Monday, March 30, 2015

It's Bigger Than You

"It's Bigger Than You"
Mark 5:18-20

Some boundaries are not geographical.  They aren't the divisions drawn by the register of deeds.  They aren't the case histories of property researched by an abstractor.  They aren't the property lines haggled over by neighbors.

Some boundaries are emotional, social, spiritual.  You can't draw such borders.  They are human thresholds.  Everyone has limits to who they are, who they want to be, or choose to be.  Everyone has a sense of where their fringe is--where the fullness of their personhood has "brimmed out" so to speak, where there is room for adjustment, and where the needle is nearly on empty.

Those boundaries are never the same for everyone.  You can subdivide a tract of land or a neighborhood in prescribed ways.  Like most of the small towns in Kansas, you can make all the streets go east and west, north and south.  You can make the blocks a uniform size in every town.

You can't do that with people.  You can't hold up a preformed grid pattern and expect that everyone's social, spiritual, and emotional boundaries are going to be the same.  Each person comes with their own map, their own limits and boundaries of selfhood established.

The problem is, most of these personal boundaries I'm talking about are not clear.  They aren't clear to other people and sometimes aren't even clear to us.

I read an article about a woman who wandered into the Boston City Mission.  The woman was seeking help.  She was clearly stressed and disturbed in many ways.  Half-way through her conversation with a mission worker, the woman paused, reached into her purse, took out a whistle, and to quote this article, "she just blew the hell out of it."

Have you ever felt like that?  Wished you had a whistle handy so you could, when you needed to, just blow the living daylights out of it?  Part of what was happening for the woman was her boundaries of selfhood were shifting.  Some of her sense of self was becoming restricted--she was becoming confined by a smaller and smaller perimeter.

Another part of it was she felt like some of her protective boundaries had been breached by "the enemy"--whoever or whatever that was for her.  She felt like she was under attack and had lost a strategic border that defined who she was and who she wanted to be.  Maybe she was trying to literally blow the hell out of herself.

Many times, that is the only way we come to discover what the limits are of others, or our own selfhood--especially our false self.  We may not know exactly where the boundaries are until someone starts pushing up against them.  Or when, by some circumstance, we are forced to grow beyond our self-made boundaries.  Or, when someone wants to get to know us, and they start exploring where the edges are, we may make some startling self-discoveries.

The woman who wandered into the mission may not have known where her boundaries were before, but she knew where they were now.  It was crystal clear.  And the only thing she could think to do was to blow the whistle of anxiety, not only so others could hear, but also to sound the alarm of her false self as well.

What we've been looking at, all during Lent, through these messages, and reading the book, The Deeper Journey, has been about boundaries.  The false self the book talks about has set the boundaries of our spirituality.  The false self has tried to draw the lines so that God has been put on the far side of those boundaries.  The false self has created protective walls around us, so that God can peek in the windows, but never really get in.

But what God has done through Jesus Christ is destroy those false boundary lines.  Our false self has been trying to protect us from God.  It does so by drawing the lines tighter and tighter, getting us more and more constricted, until we are living a small life in a small world.

Every time God appears to be getting too close to who we are, trying to break open those false boundaries of self, the false self blows the whistle.  Loudly.  Passionately.  A number of you who have been reading the book have blown the whistle of resistance.  The false self has blown the whistle of warning and rationalization and excuses so loudly in your ears, early enough, that you gave up or gave in.

But you can't get to the Resurrection without going through the Crucifixion.  There has to be a death.  Of Christ.  And with Christ, the death of the false self.  That's why the false self blows the whistle so shrilly in your ears.  It doesn't want to die.

While thinking about this, this week, I realized I had a perfect example of what I'm trying to say, just down the hall from my office.  Michelle, our church administrator is pregnant.  You all know that.  This baby, Mason, is being stubborn.  He is a week to 10 days over due.  Labor starts and then stops.

It's like he really doesn't want his boundaries to change--even though he is becoming more and more cramped in too confined of a space.  It's like Michelle and Jordon are talking to the little guy, trying to convince him to give up his little self-styled world.  But in that little world, he thinks all his needs are taken care of.  His boundaries are just fine--to him.  He's protected.  He's fed.  He's warm.  What could be wrong with a self-created world like that?  I wonder if a baby, in the throes of the birth process, thinks it's dying.  In fact, the infant is going through birth.

Michelle and Jordon, in talking to little Mason, say something like, "But out here is a big, wide world.  You will be free to grow and move about.  There is color and texture and tastes and smells.  There are arms that want to hold you.  Yes, it is a world very different from the one you are enclosed in right now.  But the world out here, outside your boundaries is amazing!  It's amazing out here!  Just break free.  Come on out.  Experience it for yourself!"

Imagine, God, through Jesus Christ, is telling us the same thing.  "Come out of your self-styled, cramped in false life.  Let the boundaries break.  Let go of your self-styled world.  Through Jesus Christ, be born into a totally different, wide open, amazing life!  It'll be OK.  I promise," says God.

But what do we do?  We don't want to go through the pain of birth--of exchanging one world for another, of losing the definition of our self for a new definition in God.

A number of years ago, a friend gave me this book--Maps of the Holy Land.  It's an interesting book to browse through once-in-a-while.  What's interesting about this book is many of the maps in the book were drawn by the Crusaders or others who trampled through the Holy Land as invaders or explorers.  Most of the maps are hardly accurate, based probably on assumed knowledge or speculation.  The only way, of course, to test a map's authenticity and accuracy is to travel the land yourself and check it out (or look at it through satellite imagery).

