The Ugly Beautiful Garden

Where Did the Good News Go?!

The gospel passage for Mark in this week's lectionary is Chapter 6:14-29(but while you are there click the bottom link to continue on to verse 30 and read it as well...they should have included it in my opinion) http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=114168926

Nice gloomy passage huh?  Where is the good news in that you may ask.  At least that is what I ask, since I believe in preaching the good news on Sunday. 

I think the hint is in verse 30.  Then go back and read the six verses preceding this week's passage.  Does that help you find good news? 

Maybe the good news is that I found it there and you can come on Sunday and hear the good news.  Or in the words of Reggie McNeal, watch "Jason work out!"  Or in this case...Joel.

From Spectator to Active Participator

**NOTE.  This post had been up then I added to it before I accidentally deleted it!  This is a different version of the original.

Here is the skinny.  Last week I preached from Mark 6 when Jesus sends out the 12.  I of course hit on how the church is never intentioned to be a static organization existing for its own self.  Instead Jesus' strategy is to equip and train disciples to send them out like missionaries proclaiming the Kingdom, healing the sick and casting out the demonic or( as blogger Kelly Kanwischer suggests) witnessing to the character and substance of God (and I would add Kingdom of God). 

So here is a quote from Erwin McManus (a pastor of Mosaic church in LA) I found thanks to Kanwischer. 

What is happening across the world and here at home is that there is an army of cross cultural missionaries who have become the new leaders of the church. Their calling isn’t to pastor churches that focus on the happiness of its members, but to mobilize the church for the purpose of fulfilling God’s mission of reconciling the world to himself. We used to send our missionaries out and it kept the mission a safe distance from us. Some how they broke back in and decided they were not going without us.

At Mosaic we have no members only missionaries. There is nothing to join except a community on mission. We have little patience for self indulgent spirituality that insists on everything being about us.

And there are implications. We have a zero tolerance policy for religious jargon or Christianese. We have little room for traditions that mean something to us but nothing to a person searching for God. We will not forsake the Word of God for the traditions of men. We are committed to removing every non-essential barrier between God and humanity. We refuse to allow the Gospel to become lost in our nostalgia or to appear irrelevant because we are.

And I must confess we are less concerned about whether mainstream Christians get us than about whether those searching for God get Him.

And if this makes us the bane of the church than so be it. Paul said he would be accursed if only Israel would be saved. If he was willing to take on hell for eternity, we can take a little heat from the watch dogs of Christian orthodoxy.

Cool is it not?  Identifying ourselves not as member but rather as missionaries.  Making little space for any traditions that mean so much to us but very little if anything to those searching for God.  What do you imagine your community or our community if we began to see ourselves not as members but as missionaries?  What would that look like to you?  And what traditions do we cling to that mean nothing to the person searching for God?  Can you imagine what we might look and feel like if we sought to act, worship, serve and be in ways that communicate the character and substance to those searching for God.  What would Sunday morning look and feel like?  Any thoughts?

A Little Rehabilitation

A member came up to my wife following worship.  Very excitedly, she told Juli, given the sermon and theme of worship, she wanted to recommend to Mariners (older adult couples group in the church) that they use the money they raised in a church-wide auction to help rehabilitate a friend of the church's house.  We thought, yes!  The group decided to spend most the money on rehabilitating this man's house.  He is a man who has had health issues and surgery as a result.  He has also gotten in legal trouble.  One might say he got himself into the situation.  One might think he has lived his life such that he can sleep in the bed he made.  Many people love the guy and his big heart.  In our town some sneer a bit at him because he owns a bar.  Sounds like a guy Jesus would hang out with, right?

So anyhow, I just spent the morning scraping paint and caulking windows and getting them ready to prime.  Many others have been hard at work the past two weeks doing what we can to help our friend, our neighbor's house.  I think it is beautiful.  Nothing glamorous about it but it is beautiful.  The house will look better and last longer.  But I guess the biggest point of the whole thing, is that God stirred one woman's imagination.  She shared that vision or imagination and it sparked the imagination of the group.  Now people are actively doing kingdom work outside of the church.  It is the church hearing and sensing the Spirit and then being obedient.  I am just thrilled.  It is cool to witness God bring life to the scattered seed and the seedling emerge.  The Kingdom of God is near.   

