Tag Archives: Jesus

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I told you

This was a two-part answer

Ironically framed

By the disembodied voice 

Selling cars in the next room

It’s like calling

A cathedral 

A room with four walls

And a ceiling

Huh…

I think as I finish

Stuffing variegated laundry

Into the high efficiency machine

That is true

You my darling 

Are no mere room

With four walls and a ceiling 

You are a cathedral 

And should be treated as such

Tear down this temple

And I will raise it again in three 

Days

He said

Evoking all

The foundations in the womb

Baby pictures and toothy grins

Girls whose smiles light up the room

Do not be content to be

Measured the way a man will

Span an ordinary room

Know instead 

It takes a lifetime and a fortune

To raise the extraordinary 

Cathedral

Flying buttresses

Stained glass windows

Columns and impossible

Arches

All to the altar

Rising incense

Gaze of the Infinite

God

Unwatchable 

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lately I have begun to speculate

About the geographical location of

Peter in the hours of the crucifixion

Because I am a coward too

I want to say I would be 

At the foot of the cross

But my feeble heart 

Suggests otherwise 

Snacking perhaps

On ancient Aramaic Oreos 

In some forgotten corner of 

The praetorium 

During the inexplicable hours of 

darkness

I would slide my helpless hands

Along this cavernous darkness/

The wound in his exposed chest

Grief an animal

Grasping for crumbs

In the dark heart of the world

Deserve versus worth

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We can say we do not deserve what we get–either lottery or traffic ticket.  We can even get quite indignant about it.

And yet if we are to believe the Cross, we always deserve worse than we get. Death, plague, betrayal, are all the carrion birds circling the dilemma of our sin.

We do not want to face what we have earned in our rebellion against love.

Which brings us to our worth.  

We are by native value just pennies on the ground.  But we have been purchased at such an extravagant cost by the One who loves us.

This extravagant sacrifice is the center longing of every human love story–to be redeemed, raised, and transformed by a love that will not relent or tarnish.

That is Passion.  Death by crucifixion passion.  Resurrect us in His arms passion.

I-will-never-leave-you-or-forsake-you-love.

A million times

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I tell 

The young man that I have

Fallen a million times

(Felt like it anyway)

A million falls

A million failures

A million times 

An arbitrary number 

Not as funny as bazillions or gazillions 

Arms spread wide to denote the bigness of the thing

God sent His one and only Son

…to fall like this?

Fail like this?

Criminal nailed to a tree?

His falling and my falling, so different

His fall just

To rise to life,

Me in His arms

The Other Guys

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i love the story of Peter falling into the water.

Oh, wait, that is right–the story of Peter walking on water?

Of all the accounts of Jesus’ miracles, this one most resembles a Mark Wahlberg action movie.

And then Jesus walks out in the middle of a night storm on the sea and they think he is a ghost?

Are you kidding me?!

And then Peter decides that the best way to test the identity of the physics-defying apparition is to get out of the boat and walk to him?

It all feels pretty sci-fi.  Until Peter looks down and sees “reality,” panics, and plunges into the pitch-dark stormy water.

There were moments in this story that were both freakishly exhilarating and unnecessarily terrifying.

Jesus does not engineer this event in the lives of Peter and the others simply to give everyone a good fish tale.

He does what he does because he can.

He does what he does because they need to see him the way he really is.

He does what he does because life is scary and dangerous and we all need to know that there is just this one Person who can fish us out of the storm and break the rules of physics to save us.

Think about the time Peter spent in the drink–cold, surrounded by heavy waves, dark, gasping for both life and breath.

Where were the other guys?

Shocked and useless in the boat.

People are wonderful, sometimes gracious creatures, but when it comes to drowning in the darkest storms of life, it is best to keep your eyes pinned on Jesus.

He can do the impossible.  And the impossible is what we all need–hope in the storm, life after death…

Walking on water.

strong drink

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when the King arises

He runs to us

These words, weapons, shields

Tokens of splendor 

Silver refined in the crucible

(For what is crucible but a fancy word for Cross?)

Gold fired seven

Times this burning

Brighter than the sun

Distill this ghost of a man

Standing close to a lone Word

Strong enough

To call him from the grave

Back to life

The narrow road

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We talk about the two roads: (notice there are no others) one narrow, one broad.

I picture the broad one littered with neon signs, carnival-lit and well-paved.

The narrow one is hard to find, off the the side, obscured by overgrown vines and branches. Because, let’s face it: not much traffic.

You climb through the overgrowth to get there and once on the Path the going is any but easy. Rocks, besetting ills, humiliations, and the echoing loneliness of it all.

But always the figure of the Man in front of us. Stick close to Him. After all He is the way itself. The narrow path to life–home waiting at the end.

There we will belong.

The lottery ticket paradox

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I have a bag of parables and pet theories I used to bore my youth group with…regularly.

One of them was the lottery ticket theory, which goes something like this:

If a rude person verbally assaulted you in a parking lot and insisted that they were handing you a winning lottery ticket you might be put off by the assailant, but you would be a fool not to take the ticket and check the numbers.

Jesus is that ticket.

We Christians are absolute morons–rude, pushy, myopic, prejudiced, morally flaccid.

You name it, we flub it.

But Jesus did not. He flubbed nothing. He gives us back our lousy, flea-bitten lives, whole and restored.

Why bother restating an old story from my former life?

Because I believe.

Because I still believe.

The Darkest Days

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Jesus gave them plenty of warning–he said he was going to die. He warned of betrayal and grief. He told them things they did not want to hear.

Even so, the space between the last supper and the resurrection was almost unbearable.

Almost because he took the unbearable part.

Just short of unbearable.

That is the promise of Christian life–it might get pretty awful, but it will never be as awful as the atonement.

The grief of the disciples seems so dark. So painful. And their brokenness was pretty broken.

But

It is finished

And Sunday is one Son-rise away.

A Terrible Christian

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The essay appeared to be heartfelt–urging people to brook the barriers of their resistance to organized religion and find a church, any church…because churches do good things.

Do they?

I spent the better part of my (Christian) life believing this. I still do, generally, on principal.

There was one thing missing from the impassioned church essay. One Person, actually.

You should go to church to see Jesus.

You should do everything to see Jesus.

“Christian” means “little Christ.” What happens to us when we excise Christ from our identity? All that is left is the “little” in us.

It is not easy to follow Jesus. Recently I gave a dramatic depiction of Jesus to someone who would definitely identify as a believer. This person rejected my gift with forthright disgust.

Did not actually watch the DVD….

I thought, huh…not an unusual reaction really.

How many of us would dare stand at the foot of his disfiguring Cross? How many of us have the courage to identify with our naked, broken, bloodied Savior?

I am a terrible Christian, unwashed and unlovely. But no one said redemption would be pretty.

Just absolutely essential for life
Eternal life.