And there were times when Alexander the Great was pushing out the limits of his empire.  His armies literally walked off the edges of their known maps into unmapped territory.  They were moving out into unexplored frontiers, drawing new and enlarged maps based on their experiences.  Instead of reaching the end of the map and blowing the whistle of alarm, they kept their whistles in their pockets and pushed the boundaries.

Boundaries form the sense of comfortability within which we approach life.  When we sense our boundaries are breaking down, or dissolving, or constricting, or expanding, that makes us anxious--that we have a sense a loss of control over our lives.  The loss of our boundaries means we have to change.

But those boundaries, which create for us a usually false sense of safety, consistency, routine, and selfhood are always being threatened somewhere along their line.  Because they are false, they are always breaking down somewhere.  The false self is living in a constant process of mending or adjusting to the breaks.  

  Here's a good example of what the false self does:  (Peanuts cartoon)  Charlie Brown is flying his kite.  He's really working at it.  You can tell by the expression on his face.  Lucy is standing back watching.  She doesn't look hopeful.  She watches Charlie Brown run down the field.  All of a sudden there's a loud and painful "AUGH" shouted from off the frame.  Lucy covers her face.  She can't stand to look.  In the last frame, Charlie Brown's kite is hanging from one side of the tree.  Charlie Brown, all wrapped up in a thin cocoon of kite string is hanging from the other side of the tree.

What a great parable of what happens when we try to fly our own kites--to get our own false selves up in the air under our own power.  The false self, that made such great promises, turns out to be a kite eating tree, always leaving us hanging.

That is, until God comes along, through Jesus Christ, and destroys all those false promises,  cuts us down from the kite eating tree and totally breaks everything wide open.  Birth happens.  Over all change happens.  Freedom happens.

Now here's the thing.  All along during Lent, I have been talking, and those who have the book have been reading, about how to take care of your own false self, and allowing God, through the Cross formed love of Christ, to put to death your own false self.  To destroy the small boundaries your own false self has imposed on you so that you can live in Christ, large and free.

But it's even bigger than that.  There are millions of Charlie Brown's out there, people who have been tied up and hanging from the tree of their false self.  No matter how many times they try to get their life in the air, the kite-eating-tree, the false self, gets them--as it got us--every time.

Once we have had our false self disposed of, and Christ's self has taken that place, then we recognize so many others who are dealing with that same, basic, debilitating problem.  But as we have been changed, then we are to become offerings of our self to God for others.  We are to become available to God for those who are still hanging from the kite-eating-tree.

What we are about is not just our own transformation.  That isn't what Christ was about.  Even though we like to personalize what Christ did, and make it about us, Christ didn't come to just transform you.  Christ came to transform the world.  But Christ had to start with you and me first.  Once our false self dies with Christ on the Cross, then we become available to God to do the same as Christ has done for others.  We participate in the ministry of Christ to transform the world.  The world itself is hanging from a kite-eating-tree, and Christ has made us available to him so that we might serve him by freeing that world.

A few years back, this congregation studied the book, The Prayer of Jabez.  It was about asking God to expand your boundaries.  The prayer is found in 1 Chronicles 4:10, 

Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, “Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from hurt and harm!” And God granted what he asked.  (NRSV)

God, through Christ, has fulfilled this prayer for all of us, by shattering the boundaries of our false self that kept us hemmed in and small and stuck.  And God, through Christ, has, by taking away those boundaries of the false self, opened up to us all that is of God.  And God, through Christ, has made us partners in that work of freeing the whole world from its false self.  As we move through this Holy Week, towards the Cross and Resurrection, as you look upon those scenes, now you know what's really going on.

Monday, March 23, 2015

Clothed and In Your Right Mind

"Clothed and In Your Right Mind"
Mark 5:14-17

The men taking care of the pigs ran to the town and the farms to spread the news. Then the people came out to see what had happened.  When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had once been full of demons. He was sitting there with his clothes on and in his right mind, and they were terrified.  Everyone who had seen what had happened told about the man and the pigs.


I have not been in a mall for years.  Maybe even decades.  I confess, the longer I stay away from malls, the more anxious I get about going inside one.  There is a stimulation overload that elevates my anxiety, and I find I can't breathe until I get out.

Just hearing that little bit, you might insist I have an anxiety disorder like agoraphobia or claustrophobia.  But it isn't that at all.  It's all the clothes.  All the racks and racks and racks of new clothes.  Each store with so many racks of new clothes.  It just bugs me.  Frazzles my nerves.

The essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson (whom I am related to, by the way), once wrote in an essay, titled "Letters and Social Aims,"
...the sense of being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.

When I read that I said, out loud to myself, "What!?"  The clothes we wear, and being "well-dressed", whatever that is, gives a person inner peace!!??  I thought, If that is true, then that's the reason there are so many racks of clothing in malls--our psychological search for "inward tranquility" through our clothing.  That's what the clothing makers are preying on.  It made me want to stay away from malls and clothing stores with even more vigor and anxiety.

I have tried to be a simple dresser.  Because of my height, there aren't a whole lot of choices anyway.  I don't have that many clothes.  In fact, one of the things I like about Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, is that he wore the same thing every day.  He had a kind of uniform--his black mock turtle necks, his jeans, his New Balance athletic shoes.  That's all he had in his clothes closet.  I've been trying to figure out some similar sort of basic clothing uniform.

I've been getting rid of a lot of my clothes I've had for years.  Even though, like I said, I don't have many clothes, I have even less now.  I've heard from a number of you that you also are trying to pare down the amount of clothes in your closets.  One couple is turning all their closet hangers one direction.  When they wear something, they turn the hanger the opposite direction.  After a month's time they will see what and what not they are actually wearing--and get rid of things accordingly.

