A Labyrinthine Journey

As a pastor, I see the great toll fear and anxiety brings to every member of my church. As someone who breathes I know how pervasive fear is in my life and my family. As a member of society, it distresses me to see how fear is a motivator behind most of our business, church, and personal decisions. Fear clouds even the strongest person’s point of view and it damages bodies, hearts, minds, spirits, and relationships.

In his book, Fearless, Max Lucado examines 13 ways we need to hear Jesus’ invitation to “fear not.” He makes real how we experience fear and then brings meaning to the hope and comfort Jesus’ words bring to us. I have enjoyed many of Lucado’s books, yet this one touched me most personally. I am deeply thankful and recommend this book for that reason alone.

As a bonus, the end of the book contains questions for group discussion that can brings Christ’s invitation to “live without fear” to many people in my congregation.

It is time to free ourselves from the power of fear in our lives. This book points us to how Jesus can bring us that freedom.

For quite a few years I’ve been refocusing the lens of my preaching and teaching the gospel. I am seeing it more and more as God’s great invitation to life that is full of light and wonder. One of the implications of that reshift of focus is an internal set of translating the language of church and faith. Some I am sure would cry foul, but I find the new language liberating. So, here is a beginning (and very brief) guide to this Gospel of Invitation.

Command => Invitation

This is the basic translation. To me the whole command language sets up our relationship with God as one of servant/master, which Jesus changes when he talks in John 15:12-15 about we are no longer servants, but friends.

This also clears up for me the mixed messages of all the commands to love one another. Being invited to a life of loving one another makes a lot more coherant sense then the implied idea of “love one another, or else…”

What happens if I don’t => What happens as I do

This follows from the previous conversion. If the focus is primarily on what are the results of not doing something then we are concerned with reward and punishment. Here we come boldly in to the realm of works righteousness. Yet, if we offer the invitation to what happens in life as we follow the path of life then we are no longer thinking about linear causality of fear, but we are instead focused on the ways were a participants in God’s life as we respond to grace.

If => As

Did you catch that little translation? This is one of the first ones I noticed on my journey into this Gospel of Invitation. The word “if” has that idea of “don’t.” “If I do this” carries with the real possibility and assumption that I won’t do it. Whereas “as I do this” begins and carries with it the idea of being involved. As we forgive one another, we participate in God’s forgiveness.

Compulsion => Desire

You might notice, that a lot of these translations move away from a culture of control into a culture of participation. Compulsion and control are all external source words. The force for the action come from somewhere out there. Desire and participation are internal source words. The springs of life are planted inside us and the Holy Spirit inspires desire within us and that is what leads us to act within the imagination of God’s Grace.

Surrender => Consent

Here is another one that doesn’t seem like it needs to happen at first, but I have found myself doing this one a lot more lately. Surrender is a fear-based word. It is an act of giving in and giving up. The battle of life has been joined and we have lost. However, consent is a love-based word. We have been invited to join our hearts with God’s heart and we choose to freely give our lives to God as an expression and response to that great Love.

Prove => Witness

This is reflected in my previous blog entry about the parable of two doorkeepers. A basic assumption of the prove it perspective is that God and God’s ways are somehow understandable by our great and massive intelligences. Yet, I don’t believe that. All we are able to do is to witness to the mysteries of Life and Love. All we are called to do is to keep pointing to what God is doing in our lives. So we can stop adding notches to our belts of those we have “converted” by our eloquence as we keep proving how great God is (or have we really just proven how smart and charismatic we are). Instead a Gospel of Invitation is all about celebrating what God is doing in life. As God transforms lives we rejoice with the company of saints and keep on inviting people to “come and see.”

That’s it for now. Let me know what you think. Can you see how this moves us a God’s people from being messengers of shadow into being bearers of light? As I find myself shifting my thinking in this way my life system moves from one which is closed and feels empty into one that is wide open and spacious, fillable and filled with the fulness of God’s Spirit and Light.

Psalm 84 is up for the lectionary this week. Verse 10b stimulated a little parable.

I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God…

Doorkeeper #1: Let’s call him Frank.

Frank tends the door at the most exclusively club in town. Inside the door one can find the most exquisite decor, the most delicious food, and the DJ spins the best music in the country. It is a wondrous and magical place to be. And only the best people are allowed to enjoy this place.

