James 24:7

The following is a speech I delivered at Milligan College on the celebration of the 5th year of their MBA program. I gave the speech in March, 2009. 

How To Never 'Work' Another Day in Your Life

In June of 1998 I embarked on a grand adventure.  I decided to leave the pulpit and the lectern behind, turn myself into a “Martian anthropologist”  and enter the corporate world.  At the time I was 48 years old.  I had several reasons for doing so.

First, I had been feeling that there was too great a divide between the pulpit and the pew.   I had the sense that I, and perhaps many ministers, did not adequately understand what life is like for those to whom we preached, those who clocked into the corporate world and gave 50-60 hours or more hours per week to that enterprise.

Second, I wanted to see how the practices and pressures of corporate life worked to shape the character of Christians who worked there.  I wanted to know how the assumptions and practices of the corporate world- i.e. corporate culture- affected those who name Jesus Christ as their Lord.

Third, I wanted to see how Christians went about being Christian in the corporate context.  Did they check their faith at the door because of corporate constraints?  Did they feel prepared to live as Christians in the corporate world or were they unable to cross the divide that seems to exist between 11 a.m Sunday and 11 a.m. Monday?  Or did Christians find ways to express faith in even those environments that frown upon that?

Fourth, I wanted to do what I could to encourage, edify and assist Christians who were serious about being Christian but who were struggling in the corporate context.  I wondered what I could bring from my pastoral and academic background to help anyone I could to be a strong Christian presence.

And fifth, I wanted to get out from behind the church pulpit and the college and seminary lectern to serve Christ in whatever way I could on daily basis in the marketplace. Although there is plenty of important ministry that can and does occur from in those two places, I wanted to be out where people were having to deal with the daily ups and downs, the constant pressures and constraints of the marketplace.

In summary, I wanted to learn everything I could, assist in any way I could and serve in any way I could but do so- not as a pastor nor even a “marketplace chaplain” or “marketplace minister”- but as an employee who happened to have a lot of experience in ministry and teaching in his background.

My adventure as an “anthropologist from Mars” was cut short by a health crisis and, I went back into the pulpit after working for a few years in a couple of Internet based financial services companies.  I can’t say that I contributed a lot but I can say that I learned aplenty. (During my excursion into the corporate world, someone asked me how my “faith and work” project was going and I replied “I’m working too hard to get around to the faith part.”  I mean to tell you that I got a great “education” in the marketplace.)

Even though I am no longer in the corporate world, I have continued to keep up and try to learn answers to my questions from those who are.  One consistent theme I hear- one that is usually expressed as an afterthought- is that many who are in the corporate world wish they weren’t.  Many, though not all, are dissatisfied and looking forward to the day they can escape it.

That dissatisfaction gets expressed in a number of ways.  Some express it in the form of shared daydreams (“If I had my druthers I’d be doing this or that but as it is….”).  Some express that in the form of vision (“I’m doing this until I can retire and do what I really want to do…”)    Some express themselves in terms of the  “daily grind.”  I hear it expressed in a lot of different ways.

Now I admit that I have listened to a skewed sample.  After all, people tend to seek out pastors when they are feeling discouraged.  I know there are some who can’t get enough of their work.  I know that the saying that no one who breaths his last ever says “I wish I had spent more time at work”, is true for many but not for everyone…some can’t get enough of the office. 

Some of what I hear is to be expected.  Part of it is wrapped in our understanding of work as well…WORK!  What is that saying?  “If this was supposed to be fun, it wouldn’t be called ‘work’?”

And part of it might be attributed to that very human tendency to think the grass is greener somewhere else or as the poet Wendell Berry suggests… we seem to always think life would be good if we could be somewhere other than where we are, being someone whom we are not.

And part of that desire to get away from the corporate world may be simply a function of being in a tedious or over pressured job, in a less than stellar company, run by inept people, working for a demanding boss and doing work for which one is not suited.

And then there are those who have compelling personal reasons to leave the corporate world behind: aging parents who need attention, young children at home or other important matters screaming for attention.

However, having spent a lot of years on this side of the pulpit and the lectern and a little time on that side of the pulpit and lectern, I would like to suggest another reason, a 2-sided explanation, for the dissatisfaction so many people feel about being in the corporate world.

On the one hand, people seem to expect more from their work than their work can deliver.  The bookstores are loaded with books that direct you on how to find meaning and purpose and true happiness in your work.  Of course, on the surface there is nothing wrong with trying to find meaningful, purposeful work or even in trying to make your work more meaningful and purposeful.  The problem is that we push that notion too far and seek from our work that which only God can provide.

That we do that is not surprising.  We tend to do that in every aspect of our lives.  We seek more from money, popularity, power and status and our various kinds of relationships than those things can deliver too.  Our marriages, our children, our levels of success and attainment are all supposed to deliver the great end of happiness, meaning, and purpose.  While those aspects of life can contribute to our sense of meaning and purpose, none of them, alone or together, can deliver what we are seeking.

The reason is plain: we can never derive from the creation that which only the Creator can provide.  Our ultimate sense of assurance or security or meaning and purpose or peace, which is part of what we are seeking, can only be provided by God.  To seek those things from the created or by use of the created is the essence of idolatry, which I define as seeking from the creation that which only the Creator can provide.

That is why Jesus cautioned us about giving ourselves to Mammon or placing our ultimate trust in anything within the realm of that which moth and rust corrupts in the realm where thieves break in and steal.  We cannot obtain the eternal from the temporal, the incorruptible from the corruptible, the things of God from the vaults of Mammon.  To seek to do so, as Jesus said, is to build our house upon a foundation that cannot weather the onslaughts of life.