What is intriguing to me is that, in contradiction to Emerson's quote that I just mentioned, I've also found this quote by Charles Dickens in his book, Great Expectations:   "Probably every new and eagerly expected garment ever put on since clothes came in fell a trifle short of the wearer's expectation."  So what we have, when we make Dickens' quote and Emerson's quote come face-to-face is that even though we may be looking to our clothing for this sense of "inner tranquility," we never quite get there.  We are searching for something that we think our clothing will give us, but it never quite happens.

It's just part of our sad human condition.  We grasp at surface solutions to cover up our deeper brokenness.  But it never quite does the trick.

Maybe we need both.    We certainly need our inner confusion to be dealt with and healed.  And then dressed in an outer simplicity that portrays that healing and strength.  The wild man, after confronting Jesus, and himself being confronted, ended up "clothed and in his right mind."  Both.

What do you assume the once naked, wild man was clothed with?  Where did the man's clothes come from?  Did the disciples happen to carry second hand clothes with them wherever they went?  Or did they each carry suitcases when they rowed back and forth across the lake?  Where did the clothes come from that the wild man put on after Jesus pulled the madness out of him and pushed it into the herd of pigs?  We don't know.  It's one of the many mysterious details the story doesn't tell us.

But what if Jesus gave the wild man, now in his right mind, the clothes off his back?  Or at least his outer tunic?  How much of an impact would that have made for Jesus to take care of the inner and outer man?  It certainly isn't out of line with the way God acts.

Remember the creation story in Genesis?  Adam and Eve have sinned.  What do they do after they sinned?  They hid.  After finding them, God has a truth telling conversation with them.  Tells them what the consequences are going to be of going against God’s wishes.  But then what happens?  Anybody remember?

And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.  (Genesis 3:21)

Isn't that an interesting, odd, gracious thing for God to do.  God got out the needle and thread and made the first human beings their first set of clothes.  God took care of their internal waywardness, then clothed them.  What if Jesus--the Son of God--did the same thing for the wild man.  Took care of the man's wildness, then gave him his own clothes.  Something so powerful for the once wild man to receive--his sanity, then the very clothes of Christ.  To be clothed by Christ.  To have your shame reclothed by Christ himself.  Just as God did for Adam and Eve.  Sewed them clothes to dress them in something other than their own naked shame.

That's why new clothes are such a powerful image in the Bible for what God does for us.  The image of putting on new clothes means to put on the new life of Christ.  Paul wrote in his second letter to the Corinthian church:  "For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.  (2 Corinthians 5:4, ESV)

Being unclothed--naked--especially in public was a gross social and religious violation to the Jews.  This violation of being unclothed in public was used by Paul as a metaphor for the deep violation that we commit before God.  The naked self is another way of saying the false self that we wantonly display to God and the world.  We need new clothes--the clothes of Christ--to replace our nakedness, or our false self.

Putting on the new clothes of Christ is another way of saying the life of holiness.  The book we are reading, The Deeper Journey, says it this way:  "It is the flowering of the very nature of our true being within ...To put on the new nature is the ultimate death blow to the false self" (page 120).  Being clothed, and in our right mind.  Our clothes, so to speak, dress up and portray our selves to the world.  To be clothed in Christ, and in our right mind, is the way we portray our true selves, our Christ selves, to the world, rather than some masquerade or disguise.

Just as everyone saw the man "dressed and in his right mind", our being dressed in Christ, or by Christ, and in our right mind has to be public as well.  It is in the messiness of life, the craziness, the wildness, that we need to clearly show the humbled, clothed and sane selves to the world.  The impulse of our false selves is to dress for power, to exalt ourselves over others.  But to be clothed in Christ is to be clothed in humility where we kneel before others in the clothing of Christ.

In our chapter for this week, the true self, the Christ self, being clothed in Christ, is demonstrated in five qualities:  compassion, kindness, lowliness, gentleness, and patience.  Let's take each of those five qualities and make sure you are clothed by Christ.

First, compassion, which the author describes as loving immersion in the life of others. The opposite--being clothed with power, or for power--is the way we dress ourselves, not so we can immerse ourselves in the lives of others, but so can try to force them to orbit around our sun.  We want them to see we are large and in charge, rather than being dressed for servanthood, as Christ was.

A nurse during WWII became infamous because she would wander away from the medical camp onto the battlefield itself.  She would personally drag in a soldier who was in dire need of medical attention.  More than once she was reprimanded because she brought in not only American soldiers, but also soldiers of the enemy.  One day, an officer discovered her, again, on the battlefield.  He asked her, in a powerful and demanding tone, what she was doing there.  Her answer:  "I'm looking for the wounded.  That's my job."  She was immersing herself in other's lives, because she was dressed in the compassionate clothes of Christ.

The second quality, kindness, the author describes as sincere consideration and sensitivity for another person and their weakness.

One older woman I knew from the church in Hickman, Nebraska, always went to the post office in Hickman, even though she lived 15 miles away in Lincoln.  She said she did that because the postal lady there was always friendly. Someone told her she could just go to one of the big post offices in Lincoln and use a stamp machine in the lobby. “I know,” she said, "but the machine won’t ask me about my arthritis.”  

Kindness, I think, has to do with being genuinely interested in others stories.  People are stories.  Life is about people's stories.  And taking the time to be interested in others stories.  That's what Jesus did with the wild man.  He took some time to hear a part of the man's story, to really listen, and then figure out how to use that kindness to put the man in his right mind and clothe him.

The third quality of being clothed in the clothes of Christ for others is lowliness.  Lowliness, according to our chapter, considers others of inestimable value.    

Despite his busy schedule during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln often visited the hospitals to cheer the wounded. On one occasion he saw a young man who was near death. “Is there anything I can do for you?” asked the compassionate President.
“Please write a letter to my mother,” came the reply.  Unrecognized by the soldier, the President sat down and wrote as the youth told him what to say.

