Full Movement Reconciliation

I love the adjacent stories of Jacob wrestling with God and Reconciling with his brother Esau in Genesis 32/33.  These two stories are tied together by the related images of seeing the ‘face of God’ (32:30; 33:10).

There are times in my life where I feel I am at war with everything and everyone.  I feel I’m in God’s dog-house (or he is in mine).  I feel the wedge of tension between me and my wife or me and my friend or me and every driver on the road during morning rush-hour.  Sometimes, I find that I’ve been on an island away from intimacy and connection for a long time, sitting in my corner sulking stubbornly.  I will not budge, I will not move.  I’m insecure that people will take me out, flying knee style, in a moment of vulnerability.

In one of my classes, my professor pointed us to the importance of seeing the full movement of reconciliation which God initiated with us through Christ.  Often times when we think about atonement, or Christ’s saving work, we zero in on the cross (and his death).  The full movement in God’s plan of reconciliation, however, is genetically and anatomically similar to how we on this earth reconcile people to people everyday.  In an act of love and humility, God incarnated among us in the historical person of Christ–living, loving, eating, performing miracles, going to the bathroom.  I believe a key to reconciling with my neighbor is to wear the shoes she wears and attempt to humbly lay down my systems of control, my language of rights, to consider her world, her perspective.  It is the entry posture of incarnation that diffuses a heated stand-off.

On the opposite parabolic leg of incarnation is the resurrection/ascension.  It’s not just that we die in our yielding, but that we are raised again with a transformed heart and a new dynamic in which to newly relate and newly live.  Christ died, but did not let us down in providing a full vision of hope.  He conquered the darkness and lived–and lives.

Jacob saw the face of God through his struggle with God and people.  In the face of Esau, as his older brother embraces him with lavish love and grace, he sees the face of God.  The story does not stop with Jacob yielding and bowing before his brother, but it is Esau’s lifting of his chin and restoring both of them to new life and a renewed dynamic of relating to one another that is the story of note.

What a relief to know that my life will witness to a God who reconciles and moves to reconcile us with one another.  People will see the face of God in the moments we reconcile with them.

Matthew 11:28-30

 ²⁸“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

     The shower water is beating down on my shoulders, blazing hot.  I hope that my little water massage can loosen up some of the knots in my shoulders and upper back.  I have been running ox-like, but driven:  full-time grad student, full-time job, church internship, and starting SEED ministry.  If asked “how goes it with your soul?”  at this moment, in this season of life, I would have to respond, “overwhelmed, almost to tears.”

     That was a moment a day before giving a message on the passage above.  Jesus words are still speaking so deeply for me. 

     In this passage, the irony lay for me in the fact that I carry my weariness  and stress in my neck muscles, yet Jesus is offering his yoke.  The picture of a heavy wooden collar around my neck, doesn’t illicit feelings of relief in me.  Neither does being bound to another, without the freedom to look to and fro.  The claustrophobia of independence  makes me skeptical.

     But the reality is that, whether I like it or not, I will be bound to something.  If not God, or if not to the other in love and servanthood, I will be bound to other objects in which I seek false freedom:  sex, drugs, rock and roll, and Wii.  Jesus offers the counter-intuitive  truth that in being bound to him we have freedom and life.

Utterly Wild

Which way to the courtship hall, because there’s no music–

no parking validation, no hope for a health-care call back.

I am triaged and scorched.

A sandwich and sore hamstrings on Haystack hiding, not

resting like David’s prayer in a cave and my ripped cloth.

When the sun breaks, long-suffering flowers

will receive the urgings of bees

and my eyes will be utterly wild

and each action will be a king’s choice

because you hold my elbows and give line to my words.

Here are shelves of books with Japanese and Korean text.

They are the pools of my father’s sermons.

He is in another room nodding off into half-sleep

like an old samurai relinquishing his sword to his son.

Tomorrow I will assert myself in the field, in a strange land,

afterward, then, I will build my house in peace-time.

