Long Way Here

When I first met Frank I didn’t know anything about him other than he was poor and homeless. I didn’t know his story. I didn’t know how he got into this mess. Did he drink himself homeless? Did he waste his money? Was he just lazy or refuses to work? Did something traumatic happen to him that caused him to spiral out of control?

But it didn’t matter. We were Jesus’ folks and we had to help him. So we did.

As we began walking with Frank we heard his story of how he got into this mess called homelessness. It is a story of many unexpected twists and turns. He was a field engineer at a fortune 500 company and was doing well in his job, until his mother grew ill. With no one there to care for her, he was forced to quit his job and tend to her.

Three years later his mother passed away. As he stepped back into the work force, he had difficulty finding a job. After several hit-and-miss opportunities, he decided to use his navy veteran benefits and go back to college. Then the unimaginable: a car accident. Now injured, jobless, and penniless, Frank was homeless.

But none of that really matters.

Don’t get me wrong, his story matters because he matters, but it has no bearing on whether we should help him–walk with him. We had to, because if God has proven anything in the Incarnation it’s that no one should be abandoned, even if it’s of their own making.

Frank entered into what we call our 3E Restoration Process and as time unfolded, so did more of his story. And so did God’s in-breaking kingdom.

First, Frank stepped into a community of new friends that helped him step off the street and into a place to live. Immediately many in our church wrapped their arms around him and accepted him for who he was, just as he was. Some of us met with him weekly to talk intentionally about life, past, present, and future, while some met with him just to hang out. Then it happened. Frank stepped into a relationship with Jesus.

Now Frank lives in a house with two other guys. He has a good job and is finishing his four year degree. He has new clothes, polo cologne, a different perspective, a certain hope and abiding peace. Frank has a new life.

Each week as our church gathers, Frank serves us the bread and wine as we participate in the Eucharist. Every time I see him serve I see a man who went from homeless to housed, hopeless to hopeful, abandoned to adored, lost to found; I see the gospel. Every I time I see him serve the bread and wine I see God’s story unfolding before my very eyes as His see His kingdom made tangible.

Frank’s story is one of many I could share, and each story comes down to one simple question: will Jesus’ folk make decisions about helping others like Frank based upon what we DON’T know or DO know?

What we don’t know:
Why they are in this situation.
If they will constantly call if we give out our phone numbers.
How much they will interrupt our way of life.
What they will do with the resources we give or the life-skills we teach.
Whether or not we are enabling patterns of unhealthy behavior.
What they might do to us if we ever find ourselves alone in their presence.

What we do know:
They are made in God’s image.
He knows them best and loves them most.
To be kind to them is to be kind to God. ¹
To insult them is to insult God. ²
To help them is to help Jesus. ³
To walk with them in meaningful relationship is to be most like God in Jesus Christ.

And here is what I know that I know: on my best day I am still a recovering sinner and broken man learning how to live fully into the life God has given me in King Jesus. Once hopeless, now I am hopeful; once abandoned, now I am adored; once lost, now I am found. I am no different than Frank. Chances are, neither are you.

Lord have mercy on us if we ever forget it.

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1. Proverbs 19:7
2. Proverbs 17:5
3. Matthew 25:31-46

This post is the fifth stop on a blog tour reviewing Prodigal Christianity, by David Fitch and Geoff Holsclaw. Check out the first four reviews here, here, here and here. Then please, read this book.

I first met Pete when we turned our church building into a temporary winter shelter. Pete is a straight-forward 61-year-old homeless man who bears the trappings of a hard lived life. After a day or so, he pointedly confessed he wasn’t a christian and had no interest in becoming one. His experience in various church-sponsored sheltering programs were not much to brag about, but he supposed a “warm building even filled with cold people” (referring to Christians) was better than a cold night’s sleep. So he kept showing up.

As Pete was leaving town for his annual six-month stint in New Jersey as a carnival cook, he asked me into my office. With tears in his eyes this is what he shared:

“Fred, when I was nine my parents forced me to attend a religious school. One day the head master called me into his office. I still cannot remember why, but I remember what happened. It changed me Fred. He told me to hold out my palms so I did. With a stick in his hand, he smacked each one of my wrists. Then, he asked me to turn my hands over and he smacked the back of each one. Fred, that day something snapped. I was only nine, but I vowed to never trust a religious person again for as long as I live. For fifty-two years I haven’t trusted one single religious person. Until now. Because of you guys and this church. You guys have made me feel human and you’ve made sense of the Bible to me. I just wanted you to know.”