The letter read, “My Dearest Mother, I was badly hurt while doing my duty, and I won’t recover. Don’t sorrow too much for me. May God bless you and Father. Kiss Mary and John for me.” The young man was too weak to go on, so Lincoln signed the letter for him and then added this postscript: “Written for your son by Abraham Lincoln.”

Asking to see the note, the soldier was astonished to discover who had shown him such kindness. “Are you really our President?” he asked.
“Yes,” was the quiet answer. “Now, is there anything else I can do?”
The young man replied, with a weak voice, “Will you please hold my hand? I think it would help to see me through to the end.” The tall, gaunt President granted his request, offering warm words of encouragement until death stole the soldiers life away.

President Lincoln knew the inestimable value of each life that died in the Civil War, on both sides of the battle lines.  Each one was dear and important, and he treated each one as such.

Gentleness is the fourth quality of the clothes of Christ.  Gentleness is the freedom from being defensive, ego-protective, and ego-promoting.  Gentleness is the quality of showing an unlimited grace in our relationships. 

Here’s another Abraham Lincoln story.  At the height of the Civil War, President Lincoln and his Secretary of War visited the home of General George McClellan.  After a short wait, the General returned home, but making no acknowledgement of the President and his Secretary, he marched straight upstairs to his room.  Thinking he would be right back down, they continued to wait.  Finally, they questioned the housemaid who said, "I'm sorry, Mr. President, but the General asked me to tell you that he is tired and has gone to bed."

The Secretary of War was astonished and said, "Mr. President, this is unacceptable.  You should relieve this man of his command."  Lincoln thought a moment and said, "No, I will not relieve him; that man wins battles.  I would hold his horse and wash the dirt from his boots if he could shorten this bloodshed by one hour."

That's what gentleness is.  As I said, we are more apt to dress ourselves in power.  Push our own power.  President Lincoln could have.  History has proven President Lincoln as one of the great leaders of our country.  But it wasn't by pushing power.  He saw how power gets in the way, how always being defensive or promoting his own misguided ego was not going to win the day.  Only by being clothed in the gentleness of Christ would that happen.

The final quality of being clothed in Christ is patience.  Patience is the quality of Christ's clothing of not needing to always be pushing our own agenda.  Patience is allowing God to work in God's way and in God's own time.

          One afternoon a father too his children to the movies. One of the sons, Scott, who was seven years old at the time, was anxious for the movie to begin. As the different advertisements appeared on the screen, Scott leaned over and whispered, "Dad, when's the movie going to start?"
          "In a few minutes."
          One minute later he again asked, "Dad, when is it going to start?"
          "In just a little bit."
          After he asked the third time, the father said, "Scott, don't ask me that question again. Just sit there and wait."
          The boy, who was a quiet and obedient child, fidgeted and tried to be patient. Finally he leaned over and whispered a different question. "Dad, can you make time go faster?"
          
Likewise we say to God, "Father, can you make time go faster? I'm so tired of waiting. I'm anxious for my prayer to be answered. Please make it arrive sooner."  We don't want God's work to unfold in God's time but in the anxiety of what we think is our own best timing.

It’s time for a change of clothes.  Or maybe not a change as much as a whole new set of clothes.  To be put in our right mind, and then clothed by Christ.  New life outfits made from patience, gentleness, lowliness, kindness and compassion.

Monday, March 16, 2015

Over The Edge

"Over The Edge"
Mark 5:11-13

What if you could do it?   What if you could take all the splotches out of your life and have them thrown into a herd of pigs.  Would you allow it.

We're all a mix, aren't we?  Purity and putridness.  Saintly and sinister.  Best intentions and manipulations?  Fealty and phlegm.  Complimenting and cussing?  Hospitality and hostility?  Endearing and demeaning.  Forgiving and fuming.  Pretty and petty.

The problem is, we can be both at the same time.  Our purity can be putrid when it comes out as self-righteousness.  Your best intentions can be the basest of manipulations if those intentions are fed from the soil of a false ego.

Oil and water can be mixed together.  But if you wait long enough, the oil floats to the top and you can separate them easily.  But if you put chocolate syrup in milk, you can't unchocolate the milk.  Once the syrup is in, it's always going to be chocolate.

We may think the same about our character and our spirit.  Once you've let the smut in, you can't unsmut your character.  Once you've let all the obscenity in, you can't make your spirit obscene-less.  To take the smut and the obscene out of your life would kill you because it's all mixed together.  You have to pour the milk out with the chocolate syrup, if you want to start over.

Maybe you've seen the TV show, Intervention, with episode after episode, each one as frightening and heartbreaking as the last. The show's subjects came from every possible social demographic, from supportive and stable families to dysfunctional, abusive ones. What Intervention does best, though, is show the person behind the addiction — a person with a sense of humor, a set of values, an identity that was getting absorbed into their addiction crisis.

Some episodes of the show were overwhelmingly tragic, some incredibly frustrating, and some make the viewer want to leap through the television, grab people by the shoulders, and shout "stop blaming your child for being the victim of your abuse."

In one episode, Allison was addicted to inhalants, sometimes using ten cans of spray duster a day to get high. The episode stands out for a few reasons: One, until this point, many of the viewers were not even aware that people abused spray dusters as an inhalant drug. And secondly, even while obviously in the throes of a very serious crisis, Allison's personality was really vibrant, even while she was sucking down spray cans and passing out in Walgreens.

But certainly, like these people on the show, Intervention, the mad man who confronted Jesus needed an intervention of some kind.  The mad man was a human being, after all, was, at some time, some mother's baby, some father's child.  And as a human being--an awful mixture of the vibrancy of being human and the tragic of succumbing to the smut and obscene that drives a person to madness.  Can the two ever be separated?

