The Power To Create

I've been reading 'A Room Called Remember," written by Frederick Buechner.  He has an extraordinary mind.  

This morning I read his piece on The John 1:1f: -- where he opens one's mind to some amazing  thoughts on how God's Word is:  

"But the imagery of John is based rather on sound than on sight.  It is a Word you hear breaking through the unimaginable silence -- a creating word, a word that calls forth, a word that stirs life and is life because it is God's word, John says , and has God in it as your words have you in them, have in them your breath and spirit and tell of who you are.  Light and dark, the visual, occur in space, but sound, this Word spoken, occurs in time and starts time going. "Let it be" the Word comes, and then there is, Creation is.  Something is....." (p.86)

There is a line in Ted Loders prayer:

“It is a wonderful, fearsome thing, that you share your power to Create.”

If we would look closer to this claim, of this power to create, it becomes an awesome revelation.

It is saying God give us -- you and me -- his capability to make something.

Something positive, helpful, a beginning of something, ....

Have you ever thought you had God’s power to create?

Just imagine it!

Loder is not saying that it is power to create something grand and extraordinary.

Rather he is suggesting the small and amazing things that bring joy, or grace, or inspiration, or pleasure to the environment we live in.

But

      a song that we sing or music we play,

          a masterpiece that leave one in awe.

              bringing laughter to one’s heart,

                   a poet’s truth telling,

a gentle word or touch.

This morning when I read that line — A line I have read countless times before — I thought about when I write, or teach, or preach.  There is the possibility, in my words, to bring wonder, questions and maybe even doubts. Doubts that challenge someones mind or heart. Or make their faith a tiny bit stronger.

Loder writes; 

“…and it is mine by your genius or madness this power to speak and have light burst upon a minds or darkness descends upon a heart.” (p. 110 Guerrillas of Grace)

Something to ponder as you move through this ordinary day.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. ⁷He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. ⁹The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. ¹¹He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. ¹²But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, ¹³who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. ¹⁵(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known. (John 1)

 

Life's Distractions

 My head was still sleepy on my Pillow when I began to think about the concept of   ‘distractions.’

Distractions that disable us from doing a simple task.

More specifically things that interest, and move us, away from.  Away from Jesus’ invitation to live our lives as we desire to live. Or at very least hope to live.

Distractions are so clever, sometimes, we don’t even realize that we are captured by their power to move us past our center.

So I got up, made my coffee then looked up the Greek word for distraction: 

“ecstatic, ecstasy, a change of place, confusion of spirit, alienation.”

In Hebrew — an "illusion or terror."

 “Ecstatic means to remove oneself, to alter/ shake, to confuse, to bewitch, to lose one’s wit, go out of one’s mind.”

I am thinking about how easily we allow ourselves to be taken in by all the world’s distractions.

How we move, step by step, in directions the lead us further, and further, away from God’s way for our lives.

Two recent Sunday Gospels are good examples of how this distraction works.

The first Gospel comes in Luke’s chapter 10.  Where Martha got all in a knot because Mary was not doing her part to help with the meal preparations -- just sitting with Jesus listening to his every word. 

The distraction is Martha's putting Jesus in the middle of the problem.   Jesus says to Martha:  "Martha, Martha you ar worried and distracted by many things...

The other examples comes in Luke’s chapter 12.  Where the rich man decides to tear down all his barns and built larger ones to store his abundant harvest.  And then sit down to enjoy, for himself, his good fortune. The response: 

 ²⁰But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” ²¹So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’

But stop, just before that little story, about the rich man, we are told of another issue:

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.’ ¹⁴But he said to him, ‘Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?’ ¹⁵And he said to them, ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’ :...(Luke 12)

Now, if we are not careful we can miss the obvious distractions here.  

We can miss the point of Jesus’ story.

The point is not about the brother's inheritance, the rich man abundance or Martha's whining.   It is about them just thinking about them selves.  it is about not thinking about what God would want for their lives.

Do you remember what happened to Jesus after his Baptism?