With those words we hugged, and Pete left for New Jersey for the next carnival season.

If I am reading it right, I think this is what Holsclaw and Fitch are getting at in their chapter entitled, “Signpost Five: Scripture.” Far too long we have treated Scripture as the Church’s inerrant and infallible constitution of God-inspired authoritative propositional truths to be both proclaimed and practiced, rather than “a dramatic unfolding of the story of God’s redemptive work in and for the world” (69). In doing so, we have made Scripture into a “disincarnated text addressed only to our minds, making disincarnated disciples who are more concerned with proper ideas than they are with missional lives” (69). At first glance this provocative statement looks quite harsh, but if you were to meet Pete he would say the same thing, just with different words. Like many in our current culture, the Bible has no place of authority in Pete’s life, and persuasive or rationalistic arguments proving that it should just fall short. So what do Fitch and Holsclaw suggest?

See, Pete is familiar with the truths of Scripture–don’t lie, don’t get drunk, love your neighbor, and the like. He has met many christians who set out to obey these commands and suggests he do the same. He even believes that the bible is “God-breathed.” But what Pete is unfamiliar with is how the grand narrative of Scripture, along with it’s embedded truths, works itself out in real life, or perhaps better put, how it works our lives out in the story God is telling. Instead of only commanding that we live a particular way of life in our world, Pete needed to see that Scripture invites us to participate in the world God is re-creating in and through our lives as citizens of His kingdom. Then Scripture can be received as an extension of Jesus’ person and work in the world as it connects us to the reality of God and His mission, and shows us what kind of life really works when God is king. In my view, Fitch and Holsclaw flesh this out well, both in theological and practical detail.

As you read this chapter you may be confronted with the same realization Holsclaw shares when he realized that we spend a great deal of time interpreting Scripture and not enough time allowing it to interpret us. This is not to say we should avoid interpretation. Holsclaw suggests quite the contrary. However, he encourages us to be careful not to seek control over Scripture as an idealogical text and learn to discern the Bible as our own story, as the story of God’s in-breaking kingdom. This discovery is essential if Scripture is to possess any transformative authority in our lives, because it’s authority is “a principal component through which the kingdom comes” (78).

When we come to understand Scripture as the redemptive story God is telling, we are compelled to submit to it’s authority as we participate in this unfolding story as His people. Now, the authority of Scripture moves beyond propositional truths to be obeyed and comes to us, by the power God’s Spirit, as the product of God’s mission in King Jesus. Scripture begins to live and breath as it becomes the means by which we join God in what He is doing all around us. When we do this, we put skin on the story God is telling and His kingdom is made tangible to those inhabiting where we live, work and play.

What Pete did not know is that it was never God’s intent to merely inform us with Scripture as much as it is His intent to form us by Scripture, as through it He invites us to live what appears to be an upside-down way of life in a world convinced it’s right-side up. This view of Scripture gives birth to a community submissive to love, instead of lambasting; mercy, instead of malice; compassion, instead of conjecture; grace, instead of grumbling. Yes, as God’s story becomes our own, we begin to listen, love and live from our place within it. This changes everything. And it can change anyone. Even Pete.

Make no mistake, in this chapter you will find that Fitch and Holsclaw hold the highest view of Scripture. They are suggesting what I believe to be a more robust and faithful way of seeing, embracing, and proclaiming Scripture in a post-christian culture. If we join them in this journey toward prodigal christianity and follow signpost five, we will affirm the authority of Scripture as the result of God’s mission in Christ, and together live in such a way that the Petes’ of our world will only be able to surrender to or reject, but certainly unable to deny.

Psalm 131 is a psalm of ascent. It is a psalm of confession. It invites the worshipper to see the folly of pride and self-sufficiency, and see the peace and freedom in wholly submitting  to the Sovereign God of grace.

But for me Psalm 131 is more like a psalm of irritation. Over the last 8 years of my life this psalm has given me both peace and trouble. Each time I read it I am left with conviction and a new (and often complicated) direction. It has knack for calling my attention pride, restlessness and self-involvement, a.k.a. busyness. Then its as if God leads to me to a posture of confession and surrender, which is sometimes painful and every time beautiful.

Read it. Drink it in. Slowly. Then read it again. Instead of reading to interpret the psalm, let it interpret you.