So, one side of this equation, this problem of being people dissatisfied in our work, is that we simply expect more out of work, and so many other things in life, than any of it can deliver.

Then on the other hand we have these inadequate understandings of God, understandings which fit well with our idolatries just mentioned. During the past several years, I have had many opportunities to speak about these things in churches, retreat settings, and classrooms.  In those settings, when I can engage in some conversation with folks, I like to ask people to tell me about their dominant image of God.  I usually get three answers:  (1) God as Savior of the soul, (2) God as Companion in the Garden, and (3) God as the Lord of the Temple.

Those who think of God as “savior of the soul” think that God’s particular emphasis is the salvation of an interiorized soul.  That salvation occurs at a point in time and is accomplished so that at the end of one’s life one can die and go to heaven.  The two important moments for the Christian then are (1) salvation of the soul at a point in time and (2) going to heaven when one dies.

Several difficulties emerge with that view.  First, the focus of salvation is upon the individual soul, not the totality of his or her existence, but his or her soul.  Second, that model offers little guidance as to what that “saved individual” is supposed to be doing between the point of salvation and the moment of death.  And third, there is little emphasis given to the ethical dimension of faith, how the “saved individual” is supposed to relate to others.

People who emphasize the garden variety God must have been highly influenced by that hymn composed by C. Austin Miles in 1912.  The chorus of that hymn, a favorite of many, is “And He walks with me and He talks with me and He tells me I am His own…”  To them God is a constant and comforting companion, a kind of nurturing presence who listens to them and cheers them and reassures them that He is with them and they are His.

The other group of people, those who favor the temple variety of God, do not say this so much as they live it.  They believe that God usually only shows up on Sunday morning in this building we call a church.  These folks, which are most of us, “go to church” to “worship God.”  Once they are “in church”, the architecture teaches them that the real action is not only “in the church” it  is up front on the stage where the religious symbols are and from whence they are led and taught by something on the order of specialists in these highly sacred matters.

Whatever else might be said about these common visions of God, they are visions of God which require little to nothing of us.  They fit neatly with each other, neatly into our culturally prescribed ways of life, and neatly with our idolatry.  Because each of them is focused upon us- our salvation, our assurances, our schedule-  they do more to fit God into our lives than they do to shape our lives to fit with God.  About the best those visions can offer us is the assurance that  because our souls have been saved and we have given God his due on Sunday that God will follow us through the week reassuring us that we really are “okay”…just as we are.

Well I am here to disavow you of those views.  God is not simply interested in our “souls” and not merely waiting until the day he can punch our tickets for the glory train to heaven.  God is not simply “in church” on Sunday morning waiting for us to show up and sing to him and God is not simply following us around patting us on the head for being good moral citizens of the realm.

God is a missionary…THE missionary…and is afoot in our history, our world, our community, and yes, even your company working to realize his purpose of “bringing everything in heaven and earth under one Head, even Jesus Christ.” (Ephesians 1:10-11)   God is at work seeking to “fill all with the fullness of Himself.” (Ephesians 3: 19)  God is at work to achieve the final Shalom, the richness of wholeness, healing, and holiness through his Son Jesus Christ. (Revelation 21)

God is by nature and purpose a missionary and if we are going to be with God, we must learn to “go with God,”- to be God’s co-laborers in mission, to join with the God who is “at work.”

If you, as people who spend hours in the one of the largest and most influential mission fields in the world, will embrace this vision of God you will find that much of the drudgery of “work” will vanish and you will arise out of bed in the morning ready to embrace this adventure of being co-laborers with this missionary God.   If you will attend to this way of thinking about God- a way of thinking about God that is in almost every verse of scripture- your life, in every aspect, will be absolutely revolutionized.

In a second, I will tell you how and why this will revolutionize every aspect of your life but please understand, the point is not YOU.  I am about to tell you the graces that accrue to anyone who adopts this way of life.  However, this way of life is good and right, not because of what it does for you, but because it aligns with the nature and purpose of God.

Here’s a paradox:  the less you make your life about YOU and YOURS, the more you will experience an abundant life.  Isn’t that what Jesus said: the one who seeks to save his own life, to preserve his own life, to enhance his own life will lose it, but the one who lays down his life for God’s sake, for Christ’s sake, and for the sake of this good news will save it, preserve it, enhance it?

So…and this key..:  even though I’m about to lay out the graces of thinking and acting on what I’m telling you, YOU are not the point.  Rather, these graces accrue to you as forms of a larger blessing that comes from aligning yourself with the purpose and intentions of God.  Even though I can’t seem to escape the self-centered reasons for living this way- i.e. the graces that accrue to you- please know they only accrue to you as an overflow of the blessing of serving this missional God. 

So here are some of the graces that come to you when you live this way:

The first grace is that you will live a life of integrity.  You will find that the disparate pieces of your life will be integrated under one overarching mission and you will realize three smaller graces:

First, the struggle to find balance between your life and your work will disappear because you will see that you and your family (insofar as they ‘get’ this) - no matter where each of you goes in any given day doing whatever each of you does in any given day- is engaged in the same work, that of co-laboring with God in the realization of God’s purposes on earth.  Whether you are being a parent or being an executive you are always engaged in the same ultimate mission.

Second, you will see the line between what you take to be “secular” work and “sacred” work disappearing.  All work becomes sacred- indeed, all of life becomes sacred because there is no area of your life that is not aligned behind the great and ongoing mission of this God who is cutting his path of justice, salvation, reconciliation and love in the world.  Whether you are at home, working in a corporate office or coaching a little league team, your eye is always focused on the same thing:  discerning where and how God is moving and discerning how you can join God in that moving.