He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to live for forty day. There he was tempted by the distractions posed by devil.

He was tempted by all of the things we get tempted by:  playing God instead of listening to God.                                                                                                                        

My simple interpretation.

God knows what kind of world we have been born into.

God also know the temptations we face; the distractions surrounding us each minute.

In our world we live with a lot of distractive noise. 

This noise is so much more real, and clearer, and easier to hear and understand. Then God’s word.

"Is It madness To Believe Such A Thing?"

 

¹³And when he forgave us all our trespasses, ¹⁴erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.(Col 2)

The word “erasing” has once again caught my imagination.  

In the Greek the verb — erasing — is: to dissolve, blow out, turn or switch off, extinguish and douce.

I am thinking this morning of how unbelievable this erasing is to the majority of the Christian world, not to mention the entire universe. 

Is there a God who is so gracious and understanding?

Is there such a God who actually said:  

as far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us.    

Or: ....for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. 

¹⁰ He does not deal with us according to our sins,
   nor repay us according to our iniquities. 
¹¹ For as the heavens are high above the earth,
   so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him; 
¹² as far as the east is from the west,
   so far he removes our transgressions from us. (Ps 103)

31 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. ³²It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. ³³But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31)

Does this truly mean that the most horrible of sins can be erased?  

Gone forever?

To quote a famous theologian in his book, ‘A Room Called Remember, ’ Frederick Buechner writes:  “Is it madness to believe such a thing?  That is a serious question.  Is it madness to believe in God at all let alone in a God who speaks to us through such obscure and fleeting moments as these and then asks us to believe that these moments are windows into the truest meaning and mystery of the cosmos itself?  It is a kind of madness indeed.” (p.28)

Now to clarify, Buechner was  talking about the Exodus 3 text. When God spoke to Moses out of burning bush.  When God ask Moses to go and save the Israelites from Egyptian’s oppressive slavery.

None-the -less, erasing sins is as impossible as having God talk to us from a burning bush after all. 

Or anywhere else for that matter. 

                                                  Right?

And yet, as I sit and think about all of the centuries that have past since God talked to Moses, and Paul wrote to the Colossians.  And our world is still looking to the hope offered from the story of a God who came to earth in Jesus skin. 

There is still a thing called worship that draws all kinds of people to come and to hear the word of God spoken.

Down through the ages the madness -- God’s truth -- still pulls at people’s hearts and minds.

So there must be something to this madness after all.

Don’t you think?

Human Wisdom Has Lead Us astray

 I am still thinking about the my last blog where I talked about all of the diverse messages that surround us daily

The Apostle Paul is writing to the Colossians about the presence of false teachers who assume a superior way of thinking about how this world should think and be — over against the teachings of Jesus.  

We know of such teachers in our present day.

Paul is asking them to remember their true “roots” ignoring those who would lead you away from God.

¹⁸Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking,…

How often do we tend to listen to the ways of "human thinking?"

We get caught up in the rules and regulations of our earthly culture and then make decisions, and form opinions, according to todays worldview. 

That must have been happening with in the Colossians community as well.

All these centuries, how do we learn to separate the ways of Christ with the way of our modern cultural human understanding of how to live together?

 20 If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations,… 

This issue is huge in our nation and all over the world -- the need to own power and authority. 

Just stop for a moment and think about all of the myths that inform our day-to-day living. 

If nothing else the nightly new casts are enough to prove Paul's point.

I am inviting you to attempt to remember a world other that what we hear on the news, about all the deceitful philosophies and power hungry leaders who claim to be about "your own interests."

 

In is my honest assessment anything -- anything -- that temps us or tries to lead us away from what Jesus came to teach and model are: philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.  

So I am wondering how you and I start to remember -- reflect on-- how we reorder our thought processes???

When is it that we start to say 'no' to all those who cleverly gain our attention away from the wisdom of Jesus?

When will we begin to live according to God's original design.  You and I as His image?

