Already. Not Yet.

I could simply rename my blog this, and it would make sense.  If you read back through previous posts, you will discover this is one of the few abstract concepts to which my brain defaults.   The more I understand the Lord and his wisdom, the more I see the world this way.  The more I let him change me from the inside out, the more I am drawn into a life of both/and.  All of the grievous societal sin, even most of the personal sin can be traced to an absence in the understanding that the Kingdom of God is here.  Available.  Now.  If this were preached more...  If this were understood better... If this was genuinely believed... what would our world look like?  I think this is the root cause to the European post Enlightenment exodus from the church.  I see it in the crusades, I see it in slavery, I see it in women's suffrage, and I see it in America on a daily basis.

We do not live a life right with God today in the faint hope to have eternal life later.  No.  We get to love and be loved by our creator today in order to be made whole and restored to His designed goodness now for the sake of ourselves and others.  Ah-mazing.
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One of my family's favorite stories to tell of my grandfather was how he would load them in the car, head to the mountains to look at leaves.  He would take video of the leaves.  The only problem was that this was the 1950's, and he had a Super 8 that only captured black and white.  We have hours of black and white leaves.  Ridiculous.

He was not alone.  My Facebook news feed tells me that this many believe Fall to be their favorite time of  the year, and the beauty of leaves changing colors has a lot to do with it.  We are at a particularly special moment in the fall, and I found myself marveling at the beauty while having an ah-ha moment.

And so, for those of you that are visual learners, our God has not forgotten you.  Behold:  Already, Not Yet.

Soundtrack:  All Creatures of Our God and King, (as performed by David Crowder) St. Francis of Assisi/William Draper.

Hope Floats

A version of me once existed that was grossly optimistic.  I use that term both to mean an overwhelming abundance of optimism and to mean as a disgusting amount of optimism; a cheerleader known for her big bows and energetic facial expressions.  I was far from dark and twisty.  I was bright and shiny.  There were mean girls who made fun of me because of it, which made me a little less bright and shiny.  

But along the way, I continued, no I continue to experience pain and loss and death, some seasons worse than others.  It's foundational to the human condition.  It's the rust, the corrosion, of Sin with a capital s in the world.  I can't hide from it, and neither can you.   

To be clear here, I am grateful for every ounce of dark and twisty that I've encountered in my life.  I carry the scars that the pain from those events caused like badges of honor.  I am a better person for having felt pain.  I am a better Christian because I know loss.    

I know darkness: the depths of darkness.  And I know how when the tide is flipping you upside down, you feel hopeless.   I happened to have a handful of conversations over the last couple of weeks with some people walking through or just having walked through some devastating loss.   And the relationship between pain and hope continues to return to the forefront of my mind.    

In the times that I felt like I may never be me again, I remember having two very distinct thoughts about hope.  OK, they may actually be feelings about hope.  First, I simply feared that I may never feel hope again.  And for a believer, this can be more disorienting than the pain itself: fearing the loss of hope.  Secondly, a much deeper current of assured peace ran through my soul.  I knew hope would return despite my blindness to its presence.  And here I am, today.  My grandmother, who is slowly losing grasp of so much, can't stop saying how happy I am.  She can't see much, but she sees that.  

I am perplexed by how that happened.  But I know how that happened.  

There's that scene in the first Men In Black movie where Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones go to visit one of the aliens, and Tommy Lee Jones shoots the guys head off.   And immediately it grows back.   It's kind of gross, but undeniably interesting.   It really confronts our whole understanding about death.  His head regenerates.  It grows back.  Regeneration: something growing back from seemingly nothingness.  It's simply a term that we don't understand very well.  

That's hope, for the Christian.  

And this is where we have to talk about the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  Even when we think our ability to love, to hope, to feel joy are dead; the Spirit within begins to bubble up.  And He renews us.  He replaces the hopelessness with divine Hope.  It's not something we can work towards.  We have to get out of His way, and be honest about where the death is so he can seed and grow new life again.  But there it is.  Growing.  Regenerated.  New.  Bright and shiny from where dark and twisty used to be.  Amazing.  

