Holy Week: Eyes on Jesus...

Palm Sunday (last week) begins what is traditionally known as 'Holy Week', the week leading up to Easter Sunday.

For those of us less-liturgically raised, it is a challenge. We lack the guide of tradition to understand just how we ought to be during this time.

Don't get me wrong--I am not saying we do not appreciate the significance.  We know this ought to be a centerpiece of our year, but like someone who understands the words but misses the punchline, we feel left out of something we think we should 'get.'

One thing I am beginning to understand, is that this is the time when the focus turns to Jesus.  This seems like a blatantly banal statement... and it may be.  But what I mean is that Lent has led me (us) to a time of deep personal reflection about the darkness of my condition, and my soul's dependence... but now Holy Week comes around and makes me travel with Jesus, in what is clearly his journey.  In doing this, my obsession over my life gets swept up into an observation of Christ's life, death, and resurrection.

In other words, it turns from "Christ, who is with me" to "me, who is with Christ."

Which is the way it should be...

Less Is More

One of the themes of the popular new teen movie, The Hunger Games, is that of greed and materialism. In this world, there are 12 Districts that are forced to give all their resources to the Capitol. Thus, the Capitol has become a land of opulence and overindulgence. Like the ancient Romans, they have so much food that they vomit it out so that they can continue to eat more. Meanwhile the other 12 Districts are starving to death, hence, the title The HUNGER Games.

The odd thing about having a lot is that you always want more.

The Capitol has so much, but they vomit up their food so that they can consume more. This seems like a crazy idea, but on a certain level we might be accused of the same sort of greed. We have probably consumed beyond our need and we have probably overindulged ourselves. Who hasn’t gotten one too many handbags, shoes, DVDs, phones, TVs, etc.? Who hasn’t felt compelled to buy something that they really didn’t need? And more importantly, who, in that moment of consumption were ignorant that they were guilty of greed?

My hand is up. I am guilty. However, I’m not pointing this out to make us feel bad about ourselves. Well, maybe just a little, but the main reason is that this is what I have learned from Lent - I cater too much to my own needs and desires. Why do I do this? Because I think that by serving myself, by indulging, consuming, and over-feeding my desires, I’ll be satisfied.

The sad thing is I don’t feel full. I’m just left with more cravings.

Going back to The Hunger Games, the surprising thing about the children from the poor districts is that some of them have so little, but from the little that they have they share. While those with enough, hoard and consume to excess. On the other hand, those with barely enough, give away their measly portions. I think they can do this because the poor know that they can survive with less.

They have learned the hard way that they can live with a smaller portion.

During Lent, I realized that I, too, can live with less. One unexpected thing that arose from this was that it really made me appreciate all that I have. Secondly, it made me realize that maybe, even with my small income, I can help others. I can buy that friend a dinner, I can give that homeless man something significant, and I can share my small portion and make someone feel full.

Anything here make you think? Please share your thoughts with us, we want to hear.

Generous, But Not Too Generous...

Earlier this year, a woman in northern California won a million dollars playing scratch-off lottery. She used the money payoff a massive medical bill she accrued for a ruptured spleen.  She gave people she loved gifts.  And ever so grateful, she gave $100 bills randomly to strangers.

She also continued to play scratch-off lotto at the store she won her big jackpot.  For old-time sake. And it seems that she gave some of these lottery tickets away--one of them to a homeless man, who told her she was 'lucky.'

Except that perhaps she was too lucky for her own good, because that ticket she gave away won $260,000.  And now she says she wants it back.  She never intended to give that ticket away, she says. Just the hundred dollars.

(Surveillance videos shows otherwise, we are told.)

So...
Anybody else think this sounds a parable that Jesus might have told, to reveal the petty nature of the human heart?  Two things occur to me.  First, if she was consistent in her grateful attitude toward life, she would have realized she really lost nothing, since she didn't ever have it in the first place.  Second (and THIS is really my point), well, I am totally not surprised by her pettiness, in that I think most of us (including myself) would probably do the very same thing.

Human nature, Jesus tells us, is to be generous, but not too generous.  That's our problem.  True grace is always from God.

If that lottery ticket won just $100, well, then...

How do you think you would react?

The Road Not Taken

I'm inspired by people who are willing to give their life to a single, noble cause (e.g. William Wilberforce, Amy Carmichael, Mother Teresa, Charles Colson, etc.; to this list you could add Bryan Stevenson who gave this TED talk). G.K. Chesterton made this astute observation in his book Orthodoxy, "So he who wills to reject nothing, wills the destruction of will; for will is not only the choice of something, but the rejection of almost everything." This is not easy for me as my natural tendency is to have as many options available as possible. When people choose a cause, it means they reject other things (including other good things); and it is the rejection of the other things that empower them to focus on the one thing. I really admire this and it is one of my deepest longings and prayers to live that kind of focused life.