Matthew 13:44–the hidden treasure

Week 2 of our SEED ministry gatherings.  We continued in Jesus’ parables with Matthew 13:44:

Hidden Treasure

⁴⁴The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

The day my son Isaiah was born was the day I experienced a joy that must be akin to the joy compelling this man to sell all that he has for the one treasure.    I could honestly say,  I would give everything for my son. He is a treasure to me.

Admittedly, though my paternal connection to Isaiah is extremely real, concrete and relevant, in contrast, the reality and impact of the value/treasure of the kingdom of God more often alludes me.

I felt the disconnect between these radical kingdom-castings of Jesus in his day and our wrestling with these very words this evening.  I felt lost in addressing this disconnect.  How are we living as Kingdom marked people today?

The Kingdom of God is like what to me right now?  I have forgotten my own testimony:

• it is like the dismantling and rebuilding of a heart enraged and on the run, now vulnerable to suffering yet flip-wise open to deep joy in the presence of God and in the company of loved ones.
• it is to experience a witnessing community of faith spring out of nowhere through engaging with the Word and with one another, and through servanthood towards and radical love for the neighbor.
• it is the healing of hearts, the reconciliation of relationships, the transformation of lives . . . in a dog-eat-dog world, among a culture that feeds on vengeance, bitterness, and despair.
• People turning to Christ.  Turning their lives around.
• The power of a community in prayer.
• Giving when giving should not be done.
• Loving when loving seems impossible.
• Mourning with those who mourn.
• Hidden gifts emerging in the ones who had no confidence.
• A broken vessel bearing the Gospel of hope to other people.
• Good news to the poor.  Release to the captives.  Sight for the blind.  Freedom for the oppressed.

A year of Jubilee where Jubilee could not possibly be.

Moon-Dance: a sabbath prayer

It’s too late to apologize for the

misstep in this scandalous moon-dance

of ours . . .  my wrist air tunnels and surfs

silent groves of dot orgs and dot coms

binged into your mystery. But I begged you

to speak while I chose my back-doors to public

districts with escape routes and cheese-ants

scuttling industriously:

testing you, hoarding you.  Sicut Deus.

Was anything ever said at all

today’s question for myself and

in myself brewing unloved for many years

but for the blow of subtle dog-fight vengeance

and bending grapes.

Silence is right for you now.

A hunter in those

cereal groves  and the stability

of hibernating while not at work, password:

crowflowers.  These days to follow

will carry my love songs.  I butcher

the notes as I sing them to you, ancient notes–

A man trying to sync with some sort of invisible

pattern, a sabbath rhythm with which all

things hold together.

Mustard Seed Mark 4:30-32

The First SEED ministry meeting went well.   I took us through Mark 4:30-32, the Parable of the Mustard Seed.  I’ll try to post reflections or notes on the week’s passage every week.

30 And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? 31 It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, 32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

³³ With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. ³⁴ He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.

Some contextual observations:

• This small jewel comes at the tail end of a run on parables Jesus tells to the crowds.  These are the first parables Jesus tells.
• This parable is embedded within a narrative of “pressure”.  Jesus’ is being pushed figuratively and literally from all sides.  From the established religious order, Jesus is facing rejection, accusation, and condemnation.  Even his own family are trying to save him, siting mental collapse.  At the same time, Jesus is becoming a rock-star to the multitudes.  They are literally pushing against him–to be near him, to touch him, to witness something extraordinary.  Jesus is teaching from a boat just off shore, in order to have some space from the crowds.
• In the midst of this ‘pressure’, Jesus takes time to choose his disciples with whom he gives ‘private lessons’ and insight into the ’secret of the kingdom of God.’
  
• This parable shares an organic  “green” motif with the others before it–sower, seed, soil, trees, nests and birds, growth.

Passage Observations/Questions:

• What does this parable tell us about the kingdom of God?
• There is a dynamic motion from that which is superlatively small to that which is superlatively large.
• Is bigger better?  How do we measure things in the kingdom of God?
• The image of birds making nests in this tree’s shade introduces an element of refuge, security, and fortitude.
• Is the seed here the Word?  Could it be something else?
• Jesus makes plain to his disciples that which is mysterious to others.