Third, you will see the distinction between “clergy” and “laity” disappear.  The one behind the pulpit and the one in the pew is engaged in realizing precisely the same mission- the mission of God.  Each may play his or her own role in that but each is clear that there is only one mission- and that mission is God’s.  Another way to say this is that in this way of thinking everyone becomes “clergy” or to be more biblically straight, we all start realizing what it means to be a “nation of priests”.

The second grace that comes to you is that you will discover your reason for being.  You will never again wonder why you are here.  You will come to see more fully not only why you are here but why it matters that you are here.  You will come to see that you are here to join God in the greatest mission there is, the mission of God, and that God has uniquely outfitted you with talent, skills, gifts and experience so that you may take up your part in this adventure of God’s.

You will never ask again: “Is this all there is?”   As you come to embrace the mission of God you will see the truth of that saying that the mission of God is “larger on the inside than it is on the outside.”  In the beginning you may think that God is doing this one thing but discover, once you get into it, that this thing is somehow related to that thing and that thing is related to the other.   (The main thing you will discover is that while you are out and about following God into this situation that you are being brought to life!)

You will not spend another second of your life agonizing over “God’s will for your life.”  Listen…we Christians waste more time agonizing over God’s will for our individual lives!   YOU are not the point…remember?  God is the point!   When you get that you start to ask a different question: “What is God’s will for God’s life and how can I help God toward what God is after?” 

Isn’t that what Jesus taught us to pray when he said: “THY kingdom come, THY will be done on earth as it is in heaven?”  You can begin helping God get what God wants within the next minute or two or you can sit around pleading with God to show you what his will for your life is.  (However, if you choose the latter do not neglect to ask yourself: “If I was God, which condition would I bless…the one where my people are sitting around agonizing over themselves or the one where my people are already out and about engaged in helping me get what I’m after?”)

You will stop yearning to be anywhere other than where you are being someone who you are not!  God is moving where you are and God has prepared you to join him now!  God is here and God needs you…now!

At work, you will wander out among the cubicles no longer seeing people as so many worker bees but rather subjects of God’s eternal love, the very souls among whom and through whom God is working to realize his purposes on earth.

At home, you will begin to see your family- your spouse, your children, your parents- as people just like you, called to become a nation of missionary-priests, each called to join the missioning God.  And you will begin to ask yourself: how do I go about helping each of them to become who God is calling them to be?           And you will do the same with your friends and you will begin to invite them to join you in the grand adventure. 

The third grace is that you will begin to see God show up in your day.  You will become more discerning of where and how God is moving within you and around you.  As you learn from observing the life of Jesus and the contemplation of the word of God just what it is that God is after, you will spend your day teasing out how God is doing that all around you.  And you will begin to think of yourself as one who is involved in the most significant work there is or can be…that of lending yourself to helping God get what God wants more than spending all your time simply getting more of what you want.

I can tell you from personal experience that this can and does happen all the time.  Since I have begun to grow in this way of thinking I have been astounded by what happens in my own life.  Just today I was talking with a woman about how she can use her business success to help us dig a well for a maternity hospital in Nicaragua.  While we spoke I thought about someone I know who is in prison.  I don’t know why it came up but I had no sooner thought about him than the woman to whom I was speaking said: “Can I ask you something that is a bit off topic?”  I replied that she could.  And she asked: “Do you know how I could get involved in prison ministry?”

Now, that’s a little thing, a little moment, but I tell you, when that happens and you start seeing it happening all the time, you quit doubting whether there is a God and you start looking for him to show up behind every rock and tree!  And you start to ask yourself whether why you are doing what you are doing is really why you are doing it!  And you start thinking that you do not so much “have God” as God “has you”!

That happens to me all the time, not because I’m some special person, but because I have come to believe that every day God is out in the community ahead of me and that if I enter my day being prayerful and attentive I will see him duck into this store and behind that person.     

The fourth grace is that your work and your life will be lived as an adventure rather than drudgery.  You will stop seeing yourself as the much-put-upon protagonist of your own story and begin to see yourself as supporting character in the story of God, the eternal protagonist.

That will change how you read the Bible.   You will stop looking at those folks in the Bible as just so many “ robed characters in the Bible” and begin to see them as “characters in the ongoing story of God” and not unlike yourself who is also a “character in the ongoing story of God.”  Those people will begin to feel less ancient to you and you will begin to see them as other versions of you, playing their part in the narrative that God is living on this earth.

The fifth grace is that  you will find yourself entering into risky territory but empowered to do what you are being asked to do.   Like Philip who stood there in the middle of nowhere looking down that desert road at that eunuch from Ethiopia, you will begin to hear the Spirit of God whispering in your ear, “Go stand next to that chariot. Go stand next to that chariot. ”   And you will go forward, not knowing what to say, not knowing what to do, not knowing what to expect…way outside your comfort zone but living life in the grand missional adventure of God.  You will find yourself engaged in the life of the hurting, standing in the court of the Caesars speaking truth to power.  You will discover the pain of the cross but not without seeing the joy that is set before you. 

Now I know how you business folks are…I’ve been and taught a lot of workplace Bible studies and I know…Some of you, many of you, all of you are saying: ‘Well this is all well and good, but what’s the ‘take away”?   I learned a new word out there in your world: “Actionable”.  You like things that are “actionable.”

So here are the “actionable items”….

(1) Tomorrow is Sunday…As you are driving “to church” tomorrow I want you to say a prayer:   “God/ this the last time/ that I will ever drive to church./  From this day forward/ I commit myself/ to being the church.” 

