being led to slaughter. But every so often one of us wakes up and shouts at the top of there lungs, "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light."  A clarion call no doubt, a prayer too. Because what do we really have to lose?

Jesus once said that in order to find our life we must first lose it.  In other words, the things we fear the most will be the death of all our fears. Yet Jesus said the goal was death, nothing less, yet in that dying we find life. This is heady stuff. But it is also powerful stuff, words of life even.  And the beautiful thing about these words was that Jesus not only spoke them but He lived them. This is a rare combination today, when what we say actually lines up with what we do, but Jesus was the rare type. He not only took on death itself but all of our fears, failures, insecurities, and mistakes, even our blatant sins and he let them do their worse.  And the funny thing is that he was right all along, he defeated our fears for us, he died for us, for me even.  And it is this rare feat that gives me courage.

The United States rebounded from the Great Depression and emerged not just better, but as the most powerful nation in the world. The people rallied around their leader who had the courage to spit in fear's face and to convince the nation to follow his lead. They pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and exceeded their wildest goals. But in our quest to defeat fear, we must first be defeated. We, like the starving masses of the 30's, have right to fear. But we also have a courageous leader who has not only named the enemy but defeated it and has the scars to prove it. His victory did not come through will-power or hard work but through submission, through a God-forsaken cross. And our own way through is through defeat.  But we do not stay down. He did not stay down but got back up again and as the scarred man stumbled forth, he staked his claim over all the lands ruled by death and fear for He now holds the keys. The grave was overcome and we can finally believe Him when He says, "do not be afraid..."

God of Jacob, just as you wrestled Jacob and defeated him, defeat us too. It is not in courage that I overcome fears but in death. So take my life, but I will not let yo go til you bless me, change me, give me a new name and a new life. I have no clue how this happens but let it be. Defeat me Lord so that I may be victorious. Amen