Spilled Wine

The last 12 days have been a whirlwind for me.  It was one of those vacations you always dream about.

Wendy’s dad and step mom live on the island of Trinidad (off the coast of Venezuela) and, for Christmas, sent us a trip to come see them.  It was a week on a tropical island.

It was warm beaches, tree covered mountains, waving palm trees, exotic birds, crawling crabs, interesting food and good times with family.  It was really, everything you could want in a vacation.

So why did I come back to Hillsboro?

The accommodations were as nice as my home.  The food was fantastic.  The company was great.

After our trip to Trinidad, my family came back and I went to Michigan on a quick business meeting.  Flying back I thought a lot about why I was coming back.  The reason is simple

Home.

Home is where I belong.  I came in, made coffee and sat on the back porch with Wendy.  My children came and we talked.  I sat in my own chairs, smelled my own kitchen, laid down on my own bed.  It was where I belong.

Then Wendy reminded me, “It is Tuesday night, are we going to go to Share Group, or would you rather stay home?”  I didn’t even give it a thought, “Let’s go.”  A couple hours later, we were sitting around a room with our Share Group—laughing, telling stories, drinking coffee.  I realized again, the reason I came back.

Home.

I am so excited about the new emphasis and push we are putting on Share Groups at Singing Hills.  I can’t wait to expose a whole new group of people to what I felt when I came back from vacation.

Home.

Have you noticed we have names for people we don’t like?

“They are just white trash.”  “Those liberals!”  “Those rag-heads are all out to get America.”  “Neo-cons just don’t care about anyone.”  “He is an Uncle Tom.”  “He is just hanging out with the brothers.”  “Dumb cracker.”  They are just a bunch of hay seeds.”

Religiously we have some of the same quick labels.  “Liberal,” “Once-Saved-Always Saved,” “Post-modern,” “Traditional,” “Sinners.”  We say them with all the same vigor that people talk about their hated neighbors.

In Jesus’ day, the Jews would point at a Gentile, make a face and spit out the word, “Dog.”  A racial slur.  A separation.  An ugly divide.  It said, “You are different from us, we are children, you are dogs.

It is hard to imagine any greater divide than the one between humanity and God.

God created us to be sons and daughters, but we told Him we didn’t want to be those children.  So we did everything we could think of to separate ourselves from the God who created us.  We became we and He.  We were separate.

Unwilling to abide our division, God became a man and dwelt among us as Emmanuel, God with us.  And through Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection He was one of us.  He came to show us there is no we and He.

Jesus came to erase the division between people and God.  When Jesus erased the line between us and God, He erased the lines between people as well.  With His life, He said, “We are all in this together.” He erased the lines—all of them.

For Jesus, there are no children and dogs.  That is why when we look at Mark 7:24ff we are so perplexed.  Jesus says to the Syrophoenician woman who is asking for His help, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

Some people make a big deal out of Jesus using a little kinder word for dog–a little dog.  It is like saying, “You are such a nice little n*****.”  It is still demeaning.  It is still offensive.  It is still a slur.  It is still us and them.

The woman makes a clever response, then Jesus says, “Because of your answer…” and heals her daughter.

The standard interpretation for this passage says the woman’s clever answer turns aside Jesus’ decision not to help her.  It is not satisfying to me.

Something else has to be happening here.  Jesus did not divide people into “Children” and “Dogs” so however we interpret this passage, it must be consistent with who Jesus is.

Pondering….

….and here is what happend with it – Children and Dogs.

I am a creative person.  I love to write.

There is something, however, about sitting down on a Monday and saying, “Ok, now I am going to write,” that makes the blank screen scream jokes at me.

I’ll fix it.  I just closed the app and am going to read for a while.  Take that, MS Word.

When Jesus told His disciples that people were not defiled by the things which enter from the outside, but from what proceeds from the inside, He shook the foundations of religion.

Religion is all about making rules and getting people to follow them.  Jesus didn’t care about the rules.  He cared about people.

My sermon went well, today.  A funny side note, people were stunned that I said “Sperm” in a sermon.  Made me laugh.

Take a listen, and feedback what you think!

Stating the Obvious

Recently we moved.  We made a trek from Oklahoma to Oregon.  We left behind family and really dear friends for a land and people to whom God was calling.  Everyone asks, “Do you like it here?”

Our answer is always, “Yes.”  We really do.  But deep down inside, I wish it were yesterday.

I wish it were yesterday when everything was perfect.  When all of my friends laughed.  When everyone at church was happy.  When the skies were all blue.  When the grass was all green.  When the house always smelled like fresh bread.  When the bathroom smelled of blooming roses.

I wish it were yesterday.

I hear that all the time.  Our church longs for yesterday, when everything was perfect.  When we felt like family.  When all of the coffee was Folgers.  When everyone beat down our doors to study the Bible.  When every single person sang in worship.  When we had preachers that were at every crisis.  When we spent all our time praying for each other.  When no one complained.  When the bathrooms smelled of blooming roses.

I wish it were yesterday.

It is not yesterday.  It is today.

Today, our church is filled with people whose schedules are crammed with stuff.  Today, I wrestle with vampires that want to suck the life out of me.  Today, our church struggles with closeness.  Today, I have to work to keep my family close.  Today, our church is fighting to keep moving forward.  Today, I am trying to live up to the pastors of yesterday, and I don’t measure up well.

Today, the bathrooms smell like…well…bathrooms.

I wish it were yesterday.