Thinking it impossible to separate the two, people learn to live with it.  You hear them say things like, “This is just the way I am.”  Many addicts on the show Intervention, were heard to say: "This is just the way I am!  If you don't like it, tough.  That's your problem, then, for not being able to accept me the way I am."  That's the problem, isn't it.  We get used to it--the way we are.  Nothing's going to change until the kingdom comes.

But what if it could?  What if you could?  What if all that falseness and madness could be separated out from you and you could be free of it?  Would you do it?  Would you take the chance?

I wonder about the wild man.  If people just got used to him.  And he just got used to himself. If you lived in the nearby town and went to the waterfront for some reason, you just expected to hear or see the wild man, running around screaming.  Or if you went to the cemetery to decorate the grave of a loved one, you expected to see the wild man, either from a distance or up close.  It was just a reality.  The situation wasn’t going to change.  The mad man wasn’t going to change.  People and the man were resigned to the way it was.

But the situation did change.  The man did change.  By Jesus, everything changed.  The man's madness--his deeply imbedded false self--was separated from the good that lay hidden, and removed.  After his encounter with Jesus, the man was "...clothed and in his right mind...".

2000 pigs died that day.  The story thus makes us assume there were 2000 aspects of the mad man's false self that went out into the pigs causing them to stampede and die.  Imagine 2000 aspects of one man's false self.  Makes you wonder, doesn't it.  About yourself.  How many aspects of your false self there really are.  Evidently, not enough to drive you mad and live in the cemetery.

But enough for me to ask the question again, Would you allow it?  Would you allow all the aspects of your false self to be cast into pigs, and watch those crazed pigs, imbedded with your false selves destroy themselves--and your false self with them?  Not scapegoats, but scape pigs.  Would you allow Jesus to do that for you?

The thing is, because the false selves were so many and so rooted in the crazy man's life, he probably didn't even know that he needed such an extraction, such an intervention.  Notice, Jesus didn't ask the mad man's permission.

Thus, Jesus, in effecting our salvation--of performing an amazing intervention--doesn't ask our permission.  Jesus has already made the evaluation that we are a sick, addicted, perverse, violent, and nearly mad people.  In Jesus Christ, God doesn't wait for us to ask that there be some sort of thorough spiritual intervention.  As Paul writes in Romans, "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly."

In the intervention that would free us from our false self once and for all, Christ didn't round up all our loved ones and give us a choice.  Christ went through with it, extracting the false self cleanly and neatly from the ways it was intermixed and tangled with the spark that had to do with God.  It's already been done.

As this chapter says, "Putting on the new nature, as with putting off the old, is not something we can do" (page113).  That's the amazing gift we've been given.  The Lord has cast all of our falseness into the pigs and sent the whole mess over the edge.  It has, once and for all, been put to death.  Not because we wanted it or could do it ourselves.  All we need to do is acknowledge what Christ has done for us.

But I like what the author of our book further states:  "Such acknowledgment is far more than our intellectual assent to a theological fact or our cognitive affirmation of dogma.  It is a radical commitment to a whole new mode of being."  We aren't just saying to ourselves, "Oh boy, Jesus has taken care of my false self, and killed it.  What a nice guy."  Instead, our acknowledgement of that fact needs to be the first step in that "radical commitment" to Christ for what he's done.  That commitment is the only thing that will keep the demons from coming back, digging in to create another false self, or false selves.

That's why I love this picture on the front of the bulletin.  It's the picture of a person who has had her false self, with all it's aspects, thrown into the pigs.  The pigs have all thrown themselves into the lake and drowned.  And all that's left is a person, a human being, clothed and in their right mind, clinging to the cross that made it all happen.  Clinging to the Christ on the Cross.  Clinging with radical commitment, free of the false self, and transformed and filled with the Christ self.  All you need to do is put yourself in that picture.

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Who Are You?

"Who Are You?"
Mark 5:9; Galatians 2:19-20

In our chapter for this week, out of The Deeper Journey the author uses the image of the door.  This is what he writes:

What is the door on which Jesus knocks?  It is the door of our false self.  It is those places in our life where we have shut God out and enclosed ourself within our self-referenced structure of being…(page 79)
God calls us to open the door so that God can come into our false self… (page 80)
We might think of the door as any aspect of our false self that prevents God from being God in our life on God’s terms.  It may be a habit that holds us in its destructive bondage, an attitude that deforms our way of living, a perception that warps our view of others, a pattern of relationships with others that is destructive to both them and us, a way of reacting to circumstances that hinders us, a cancerous resentment whose poison is eating away the vitals of our being… (page 80)
How do you open this door…you begin to experience his cross-shaped love nurturing you in that love, healing the hurt, removing the resentment, flushing away the bitterness until one day you realize that Christ’s love and forgiveness have become incarnate in you…Your Christ self has come to life!  (page 81)

Here’s a story using that imagery.  See if it helps.



There was a knock at the door.  Oh, for Pete's sake, I thought to myself.  I was deep into a novel, and deep into my chair.  Whoever it was had jarred me right out of the world the novel had pulled me into.  And I was right at a good part--Daenerys' wedding to her "sun, and moon, and stars!”  Darn!  I entertained the notion of letting whoever it was just go on knocking, and I'd go on reading.

Who would be out on a cold day like this, anyway.  I was covered up and toasty with my down throw.  Oh well, I thought.  Might as well be hospitable.

I cranked down the leg rest of my recliner, stood, stretched, and walked over to the door.  "Who is it?" I asked, speaking through the door.  I don't open my door to just anyone.  In fact I don't open my door to anyone.  Not unless I know who they are.