Encounter

The Parable of the Mustard seed is contextually and elementally kindred to the larger Parable of the Sower and the Seed preceding. In this parable the “sower sows the word“  The growth dynamic of these sown seeds is correlated to the receiving “soil” of the hearer.  Skipping ahead, the “good soil” characterizes those who “hear and accept“  the word.  Who can say how “accept” plays out in the faith of the individual, triggering a dynamic, exponential fruit-bearing?  Or beyond the individual’s faith, how “accept” plays out in the faith of a community of believers?

The beauty of these parables and their surrounding narrative in the early part of Mark is how Jesus is living the parable out.  Perhaps, it is as one of Shakespeare’s devices (see Hamlet) of the play within the play.  Jesus is the sower.  And his words are his seeds in the form of parables.  The very nature of parables–as they are indirect, as they are mysterious, as they depict an ethos/culture–perhaps push the issue to all who come into contact with Jesus:  what soil are you? Some will see the kingdom of God as a threat.  Some will see it as an invitation.

I can’t begin to explain the inner-workings of a small seed.  What the heck is inside it that when in contact with soil, air, water, sun, unleashes an incredible bounty of green life that can re-create itself.  I can only appreciate the miracle of life and growth and accept beauty.  All kinds of people were pushing in on Jesus.  Perhaps they were plotting against him.  Perhaps they wanted to see a miracle.  Perhaps they just wanted to see what all the hub-bub was about.  But in the midst of this, I believe Jesus invitation was:  will you hear and accept and be my disciple in the word? This is the invitation to me today.  Jesus pushes (sometimes crashes) into my life through his word, through the spirit, through his body of believers.  The discipleship question is:  will  I hear and accept?  Will I allow the word to guide me, change me, affect how I live my life?

Hybrid

I’m to never leave out the chinkapin burrs
from my public readings,
or even those private dialogues with friends,
their ghost-hands clenching chamomile citrus
like mighty leaves. The couples we know are especially transparent
in the chairs of our home—domestic pews with felt tipped
legs serving to ease some pain as we drift
from newness. Dogwood and two birds.
I, Imagine they are eighty-five yards away—I could just . . .
touch, weep, invite, steward with one great pass and reception—
this boy and mud.

My eighteen-month old son toddles around—his diaper feathered
vision of beauty flying out
to the other bird—I forgive the clichés in my daily sin life
and reach to embrace him
grasping so tight
kissing his cheek—
my own private betrayal.
once so ambitious, I pounce from dream to dream
until my feet are left supporting ridiculous joints. I’m now
reaching to put this cutting edge mouth-piece into my jaws.
I’m oak-rogue and hard-chested, my teeth
lend new swing-line agility.

Reflection on John 4:1-42

Perhaps, Jesus “had” (v. 4) to go through Samaria because it was really important for him to meet this woman at the well.  The very intimate, one-on-one conversation, ends up touching the woman in a profound way.  Her brush with Jesus turns her life around.  In a short span of time, the reader witnesses the transformation of a woman who, at the onset, is living in shame and operating in isolation.  But, by the end of the narrative, she is the catalyst for a whole town’s renewal.

More than deriving bullet points highlighting evangelism strategy points from the model of Jesus’ missional agenda, I believe the true water to be drawn here lies in the well of his relational connecting.  The greatest lovers know that trust is the currency that moves the cart.  Shady hoaxers give the mere perception of trust and abandon ship when it comes time for accounting.  Jesus offers himself:  the full depth of gushing, white-spray propelling life.  And he has the game to back it up.  This pericope is a sample bite of the “greatest story ever told.”  The narrative through scriptures of how God loves us so deeply and intimately–when we are but touched by Him we are propelled ourselves to gush upon others.  Jesus speaks to the woman’s soul thirst.  Story and parable convey a way of life, or, you could say a culture, an ethos.  Metaphor is the atom of story.  We have to but step into it in humble admission.