That is Frank’s job. He tends the locked door behind the red velvet rope.

If you come to the club you have to show Frank that you are worthy. Your name has to be on the list and only those A class girls and boys can gain entrance. So you have to prove to Frank that you are who you are and that you allowed inside. If you can do that, then the wonders inside are for you to enjoy. If not, then you can only stand outside and wonder. But most people after a little while just give up and think no longer about even trying to enter this place. They go along with their lives outside the door.

Doorkeeper #2:  We meet Francis.

Francis is the Doorman at the finest hotel in town. It too is a place of wonder. The lobby is spacious and filled with marvelous visions and images of beauty. The restaurant off the lobby is known to sell the simplest yet most filling foods and most refreshing drinks. It also is a wondrous place to be. And anyone who enters finds themselves most blessed.

Francis’ job is to tend the front door.

Yet, for Francis his joy and delight is to do all he can to open the door and welcome everyone who walks past. As people walk by, he smiles at each one and gestures toward the door to invite them in. If they keep walking, he waves and invites them to return anytime, the door will be opened for them. If anyone stops and turns to enter, he rushes to the door to open it wide for them to enter. If they have coats, hats and umbrellas he makes sure they are relieved of their burdens at the check room. He loves to make the way clear for everyone to come in and enjoy the wonders of this beautiful place.

Which doorkeeper are we?

As I think about the church, I think we have found it too easy to be more like Frank. We see ourselves as the gatekeepers to the kingdom. What we have is the most wonderful thing in the world, but we somehow think it is fragile and easily spoiled. We see ourselves as the protectors of the faith and believe that it can become lost or damaged if those unworthy are allowed to enter in. So we set up all kinds of rules of righteousness and ritual to make people prove themselves worthy. Trouble is, those we allow in usually end up being, dressing, acting, and talking just like us-those already in.

Yet, I think the Psalmist and Christ invites us to be more like Francis. The Gospel message is the most wondrous thing in the world and we do believe that anyone who finds the presence of the Loving God has found all the blessings they desire. However, we believe it is so marvelous that we want to do all that we can to bring everyone into that Presence of Life. So we radiate that open invitation to all we meet. And when anyone decides to respond, we joyfully do whatever we can to welcome them into the Grace of Christ. We look for and seek to remove all burdens and obstacles that keeps them away from enjoying the abundance of God.

I know I said last month that I was going to be more intentional about writing. I blogged a lot right away and then grew increasingly silent. Life and other projects have stepped in the way. But, I’ve been writing. In fact, I picked up a used Thinkpad just for writing that is much lighter, smaller, and has great battery life. This way, I don’t have to become a hermit from my family to work on things.

I have two major writing projects in my head. Both have peeked their heads into the blog. One is going deeper into the Enneagram from a distinctively Protestant Christian perspective. This project has joined forces with an old writing project using the images of the ancient elements as spiritual growth tools. This one is more deeply in the research stage. I still don’t have the Enneagram “cold” enough to be bold in writing much about it yet. The research is active and background.

The other writing project is the one that I am spending time with. In May I preached a sermon series on the United Methodist “Rethink Church” marketing campaign. The way it came together has led me to want to devote more time to writing more fully about the ideas. Yet, for the longest time, I was stuck in getting started. I recorded the sermons and they have given me the basic document to work on, but that hasn’t been enough.

I realized that I didn’t yet want to write it. I hadn’t sold my own internal publishing board on the project. I wasn’t clear enough on why I thought my ideas were worth writing about yet. So for the past week, I’ve been working on my own book proposal for “Rethink Christian” (my working title). At the moment this has nothing to do with trying to find an agent or a publisher, but it has everything to do with getting me to turn off the television and get up earlier in the morning to make the time to show up as a writer.

Part of me wonders if that is normal for other writers: to have to sell themselves in writing. Another part says that doesn’t matter. If this is what I need to do to get myself into the game, then let it be.

I’m closer to my selling point then I was last week. For that I am grateful.

An excerpt from my Soul Writing from a few days ago.