I think Robert Frost expresses a similar sentiment in his poem The Road Not Taken:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear,

Though as for that the passing there

Had word them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I marked the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that had made all the difference.

Choosing one path often requires that we reject another path. Sometimes we're hesitant to make a difficult decision because we're afraid to close the door on the "other path(s)". We want a backup plan; a second option just in case the first one doesn't work out. We're afraid to go "all in" because we might end up with nothing. This is a sensible and practical way to live, but....

This Lenten season, my prayer is that we would follow Jesus – who lived and died with a singular focus of glorifying God the Father by redeeming all those who would look to Him in faith. He chose one path - the path of the cross; may God gives us the grace to follow Him.

Levitated Mass

I often find myself being hopelessly negative. It can begin with a small kernel of a thought; something harmless like my jeans are really tight today. Then it grows bigger...I'm so fat! Somehow it all ends with I'm 30 and I have nothing. Pretty depressing, right? Well, I do this with my spirituality. At Cross we're talking about transformation, and sometimes I let one bad thought in about my sinfulness and then I find myself saying, "God, I haven't grown at all!!!"

This is not true.

This past week I had the opportunity to pray in a really cool environment. There was a violinist who played live for us, a cool art piece in the front, and dim lighting. As I prayed I felt those negative kernels of thoughts melting away. Thoughts like: I should pray more, why can't I focus for more than five minutes, why do I always remember to catch up on my favorite TV shows, but I don't remember to read the Bible. For some reason, I wasn't caught up with all that, and I just got to come before God. Freed from guilt.

As I prayed, there was one resounding thought: God, let me be open. Open to just hear from you. Use my distracted thoughts and just let me hear from you. I don't want to set the agenda for prayer, I want you to set it for me.

Then he pointed something out to me. Look, Sun, look how you've grown. Before you came before me and you felt like a distracted and energetic puppy. You bounced from thought to thought, not really knowing what was of significance. Now look at you, you're solid. And I felt it too.

I felt solid like a rock. Like that Levitated Mass that's been making it's way through our cities. It's so huge and solid that it took 12 days to move. God reminded me that I have grown. He doesn't want us to be weighed down by guilt every time we come before him. He wants us to be open, to listen, and know that he is working in us.

He is making us a little more solid everyday.

Spiritual Spandex

 There is a theory going around that says that spandex is making America fat.  Seriously.

The reasoning is simple.  Something like 80% of clothing sold in the US has spandex, and spandex stretches with you -- and can even make your body look more streamlined -- so that 1) we feel better about ourselves when we look at our instantly-slim-selves and, more to the point 2) we don't notice the weight that we are gaining.

Think about it.  When I used to wear my suits on a regular basis, I could actually feel the weight gain against my waist, pound by pound.  Same is true of the classic 100% cotton denim jeans.  But in the age of spandex, we can have jeggings.  For men, even.  No longer would men and women be forced to fit into rigid fabrics, Americans can now look for clothing to accommodate their expanding waistlines!

Interesting, no?  I personally have nothing against spandex (I probably own more than my share of spandex in my cycling gear to give this dude a run for his money.)  But why am I writing about this, in this blog, about Christian life?

Okay, this is the image you get when you look up "cycling shorts" in wikipedia. Why, dude, why?!?!

Well, I have to admit, part of it is that it is just interesting.  And it does give me an opportunity to use some interesting images.  But there is a real point here some where.

Spiritual Spandex, then, would be those things that we do/surround ourselves with that makes us feel better spiritually, but are in fact hiding/enabling some unhealthy things in our lives.  There are couple of ways in which I think this works for most of us.  

First -- and we have talked about this many times in our services -- is that when we use spiritual disciplines legalistically, they can quickly degrade into spiritual spandex.  We pray and fast, not because we are interested in hearing God, but because we want God to do something for us.  It gives us a sense of being holy, without ever pursuing the hard work of pursuing holiness, through lives based on mercy and justice.

But second, we can spiritual-spandex ourselves with certain habits and patterns of behavior that do not honor God by avoiding truth and accountability in our lives.  I think most of my friends will say I am a pretty direct person.  But I've been stunned by my own ability (agility?) to avoid difficult conversations, whether it is in avoiding something about my life or loving someone enough to to tell them something they need to hear.

Let me give one simple example: passive-aggressiveness. Have you ever seen Christians spiritualize passive-aggressive behavior as the fulfillment of Jesus' command to 'turn the other cheek'?  It is spiritual spandex--we tell ourselves we are being loving, but in fact, it hides a something ugly, a resentment, an anger, a hatred...