There are so many sociocultural, historical, religious, and emotional  barriers present here to prevent these two people from jiving.  Just like there are reasons a get-together or gathering bombs, even with the right food and right music.  There just wasn’t the ‘it’ we feel as we slip bashfully out the door.  Jesus has ‘it’. He and the woman salsa in conversation on a dance floor with no room for jealous men standing rigidly on the walls.   They, who had the courage to stand out of bounds in the margins to allow for unconventional wisdom.  She who was not defensive, but was compelled to share her life with a stranger–drawn into the story, truly moved to worship.  Drenched with love.  The fusion of the common-ordinary-everyday with the eternal.

late nite ramble: leadership in a missional movement

John Hayes, in his book Sub-merge, addressing the question “what is your model” writes that his teams “were often using more than one model of empowerment to realize the potential of a neighborhood”  Each place, he remarks, is different and “reflects the unique genetic code of hopes and aptitudes present among the poor and among our team members.” He and his teams found their ministry to be most effective when driven by story, which are accessible, attractive and memorable for most cultures. Turning to the Gospel narratives was a great tool for them, and they found their culture of ministry to be low-tech and mostly oral.

I believe the crucial dynamic here is that training, or “curriculum”, is spread across a level plane, like peanut butter over bread.   It is not elitist, complex, or programmatic.  It is woven into the Gospel stories–meaningful  because they were picked at freely–the meat in the middle and the hot pot for all– as a palatable feast and exchange like a bazaar, voices volleying Wimbledon quick over market cobblestone.  More succinctly:  power is held horizontally by all and not handed down from above like some secret jewel.   Accessible.  The spirit of Gutenberg.

Inagrace Diettrich drafts chapter 6 called:  “Cultivating Communities of the Holy Spirit” in the book Missional Church.  In a similar movement, she argues that a powerful witness of missional communities resides in how they “share power and influence in their decision making.”  This is counter to the decision making culture of the church which usually falls within an organizational framework.  Communal decision making according to Diettrich is pneumocratic (rule of the Holy Spirit) where authority “is found neither in particular status nor in majority opinion. It is dispersed throughout the whole body through the illumination and empowerment of the Spirit.”  Once again, what is necessitated here, is the overturn of a hierarchical structure of authority flowing from the top to the bottom.  It is the peanut butter dynamism at work again–dialogue, listening, trusting, offering–power spread across a plane.

I used tell students I worked with while a staff worker with InterVarsity at the UW that we needed to go ho.  This was a phrase I borrowed from my ultimate frisbee days that is short for Go Horizontal. What I meant in this was that we needed to build a fellowship structure/culture that was horizontal.  Where our patterns of decision-making and leading and ministering were stretched or unfolded or kneaded in such a way that power was distributed across the board.  The impetus behind this call to “lay-out” came in the observation that we, especially in the leadership team, had grown stagnant.  We were too set in our structures, too set in system of vertical role and entitlement.

When the protection of role, status, and title become paramount, a culture of authority where leaders “lord it over” others becomes tantamount to or even greater than the vision which first moved the group in a fresh spirit of servanthood.  The water must be kept fresh and flowing at all times.

The missional leader is an artist of discernment and a super-encourager.  She is a skillful story-teller, able to weave individual stories and articulate them as a larger, unified narrative.  The story of God and his people.  The story of our community right now in this time, during this crisis, at this crossroads.  The green leaf of Aaron’s staff in the midst of our fear–we will move in faith. In this room, a child can speak and elders fall to their knees in humble conviction.

Tantrum

Just today, I was home with Isaiah who was sick and held from daycare. Being a curious bird, Isaiah is constantly getting into things:  drawers, cabinets, dog food, poker chips, Christian’s canned foods, toilet bowl.  On this day, Isaiah was getting into Daddy’s important things. I firmly said “No, Isaiah” and carried him away from my vital documents.  As I set him down on the floor, he preceded to kick and scream and cry and flail his arms wildly at me.  Then, he stood up and began making a bee-line for the forbidden zone.  Now this is pretty new behavior for him and a new challenge for a first time father like me.  I said “No” again and moved him away after which, the true Sim emotion and will manifested itself right before my eyes.  Isaiah was kicking and screaming and crying and flailing and jumping up and down and crazily diving onto the floor, flopping around dramatically . . . wow I thought  I’m glad I’m not at Safeway.  What a baby!