20 If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations,…

6 As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, ⁷rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. 8 See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. ⁹For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, ¹⁰and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority….

16 Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths. ¹⁷These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. ¹⁸Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking, ¹⁹and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God.

20 If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations,…(Colossians 2)

Have We "Dethroned" Jesus

 Richard L. Eslinger writes in his Theological perspective :

“One other temptation confronts the church….The tactic is familiar and chronic: when faced with a pluralistic world with all kinds of gods and causes, just ratchet down your Christology to make Jesus fit in. Diminish your Jesus until he will not disturb or upset anyone……...  But what if Jesus Christ is the image of God?  Imagine — all things created through him, all things fulfilled in him, creator of all that is, both seen and unseen.  Consider all these powers — these “thrones” and “dominions.”  If Christ is the “firstborn of all creation,” then these powers were created by him and through the cross have been “dethroned.”   They can no longer enslave. What if everything holds together in the One who is the image of God?”  (Feasting on the Word Year C, Volume 3, page 261)

Have we, in our cultural world, actually “dethroned” Jesus?

I invited you to reflect on that for some moments.

In my truth we have dethroned the One who came to reveal to us the God of all creation.

We have reduced his identity to just someone who once roamed the world doing Good, healing people and teaching about the love of God.

We don’t perceive nor understand the man Jesus as God.

I may have told you this but one evening, just before confirmation class, a young man came into my office and sat down.  He made a statement that caught my mind:  “Pastor Marcia I believe in God.  I just don’t get were Jesus fit.  What is the need for Jesus in the story?”

I don’t remember now what I answered.

However, that question clearly hangs out loud in our world today, doesn’t it?

There is an entire denomination that has moved away from Christianity because of such questions ask by that confirmation student that evening.

 

But what if Jesus Christ is the image of God?  

And why does this matter anyway?

In my imagination it matters because, in my understanding, the God of the Old Testament realized that his human creatures had gotten very mixed up and turned in opposite directions.  

They had lost the real truth about their God.

They needed some help coming back to the original purpose that God made them in the first place.

So God decided to actually come down to earth and walk among his confused people. 

            God incarnated!

                                   God actually with us in the skin of Jesus.

He came to begin again, in person, to adjust their understanding of the who, and what, and why of God; and God’s true character.

He came to broaden their archetype of this God that the human mind had limited by their lack of understanding. 

Extensions Of God's Word

As I read The Gospel of Luke (10:1-11, 16-20) for Sunday, I got a connection with  the last five blog I just rebooted.

The Apostles had an important role — a divinely ordained and enabling role to fulfill.  The role of proclaiming the name of Jesus and character of Jesus.

Telling people they needed to understand that God’s Kingdom had come near to them.  

They also had a symbolic role in the defeat of demonic — evil powers.

16 ‘Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.1

The exorcisms they gave promised the ultimate activity of God’s purpose in the world of human life. 

What is clear, is that Jesus’ call — to go out — is going to offer both positive and negative.

Positive because they are privileged to model Jesus’ love and forgiveness.  His hope of reconciliation for of all God’s people.

The negative, they also must identify and face the forces of evil that oppose God’s purpose.

 ³Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 

The plan truth is, God’s work is not always pretty nor pleasant!

Regardless, we are sent to reach out and touch our little part of the world with God’s presence.  We don’t do this with words, but our actions and manner of speaking.

One commenter writes:  "Everything about the apostolic mission, in other words, subverts the system of power and privilege in the world. The peace the apostles are to offer is more than a greeting of demeanor.  Peace is a representative of the kingdom of God, the salvation that is shalom.  Ironically, this peace is conflictive, because it arouse the hostility of demonic power." (Feasting on the Word p.216, Year A, Volume 3)

 

And the fact is, people won’t alway welcome us or agree with our stance or opinion about God.  Or how to live.  

None-the-less. we are to go out and live in faith and trust that God walks with us.

The term that comes to my mind this morning is ‘extension.’

Those seventy, who were sent out, were extensions of Jesus mission. 

