The Way I See It #77
“The human catalysts for ‘dreamers’ are the teachers and encouragers that ‘dreamers’ encounter throughout their lives. They are invaluable in the quest to turn ideas into reality. So here’s a special thanks to all of the teachers – especially my teacher, Miz Lane!”
– Kevin Carroll
“Katalyst” and author of Rules of the Red Rubber Ball: Find and Sustain Your Life’s Work.
From Jeremiah’s blog:
“America is merely 5% of the world’s population but uses more than 20% of its resources.
Approximately 35,000 children under the age of 12 die every day of starvation or water-borne illnesses. That’s 9/11 times 10….every single day.
1.1 billion people in the world don’t have access to clean drinking water, and an estimated 1.6 billion don’t have electricity. It is estimated that 80% of all diseases could be wiped out if you just gave people clean water.
Over half of the global population lives on only $1 a day.
If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. -1 John 3:17-19
Something has to be done. Join us on Monday Sept. 4 from 9am-noon at Vineyard Central for the Starving Jesus tour. Give. Fast. Pray. Do Something. www.starvingjesus.com “
Starving Jesus conference
9-9:15 Conference registration
9:15-9:30 Welcome and Worship
9:30-10:15 Craig and JR- Starving Jesus
10:15-10:45 Breakout sessions
10:45-11 Break
11-11:15 OneCity highlight
11:15-12 Craig and JR- Q & A
12-? Conversations and applications
So the homily I gave on Sunday didn’t get recorded but here are my notes from it:
“this bread is my flesh”… So, this is kinda creepy if you weren’t a Christian and knew the rest of the story. This is pretty intense.
Let’s recap the story…
So, Jesus and his disciples get trapped by a huge, hungry, needy crowd… they fed them with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. Then his clearly amazed friends get in a boat and head across the lake. Jesus comes walking on the water to meet them. They get to the other side and by morning the crowd wants more of Jesus… so they take off in fast pursuit. The crowd wants fed again. What’s more they want a sign… some miracle to prove who he is so they can really “believe”. They pull the Moses card.
I can imagine the scene is a bit like a new trick that Cloey has learned lately…. “But Dad said I could….”
The crowd was saying but “Moses gave us bread from heaven…”. To which Jesus replies, “Nuh huh. My Dad gave you bread and now the real deal is here. You’re looking at him”
Naturally, they don’t get it.
So Jesus gets a bit more explicity…. kinda… “I am the bread of life. No one who comes to me will ever be hungry again. Those who believe in me will never thirst.” (35)
Naturally, they still don’t get it and now they think he’s lost his marbles…. “Umm, isn’t this Joe and Mary’s kid…. he ain’t from heaven, he’s from poo-dunk little Nazarerth”… or as someone in our house church said… “crazy pants”
And then Jesus just gets nasty… here he’s talking to his own people, the Jewish people, and he recounts their own history and tweaks it. He takes their own story and does them one better. Your ancestors ate bread and died. I am bread that will give you eternal life. “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever; this bread is my flesh, offered so the world may live.” (51)
So what in the world is Jesus doing? What’s this whole “bread of life” thing about, anyway? It gets worse… Jesus goes on… let me read the next several verses:
” 52Then the people began arguing with each other about what he meant. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” they asked.
53So Jesus said again, “I assure you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you cannot have eternal life within you. 54But those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them at the last day. 55For my flesh is the true food, and my blood is the true drink. 56All who eat my flesh and drink my blood remain in me, and I in them. 57I live by the power of the living Father who sent me; in the same way, those who partake of me will live because of me. 58I am the true bread from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever and not die as your ancestors did, even though they ate the manna.”
59He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
60Even his disciples said, “This is very hard to understand. How can anyone accept it?”