Reflecting on this incident now, I realize that though I can easily write Isaiah’s behavior off as him ‘just being a baby’, I can strangely remember moments when I myself, the big adult, have felt as frustrated, as angry, as powerless and have behaved as irrationally, though maybe not as demonstrably.  At least Isaiah has the ‘lack of articulation’ in his defense.  As adults, we may still throw tantrums, but it is definitely unacceptable.  Please see Rachel Maddow’s conversation with Melissa Harris-Lacewell here

right wing racism revealed

for a ‘wise’ discussion on emotional tantrums.

Back to the word powerless I wrote above.  In my experience it is often the luxury of the powerful and ‘in charge’ to be the cool and articulate ones, as they look down cautiously at the silly people  raging and pounding their chests around them.  But what happens when the cool get on tilt?

A good illustration of this is the evolution of Jack Nicholson during the trial in the movie A Few Good Men.  To start, his character was a smooth, dignified, well-respected, and powerful man.  But I love how Tom Cruise draws the monster out of him as the scene progresses, culminating into an insert foot in mouth incident–you’re damn right he ordered that code red!

Seems like there’s been a lot of revealed monsters these days in the great US of A.  The image I get is of a kid lifting a big rock away from the ground to find moist soil along with a hidden world of crawling things: rolie polies, centipedes, beatles, etc.  A lot of shocking bugs being revealed these days in this season of economic turmoil and change.  In the midst of this, we’ve seen a housing market crumble under shady lending practices, big powerhouse banks and automotive giants go down, politicians drop like flies in scandal (or just drop off for no apparent reason at all), execs get fined and investment managers go to jail.  To throw fuel on the fire:  many of our baseball heroes have actually been juicing up all along.  What the heck?  Makes you not want to turn over those rocks for fear of what more lies beneath.   I feel like Cops and Cheaters should stop going to Lakewood and hang out on Wall Street and Capitol Hill some time for the real scandal and drama.

The monster is definitely being unleashed.  It was always there, tucked away, brought out like hornets from a fallen nest.    After the ridiculousness revealed in Wall Street, why would I ever trust big money and big corporation?  Quite frankly, I’m thankful for the Fed and its regulating these days.  I would love to see more light and truth shed on greed and corruption in our country.  The greed and corruption of the few, rich white male elite seems to me to be the real enemy of capitalism.  More should be done to shed light.  More should be done to regulate.  Can we ask how is Med Street serving Main Street?  It’s not like it ain’t already broke now.

Cleaning house is so hard when you’re facing comfort and privilege as an opponent.  It hurts.  And things could get outright vicious.  Our country is in desperate need of a new generation of leaders with character and integrity to match their authentic servant hearts.  Folks who won’t sell out and will do the thing right.  We should take all the teachers in the cities and towns  and make them CEO’s and politicians, because at least we would know for sure that they won’t be in it for the money, but for the love.

I tell a lot of young in-their 20’s folk that I think they will be the change agents of the future.  We need to get juiced on character and integrity. I think the emerging leaders of color, especially, have much to offer.   I believe it is a necessity, an imperative, and inevitability that the platform for the minority voice in America grow.  There’s a natural discourse and relationship with suffering involved here.  Suffering lends to character when dosed with vision and love, and unadulterated by privilege.   I pray for our nation to have the humility to sit at the feet of those wise voices and learn.

How did I get off on all of that?  So Isaiah threw a tantrum today.  All the books say the best thing to do is not panic or react, show him you’re there with him and loving him, but stay firm.  I hugged Isaiah and played vrrooom vrrrooom with the cars for the next hour.