This is Gospel, deconstructed: God going to the place of death, and bringing new life.  And He does it every single day.  And He wants to do it for every single person.  Is there anything more beautiful?  

I don't mind being optimistic again because even though I have scars, I've had a front seat view to the love of a pretty awesome God.  

Romans 5:1-5 (NRSV)  - Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

May you be reminded, or experience for the first time, God's love being poured into your heart through the Holy Spirit.  

Soundtrack:  My Hope is in You, Third Day; Behold the Lamb of God, Mylon Lefevre; What Doesn't Kill You (Stronger), Kelly Clarkson 

Swinging Chandelier

The image of Jesus you carry around defines how you perceive Him.  I don't mean the figurative image, I mean the literal one.  The image that you have seen the most, pondered the most, or even just the one that you filed away as, "THIS is how Jesus looks."  Most people carry one of two images around with them.  As a Protestant, I have seen this portrait or one very similar in most church vestibules and more than a few homes.  He is stoic and composed.  He is regal and reserved.  Very "WASP"y.  He has blue eyes.  He looks like "us" so we can believe our assumption that Jesus thought like we do is true.  He is the Jesus that we have watered down to represent a God that is all knowing and all powerful, but ultimately disinterested in our day to day lives. 

Then there are the people that primarily think about Jesus on the cross.  He sacrificed his life for our sake.  We owe Him everything.  I think this image has a lot to do with the phenomena that people call "Catholic guilt."  He is tortured.  It's hard to relate to this Jesus.  I mean, really, what do you have in common with the guy who takes on the sin of all the world, is beaten within an inch of his life, and defeats Satan in Hell?  He is smack dab in the middle of an experience that no one else can ever share.  

My sister-in-law particularly likes this picture of Jesus.  It's called "Jesus Laughing."  She is a pastor, and she has a particularly intimate relationship with the Lord.  Once you know Him as friend, you revel in seeing him in the same way that you experience Him; loving, free and joyful.   This Jesus represents the person of Christ that  hung out with his friends.  He went fishing and made jokes.  He loved his mother, and he spent hours in the workshop with his dad.  He planned dinners for his followers.  He wants to hear about the mysteries and joys of life.  He lived a big life, and he loved every moment of it.  

When Ricky Bobby's wife in Talladega Nights explains that it is off putting that he always prays to baby Jesus, Ricky tells her that she can pray to  "grown up Jesus, teenage Jesus or bearded Jesus."  He would continue to pray to baby Jesus because Christmas Jesus is his favorite Jesus.   He goes on, "Dear eight pound, six ounce, new-born infant Jesus; don't even know a word yet.  We just thank you for all the races I've won and the 21.2 million dollars.  Woo."  

This movie moment speaks more to the American perception of Jesus than most church goers would like to admit.  We don't want to deal with a grown up Jesus.    We want to keep him sweet, angelic, peaceful, and ultimately controllable.   We want to be able to have the security of an afterlife and yet continue to live as we see fit in this one.  This mindset is why Buddy Jesus became such a big deal when it came out.  We collectively acknowledged that we have reduced Jesus down to a plastic figurine.  We no longer want someone to whom we can relate.  We want him sitting on a shelf like a trinket- a memory of something we once valued but for which we no longer have use.    

When I was younger they didn't have Children's church or coloring pages on the back of the bulletin.  So we just sat in the pews with our families.  It's why I could say the Apostle's Creed in my sleep, and I know the lyrics to most hymns in the UMC hymnal.  I vividly remember sitting in Sunday morning services at Conyers FUMC.   I had a fantasy of what I would do if I was a master gymnast and the physics of it would work.  I would jump from the balcony and catch the enormous chandelier.  I would swing a few times and then drop perfectly to the space in front of the altar.  The gymnastic fantasy would end with me doing back-handsprings all the way across the front.  Later, in my adult life, I discovered that most of my friends were thinking about something similar at the same time.  When I wasn't inside my imagination, I  also spent a good amount of time staring at the stained glass window above the choir loft.  The image is a modified version of this picture of Jesus in Garden of Gethsemane.  He is hopeful, devoted, tortured, burdened, but peaceful.  He is actively seeking the Father, but resigned to the steps ahead.  He knows what must be done, and he hates it, but he is clearly prepared to go to the cross.  

