Tag Archives: Jesus

A Word for Mountains

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I am always uncomfortable with the things that J says which are elastic-impossible.

So You are telling me if I have a little bit of faith I can ask mountains to fall into the sea?

Yes.

This would be galvanizing if I had never tried it.  If there had never been a mountain I really needed, really wanted, really believe could be…moved.

The heartbreak of the unmoving mountains.

So first, an inventory–

Mountains are so big, so high, so holy 

Why should they move for me?

Today my daughter said the thing that did not staunch all the grief of unmoved mountains, but did let me see how the unanswered questions have long been answered.

She said the mountain is a metaphor for God.  

The relief of it was palpable.  God.  I know God moves for me.  Moves toward the Cross.  Moves the boundaries of eternity. Moves toward the prodigal son.  Runs, actually.

Suddenly I see.

It was never the unmovable mountains, it was inexplicable stones moved away from terrible places to make room for the God of resurrection.

Nothing too hard for J.

Ever.

Funeral

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Weddings are such artificial confections, but all funerals have a unifying element of truth–we are all prone to die.

The manner and time vary, the seeming finality does not.

Unless…

Unless Jesus is right.  Unless He is the resurrection and the life.  In that case the things we take for granted about the finality of the grave may not be all there is.

I went to a funeral recently.  An untimely one.  The priest gave the family a final story from Acts 3–the silver and gold I have none story.

Only he did not tell it right.  Instead of the healing of the beggar and his resultant joy–physical, exuberant, unmissable dancing and jumping! The priest says that Peter says he will be there and pray.

Don’t get me wrong–Christians being there and praying is getting to be miraculous and rare, it just isn’t what Peter said or did.  At least not all he did.

The thing that Peter did for the beggar was public, miraculous, transforming, and unmistakable.

And powerfully reminiscent of his Master.  When Peter heals the beggar he signals that we are in AD now.  He lets us know that any narrative that portrays Jesus just another victim of Roman torture is incomplete. 

He lets us know that the flood of the miraculous has gushed into the ordinary.

A flood that should wash through every wedding and every funeral with the insistent song of redemption and resurrection and eternity.

Nothing quiet here.

Splitting the difference 

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According to His most ardent biographers, when Jesus was born he got a star, an angel choir, multiple prophetic and celestial intros, a visit from some prominent foreign astronomers, and an animal feed tray for a bed.

It seems like the divine side of the birth announcement for this kid was legit–angel choirs and all.  But the human side was sub-par.  The innkeeper could have let the pregnant girl use his digs.  But he did not.

Easy, I suppose, to judge the inhospitable of Bethlehem for their general indifference to an infant King.  Harder to face our own.

The question for each so-called believer in this tiny bundle of Infinite Light is–do you see Him?  At the breakfast table or the DMV?  In the bad driver or the white-collar criminal?

It is hard to see Jesus in us. We are often a selfish, short-sighted, venal bunch of sheep.

Sheep on a hill somewhere in the night.

Beneath a star.

In the presence of angels, so close to our King.

The other alternative 

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The sermon was lovely–feeding of the five (to 20 plus) thousand.

Five loaves and two fish expanding out to a feast for thousands.

Is it difficult to miss the metaphors?  The abundance of God?  Jesus providing through his own personality to satisfy all those souls by the sea.

But what if the boy had said no?

What if he had not shared? 

Jesus never needed us to contribute.  He tells us that if we don’t praise Him, the rocks will cry out.

He doesn’t need our help.

But if we keep our lunch to ourselves?  We miss our portion in the miracle.

We need Him to make us characters in His story, not the other way around.

Good reminder when I am hungry and not sure it is a good idea to share my lunch.

When Jesus gives, He pours it all out for us.  

Down to the last drop.

Saul Alinsky, kerfluffles for old radicals

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I just read a poorly-written article from the Washington Post desperately attempting to disentangle Hillary Clinton from Saul Alinsky and Lucifer.

While I personally doubt she will ever be able to divorce herself from Satan, there seems to be little reason for Mrs. Clinton to distance herself from Alinsky.  He was a bit of a badass, sloppy theology notwithstanding.

Jesus (the original anti-Lucifer) told a parable about two brothers who had opposite responses to their father’s request that they both go work in the fields.

One said sure then did nothing; the other said naw then went to work.

Mr. Alinsky seemed to have been the second guy.  He went to the poorest, least powerful communities in this country during a time when the people in those communities were genuinely oppressed and disenfranchised and gave them power and a voice.

When asked why he focused on African American “ghettos” he spoke of pervasive  oppression of African Americans through lynchings, the Klan, and systematic disenfranchisement. 

He chose to go to the people who had the least reason to refuse any offer of hope.

Saul Alinsky was a do-gooder.  He refused labels, especially political labels.

He was wrong about metaphysical hell–there are few have-nots there.  But right about the hells on earth that men engender through systemic avarice and racism.

I don’t know Alinsky well.  In fact after Carson and the bedraggled WP article I plan on getting to know him better.

But I leave you with a fact and a suggestion–

Alinsky once suggested a fart-in at a concert to combat social injustice.

And I bet you a pork-pie hat that Alinsky’s version of the Fox TV show Lucifer would actually be worth watching.

He came in disguise

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I have told my kids (on too many occasions) that I would love to see a spy movie in which the main character’s spy skills are demonstrated by the character’s thorough-going appearance transformations.

He would become she, young and handsome would morph into old and frail, fat to thin, and tall to short…by assigning entirely different actors to play the part in unbroken succession.

Then it occurs to me that is what Jesus did–He came in disguise.  Clues for this theory are in the Gospels–the transfiguration (why take only three disciples?), the times when He prohibits the healed from blabbing about their transformations, the healing of Jairus’ daughter (again, only three disciples?) and then those times after His resurrection when people don’t recognize Him.

God in disguise.

It makes sense when you see Him described in other places in the Bible.  Excuse my French, but Jesus in His “real form” is unmistakably bad-ass. 

Which brings me to the most haunting part of this story of voluntary disguise.  

The Lord of glory, Creator of the universe, Beginning and the End, Lion of the tribe of Judah, naked, eviscerated, gasping on the Cross.

My death.  This is the purest place for me to see who I really am–the person who deserves this terrible end.

He wraps Himself in the vortex of hell to give us access to heaven–undisguised.

Older Brother

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My son tells me his fears and I tell him mine are remarkably similar–fear of the tragic loss of love.

Sometimes he and I get to the end of an ordinary day and he says our crew is still together, Mom.

We are citizens of a dangerous and lonely kingdom.

But only because the true King travels in disguise.

He is this magnetic force–scarred forever by his tragic love for us, hole in the chest and again in each Vitruvian extremity.

Stranger at the party.

You should get to know this guy.  His words and actions may seem either simple or radically divisive, but His gaze is irrevocable.

He is the perfect older brother, fierce in both love and justice.  When I dread this fallen world I turn to Him.

Knowing He will never fail.