(2) When you get “to church” tomorrow, I want you to walk up to your preacher and say to him:  “I am committing myself to hold you accountable to help us become a place of missional training that happens to have a worship service and stop being a worship service that has some optional missional “add-ons” for those who want them.”

(3) Then on Sunday night, I want you to sit down with your family and say “Even though each of us will go our separate ways tomorrow, I would like for us to agree that from now on we all serve the same mission- that of helping God get what God wants more than helping ourselves get what we want.”

(4) On Monday morning, before you walk into to your place of employment I want you to pray this prayer: “Lord, make me a beacon of your grace and a channel of your love to whoever crosses my path this day.”  And then I want you to brace yourself for those who cross your path.

(5) On Monday night, as you gather- and this may be the hardest part- as you gather around the supper table with your family ask everyone gathered “where did God take you today and to whom did he send you?”

I can promise you if you will do these things and do them over and over again you will never “work” another day in your life.           

           

 

           

My interest in playing the guitar came on the heels of seeing Eddie Arnold play and sing "The Cattle Song" on TV.  I was 6 years old and lying under a chair my dad was sitting in when I saw Eddie strumming his ax and wistfully "hoo, doo, doo-ing" about his cows.  After that, I started hounding my parents for a guitar. 

My dad finally gave in and took me down to the local pawn shop.  (There were no music stores in my hometown back then.)   We ended up picking out a Harmony arch top guitar, the kind with the "f" holes in the body.   We didn't know a thing about guitars.  I guess we just bought what my dad thought he could afford.  I remember it cost him $15 and looking back now I realize that was quite a sacrifice for my parents to make in those days.

Somehow I found out how to play a couple of chords..C, F, and G as I recall.  It didn't really matter because every time I tried to play they sounded the same..."thrump, thrump, thrump."  I might just as well have been strumming a wash board.

I could not get my fingers to press the strings down hard enough.  Knowing what I know now, I suspect Dr. Manhattan could not have gotten those strings down to the fret board.  The distance between fretboard and string was the same distance you see in that painting of God and Adam by Mickey Angelo.

So there I sat, holding my Harmony wash board, straining with all my might to play a chord and all I got was the very same sound my mom was getting when she washed our socks on the scrub board.

I started crying.  

Now I would not have cried had I known anything about what I was doing or what to expect.   All I knew then was that I wanted to play the guitar like Eddie Arnold and get on TV as soon as possible.  

I remember my dad, who knew even less about the contraption than I did, suggested that I bring my left hand over the top of the fretboard, that maybe that way I could get a better grip.   Geez!  Anybody knew there wasn't but one way to play the stupid guitar and that was in an underhanded way...something I learned a lot about later on in some pretty seedy nightclubs. 

Well..I finally wrestled that sucker to the ground and have been happily picking away for the last 50 years.  

I wish I could apologize to my dad for thinking his idea was stupid.  It was only stupid insofar as the boundaries of my 7 year old knowledge base would allow.  I only knew what i had seen Eddie Arnold do..and Elvis too.  A right handed picker always played the guitar with an underhanded left hand.  Period.  End of story.  I had an Eddie Arnold paradigm and that paradigm was reinforced by every guitar player in the world.   

All God's children had an Eddie Arnold paradigm.

Our paradigms, our mental models, often conceal alternatives from us.   We see the world as we see the world and that's the way the world is. Period.  End of story.

Now our paradigms serve us well as long as they serve us...well.  However, every so often something happens or some dreamer comes along and suggests, "you know you might go over the top or come around from the side or go back to the directions or..."  We usually kill them or criticize them or snap their fool heads off.  

Many of us are in the fight of our lives economically.  Our businesses are sucking wind.  Our churches are straining to make it from one month to the next.   We think the problem is the economy...and maybe it is to a point.  However, the problem may be our paradigms. 

Take the church..which is where I find my center.  We have this paradigm that a church is only a church if... If it is in a building with a steeple, if they give you an order of worship when you walk in, if you sit and stare and the back of someone's head while folks on the stage do the heavy lifting in terms of singing, teaching, preaching and praying.

We think being a church requires a building and a paid staff and programs and curricula.  We think things should happen in a certain way at a certain time every time all the time or we aren't doing church.

We get hung up on our paradigms as the right paradigms and can't even see that not everyone in the world shares our model of church.

A while back I asked a young African church planter what the churches he planted looked like.  He stared at me for a moment- you could see the confusion in his eyes- and then he said: "It looks like a group of people in a field."

The social, economic and cultural conditions of this young man's world had not so shaped the minds of the people with whom he ministered that they believed that HAD to have X, Y, or Z to call themselves a church.

A lot of folks are wondering these days...Given the tremendous needs in the world and in our communities..heck...given the cost of doing business...given the assumptions of the New Testament...given the "what this is supposed to be about"  are there not better ways to do this?  Less expensive ways to do this?  More appropriately generous ways to do this?

Of course there is a lot of push back.  After all, everybody knows that you play the guitar in an underhanded way.  

Oh wait...I forgot...check this out.

And oh...check this out...neither one of these seem to know what they are doing.

Then ask yourself: "Are there other ways?" 

 

 

I visited with Stanley Hauerwas several years ago in his office at Duke.  He was kind enough to take some time with me to talk about whatever I had on my mind. 

I cannot remember everything we talked about that day but I do remember that I asked him about something I had read.  Someone recounted the story of a hospital stay the very active Hauerwas endured.  

In the article he spoke about how Duke seminary students came to visit him but only showed up as "shimmering masses of availability."   At the time I was teaching seminary students about pastoral care myself so I asked him what he meant by that.