Seeds!

I am back on the lectionary...for now.  Here is the Mark passage link...http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=111752647

The kingdom of God is a phrase I never really paid much attention to until seminary.  In fact I took a class titled Jesus and the Kingdom of God.  Our professor Vic showed us some great things.  Two I will always remember.  The first is that the kingdom is not a place.  Instead the kingdom is God's authority or rule.   Second the rule is God's.  It belongs to God not us.  Therefore, how can we build the kingdom?  The answer is we can't.  God can, does and will. 

In the first parable we see this point made very well.  The kingdom of God is as if a man went and scattered some seed.  He sleeps and rises and sure enough the seed sprouts, grows and bears fruit.  It had nothing to do with that man.  We can't make a seed grow once its in the ground.  Farmers spray pesticides and fertilizers and such.  Gardeners prepare the soil, tilling it and adding what it needs.  Both water it if they can.  But whether it comes up is beyond us.  Unfortunately in our part of the country farmers are all too well aware of this.  I heard someone say today, "This is our third seeding and it still is not coming up."  We have had too much rain.  It is raining right now.  So what is our responsibility in the God and human relationship?  Would Jesus say just sit back and let the kingdom grow?  Would he say don't worry about reading the scriptures because God will grow you as God grows you?  Is ours the role of passive spectator? 

The second parable talks about the mustard seed.  The mustard seed?  I think that is the question people hearing this would ask.  Why a mustard seed?  Its a weed.  It is not a great tree.  Why not one of those great cedar trees of Lebanon?  Maybe its ordinary.  Maybe its not the highest pedigree.  Maybe its small, common and unassuming, but in it lays the capability to grow into a something big where the birds of the air might rest?   The kingdom emerges out of nothing spectacular and that which the world understands as powerful.  It happens in the most unlikely place and through the most unlikely people and through the most unlikely manner. 

We today look to the great big movements.  We look and compare ourselves to the mega church folks.  We lift up the most "successful" pastors (you know who they are).  We are tempted to borrow their strategies, programs and stuff.  I wonder, and would even say am certain that is the wrong road.  What in your church is a mustard seed or plant?  Maybe there in the ordinary, unspectacular place is where the kingdom of God is emerging.  

My First Shack Thoughts

I first heard about The Shack just about a year ago and heard you just need to read it.  I did not read it.  Then some folks in the congregation began speaking about the Shack and expressed how much they enjoyed reading it.  Of course they encouraged me to read it.  I did not read it.  Then some of those folks decided to get together and talk about it after our regular Sunday school stops.   That is when I got excited.  It excites me when people imagine together and then do it.  So I am reading the book. 

Let me make a bit of a note.  I don't care if you hate the book and think Satan wrote it.  If you do post on someone else site who hates the book.  I have not made my opinion yet.  What I am intending is to lift out some points that stick with me.  If you want to comment on that please do so. 

So at the end of chapter 4 on page 68 of my book, it reads"

"He realized he was stuck, and Sunday prayers and hymns weren't cutting it anymore, if they ever really had.  Cloistered spirituality seemed to change nothing in the lives of people he knew, except maybe Nan (his wife).  But she was special.  God might really love her.  She wasn't a screwup like him.  He was sick of God and God's religion, sick of all the little religious social clubs that didn't seem to make any real difference or effect any real changes."

So here I am reading this and I think, yeah me too!  I am not sick of God.  I am sick of all the stuff that gets attached with  God in the United States.  For example pop Christian music that all sounds the same and talks about how in love with Jesus we ought to be.  And Christian radio that is more full of rhetoric than intelligence.  And Christian bookstore Christianity where you can purchase all these cool accessories for being a Christian including breath mints for the Christian.  I am sick of religion.  It does not work yet we keep on trying.  I mean I create the services this guy Mack is talking about.  I write ( or cut and paste) those prayers for people to say.  I choose the hymns.  Some days I too wonder if they really speak to the deeper realities of our life.  Yet what I hear, and I admit I have my lens, is that when we just simply think faith is something we do when we gather on Sunday morning, then it is impotent to speak to our deeper human life.   If it does not include a growing, authentic community where you are known and know more and more, then it will not work.  If church is just about providing spiritual goods and services then forget it.  If church is just what you do or don't do on Sunday and not a living organism of which you are part of and connected within then its toast.  If church remains a people who are not being transformed by the narrative of God in scripture  and therefore biblical Christ-likeness, then it is not a church.  If church remains a cloistered, social club that has nothing to do with God's ongoing mission of healing and reconciliation in the world then it will not speak to our own deep human-ness.  I think the author Wm. Paul Young is on to something and is speaking a strong, present voice in our American culture.  Church and the faith of the followers of Christ will be irrelevant, powerless, unbiblical, un-Reformed, unnecessary and disobedient if remains cloistered. 