Dear God,

Thank you for inviting me into your abundant life. I don’t always hear the invitation clearly, yet you keep on knocking on my heart’s door and calling my name. Sometimes I do hear it but I turn away from it. I don’t know why. Those seem to be the times when I think the little I have is all I deserve. The shadow voices convince me for the moment that I am only worth the lesser portion. You have to admit it, this life you invite me to is pretty amazing. It does go far beyond imagination.

Sorry, but I live among a people who are used to dreams dying. I’ve been a Chicago Cubs fan. It is very common and almost normal for us to find disappointment and to live discouraged.

I get so excited about some dream idea and then it doesn’t come. That excitement turns to grief and pain. Or maybe I get what I want, but it doesn’t live up to those hopes. What’s left is emptiness and even resentment. Or sometimes I will have fun starting to follow a wonderful dream, but then it gets hard or it changes too much from what I thought it would be. I give up.

I become disheartened.

That’s a good word for it: disheartened. With time and the accumulation of more disappointments I have learned to protect my heart. A few times in I can actually picture my heart encased in a hard shell. I stop getting excited about things. I learn the cynical path is the easiest one to take. I stop imagining things. I settle.

I settle for the lesser life.

I can tell when I am in that settling place by the echo of my heart. I read, hear, and even write or preach your words of hope and love, and inside I hear those words echo in emptied spaces. The shadowed chambers of my soul ring the deep notes of that disappointment. My hearts feels the pre-creation void as an echo of that old shadow. And those days feel so small.

I wonder though, why would You torture me with this vision of abundant life if you had no intention of truly providing it for me. You wouldn’t do that would you? That wouldn’t be fun or fair. It would be so much easier to just stop dreaming, to accept that this vision of abundance is just illusion and that this little life is all I will ever get. The dying inside will hurt some at first, but then after a while I won’t know or care anymore. have accepted my small life while still yearning for abundance.

I think of my Grandmother. As her dementia began she was terrified. She had watched her Mother disappear before her eyes and recognized within herself the same progression. Then she reached that part of the disease where she forgot and was no longer afraid. Her world had grown small enough that she again felt safe.

Is that what is available? Spiritual dementia? Accepting the lesser “vision?”

If that is all you are ever going to give me, then in your kindness and grace take these extravagant dreams away from me.

However, you still invite me to this abundant life.

I will not accept the shadow idea that you are cruel and arbitrary. I will not accept the idea that you would offer us only empty promises. If you invite us to live your abundance, I will trust that you will make it real.

Strengthen me when the siren song pulls me toward the rocks of Less. Carry me through the times of transition and transformation to the place of grace.

God, help me to always remain open to your invitational knock. Don’t let me slip into my little world where your dreams are all dead. Resurrect my soul, illumine my heart, and free me for your life abundant.

Over the last couple days it has been my turn to celebrate communion at two of our local care centers. There was a time early in my ministry, I am ashamed to admit, when I would have seen those times as impositions on my time. Yet by grace and through the Holy Spirit’s changing my heart, that attitude has been changed.

I see the time as a simple gift with surprising and mostly unseen fruit.

The time is short, it is not much more than reading scripture, sharing the prayer of institution and the Lord’s prayer and personally sharing the elements with each person who comes. Even when we celebrate communion in larger church worship, I seek to look each person in the eyes as they come up. A look that I fill with all of God’s grace that I can allow to flow through me.

Here my celebrating communion in care centers happens 20 times.

For some reason, today was different.

I was feeling tired and empty today, so the old resentment tried to raise its objection to going, but no-one listened. And when I got there, the elements were prepared, but only 3 residents had gathered. This is about a third to a fourth of the number who usually attends. Besides, the activity director could not be found. But that wasn’t a problem. We just waited for a few more to come. When we had 7 of us, I started the reading from Psalm 130.

“My soul waits for the Lord, more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.”

Then the prayer of thanksgiving:

“Pour out your Holy Spirit on us gathered here and on these gifts, that in the breaking of this bread and the drinking of this wine we man know the presence of the living Christ.”

Followed by the Lord’s Prayer. While we are praying a couple more residents come to join our small circle, I smile at them to welcome them to the group.

Then sharing the gifts. I have to pay attention now. Will she take the wafer or will she want me to place it in her mouth? Will he be able to hold the small cup of juice or will I need to help him drink?

I partake last, mindful today of my own sense of void and emptiness. I am grateful.