He told me that they came prepared to do whatever it was he needed doing but didn't come prepared to render ministry to him.  In other words, they didn't know what to do  but only waited for him, the sick one, to tell them.

I asked him what he would have preferred.  He said that he would have preferred it if they had brought him some of the bread and wine that was used the previous Sunday in the worship service at his church.

He went on to explain how isolating a hospital stay can be and how cut off from ordinary life he felt during that time.  Partaking of part of the bread and wine his community had used the Sunday before would have helped him feel joined to the community.

He went on to tell me that he went every Thursday to the Duke Chapel for Eucharist.  And then he said something I'll never forget: "Jim, this business of being a Christian is some real fleshy sh*#!"

He went on to remind me that we lived in bodies, that Jesus had 'in-caranated', that we were part of the BODY of Christ and that we love best when we love in the flesh...i.e. body to body, face to face, person to person.

I've never forgotten that conversation and only in part because of Hauerwas' colorful way of putting things.  I've thought about it many times as I have spent more and more time online...casting disembodied messages into cyberspace.  (Oh, how I love it though!)

I've been thinking about this idea of the sensual experience of God.   If Christian faith is "some real fleshy sh*#", then why is so much of it shoved up into our heads?  Why is so much of it about words and arguments around words?  Why isn't more of it sensual?

I'm going to riff on that a while.  However, until I do that think about the words of Hauerwas and the words of this old hymn by Bonar (1855) and then ask yourself: "Is there a place for the sensual encounter with God?"  (emphasis mine)

Here, O my Lord, I see thee face to face;
here would I touch and handle things unseen;
here grasp with firmer hand eternal grace,
and all my weariness upon thee lean.

This is the hour of banquet and of song;
this is the heavenly table spread for me;
here let me feast, and feasting, still prolong
the hallowed hour of fellowship with thee.

Here would I feed upon the Bread of God,
here drink with thee the royal Wine of heaven;
here would I lay aside each earthly load,
here taste afresh the calm of sin forgiven.

I have no help but thine; nor do I need
another arm save thine to lean upon;
it is enough, my Lord, enough indeed;
my strength is in thy might, thy might alone.

Mine is the sin, but thine the righteousness:
mine is the guilt, but thine the cleansing
here is my robe, my refuge, and my peace;
thy Blood, thy righteousness, O Lord my God!

Feast after feast thus comes and passes by;
yet, passing, points to the glad feast above,
giving sweet foretaste of the festal joy,
the Lamb's great bridal feast of bliss and love.

Intimacy with God. 

We hear it all the time.  Perhaps that is part of the problem...we hear it in the same way that we hear sound bites and cliches.   We hear it like we hear the beeping of a horn, a distant siren, so much Muzak.

Intimacy with God.

We would do better to savor it. We would do better to roll it around on our tongues while we purse our lips and draw in streams of air until the aroma of it fills our heads.

Intimacy with God.

We would do better to sink into it like a hot bath...to immerse ourselves in it...to inhale the steam of it until our passages are clear and enlarged.

Intimacy with God.

We would do better to wrap ourselves in it...to be warmed by it...to be snuggled in it.

Intimacy with God

We would do better to bask in it like a just-right-sun on a slightly breezy and cool April day.

We would do better in so many ways if we would just get over simply "hearing it".   To only hear it is to avoid encountering it.  To only hear it is to avoid engaging it, embracing it and being embraced by it.

To think of intimacy with God in terms of the above metaphors is to think sensually about our friendship with God. 

The thought of that scares us to death...at least some of us.  

To be sensual is to be attuned to the senses, to get out of your head (and maybe even out of your mind!) and to actually sense something.

But that's the rub!

How can the senses pertain to God?  The senses connect us to the physical world, the world of apples and rocks and birdsong and texture.  How can the senses pertain to Spirit, to God, to this intimacy with God?

Our struggle with that problem is part of what keeps us locked up in our own heads...thinking about God, postulating about God, wondering about God.

Since we assume that God does not pertain to the senses, how else are we to understand God if not with our heads, our minds?

Perhaps this bias against the sensual when it comes to God is why Christians have generated far, far more theology than they have art...at least in that last few centuries.

Words, upon words, upon words. 

Words to be parsed and to be analyzed.

Words to be debated.

Words to be systematized.

Words to launch wars large and small.

We'd rather talk about God than know God.

Our bias against the senses in matters of the Spirit are not only based on the disconnect between sense and Spirit.  They are based on something far more "sinister."

Sensuality, which again is about celebrating the senses, has been merged with sexuality.   We cannot speak of being 'sensual' without also being drawn into the 'sexual' and, sadly, we cannot be drawn into the sexual without being drawn into the lurid.

You need go no farther than the dictionary to see this.

Here's a quick cut 'n paste from dictionary.com:

Sensual....

1.	pertaining to, inclined to, or preoccupied with the gratification of the senses or appetites; carnal; fleshly.

2.	lacking in moral restraints; lewd or unchaste.

3.	arousing or exciting the senses or appetites.

4.	worldly; materialistic; irreligious.

5.	of or pertaining to the senses or physical sensation; sensory.

The basic meaning of sensual is shoved all the way down to definition number five! 

Somehow sensual

hooked up with

sexual

and sexual

hooked up with

carnal/fleshly and

carnal/fleshly

hooked up with 

lewd and

lewd

hooked up with

materialistic (anti-spirit) and irreligious.

God!

No wonder we are scared of our own bodies, our own feelings.  No wonder we distance ourselves from ourselves by way of all kinds of substances.

Could we be filled with more self-disdain, more self-hatred?