I realized this Sunday that when I sing "In the Garden," and when I pray... this is the Jesus that I see in my mind's eye most often.  He's legit.  He's the real deal Jesus.  This dude gets it.  He's got power, but he's also so human in this moment.  I always feel assured that the Lord knows the depths of human suffering and can empathize with the burdens I bring to Him.  I can expect that the faint smell of wine would be on his breath, and he has the residual peace one has after having been to a dinner party with the people that you love.  This Jesus is fully God.  He's preparing for something beyond what any of us can imagine, but he's also one of us.  

Let's be honest.  Jesus is a complex living person with many facets still unknown by us.  There is some truth to each of these perceptions, and there are significant limitations to boxing him into just one of them.  May you continue to encounter the living Jesus who is looking for a way to reveal Himself to you. 

*Note - throughout this blog entry the word "we" is used often to reflect a general societal collective "we", not necessarily a specific "we" or even a church "we." 

Soundtrack: Picture of Jesus, Ben Harper; In the Garden

Creative Grace

Recently I had occasion to state that I believe the ability to reason and create are the two things that separate us from the animals and thus reflect the imago dei.  We should regularly engage in both.  It's something I've thought for a long time.  And I've been processing this idea since declaring it to this person.

A related thought, but not in a necessarily obvious way, I also often think about the wide range of Christians/denominations and, therefore, Christian beliefs that presently coexist.  I'm particularly interested in just how many ways we understand the same truth and how we find so very many ways to disagree with one another.  I choose to believe that most of it is simply a reflection of how great, complex, and deep the Father's heart really is.  I think we; in our temporal, limited abilities to comprehend His awesome and completeness,  must focus on what we are able to see.  Like standing an inch away from anything that could be considered overwhelming.  A man at the base of the Niagara Falls may describe it as white.  A woman tipping over the peak may call it high.  I would argue, they are both right.  I think most theological debates could be answered with the simple answer - yes.  Both/And.

We Christians debate the significance of grace and justice like it's either/or.  And, even when it isn't being debated... you hear it in the way people talk about God and how they behave toward one another and how they think about themselves.  We become preoccupied with that which is in front of us.  I believe we naturally gravitate toward one or the other, and that some people are haunted by both.  I freely admit I may believe this because I am one of these people who can't ignore either.

Driving home today, listening to a story about the potential stay of execution for Warren Hill, I associated these two meta questions in a way that will never disassociate again in my heart.

In my own life I see a pattern and a relationship between them.  As a younger woman I lived in an academic world that prioritized reason and thinking and logic.  I excelled in these areas, and remember thinking in a very black and white terms of justice.  I remember being so grateful that Jesus took my place on the cross.  My sin deserved punishment, and I understood that.  Inwardly I needed to organize my thoughts on guilt and consequence around the basic tenants of justice.  Outwardly, I was judgmental and legalistic.   As an adult, I look back on those days and I am thankful for the protective cushion my legalism created in my own life.  I avoided countless mistakes because of my strict understanding of right and wrong.

As I grew older, I realized that I both have a natural inclination and deep interest in the creative process and creating things myself.  And not surprisingly, my understanding of grace and disdain for the pride that lingered around my sense of justice have grown as I have given myself room and permission to explore my creative side.

Are these related?  I think so.

Do creative people understand grace in a way that logicians never will?  Are the free spirited cursed to never recognize absolute truth?

Regardless, all of this brings once again to the forefront the mysterious nature of the One I adore.  And for that, I am blessed.  The joy of worshiping a God so big, so good; so interesting can overwhelm in the best way possible.

I leave with the words of Karl Barth  - We are forbidden to take sin more seriously than grace, or even as seriously as grace.

If this great thinker can find satisfaction in the tension between grace and justice, may you too find a way to value both equally.

Soundtrack - Amazing Grace (um, duh); We Will all be Changed, Seryn