As soon as I prnounce the benediciton, the last woman to arrive jumps up as fast as she could jump with her walker and comes over to me apologizing for being late.

“I’m just glad you made it”

By now she has made it to where I am standing and she grabs hold of my arm and leans up against me and begins to cry. “I am so glad I made it, too. Thank you. Thank you.”

I give her a hug and she moves down the hallway to her room. I then go to each remaining person and shake each hand and smile with each grateful face. Each one echoes the thought, “Thank you so much for coming.”

As I finish gathering my Bible and prayer book, I am thinking how different today feels. One woman hasn’t moved yet. As I stop to talk with her, she says that they have lost quite a few residents in that facility in the last couple weeks. So we talk for a few moments about grief and the seasons and cycles of life and death. She thanks me and begins moving down the hall back to her room.

As I leave, I find myself thinking that in my prayers, I rarely pray for a whole care center. I might pray for individuals and for larger communities, but not for those smaller communities.

And I realize that I am leaving a feast of the body of Christ. It may not have been 5 loaves and 2 fish, but the 8 of us were gathered and Christ’s presence was felt by my heart today.

I had a dream last night. It was a dream that raised the very important question of what questions we ask God that guide us in mission and ministry.

In the dream, a group of young people were sent out into the community for a day. They come back to report.

One young woman comes all sad, and frustrated. She tells of all the tales of woe she witnessed and heard throughout the day.

“God, what is up with all this disease and bad in the world? It is just too much. How can you stand it?”

Another young woman followed and shared how she all those things, too. yet, she also saw people holding on to hope and still getting up to face another day. She saw babies being born and children playing and being taught. She also saw people laughing and loving.

“God, if we are all dying, this life-threatening stuff makes sense, why don’t you just throw in the towel?” So, what is up with all this life I saw?”

And there ends the dream. I woke up enough to jot down that dialog, but I’ve been mulling this snippet over ever since.

We cannot deny the presence of evil and all that threatens life in our world. Utter despair is what makes sense when we consider the evidence of the world around us and our own mortality. And we could approach the world lost in that despair. I am humbled by how often I find myself seeing and therefore believing only the worst.

Yet, God, what is up with all this life you infect our lives with? You keep bringing us moments of renewed energy and clarity. You turn winter into spring and summer. You come to the darkest shadows and where you show up there is light. People die in our lives. New relationships are born and reborn more often. And even as the time leads us toward mortality, you keep on living in and around us.

As I witness the tears of sorrow, God, help me see your light. As I wrestle along with someone who is seeking freedom, God, show how the chains are being taken away. As I think all this is just too much, surprise me.

Yesterday’s post about my initial responses to Ephesians 2 was a strange one for me to write. It as one of those let’s get the words down raw and let them just sit there as they are. I don’t think I will preach that passage in just that way. And for me it was a risk to write it that way, but it was a choice.

A choice of voice.

In my study of the enneagram I continue to see myself as a Type 8. If you do any kind of looking at the Enneagram types the 8 is the more strong willed, in your face, powerful leader. I am learning to see where I do intimidate people, and I am learning to accept that as my type energy at work. Yet, I have spent years not liking the commonly expected voice of the Enneagram 8, what I am thinking of as the Confrontation Voice.

Before I knew of the Enneagram, I had observed some very clear examples of that Confrontation Voice from church leaders. I saw the harm those harsh words had on my life and on the lives of others. So as I was seeking my own voice as a preacher and a leader I intentionally sought a different voice. It was those years of cultivating a non-confrontational and peacemaking voice that led me first to see my Enneagram Type as a 9. I was content with that.

So one of my struggles with the Enneagram has been accepting that I do have that Confrontational Energy and voice within me. Part of that acceptance is to find healthy ways to practice it. And practice is the operative word there. I am clumsy with my Enneagram 8 energy and voice. It is a shift of years of practice to become open to an important part of how God made me.

So yesterday’s post was a practice exercise in that more Confrontational Voice that is one of my authentic voices.

My preferred preaching voice? Invitational. And I can see how that can be just as bold and clear of a type 8 voice as the more confrontational one can be.