We content ourselves to think about God, to hold God at some cold and calculated distance, to observe God from afar, through a microscope or a telescope. We satisfy ourselves with discussions over tea or coffee- depending upon denominational affiliation. 

We do so because we dare not draw God too close to the body, which we claim God made, lest God become tainted!

And all the while we become the most sexually marketed, sexually addicted people on earth.  Wonder if that is what comes from divorcing the sensual from the spiritual?

When Abba Joseph invited Abba Lot to become "all flame" he invited him to a spiritual life that was about as sensual as you could get.

How could anyone burst into flames and not "sense" it?   How could anyone burst into flames without "getting hot?"

I back up and ask myself: whose agenda was served by this project to de-sensualize the people of faith?  Whose agenda was served by freezing the people of faith and shoving them up into the freezers of their own minds?

I have my suspicions but I'll keep those to myself.

This much I know:  whoever it was did so because they knew that a people who dabble in God are far more easily controlled than a people who burn. 

Twelfth in a series of reflections on a story from the Desert Fathers)

"Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, 'Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?' then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, 'If you will, you can become all flame.'"

"If you will, you can become all flame."

This morning these words of Oswald Chambers from My Utmost for His Highest caught my eye.

"God’s revelation of Himself

to me

is influenced by my character,

not by God’s character."

While I could quibble with that, there is truth there.  My character - the history, the patterns, the convictions, the underlying way-of-being that I am- must play a major role in how I relate to God, especially in terms of how open I am to God.

Paul said as much about the Jews and the gentiles of his day.  "Jews demand miraculous signs and Gentiles demand wisdom..." (I Corinthians 1:22) Each class of folks had their own criteria by which to determine what was of God and what was not of God.  

Each one of us do too!

I look back over my years of searching the Bible, reading books and asking questions and see how often I have tried to construct some system of criteria by which to measure the presence or the will of God.   "If this, then God...If that, then not-God."

I read somewhere once that baseball managers study the "proneness" of opposing players. Their minions scout other teams and keep a record of how the oppossing players tend to hit.  Player A may be drawn to certain kinds of pitches under certain conditions.  He may be prone to hit into left center but not into right field.  Some managers have extensive data to support their views.  They want to know the opposing player's "proneness."

We tend to do that with God.  We search out God's proneness.

"I know it is of God when there is a miracle for God tends toward miracles!"

"I know it is of God when it is esoteric for God tends toward esoterica!"

"I know it is of God when it makes sense for God can only be a reasonable God!"

Isn't it interesting that we seldom hear anyone say: "I know it is of God because it is ordinary"?  How often do we hear anyone say: "I know God is at work in me when all people notice is the work in me but not me at all!"

Here is another of Oswald Chambers' insights:(My Utmost for His Highest: 11/16)

"But to do even the most humbling tasks to the glory of God takes the Almighty God Incarnate working in us. To be utterly unnoticeable requires God’s Spirit in us making us absolutely humanly His."

"To be utterly unnoticeable requires God's Spirit in us..."

Our own desires, our needs, our self-at-war-with-self tendencies, our agenda influences God's work with us and in us.

Abba Lot seems to have had a great deal of practice in this all-too-human practice of dabbling in self-selected spiritual practices.   While I cannot get into his head, I wonder if perhaps he engaged those practices as a way to hold God at bay while, at the same time, striving for deeper intimacy with God.

I try to imagine what my marriage would be like if I approached my wife with a recipe for marriage grounded in my expectations and convictions about how she works. 

I wonder how it would have gone over with her if I said: "Let's see.  Today I have pencilled in 10 minutes of conversation with you...three hugs...one kiss and one chore.   After that, I am done with you for the day."  

I take it back.  I don't need to imagine what my marriage would be like.  I know what it would be like.  It would be like being...unmarried.

Yet isn't that exactly how we approach God? 

"Let's see, God.  Today I have you pencilled in for a morning devotion, 5 minutes of prayer and a quick read from the Psalms."

And we wonder about our spiritual life?

We cannot "Abba Lot" our way to God.   We cannot assume that our way, based upon our character, is sufficient for that encounter with God. 

All we can assume is that our way suits us.

Eleventh in a series of reflections on a story from the Desert Fathers)

Again...here's the story:

"Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, 'Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?' then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, 'If you will, you can become all flame.'"

"If you will, you can become all flame."

What exactly is it that we choose?  Abba Joseph presented Abba Lot with two alternatives: stay the way you are, do what you currently do or become all flame.  

The choice between those alternatives was clear.  However, if Abba Lot selected the "all flame" option how would he embrace it?  "I want option two...so how do I embrace it?  Having selected it, how do I engage it?"

Abba Lot may have decided to become all flame.  However, he could not set himself on this-kind-of-fire.  

A long time ago when I was studying family therapy I learned about a phenomenon called the "Be Spontaneous Paradox".  The BSP is a relational pattern wherein one party in the relationship commands, orders or directs the other person in the relationship to do something which, by definition, cannot be commanded, ordered or directed.

"Fall in love with me!"

"Like me!"

"Catch fire."

What is the other to say: "Okay, I'll do that at 2 o'clock this afternoon?"

If the other does as commanded, the commander can never be sure that the other has really obeyed.

"Fall in love with me!"

"Okay!"

"Wait! How do I know you aren't just saying that or just 'falling in love with me' because I told you to?"

The BSP always sets up the one to whom it is directed  for failure.  If the commanded does as told, the commanded is suspect.  If the commanded  does not do as told, the the commanded is disobedient, uncaring and unresponsive.