And it says Jesus had given them “authority” to do what was needed.

Jesus gave them the “power” — His very own power.

What to you suppose that means — He gave them “authority” and “power?”

As I asked that question, what popped into my mind was a sound system.  A sound system give us the power to extend our voices so that all can receive God’s word.

With a sound system, a microphone, allows the power to be heard — to extend our voices and music — is not our own.

Our source of power comes from an amazing technology I don’t pretend to understand. 

Electrical power enables us to be heard past our own vocal capacity.

                     

Pretty amazing!

In my imagination, I got a vision of all of us walking around our environments with extension cords plugged into our hearts.

That Jesus empowers us is kind of an unbelievable thing for us I think about.

We truly do not understand it.

                          And so it is difficult to believe.

Unlike the technology of electricity, where we can actually pull a cord or turn on a switch.    

   God provide no proof.

There is to instruction book, or tutorial, to show us how to connect with the source of the power given by Jesus.

Clarification:

In todays world God is dealing with a sophisticated group of humans.  We live in a computerized culture.

We can have any bit of information at our fingertips with a click of a key.

We can replace a damaged heart in the human body in a matter of hours.  Or a warn out joint with man-made-ones.

We have conquered unknown shores of outer space with Hubble and Webb.

We even have global positioning systems that give us the latitude and longitude coordinates that tell us where we are; and where we should go.

The human brain has created all of these amazing technologies.  So it is pretty difficult for us to imagine ever even needing Jesus’ power any more.

And yet, with our amazing human brain, as sophisticated  as it is;  we can’t even begin to imagine how that intricately designed organ, called our gray matter, really works.

Oh, there may be scientist or psychiatrists who world disagree.  But I am convinced the human brain is as much mystery as God.

And like the apostles, we are sent our like "lambs among the wolves" to give the world one message: "The kingdom of God is nearer than you could ever imagine.

And like the apostles, we are sent our like "lambs among the wolves" to give the world one message: "The kingdom of God is nearer that you ever imagned.

So it seems to me that leaves us still pretty dependent on God!

After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. ²He said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest. ³Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. ⁴Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. ⁵Whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to this house!” ⁶And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. ⁷Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the labourer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house.⁸Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; ⁹cure the sick who are there, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” ¹⁰But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ¹¹“Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.” ¹²I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.   13 ‘Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. ¹⁴But at the judgement it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you. ¹⁵And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades.

16 ‘Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.17 The seventy returned with joy, saying, ‘Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!’ ¹⁸He said to them, ‘I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. ¹⁹See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. ²⁰Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.’

Blessed Are The Peacemakers

 A reader responds

“After reading your blogs on resonance: I was thinking there could be resonant evil as well a good.  Resonance  works in all ways some positive and come negative.”

You are absolutely correct.

“Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?” ²⁸He answered, “An enemy has done this.” The slaves said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” ²⁹But he replied, “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. ³⁰Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” (Mt. 13)

In the very first blog, on this amazing subject, I mentioned that in her book, Jesus Wisdom, Cynthia Bourgeault introduced me to a quantum physic concept called “Planck’s Constant.”  

“Planck’s Constant” is: “of constriction and density that comes as part and parcel of this human realm and is the necessary precondition for the full revelation of divine love.” (p.107) 

She continues this discussion on page 120.  “Only  at this particular density, within these sharp edges and term limits (the ultimate one, of course, being death) do the conditions  become perfect for the expression of the most tender and vulnerable aspects of divine love. Built right into the deep structure of this realm, then, is a “Planck’s Constant” of darkness and density.  It belongs to the warp and weft of creations itself, and to dissolve it is to cancel the very conditions through which this realm makes its uniquely important contribution to the divine fullness.” (p.120 

  

In this world there is good and bad, ugly and beautiful, light and darkness.  That is just the truth.  

Why? 

I do not know.

However, think about this:  God came, in Jesus' skin, purposely into this condition of darkness, to shine his light upon the need to change what was a most disturbing ingredient of the human being.