So far I like it.  Remember, (and I don't even know who reads this)  if you are going to write something stay within the present dialog and keep your Shack hammers in your tool belt.  Oh and peace be with you.

So I Send You...and Do Not Think Its on Your Piety and Power!

I am reading John 20:19-31 for the lectionary, gospel passage for Sunday.  In this passage the resurrected Jesus shows up in the room where his disciples are gathered and maybe hiding out.  Jesus says "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you."   When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit."  For me its a fat, fastball waist high and just a enough inside.  I have to swing. 

Jesus having been resurrected sends the disciples out empowered by the Spirit to be a people of forgiveness. 

Then in Acts 3, which is not the lectionary passage, but precedes it and gives it proper context, we have this story of Peter and John healing the lame man at the Beautiful Gate.  And afterward when the Israelites are amazed and astonished at this healed man Peter speaks up, saying...

  "You Israelites, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?  13 The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him.  14 But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you,  15 and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses.  16 And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you.

Don't think its because of our piety or power!  It is the Spirit.  The Spirit Jesus breathes on them.  The Spirit of Pentecost that blew through the people (Acts 2)  Spirit empowered, Spirit led mission grounded in the life, death and resurrection in Jesus Christ is what is necessary.  Of course you might say.  But even as I prepare for Session (leadership team) tonight, do I trust the leading and power of the Spirit?  How do I cultivate as a pastor the garden for discerning the Spirit? 

Well first of all the place is not where we gather.  They are out there in there everyday going about when they encounter this man.  They give him Jesus.  I would say John 20 is a missional passage, at least its one of the go to passages for missional justification.  God sends us.  Got it.  Acts 3 is a missional encounter and engagement.  I meet many people who are lame in different ways.  I don't believe that if I were to say to them, what I have to give you I give in the name of Jesus Christ, get up and walk and that that the man would be totally healed.  And for those who I have said such things, there have been a few and they did not walk I continue in faith.  What do we have to give in Jesus name?  John 20 tells us we are to give forgiveness.  We are to forgive others.  Go and forgive.  How are you doing on that one? 

Easter is not about gathering in a room.  Its not simply a Sunday in Spring.  Its about going.  Its about going out to be a force of forgiveness.  The world needs that right?  Jesus thought so.  What if we ask the Spirit to show us  those in our going about who need forgiveness?  Are they in our neighborhood, our house, our workplace, our school or sitting in the pew next to us on Sunday?  Why don't we ask the Spirit to show us where we still need forgiveness?  Easter in us and use us to easter in others. 

An Interesting Thought From our Leadership Retreat

Allen manages and leads within a local agricultural business.  He stated in our Elder retreat, (or leadership team) he has discovered younger people whom they hire are entering the job market with a different mindset.  “Younger people want the freedom to do what they want.”  They don’t want to do what we want them to do.  Maybe more appropriately they don’t want to do something to maintain an institution or organization to which they are not loyal, hold suspiciously and have no ownership.  Instead they want to do what is on their heart and in their imagination.  How do we allow for the younger members of our congregation who did not grow up with us to do what they want to do within the current organizational structure?  Or maybe how do we cultivate their imaginations around the Kingdom or what God is up to in our community/neighborhood rather than in our church?  In Allen’s business organization, they have adapted.  Rather than giving interviewees the job description they want them to do, they ask those being interviewed to discuss how they will impact the organization, what will they bring and given their abilities what do they want to do.  Once hired they have a stake and legitimate say in what they want to do.  In other words instead of giving them a job description, they ask them to write one.  Instead of telling new members what we expect of members and our description of appropriate member behavior could we ask them to write their own descriptions?  Could we immediately begin to stir and cultivate their imagination around God’s activity and call? 