61Jesus knew within himself that his disciples were complaining, so he said to them, “Does this offend you? 62Then what will you think if you see me, the Son of Man, return to heaven again? 63It is the Spirit who gives eternal life. Human effort accomplishes nothing. And the very words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 64But some of you don’t believe me.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who didn’t believe, and he knew who would betray him.) 65Then he said, “That is what I meant when I said that people can’t come to me unless the Father brings them to me.”
66At this point many of his disciples turned away and deserted him.”
Obviously. This guy has lost it. He’s tellling people to eat his flesh and drink his blood! What in the world!?
I wonder what point Jesus is trying to make? I wonder what John is trying to accomplish in writing this story about Jesus? I wonder what the Spirit is saying to us today through all this?
I have 6 ideas:
#1 Jesus is weeding out his disciples – Jesus is basically saying, “Here’s the deal. Are you in or out?”
This is the hard stuff. Radical discipleship. It is a call to action. Which would be consistent if this John is the same John the writer of Revelation, which is, I submit at its core about radical discipleship.
#2 Jesus is taking a known cultural norm and tweaking it. “You’ve heard it said but I say to you…” kinda thing. You think you know bread from heaven? I’ll give you bread from heaven. This bread or manna was held in such high esteem that it was even kept in the ark of the covenant, so it was pretty central to their cultural and religious identity. He takes that piece of their DNA and shows how he is the fulfillment and the True form of what they thought they knew.
#3 John was juxtaposing the temporal with the eternal and placing Jesus clearly on the side of the latter. Manna was part of their identity – temporary. Jesus – eternal
#4 Jesus is true sustenance. He is True Life. Which is consistent with John’s purpose as he puts in John 20:31 – 31But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
#5 If John wrote this to a Greek audience then he may be trying to make clear that Jesus is for the whole world – not just Jews. Then all this talk about Jesus being more, better, truer than what the Jew’s ancestors experienced would make some sense.
#6 I have a sneaking suspicsion that the Spirit is saying something to us today about where we assume our sustenance comes from. We have come to believe that our meaning in life comes from having stuff. Making a name for ourselves, being popular, being noticed. We lust for importance. We are gluttons of our own achievement. We assume that our fulfillment in life comes from getting. Sure we want to get different stuff from what the crowd in Jesus’ day wanted… but we, like them, both want want want want want. We are unhappy unless we are getting more.
Is it any wonder then that we live distracted, disinterested lives? If we constantly and consistently surround ourselves with the junk that we crave is it any surprise when we can’t seem to focus.
So, we’re in In-service for school. Here’s a verse that was just quoted. Seems potentially thematic for our impending year….
Well, let’s see how much trouble I can get in here. So Steve, from house church gives me this book – Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola – last week. I’ve heard of Mr. Viola before but had not read anything by him. The title is provocative enough so I was interested in reading it. I’ve only been able to skim and read sections, but I think I have a good sense of his point. Here’s the gist (from their website):
“That most of what we Christians do in our churches has no root in the New Testament! It rather has its origin in pagan culture long after the death of the apostles.”
So basically here’s what I gather: What we do as Christians – how we practice our faith – is all wrong and, even more, pagan. Mr. Viola will illuminate how we are wrong on every account and will prescribe the truly Biblical alternative. Further, the Bible does, in fact, lay out a clearly discernable path of how we are to practice our faith, but we have missed it completely and it must be rediscovered. Oh, and did I mention that everything we do in our faith practice is wrong? All of it.
At least that is what I gather from what I read.
The problem is I disagree. Sort of. I guess I agree and disagree. Let’s start with my disagreeableness (is that a word?).
I dislike the polemic Viola sets up. He creates a black and white, right and wrong dichotomy where I don’t think one exists. Whatsmore, he sets himself as judge and jury of what is right and wrong. I think there are many more shades of gray here than he seems comfortable with.