AND, all this usually begins with something that is really seemingly harmless to us, doesn't it?  But like real spandex, there are unintended consequences that we may not be aware of.

Lent is a good time to pray that these things become revealed to us.  And repent.

(Yeah, this blog started kinda light, then became serious.  Sorry.)

Web of Relationships

Since I enjoy reading books and watching movies, I'm always on the look out for the next good read/watch. So it comes as no surprise that I love playing around with Amazon's yasiv - a sort of visual "customers who bought this also bought" feature. Just type in a book, movie, or even youtube, and yasiv will pull a web of similar, related items. (Yes, I realize that this is just another marketing tool by the evil empire Amazon, but I still get a kick out of using it.)

What would be really fun is if you could type in a person or an organization and see how the web of relationships develop. I would be curious to see what would pop up if we put "Cross Community Church" in the search field. Let's imagine for a moment that each line of connection generated by yasiv represented "friendship" or "strong relationship". What would Cross' "web" look like? Would there be lots of zig-zagging lines connecting one another or would it look sparse with each person connected to just a few others?

What do you think?

Lenten Practices: Harder Than You Thought?

Okay, confession time.

When I was thinking about what lenten practice I would commit to this season, I was going to go for something kinda hardcore.  Like fasting for 40 days.  Or at least 7.  Something that a medieval monk might do.  Or at least a 1970's evangelical.

But I didn't.  I decided to go for something a lot easier.  Like fasting three lunches a week.  And refraining from shopping.  While they don't have the 'wow' factor as the harder stuff, they seemed worthwhile, and I thought I could focus more on quality, rather than quantity.

But 'easy' has not turned out to be so easy.

Okay, is it just me, or is anyone else struggling with keeping up with their lenten practices?  I mean, for the most part I've been pretty good about the refraining part, but I catch myself just 'drifting' all the time!  And while I've definitely had couple of instances of 'deeper reflection' during these moments, for the most part, I am focused much more on just simply 'not doing'.

All of which is quite revealing to me...

So, let me ask you -- lenten practices: harder than you thought?

[btw, as I was composing this, Nadia just commented on the previous post about her struggles with the lenten practices.  Thanks Nadia!]

The Other 'Lent'

One of the vocational risks of being a pastor is that you use words differently than most 'normal' people.  (I am thinking of words like 'calling', 'charismatic', and 'election', among many others.)

Some time ago, I was having a conversation with someone about Easter.  And I guess I used the word 'Lent' several times. It was already about ten minutes into the conversation when my dialogue partner looked at me and said "I don't think I am understand what you mean when you say 'lend.'"  "Oh," I thought, "I need to watch how I speak my Christianese."

But that misaligned conversation has been helpful to me in thinking about some aspects of this 'Lenten' time, as I remember that the other definition of the word 'lent' is as a past tense of 'lend.'  As in, all of these things around us that we enjoy and feel incredibly blessed to have -- our children, our friends, our family, our world, our possessions, our health -- ultimately are given to us on a 'lent' basis, which is to say they are ultimately not 'ours.'  

Which means the thing that we ought to be most thankful about is not our children, our friends, our family, our world, our possessions, our health -- but rather the One who is so kind and loving toward us to give these things to us to love and enjoy for the duration.

Which actually is kind of a good thing to think about during this other 'lent.'  

May God re-orient my gratitude toward Him.

(So, what thoughts have occurred to you during this Lenten season?)

Sushi and a Sense of Calling

Vocation: lit. "a calling."

I stumbled upon the following trailer for a soon to be released documentary.  A word of warning: if you like sushi (Sam?), you are about to be hit with major temptation.  Seriously, I am thinking sushi might have been the fruit that Adam and Eve fell for...

I had a couple of thoughts when I saw this.  First, with Sam's Sunday message ("Living a Mission Driven Life") fresh on my mind, I connected with Jiro's singularity of focus. What happens when we understand our calling as disciples that deeply?  Might it cause people to take notice? 

Second, vocation.  Our small group discussion this week was partly on vocation.  What if we understood our vocation like that?  Jiro dreams about sushi.  And at 80 years old, having had all the accolades, he is strangely not about finding success in the 'world's terms.'  No franchising, no opening of larger restaurants, no fancy cars, no life of leisure, no long vacations to exotic places, no retirement to look forward to.  I mean, don't you get the sense that he would dream about sushi even if his little subway restaurant was all there was?  What if we measured the success of our work in different terms?

Contrast this with the movie I just saw, Margin Call.  Ultimately, it is the story of people willing to sacrifice whatever principle they call dear, for the sake of making lots of money.  The ends justify the means, and the ends are nothing more than having lots and lots of money.

Tell me your reaction to the video.  Whatever that might be.