Psalm 131

Lord, my heart is not proud;
my eyes are not haughty.
I do not get involved with things
too great or too difficult for me.
² Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself
like a little weaned child with its mother;
I am like a little child.
³ Israel, put your hope in the Lord,
both now and forever.

One day after reading this psalm through a practice called Lectio Devina, it began to wrestle with my heart in a particular way. This led me to confession, causing me to put pin to paper resulting in what I call, my anti-psalm. This is what bled from my pen:

My Anti-Psalm 131 

My heart is proud, Lord.
For different reasons at different times, my eyes look down upon others.
I always seem to be caught up in things too great or too difficult for me; I want to be in control.
I am a restless, anxious, busy heart.
I am like a fussy, discontented child sitting in the lap of its mother.
I am like a fussy, discontented child.
Self, don’t keep putting all of your hope in your sufficiency and ability to get things done, beginning now and forever more.

Things look different once you write them out. In black and white you are forced to see word for word what has been hidden as scattered thoughts floating around in your mind. For me, this was a formative moment that resulted in a new direction. I cannot begin to tell you how perfectly timed this proved to be. It was like God’s Spirit was cutting away at my pride and restlessness one thought at a time. Maybe this is what Paul mean when he called the Word of God the sword of Spirit.

So I invite you, go ahead and write your anti-psalm. Who knows, a new direction or divine-interruption may await you.

A great tragedy happened Friday. Rabbi Jesus was crucified. Now it is Saturday and the disciples are overwhelmed with a grief words cannot express. Everything they possessed, everything they knew, everything they were, they put on the line to follow Jesus of Nazareth. Now He is dead. It’s over. So they wait, wondering what to do on this Saturday with this tragedy that happened on Friday. They didn’t know what would happen on Sunday:

“Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them what He had said to her.” John 20:18 

In the resurrection of Jesus God turned their tragedy into triumph! Little did they know on that Saturday they were only somewhere in between tragedy and triumph. And if we are honest, perhaps we will admit that sometimes we forget too.

That’s the beauty of Holy Saturday.

The truth of this Holy Saturday, March 30, 2013, is that no matter what happened yesterday or yesteryear, or what happens tomorrow, because of that Sunday 2000 years ago we can trust the we are only somewhere in between tragedy and triumph.

As the old gospel preacher once declared, “Sunday is comin’!”

In the resurrection of Jesus God’s promised work redemption and restoration has already come to us all as He is making all things new because Jesus is King.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.”                              2 Corinthians 5:17

And when King Jesus returns His work of redemption and restoration, which He began that first Easter, will come to us in fullness as all things will finally be made new.

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea no longer existed. I also saw the Holy City, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.

Then I heard a loud voice from the throne:

Look! God’s dwelling is with humanity,
and He will live with them.
They will be His people,
and God Himself will be with them
and be their God.
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
Death will no longer exist;
grief, crying, and pain will exist no longer,
because the previous things have passed away.

Then the One seated on the throne said, “Look! I am making everything new.” He also said, “Write, because these words are faithful and true.”  And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give water as a gift to the thirsty from the spring of life. The victor will inherit these things, and I will be his God, and he will be My son.”                                                                         Revelation 21:1-7

Today marks the day Jesus was arrested. Today marks the day of divine surrender–the day where God in the flesh willingly submitted to His fickle and comparatively weak created ones to rescue us. It is the day where God whispered to us:

“I’ll be broken so you can be whole.”

“I’ll be reviled so you can be redeemed.”

 

“I’ll be rejected so you can be reconciled.”

“I’ll take on death so you can take on true life.”

“I’ll accept the hatred so you can know God’s love.”

“I’ll be denied by all so you will be accepted by God.”

“I’ll be forsaken by God so you will never ever be.”

Yes, one of the most confounding truths of the Easter narrative is divine surrender. It is where God in Jesus Christ reminds us of His faithful love–a love so great that He would allow His hands to be tied behind His own back by the very ones He will suffer to save.

Jesus’ divine surrender led to His redemptive suffering.

When you and I get it, and I mean really get that Easter comes through divine surrender, our hearts will be taken captive and we will, in turn, surrender. And we will surrender our lives because we will come to believe that He is worthy of all our trust because in this divine surrender and suffering, God did exactly what He said He would do.

“I’ll surrender to death on a cross so that you can be rescued from death because of your sin. Then I’ll be resurrected three days later so that you can know that the Father is faithful to His word: redemption and restoration has come to you.”