Read Isaiah chapter 9.

² The people who walked in darkness

   have seen a great light;  (I invite you to keep reading)

This dark side of life is, Carl Jung describes as, “the excluded shadowland of the fourth.”(152 Second Simplicity)

As we read throughout scripture we are constantly faced with the “darkness” — the sharp craggy edges of human nature. 

We experience this tendency, of good and not-so-good, in nature, weather, wind, volcanos, hurricanes, floods and fire.  

And in all of those kinds of terribly destructive occurrences there is divine possibilities of new life, new growth, comes into being within humans, animals and nature.

We experience this sharp edged way in:

                                                                 Musical arrangements.

                                                                      Poetry,

                                                                          The Psalms,

                                                                                Jeremiah,

                                                                                    Isaiah,

                                                                                       The story of Job, 

                                                                                            Jesus’ parables

                                                                                                and everyday life still today.     

  

“Like any good Zen master, he (Jesus) is out to completely short-circuit our mental wiring so that we are catapulted into a whole new way of seeing and being.” (p. 39 Jesus Wisdom)

Jesus bring it all together:   

                                       “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

The Most Amazing Gift

God’s wireless communication that has for centuries been perceived as something we just don’t get — don’t comprehend.  And actually doesn’t make too much sense to human logic and reason.

It is interesting that our modern world of wireless-bluetooth, which has endlessly confused my mind, yet has actually helped me to finally see more clearly God’s most precious gift.  

The gift that He came in Jesus’ skin to give us — show us.  The blest power to have a two way conversation with the Almighty God Creator of all that is.  

A communication that is possible through the Advocate, The Holy Spirit.

When I read Cynthia Bourgeault’s assessment of the heart my entire body became tenderly moved.

She is discussing the difference between our intellectual minds and our preceptive heart. 

“The egoic operating system is particularly related to the mind, to the ‘binary operator’ built right into the human brain. The heart has a different way of perceiving.  Rather than dividing and conquering, it connects with a seamless and indivisible reality through a whole different way of organizing the informational field….In wisdom, the heart is primarily an organ of spiritual perception, a highly sensitive instrument for keeping us aligned, as we journey along the horizontal axis of our life in time, with the vertical axis of timeless reality; the realm of meaning, value, and conscience.  The heart picks up reality in a much deeper, more integral way than our poor Cartesian minds even begin to imagine…..The heart picks up from the emotions, from our sense of proportion, from  intuition, from images and archetypes;..…and keeps us aliened with our innermost, with what we truly know. (p. 35-36

And my mind went WOW.

⁹ With you is wisdom, she who knows your works

and was present when you made the world;

she understands what is pleasing in your sight

and what is right according to your commandments. 

¹⁰ Send her forth from the holy heavens,

and from the throne of your glory send her,

that she may labour at my side,

and that I may learn what is pleasing to you. 

¹¹ For she knows and understands all things,

and she will guide me wisely in my actions

and guard me with her glory. 

¹² Then my works will be acceptable,

and I shall judge your people justly,

and shall be worthy of the throne of my father. 

¹³ For who can learn the counsel of God?

Or who can discern what the Lord wills? 

¹⁴ For the reasoning of mortals is worthless,

and our designs are likely to fail; 

¹⁵ for a perishable body weighs down the soul,

and this earthy tent burdens the thoughtful mind. 

¹⁶ We can hardly guess at what is on earth,

and what is at hand we find with labour;

but who has traced out what is in the heavens? 

¹⁷ Who has learned your counsel,

unless you have given wisdom

and sent your holy spirit from on high? 

¹⁸ And thus the paths of those on earth were set right,

and people were taught what pleases you,

and were saved by wisdom.’ (Wisdom of Solomon 9)

Thanks be to God

I would be remiss if I didn’t end this incredible gift, I have been so recently been given, in the works, God enabled Cynthia Bourgeault and Bruno Barnhart to express in their writings.  

I am most grateful to God for the way He works in all of us.