"Who are you?" the Voice came back through the door.
I scrunched up my face at my side of the door.  "What do you mean, 'who am I’”? I asked back.  "I don't have to identify myself to you," I added.
"Yes you do," said the Voice.
"I'm sorry, but that's not how this works," I said.
"How what works?" the Voice asked.
"You know," I said.  "Coming up MY front steps, knocking on MY door that's attached to MY house.  You're the one who has to identify yourself to me. Not the other way around."
"I don't think so," the Voice replied.  "I have to know who you are before I decide if I want to come in."

I scratched my head wondering what kind of joker this was.  I started going through the voice recognition in my mind, trying to place the Voice on the other side of my door.  It has to be someone I know who'd be pulling some kind of stunt on me.  But for the life of me, I couldn't place that Voice.  I was beginning to wish I had installed the peep hole last summer, so I could look out and see who it was.

"So," the Voice said.
"So, what?" I asked.
"So, who are you?"  There's that question again.  I glanced at my comfortable chair, the book, the down throw.  I whimpered faintly. Why can't I just be allowed to enjoy my free afternoon, I thought.

"I'm me," I finally said with a bit of an exasperated tone, hoping the Voice on the other side would catch that.
"Not good enough," the Voice replied.  "Everybody's a me."
"Oh, brother," I exhaled.  "Look.  I'm the me whose afternoon you are interrupting and slowly ruining."
There was silence for a few moments.  Then the Voice spoke.  "You don't sound like someone I'd like to come in and be with."
"What?" I nearly gasped.  "I'm not someone you'd want to come in and see!!??"  Now I was offended.  "And what's wrong with me?" I asked.  "You don't even know me, and now you're judging me!!??"  I did a couple of quick steps between my recliner and the door and back again.  “What's so wrong with me that you wouldn't want to come into my house?" I asked, affronted.
"I'm afraid I need some further convincing," the Voice stated.  "I need to know more about how you identify yourself."
"Identify myself?" I barked.  "You want me to slide my driver's license under the door?" I said.  "This is ridiculous," I further barked through the door.  "You're the one on the outside of MY door.  You need to identify yourself to me!"
"Why?" the Voice asked.  "I know who I am."

I did a face palm, and began thinking I really should have just stayed in my recliner and kept reading.  Images of Daenerys’ wedding night were calling to me from the book.
"So, identify yourself," the Voice said again.  "How would you identify yourself?" the Voice said through the door.

“I…I…I’m an architect,” I said.
“I don’t care what you do,” the Voice replied.  “I want to know who you think you are.  What kind of person you think you are.”
I leaned my head against my side of the door.  Why me? I thought.  Why can’t I get normally weird people to come to my door?  Like Mormons or Jehovah’s Witness’?  Or even just a Girl Scout selling cookies?  That would be nice.  Why this crackpot trying to invade my calm—my castle, my domain?
“I’m a pretty good person,” I finally said.
“‘A pretty good person,’” the Voice replied, with a bit of a snicker.  “Really?  That’s all you got?  You’re going to stick with that?”
“Yeah,” I said.  “There’s nothing wrong with being a pretty good person.”

“Do you feel blessed?” the Voice asked.
Do I feel blessed?  Do I feel blessed?  What kind of question is that? I wondered.  “Uh, not particularly,” I said.  “I’ve got my own stuff I’m trying to deal with.  You know.  Everyone’s got their own stuff.  I’ve got mine.  You’ve got yours.”
“‘Stuff?’” the Voice asked.
“Stuff,” I replied.
“What kind of stuff?” the Voice asked.  “Would it be like bad habits you can’t or don’t want to get rid of?  Or attitudes that get in the way of you living well?  Or perceptions that keep you from seeing life correctly?  Or brokenness that sabotages all your relationships and keeps them from being healthy?  Or constantly reacting to life rather than enjoying it?  Or carrying long-held resentment that is eating away at your sense of vitality?”
“Hey,” I said, putting the palms of my hands against the door, and leaning in, as if I were trying to hold back the flood.  “You’re getting a little personal, aren’t you!!??”

I was quiet for some time.  The Voice had struck a nerve.  “There’s some stuff you didn’t mention,” I said quietly on my side of the door.  I don’t know if the Voice heard me, because there was stillness from that side as well.  “Stuff like a pool full of guilt,” I whispered, “that would just as soon drown you as let you swim in it forever.  And fear the size of a whale that swallows a person whole.  Or ego that just plain gets in the way of everything good in life.”

“True that,” the Voice said after a long silence.  “True that.  Now you’re answering the question I’m asking.”
“What’s the question, again?” I asked, a couple of tears running away from my eyes.
“Who are you?  That’s the question,” the Voice said.

“And who are you?” I asked the Voice.
"I'm dead," the Voice on the other side of the door said.
"Dead?" I asked incredulously.
"Dead," the Voice replied.
"You sound very much alive to me," I said.
"Oh, I'm very much alive," the Voice said enthusiastically.
I shook my head.  This was starting to get crazy again.
"And guess what?" The Voice asked.
"I can hardly guess," I exhaled.
"You can be dead too--you can die with me!" the Voice replied.  "All you have to do is open the door and you will die with me."

I jumped back from the door.  All I could imagine was some nut-case on the other side of my door, wearing a vest strapped with explosives.  Some black ski-masked ISIS character with a long sharp knife.  Or armed with several guns like those crazed and angry people who attack post offices or schools.