To me, the Bible is a collection of God’s loving invitations to us. Invitations to live a life aligned with the righteousness and love that God showed us in creating us, tending us, redeeming us, and transforming us. One of my pastors said once that God does not break into our lives to invade us, that is evil’s modus operandi. God knocks gently and persistently on the doors of our hearts inviting us to open and welcome in the Essence of the Divine. We can choose to ignore the invitation and we can refuse it, and God’s grace will respect that choice.

Yet, God will keep on offering the invitation. As long as we have life in our bodies God will keep on offering that invitation. And I’m even open to the idea that not even death will stop God from that extended grace (can we say purgatory?).

Even in the Ephesians 2 and Acts 10 passages, I can just as easily see God reaching out in love to Us and reaching out in love to Them and then looking at each of us with those sparkling/piercing eyes of grace and saying,…

“Shall we dance together?”

That’s a great invitation.

Working on this Sunday’s sermon on Ephesians 2:11-22. I used to read those words about the dividing wall and the strangers to the promise language as thought that God was the one who had set up the rules and boundaries. With that idea, then Jesus came to remove God’s barriers to salvation and grace.

Today, I saw a whole new perspective.

To Paul, the boundaries, the walls, and the hostilities are the creation of us humans. We call each other the circumcised and the uncircumcised. We set up the ordinances that determine who we see is In and who is Out. The divisions are ours and since people think what we say is the right way, then our ideas of who has hope and who are hopeless are received and accepted by those we tell.

The walls are ours. The Iron Curtains, the Border Patrols, Us, and Them are things we create.

Christ came to break through our own ideas of who are strangers. And our kind are never strangers.

In Ephesians 2:16, God’s strategy is to reconcile us all to God then challenge us to respond. “Deal with it,” God says.

Reminded me of Peter and Cornelius in Acts 10. The Holy Spirit did the same setup. God already had Peter’s attention. God made an independent connection with Cornelius (one of the Stranger Gentiles). Then needed to show Peter what Grace had done.

The dream of the unclean food and then the outbreak of the Holy Spirit amongst the Gentiles, God says, “I’ve chosen them, they are mine. Deal with it.”

So, who do we as the gatekeepers of the gospel see as outside the circle of God’s love? And does God really have that limited of a circle of Grace?

Not according to my reading of Scripture. How is God asking us to have our walls and boundaries ripped down by Christ?

The answer is not easy to accept. God doesn’t force us to accept each other. But where is God breaking out in power and then stands there looking at us saying, “I love them, too. Deal with it”

As a preacher, words are my tools. Other people have other instruments and implements to do their work, but as a preacher and a spiritual director all I have available to me are words. Words received and words handed out.

While preparing to preach on Ephesians 1:3-14 last week, it dawned on me that language can be small or it can be big. It isn’t a matter of large or small words. Nor is it a question of intelligence. Language can lead us into our experience of past, present, and future. Our language belies our view of God, the world, our selves, and our possibilities.

Have you noticed how prevalent small language is in our society? Words and ideas that seek to contain and restrict our ideas and our imaginations. Listening to some people all you can hear are stories of a penned up life with a sparse past, a future without, and a present filled to overflowing with scarcity. Reminds me of the book that J.B.Phillips wrote, “Your God is Too Small.” Even without reading the book the title offers a challenge to each of us who seek to use language to describe the God who lives beyond words and whose grace breaks open every soul who seeks to fathom that love.

Then there is the story of the blind men and the elephant. Small language seeks to understand God completely and stops content that it has succeeded. What is left is a view of god that is smaller than our capacity and at the whim of each different practitioner of those words.

No small language or small God for Paul in Ephesians 1! Read those words a few times and allow the rich vastness just wash over your soul. With those words Paul invites us to dive into an understanding of God and Grace that is not small in any manner of the word. Abundance. Spaciousness. Glory. Riches. These words call us to an openness of life that is what we yearn for, and what terrorizes us. “Woe is me,” Isaiah writes in chapter 6 of his prophecy, “I am small and messed up and I am in the presence of Vastness and Wonder.” (my loose paraphrase).

Everytime we dare to enter the presence of God-words, we need to share the same sense of scale. Our words are inadequate. God’s language is Huge. Yet, God has gifted thsoe words to us as the bridge of life eternal, abundant, boundless and free.

With gratitude let us follow Paul’s invitation and live this moment and each new moment “for the praise of God’s glorious grace.”