Abba Joseph could order Abba Lot to "become all flame."  And Abba Lot could have command himself to become all flame. And both men could have experienced failure!

If you don't believe that, just try it.  Tell someone close to you to "catch fire." (Many a preacher has commanded the congregation to do just that!)  Or, tell yourself right now: "Catch fire!" (Many a Christian has told himself to do just that!)

The flame about which Abba Joseph spoke could not have been set by the one to whom he spoke.  On top of that, the flame about which Joseph spoke could not have been set by Joseph either.  He did not own a spiritual match.

We cannot order another or ourselves to "spontaneously combust."  If we cannot order that or even will that into being ("I will now spontaneously combust!") the choice we make to become "all flame" cannot be a choice, by effort of will, to burst into flames.

I think about the many times I have felt frustrated to the point of despair in my spiritual life.  I have wanted to burst into flame.  I have tried to burst into flame.  I have brow beat myself because I could not do it. I have spoken with many people over the years who have shared that same despair.

We all must come to terms with the fact that we cannot do that which cannot be done.  To bemoan the fact that I cannot catch fire and to blame myself for it is like bemoaning the fact and blaming myself that I cannot flap my arms and fly.

That I have wanted to and that you have wanted to exposes something deep in us... 

somewhere

in the recesses of our hearts and minds

 we believe that we are

 God. 

What else could we have believed when we thought that we, in our own power, could do that which is by nature impossible? 

But we do it all the time.  We play God.

• Have you ever tried to make someone love you?
• Have you ever tried to control another person? 
• Have you ever tried to remodel another person?
• Have you ever tried to root out a deep prejudice?
• Have you ever tried to make yourself feel something you just didn't feel?
• Have you ever tried to believe something you did not believe?
• Have you ever tried to not think a compulsive thought?

We cannot do the impossible but God can...and does.

Abba Joseph's offer to Abba Lot- "If you will, you can become all flame"- was an invititation to abandon his self-determined, dabbling, task oriented approach to matters of the Spirit and to embrace a relationship with the one who specializes in flame...

the one who might just as well be called The Firestarter.

Tenth in a series of reflections on a story from the Desert Fathers)

Again...here's the story:

"Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, 'Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?' then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, 'If you will, you can become all flame.'"

"If you will, you can become all flame."

Now this is the challenging part, this "...if you will."

Abba Joseph put Abba Lot into crisis with those words.  He offered him a pair of alternatives that, depending upon the choice he made, would set the course of his life. 

He could continue with the usual way of living: self-directed, dabbling, and task centered spiritual practice or he could choose to become all flame.  The choice was either/or not both/and.

The English word 'crisis' is a transliteration of the Greek word 'krisis', which means to judge, to decide, to separate.  The meanings of 'krisis' form a little narrative.  In crisis, in krisis, we make judgments, we decide, we choose- this vs. that. 

Insofar as a story is comprised of a beginning, a middle and and an end, krisis is its own story.  While krisis may last only a couple of seconds, the tension is palpable.

Jesus moved along and first one then another came to him.  "Follow me," he said.

To encounter Jesus is to enter into krisis:

• Lord I will follow you but first I must bury my father. 
• Lord I will follow you but first let me sell my property.
• Lord I will follow you but let me say good-bye to my family.

Our 'buts' don't fit in a krisis.  We cannot have it both ways.  We cannot put Jesus on hold. 

We judge.  We weigh our options.  We consider the outcomes.  We hold each up to the light of scrutiny.

We choose. We take the step knowing that nothing in the past, even the most recent past, can ever be taken back.   Our choices are irrevocable.

We live with our choices.  We follow the path we have selected.  We float in the stream into which we jumped.

We can change our minds but we cannot change our history.  We can change our minds but must live with missed moments.  We can change our minds but to count on that is to count on hours that are not (h)ours to count.

"If you will..."

 

  

Ninth in a series of reflections on a story from the Desert Fathers)

Again...here's the story:

"Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, 'Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?' then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, 'If you will, you can become all flame.'"

"If you will, you can become all flame."

The word fires imagination.

Fire consumes.

I think of Paul's letter to the church in Rome. After exploring the great salvational and redemptive work of God through Christ, Paul took everything he had written  to that point, laid it on the table and asked: "Now, what is the appropriate human response to all that God has done and is doing for us?" 

He wrote: "Present your bodies as living sacrifices..."

I wonder if the image of "living sacrifices" provided the backdrop for Abba Joseph's encouragement to Abba Lot. 

Sacrifices burned.

Fire consumed them.

All flame.

Fire heats

My hands freeze as I type these words.  Cold autumn rain mutes the gold outside my window.  The furnace fan whirs in the background.  My mind runs through the vents and down to the blue gas flame. I lift my hands to the fire.

The fire emits heat. 

emittere...(Latin)...e...'out'...mittere...'to send.'

I find an online Latin translator.  I play with words.

"to send God...emitto Deus"

"to send Christ...emitto Sacralogos"

"to send Holy Spirit...emitto flamen"

Flamen?  Holy Spirit. Flamen!

Fire Lights

"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven."  (Matthew 5:14-16)

"...flame."

Could it be that Abba Joseph's word carries missional intent?   Could it be that Abba Joseph invited Abba Lot to put away his dabbling in matters of the Spirit so that he could be consumed in giving light and heat to those who crossed his path?

Could it be that inviting Abba Lot to become "flame" that Abba Joseph invited him to become all love?

(Eighth in a series of reflections on a story from the Desert Fathers)

Again...here's the story:

"Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, 'Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?' then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, 'If you will, you can become all flame.'"

"If you will, you can become all flame."

"...you can become..."