But yesterday, I wished it was yesterday.  The day before, I wished it was yesterday.  The day before that….

Maybe yesterday doesn’t exist.  At least it doesn’t exist like we think it does.  Maybe it wasn’t perfect.  Perhaps yesterday, when it was yesterday, was like today, but we have forgotten what it was like because we prefer to remember it as better than it really was.

Maybe yesterday the bathrooms smelled like bathrooms.

I wonder what would happen if we saw the string of yesterdays as a reassuring touch from God saying, “I was there.”  I wonder what would happen if when we stood in today and thought about yesterdays we heard God say, “I am here too.”

I wonder if we would see today in a different light, and maybe we would relax because we know God is taking us somewhere and both yesterday (the real one) and today are steps along the way.

Growing up, I remember seeing clergy in their robes and collars.  Black shirts with the clerical collar made them look different than the rest of us.  It wasn’t just their clothing.

It almost seemed like they carried themselves differently.  They spoke softer.  They walked smoother.  When they walked into a room, everyone sort of bowed their heads.  They were just different.

Years later, I am in the vocational ministry.  I understand a bit of the professional spirituality these men practiced.  It is the quality that gets you an invitation to pray at someone’s family reunion.  It is the quality that makes people stop telling a really good joke when you enter the room.  There is something about the collar that makes people think differently about you.  Even if you don’t have the collar.

Professional spirituality is surface deep.  It doesn’t necessarily go any deeper than the black outfit.  Christians are sometimes expected to maintain this same kind of observable spirituality amongst non-believers.  It is where we get all our rules.  Do this.  Don’t do that.  Say this.  Don’t say that.  Look pious.

But it is not those rules that make us spiritual.  In fact, it is not what we do or how we act that makes us spiritual.  It is who we are.

That is the point Jesus is making in Mark 7 when He says it is not what enters a man that defiles him, but what comes out.  It is not following all the external rules that makes a spiritual man, it is what is inside him.  It is who he is.

If the who we are is right, the what we do will take care of itself.  It doesn’t’ work the other way around.  We can all behave ourselves.  We can all follow the rules if we need to.  But it doesn’t make us spiritual.  We don’t get someone who is really a follower of Jesus.

All we really get is professional spirituality.

Tonight at our small group, we were talking about what it means to be God’s ambassadors.

It occurs to me…one of the most important parts of being an ambassador is knowing both the one who sent you and the one to whom you go.  If you represent the United States, you approach North Korea differently than the United Kingdom.

When you go to North Korea, you go ready to play hard ball.  The negotiations are stressful and you know, in the end, you are mostly trying to avert disaster.

If you are headed to the UK, you take a different approach.  The UK and the US are on the same side.  The US genuinely wants to help its ally.

The tone is completely different.  If you mis-identify the relationship, it matters.

Too often, the Church has taken the role of ambassador representing God to an enemy.  We have come arguing, fighting and threatening war.

What if we mis-identified the relationship?

What if our job is not to come as to an enemy, but to a friend?  What if our job is to represent God to the ones for whom He sent His Son to die?  What if the One who sent us wants us to communicate the message that He would rather die than see us perish?

Does it change things?  I think it changes everything.

Friends are hard to come by.

Tonight we had Keith and Kathy Ham over for dinner.  They are missionaries our church supports.

I met them when I went to Africa in February.  Though the time in February was brief, and our time tonight, obviously, even more brief, we are friends.

Friendship develops over time, but time is not only ticks on a clock.  Time is also experiences.  Keith was someone who came along side me at a time when life was really tough for me.  He was a friend to me.  In a moment, he became my friend.

We will never be buddies.  We live too far apart.  We are, however, friends.  I am deeply grateful for Keith and Kathy’s friendship and for their kind visit this evening.

Everyone who knows me knows how much I love technology.  I am a devoted Apple fan as well as Microsoft.  (I know it sounds wrong, but these two companies have given us so much, I can’t help it.)

Every year Forbes publishes a list of the world’s richest people.  Bill Gates was at the top of that list for years.  This year he was second.  Some oil guy in Mexico beat him out.

What happened?

Simple.  A decade ago, Bill Gates decided he was going to give away all of his money and he is doing it.

His fortune has dropped to 50 some billion dollars because he has given away $28 Billion to help the needy.  He is spending his money to try to chase down a vaccine for one of the world’s greatest diseases–malaria.  Until the vaccine is found, he is using his money to help fight the disease among the poorest among us.

At 55, Bill Gates has made more money than I will ever know or see or even understand–in fact, he has given away more than I will ever understand.

His generosity has made him the world’s second richest man by Forbes standards.  I say he is richer.

I don’t know whether he is a follower of Jesus or not, but He is doing the work of the Kingdom.  Thanks, Bill.

You should read this inspiring interview…

What is up with this blog?  The server is hit and miss and most of the time is very, very, very slow.

I called GoDaddy and they said there was a server issue.  I wrote to them later to tell them it was still messed up and they wrote and told me it is all my fault and not theirs.  So I called, and they said, “no, no, it is a server issue.”  Then later, I called and they had me shut everything down on the site and see if it worked.  It didn’t.  I called back, they said, “I don’t know why they had you do this, we have a known issue on this server.”

Bottom line, GoDaddy.com has no idea what is going on and neither do I.  I am going to give it a few more days and then look for another host.

I know, I know, GoDaddy is evil and Bob kills elephants….but I’ve used them forever (since before I knew either) and generally like them.  This is trying my patience, though.