Cultivating Missional Life is Like My Ugly Garden

I changed my blog title.   I think I may change its purpose.  It maybe  my  last ditch effort to blog a bit more regularly.  I even made it ugly looking to resemble my garden. 

Here is why I am calling my blog the Ugly Garden.  My executive Presbyter called me the other day.  He wanted to talk with me because he had heard of a church in my area growing their youth group from 4 to 22!  Well he thought that must have been me.  Nice ego stroke.  I told him no, not us.  Then I thought I would tell him about how God is at work amongst us and likened it to the garden.  I told him all the great ways we are cultivating our soil.  When I paused, he said these words, "Well I don't want to keep you."  And the phone call ended.  No fruit, no time.  He called searching for measurable results not to hear about my ugly garden!

Here is what I submit.  Leading a church towards a missional future is like my ugly garden.  Last fall I had a friend who does yard work, drop off two truck loads of leaves on top of my garden.  I then piled on the sand from my failed sandbox that succeeded as a cat liter box.  I worked the sand and leaves into my garden with my old, handed down in love roto-tiller that it took me several days to get working.  I only got it working after I cleaned it out and rebuilt parts of it.  Then my garden just sat there all winter.  I could not see the leaves decomposing.  I could not see the worms feasting away.  I could not see the rain cleaning stuff out.  But I trusted I had done a good job cultivating my soil so that it will grow good stuff in the summer.

Once spring came, I put some old dirt I have been slow composting for two years in my new expansion row where I intend to grow tomatoes this year.  I then forked two rows to open them up and added some new topsoil mixed with peat moss to form two early beds.  My neighbor then brought over his roto-tiller and worked the other two-fifths of my garden.  I shaped the beds just the way I planned them earlier this spring.  I planted potatoes on the right day.  I planted my onion sets.  I even have carrots, lettuce, spinach, beets and radishes planted.  Then it rained the next day and everything is great!  It still is an ugly garden though when you look at it from the outside.  One might think I have not been hard at work.

Of course this is where the ugly garden metaphor breaks all down.  My church is full of beautiful people who love Jesus and have hearts for his mission in the world.  It is when we impose our lens upon church whatever it is,  our view is distorted and obstructed.  If you are a measurable results person who needs to see the fruit then you don't see and lift up my ugly garden.  If you are a horizon missional church thinker and have these really well formed and pure visions of what missional church ought to be, then you drive my house and think man that is an ugly garden.  People want the produce section of Whole Foods (add you local organic, healthy grocery store).  Right.  There you find piled meticulously and creatively high gorgeous vegetables that have been grown by the latest in organic farming.  Can you see the orange and red peppers shining like a shrine?  Can you see the red tomatoes and the cucumbers in all their splendor?  Why an ugly garden when you can get vegetables in such a produce section? Shoot, even at our local Walmart, they have all the vegetables you could ever ask for, why an ugly garden? 

Hear is what I know to be true about missional church.  Missional church takes patience because it takes time to transform culture formed over many, many years.  Missional church requires cultivating the soil with scripture, prayer, discernment and a whole lot relationship building through listening.  The fruit comes when the fruit is ready.  Missional church is like my ugly garden in that I believe all my work and effort is going to lead to some great tasting tomatoes, awesome fresh out of the ground potatoes, and right of the vine squash, beans, and peas.  In Missional church a lot of things fail like in my garden.  My squash plants get eaten by vine borers and die.  My tomatoe plants get eaten by deer.  My plants get mold.  Some seed never germinate.  Weeds grow faster than most vegetable plants.  But I water, I weed, I fertilize and make my own compost to fertilize.  I mulch, pick off bugs, put up a fence and much more.  Missional church takes hard work and you are not always able to manage and control the future outcome.  But I love gardening.  Some days I don't want to do it. Some days I think I have no clue what I am doing. Then there are days I  think I am way to obsessed with it.  I love learning from my neighbors who have been gardening for 80 years.  I love reading books and blogs on gardening.  In it all I discover  God.  I discover the Kingdom.  I discover the deep power of life with God.  Ugly as it may be (at times and seasons) it is what I do.  I don't need some executive Presbytr to be excited about our growth.  I hope and trust my efforts to lead people towards being God' s sent people into the world as witness to his redemptive rule and reign are pleasing to God.  God loves my ugly garden and so do I.