Abba Lot went to Abba Joseph with a list in mind.  He recounted the spiritual practices in which he engaged.  He sought to know what else he could do, what other practice he could add to his list.

Abba Joseph worked to disrupt the patterns of Abba Lot's way of thinking.  Rather than accept his agenda, his way of thinking about the spiritual life, Abba Joseph attempted to create a shift in Abba Lot's way of thought.

"If you will, you can become all flame."

"...you can become..."

Abba Lot requested one more thing to do.

Abba Joseph provided the one thing to become.

Joseph introduced Lot to the possible and invited him to embrace it.  To do so would require that Lot undergo a change, a transformative change, and become something other than what he was at present.

Transformative change....

Years ago, when I was studying family therapy, I was introduced to a theory of change.   Family therapists, like Desert Fathers, are into helping people undergo transformative change.  Some, who practice a form of therapy called "strategic therapy" do or say things in such a way as to create a crisis within the person they are helping not unlike the one I have been describing.

The theory I studied suggested that there are two kinds of change.  There is surface change and there is deep change. (They called it "first order change" and "second order change.")

Surface change, as the name implies, is "cosmetic", a word which, in its root, means "arrange".  They are changes that do not change anything.  They are simply arrangments and re-arrangements.

There are books on the coffee table.  Someone has been looking at them and left them scattered on the table.  You walk over and restack them.  You have created a change but only a change on the surface, only a cosmetic change.

You get up in the morning and your hair looks like the Australian outback.  You take a shower.  You comb your hair and do whatever magic you do.  You have made a change but only a surface change, a cosmetic change.

Deep changes are changes that occur beneath the surface.   Deep changes are changes that rewrite the rules, the convictions, the "heretofores", the principles.

Deep changes are "world rocking" changes.  They sometimes create confusion, bafflement, and anxiety but also excitement, a sense of anticipation, or yearning.

When we undergo deep changes we may feel destroyed or renewed.  In the throes of a deep change, the world as we know it fades into the background and we are confronted with what we might call a "new set of realities."

We may find out that we are not all we are cracked up to be.  We may find out that there is more to us than we knew.

We may find that we have been living a delusion.  We may wake up from a dream or even a nightmare.

Surface changes are transitional.  We move from this to that to the other.  We go through changes but the changes are rather predictable. We move from A to B to C to D.

Deep changes are transformative. We move from a world we knew to a world we do not know.  We move from A to 3 to Rock to...

I am reminded of the zen saying: "First the mountain is a mountain.  Then the mountain is not a mountain.  Then the mountain is a mountain."

Think of the Transfiguration.  Peter, James and John are with Jesus when he is transfigured.  Moses and Elijah appear at his side.  Then they are gone and, as the text says, "they looked up and there was no one but Jesus." (Matthew 17:1-8)

First there was Jesus and then there was not-Jesus (at least as they had known him to that point) and then there was Jesus. 

I bet they never looked at Jesus the same way again!

Abba Joseph wanted to create a deep change in Abba Lot.  He showed him his fingers "like ten lamps of flame".  He introduced him to a new possibility.  Rather than add something he could become something. 

Abba Joseph sought to re-write the underlying rules by which Abba Lot lived.  He offered him deep, transformative change.

Lot could go on adding exercise to exercise or he could become a sacramental presence.

 

 

 

 

(Sixth in a series of reflections on a story from the Desert Fathers)

Again...here's the story:

"Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, 'Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?' then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, 'If you will, you can become all flame.'"

I cannot help but think of Moses' encounter with the burning bush when I read about Abba Lot's encounter with Abba Joseph's ten "little lamps of fire."   

Here is the story of Moses' encounter:

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.  There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up.  So Moses thought, "I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up."

When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, "Moses! Moses!"
      And Moses said, "Here I am."

"Do not come any closer," God said. "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground."  Then he said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

I think of the burning bush because, like the burning bush, it seems that Abba Joseph's hands became "like 10 lamps of fire" without being consumed.  I wonder whether the original teller of this story drew from his memory of the burning bush. However, I also think of it because of what it might suggest about the relationship between "signs" and the "signified."

Finger Signs

Without getting too far afield in the intricacies of simile and metaphor or sign and symbol, I think of Joseph's human glow sticks in the neighborhood of those terms. 

At the risk of stating the obvious, Abba Joseph's fingers are signs that point beyond themselves to something else.   I take that risk because I know something about myself and about many, if not most, of us:

We can be rather dog-like.

Have you ever taken your dog out to play in the yard?  Have you ever seen a squirrel, pointed toward it, and shouted to the dog: "Squirrel!"  Have you ever noticed where the dog looks?

I've had dogs my whole life and every one of them has done the same thing:  When I point toward the squirrel they've looked at my finger.

We can be that way about signs.  Signs point beyond themselves yet we are easily intrigued by the signs themselves.  While the story does not say as much, I suspect Abba Lot, if he is anything like us, was taken back by the fingers.

"Wowwww...Abba Dude!  How did you do that?"

(I think of Simon the Sorcerer who followed the evangelist Philip around: "...astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw."  (Acts 8:1-25)  Simon did not seem nearly as intrigued by the Power toward whom the signs pointed as he was by the signs themselves.)

The burning bush, which was not consumed in its burning, was a sign that pointed beyond itself to God.  While Moses was drawn to the burning bush he was not distracted by the bush.  He was drawn by the sign, drawn perhaps even to the sign, but managed to see and hear that which was beyond the sign.

Abba Lot would have made a grave error had he become enamored of Abba Joseph's glowing fingers. Glowing finger were not the point.

The fingers, like all good fingers, point beyond themselves.

They point to God.