“I don’t want to die!” I nearly yelled.
“But that’s the main problem with all your stuff,” the Voice called back.  “It needs to die!” the Voice said adamantly.  “And here’s the problem:  you don’t want it to.  You’d rather hold on to it, thinking you can eventually deal with it all.”
“But I will,” I promised.  “I will deal with it.  I’ll get to it all some day.  I’ll read a couple of books—maybe even the Bible, and gradually all my stuff will be taken care of.”
“Sorry,” the Voice said.
“Sorry?” I asked.
“It doesn’t work that way.  All your stuff has to die.  With me,” the Voice said.  “You have to open the door so that I will die, and you will die, and all your stuff will die.”

“I…I…I don’t know.  It all sounds so…painful,” I said.  “What happens after that?” I asked.
“You will live” the Voice said softly.
“I’ll die.  Then I’ll live.”
“Yes,” responded the Voice.  “But without your stuff.  Instead of all that, you will have me, in you, and you will be alive.  Really alive!”
“I’ll have you—the Voice—in me?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“But I’ll die.”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll live.”
“Yes.  But free!” the Voice said.

I stood there breathing.  In, out.  In, out.  In, out.  I closed my eyes.  I reached out.  I put my hand on the door knob.

Monday, March 2, 2015

Your God Is Too Small

"Your God Is Too Small"
Mark 5:17

"Then they began to plead with Him to depart from their region."  (Mark 5:17)


Maybe you've heard of J.B. Phillips.  He became the Vicar of the Church of the Good Shepherd in London in 1940.  The Nazi's bombed that part of London incessantly during WWII, and he found himself trying to bring comfort to his people, especially a rather large youth group.

In order to instill them with courage, he began translating Paul's letters into modern English.  With the encouragement of C.S. Lewis, Phillips got his translation published under the title, Letters to Young Churches.  In 1958 his whole New Testament was published, and became one of the most popular translations used by national youth organizations like Young Life.

Phillips also published several books.  One of his most popular was titled, Your God Is Too Small.  In the introduction to that book, Phillips wrote:

Many men and women today are living, often with inner dissatisfaction, without any faith in God at all.  This is not because they are particularly wicked or selfish or, as the old-fashioned would say, "godless," but because they have not found with their adult minds a God big enough to "account for" life...big enough to command their highest admiration and respect...

It's a great book, in which Phillips describes in detail how we find all sorts of creative ways to minimize God, and try to get God to fit in with our lives, our society, our world.  If we constantly try to get God to fit in with our own theology or viewpoints, we are ultimately trying to control God--keeping God in a box, so to speak.  We let God out now and then to do our bidding, and then jam God back in the box to await our next crisis.

That's what's happening at this point in the story of the Gerasene wild man who confronted Jesus.  I will be using this story throughout this sermon series to tie in with the chapters from the book I've asked you to read, The Deeper Journey by Robert Mulholland.

There's a middle part of the story that I'll deal with in another message, that's been left out here.  Briefly, what happens is, Jesus pulls the demons out of the wild man, and throws them into a nearby herd of pigs.  The pigs run down the hillside in a wild frenzy, jump over a cliff and drown themselves in Lake Galilee.

The pig keepers ran back to town, as well as here and there around the countryside, and told others what had happened.  Many of those people came out to see for themselves.  What is odd about this part of the story, the people take a look at the wild man, now calm and in his right mind, and ask Jesus to leave their region.  They don't seem to be mad or freaked out about the pigs or pay any attention to their dead carcasses floating up on shore.  Instead, the gawkers are afraid because of what Jesus did to the wild man.  So they ask Jesus to "get the heck out of Dodge."

Isn't that odd?  You would think they would invite Jesus back to town, and start lining up all the other broken people so he could heal them.  That's what happened in other places, on the other side of the lake.  But not here.  What's the difference?  I don't think it has anything to do with Jesus.  I think it has to do with the perspective of the people who are looking at Jesus and trying to decide what they think of him.

I confess this is all conjecture on my part.  The story isn't full enough, or detailed enough, for us to know why the people of Gerasa reacted as they did.  But humor me for a few minutes.

First, ask yourselves, if the people who came to stare didn't like the way Jesus acted--didn't like what Jesus did--then what does that tell you about how they thought he should act?   Why would restoring a madman back to mental wholeness be so threatening and anxiety producing?

If the people had been told that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, the Savior, or even, the Son of God, then our question is even more revealing.  How is a Messiah, a Savior, the Son of God--God in the flesh--supposed to act?  Certainly God is not supposed to disrupt our lives.  Even if that disruption upends our lives to the point of restoring us to total sanity.

We want God involved in our lives, but not too much.  A number of years ago, I tried the on-line dating thing—match.com, christiancafe.com.  Stuff like that.  I would put on my profile that I was a Christian, and that my Christian faith was foundational to who I was as a person.  A number of women responded.  But when they found out I was a minister, wow, was there some fast backpedaling.  Even though the women had written in their profiles that they wanted a faithful, Christian man, evidently they didn’t want someone THAT faithful.

I get the sense that the people of Gerasa maybe wanted an involved Savior.  Just not THAT involved.  They wanted to fashion their Savior as one who gave them their own space, and didn’t demand too much.  The people wanted to know they were cared about by God, but only when they felt they needed God to be caring.  Not all the time.  Not smothering.

In all relationships, there are strategic areas in which a couple needs to find their own balance.  One of those areas is the closeness/distance balance.  You see some couples and they are together all the time.  In fact, where one is, there is the other.  They text each other every 5 minutes or call.  There is just no individual space.  They just can’t stand to be apart.  Other couples you see have entirely separate lives.  It’s like they’re roommates.  They both have a high need for distance.  To feel their own autonomy.  To not lose themselves in the other.

We do the same thing with God.  We want to be in charge of this closeness/distance dynamic.  And most people, whether they admit it or not, whether they see it or not, want to keep God at a safe distance.  They don’t want to be smothered by God.  They don’t want their lives to be meddled in all the time by God.  They don’t want to be defined by their relationship with God—they’d rather be defined by who they are as an individual.  In J.B. Phillips words, they want a "small God."