He is essentially accuse the Church of syncretism – uncritically adopting a cultural practice that inadvertantly reshapes the adopters (in this case Christians). And he, of course, sees this syncretism as a very very bad thing. Here’s where it gets sticky for me. I, in general, agree that syncretism is bad and that the Church is quite guilty of it – even in many ways that Viola suggests. But I’m not sure we can avoid some degree of syncretism. There is no such thing as a Christian culture. We live in culture and we are Christian. We can shape our culture by our life of faith, but it will not make that culture Christian.
There’s more here than I feel like I’m able to get at right now. I guess it will just have to suffice to say that I think people like Frank Viola are good and necessary for the Church – leaven for the bread. But they are not a way forward. They poke and stab at the Christian bubble (clealry out of love for Christ and his Church, I might add). At the same time I find their assesment and diagnosis lacking, partial, and maybe a bit jaded and fearful – even angry.
On the other side of things I am reading “A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity” by Spencer Burke and Barry Taylor. This, I think, may be more of a way forward. But I’m only just in chapter one…. more to come….
Proper 14: Year B, RCL (going to be homitizing on this in a couple weeks)… which got me thinking of something that I thought of last night.
Last night was the end of my month long sabbatical from email, blogging, IM, and (mostly) cellphone. It was good. It was a spiritual discipline. But it wasn’t until 31 days into it – last night – that I felt like I recovered, or uncovered, from the noise that is digital info overload that has surrounded my life. As I lay in bed last night, not sleeping due to too much ice tea (caffienated), I felt as if I found my soul. It was buried beneath responsibilities, dysfunctions, expectations – internal and external, and way too much information. When I found it I had the sense that is was small.
Very very small.
At first I had thought that perhaps it had atrophied. That my soul was limp and weak from lack of use and neglect. Flabby and soft. But upon closer inspection I think that I was mistaken. A soul doesn’t go bad, its shelf-life is longer and more robust that I was giving it credit for. Instead my soul was small because well it just is. It is like an atom – infintesimally small and amazing powerful. I’m not attempting a headfirst jump into the deep end of self-deprecation. Just the opposite in fact. My soul is small – and yours is too.
My life has been filled to overflowing with stuff – physical, relational, technological, familial, ecclesial, etc…. Much much too much. I have felt disconnected from myself. That I am buried beneath a pile of junk. After 31 days of intentionally abstaining from some of that junk – the digital varieties – I got a glimpse of my soul. Its down there, at the center of who I am. It is solid, secure in God’s hands. I’ve missed it. I’ve missed me. It is good to reconnect and hard to stay connected. Centered. Present. Peaceful.
I’m reminded about Nouwen’s thoughts on continual prayer. This centeredness and peacefulness at the core of my being is, I think, the heart of prayer. So my voiced prayer as I enter back into the digital fray, the budding school year, and all the new and continuing responsibilities that come with being a dad, husband, pastor, friend, son, brother, teacher, IT guy, etc…. is “Lord, have mercy.” I want to live a centered, prayful life. I want remember where I last put my soul, its so small and I lose it too easily. Lord, have mercy on a distracted, overwhelmed technophile. Lord, have mercy on me a people-pleaser. Lord, have mercy on me a addict of my own disinterest. Lord, have mercy.
On a practical level, I really really enjoyed being free from the bonds of email. I am more and more convinced of just how seperating email is for relationships and community. Its great for staying in touch with folks from a far, but less than good for maintaining relationships at home and locally. There has got to be a better way. I’m going to attempt to not email as much. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do this. I’ll start by returning some emails with phone calls and possibly not returning some at all. I suspect this will get me in trouble with somebody, but that’s just going to have to be what it is. I cannot, and I’m finding that I should not, try to remain as pseudo-connected as I have attempted to be. I’m coming to see email as a false-connection to people. Maybe I’ll say more about this at some point. Maybe not. For now though, here I am. I’m blogging and I am emailing and you’ll see my on IM and you can call me on my cellphone. I just want to remember where I last put my soul. It certainly wasn’t in my Inbox.