Stirring Our Imagination

Alan Roxburgh is a mentor of missional leaders and church.  He often in many venues, talks about cultivating missional imagination within a community.  Of course behind this statement is his belief that the future of any church is already present within the people who are that church.  I think Jesus was a cultivator of missional imagination.  At least he seems to be here in the lectionary passage from Mark for this week.  http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=101994614

Okay so you read it (hopefully) and maybe you are thinking okay what is he talking about missional imagination.  They are coming down from the mountain from what sounds like a really weird event.  Jesus is talking to Moses and Elijah (who is he right? )  or two folks from the Old Testament.  Then Jesus turns bright white or he transfigures as we like to say.   A cloud then envelopes them and a voice from within says, this is my son, the beloved, listen to him.  Weird right?  Then the cloud vanishes along with Moses, Elijah and the brightness of Jesus.  All that is left is Jesus.  What is the deal.  I mean seriously if this were to happen to me I wouldn't tell a soul.  If something like this happened, I may even try to explain it away.  I may even think someone put something into my drink.  It is weird.  But enough on that.  Jesus is on the way back down with the disciples who went with him and he says don't tell anyone about this weirdness until the Son of man has risen from the dead.  More weirdness.  Then they began wondering what did he mean by the rising of the dead. 

As I have read Mark I see him in many places, telling of an action of Jesus where there is a response of people immediately following.  Jesus casts out a demon, the people were amazed.  Jesus heals a woman from fever and she gets up and serve.  Jesus cleanses a leper and he goes and tells everyone.  (All from Chapter 1)  Now you have Jesus transfigured and tell the boys not to tell anyone until after the Son of Man is raised from the dead.  Their response is to question what he means by rising from the dead.  He stirs their missional imagination.  He does not explain the funky mountain top event.  He does not explain rising from the dead.  He lets them imagine.  Maybe he wants them to imagine.  When Jesus uses parables, it seems he wants the hearer to be engaged and to enter deeper into what is happening.  Jesus wants us to think and does not seem to have a problem with our questioning.  Maybe we in the Western world like neat and clean answers a bit much. 

How could a church help raise questioning and imagination within its people?  How can we get folks to think?  To dream?  To imagine life together as God intends it?  To wonder what Jesus meant by that?  Is the sermon the best way?  How could a sermon get a person to question, to ponder the deeper meaning? 

I really do believe my questions are what lead me deeper into life.  And if those questions are about God, they lead me deeper into life with God.  Maybe by stimulating questions, Jesus gets us to wonder, pursue and seek what God is doing in our midst?  Maybe this how we are formed and discover deeper faith.  Like many people have asked me, why does Jesus keep on telling people to keep a lid on things he is doing?  Maybe we could question that on Sunday. 

Let's Keep it Clean

I think I will be focusing mainly on Mark 1:40-45, click the link to read...http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=101554885

A leper comes to Jesus.  One outcast by God's own ordering through the law.  Read through Levitcus 13-14 for more detail.  Lepers were kept outside of town.  They had to wear dirty cloths, and cover the lower part of their face.  So that people would stay away they had to yell, "unclean, unclean!"  Their sickness marginalized them.  Leprosy steals away one's name, traded in for leper.  It takes occupation, family, friends, and worship in community.  I also read, they were referred to as "walking dead."  So the leper comes to Jesus.

And Jesus cleanses him.  Notice that he does not heal.  He cleanses.  Lepers are unclean.  Jesus touches what is unclean and his touch cleanses the person.  He has the leper go to he priest have the priest declare him clean.  Why?  Does Jesus want notoriety?  It's the opposite really.  Jesus tells him to keep quiet.  He sends him to the priest because that is how he will be fully restored to the community.  When that happens, he has a name, he becomes a person again and participate in the communal life. 

Notice at the end.  Jesus is the one being kept outside of town.  At the start it is th leper kept outside of town.  Jesus has so identified with the leper he is the marginal one, although the good news he spreads is spreading like crazy.  The cross will be the ultimate identification with us.  It will be where he is the ultimate outcast, as we yell "crucify, crucify."  There he is kept outside.  Jesus obedience leads him to touch what is unclean.  Cleansing us and restoring us physically, socially, emotionally and spirtually.  Kingdom boundaries are different.