But in order to do that, you have to create a God who will comply with your wishes.  God can’t be God as God wants or wills to be.  God has to be the way you create God to be for your own individual autonomy and comfortability.

If God doesn’t comply, or want to fit into your design for God, you will find yourself, as the Gerasenes did, sending God away.  If God won’t keep God’s distance, or act like you think God should act, then you will forcibly push God “back across the lake” so-to-speak.

Thus, Jesus, as God, is too disruptive to their status quo life.  Jesus, as God, doesn't allow the people to have God on their terms.  That’s a huge part of our religious false self—creating our own version of God so that we can have as little or as much of God as we want.  The religious false self wants a small, manageable God.


Something else that may be going on may have to do with power.  The first part of the story that was read last week told about how the people had dealt with this wild man.

No one could restrain him—he couldn’t be chained, couldn’t be tied down. He had been tied up many times with chains and ropes, but he broke the chains, snapped the ropes. No one was strong enough to tame him. Night and day he roamed through the graves and the hills, screaming out and slashing himself with sharp stones.

All the peoples attempts to constrain the wild man, or tame him had failed.  All the behavior modification techniques didn’t work.  Probiotics didn’t help him.  Drug therapy was a total failure.  And I’m sure there was an exorcism or two that was attempted, again a failure.  Locking him up in the rubber room or strapping him into a straight jacket didn’t even work.  Everything that was humanly possible was tried on the wild man, and nothing worked.

It appeared even Jesus wasn’t being very successful at first with the mad man.  Jesus had been trying to exorcise the demons, but they resisted.  Jesus took a different tactic of just talking directly to the demons.  Jesus eventually was able to throw the evil spirits into the herd of pigs.

But the point is, Jesus—as God—was able to do what no other god or person was able to do.  Jesus' power called into question human power, as well as the powerlessness of the false gods.  Evidently, no one wants a God around whose ability overpowers any other power.  Something (or SomeOne) that powerful is uncontrollable.  No one wants an uncontrollable God around.  Or a God who shows us up by doing things we tried, but can’t do.  We don’t want a God showing us up.  That’s too tough on our fragile human ego.

And we don’t want a God around who is more powerful than our idols—especially the idols of science, medicine, psychology and technology. All these idols basically try to convince us they are the be-all and end-all of what is possible and what is impossible.  But what about God?  What about God, who can prove a strength bigger and more powerful than our idols?  What does that say about our idols?  We don’t want a God bigger than our idols.  We want a small God who fits in within the confines of our idols.  Our religious false self tries to fit God within the boundaries of our idols.  If God breaks out of those boundaries, we send God away.


Lastly, by healing the wild man, Jesus may have forced the people to look at a deeper and more systemic illness that involved them all.  Here’s how it works.

When I was in seminary, one of the jobs my ex-wife and I had was as houseparents in a residential treatment center called Maryhurst.  It was for delinquent and broken teenaged girls.  Most of the girls were streetwise and angry lawbreakers.  The court system referred most of the girls to Maryhurst.

But there were some girls who were hauled in by their parents.  The parents would drive onto the campus, drop the girls off, say something like, “Fix them, so our family can be happy,” then drive off.

What we found out, the more we dug into the family situations, was that it wasn’t the kids who were sick—it was the whole family.  In family systems theory, the girls were simply what is called “the identified patient.”  That is, the girls were the ones who were being forced to carry the family’s dysfunction and anxiety.  The girls were the blame carriers for marriage issues, family problems and other issues.  Yes, the girls acted out, but it was the whole family that needed to be treated, not the girls.  Fixing the girls wasn’t going to make the family situation better.

In fact, once the girls were taken out of the family situation, one of the other kids started acting out.  The family “needed” in a sick way, someone to blame for all their problems.

Now, let’s transfer that to this situation with the mad man.  What if the whole town was like the sick family.  I’ve lived in a town like that in my first pastorate.  The madman was simply an "identified patient" in a sick town culture.  In a weird sort of way, the town needed someone to blame, needed someone to carry their dysfunction.  So it isn't just the crazy guy who needs to be healed.  It's the whole weird town.

But what happens when the identified patient gets well?  The identified patient becomes the systems distinction about what it means to be healthy or sick.  We can point at the sick person--the identified patient--and say, "At least I'm not like that!"  But what happens when there is no distinction anymore?  Who's the real sick one?

Thus, Jesus wasn't just dealing the death blow to the false self of the wild man; he was at the same time trying to deal the death blow to the false self of the whole sick community.  They, all too clearly, recognized that and asked Jesus to leave, unwilling to let Jesus go so far as to finally kill their communal madness.  Jesus healing the wild man, at the same time, calls into question the madness of the whole community.

The Gerasa community had everything neat and tidy, using God to define that neatness and tidiness.  But Jesus turned all that on its ear.  Jesus was not the kind of God who would allow a sick system to stay sick.  So the community has a decision:  either we allow for a larger God, and allow that God to heal us all; or, we remain in our sickness and keep our small God that will allow us to remain sick.


Here's the thing.  God has to be free to be God as God wills to be God.  If we don't let God to be free, to be God as God sees fit, then we have created a God to act as we think God should act.  And that God is not free.  That God is too small, because that's God by our box size.  Letting God be God as God desires is too scary for most of us.  Because then we lose control.  God may act in a way that we don't think God should act.  God may not heal.  God may not restore.  God may not intervene.  God may not substantiate our own private theology.  God may not come to our every beck and call.  God may do whatever God wants because that's what a large and free God can do.  Are you willing to let God be that large?  If not, you might find yourself asking God to leave your region.