This night that came to the rich fool with full freezers, that also comes to us, requires our souls. The rich fool and the Apostle Peter got tossed up in the same night: the fool, caught up in his garages overflowing with bargain TP and cajun chicken breasts from Costco; the Rock, a passion to give up failures from over-reaching his humanity. The battle of being spirit and human in a material world crossed into the stars and the waves. For us, now, the battle is in our wallets.
Pastor Mark points out that the point of being so flung is to allow ourselves to be moved by God to give up our stuff in the material world - the stuff of life that predicts precarious attachment to our souls and belies our belief that we can overcome the workings of the material world to get personal power.
Learning to hang loosely onto the material world reveals that we need to trust the one we are giving up our piles for: Him and them -those living at subsistence levels. Trust reveals our allegiances: if we truly know the one we love, there is safety. And to feel more safe, more worthy of being identified as worthwhile, the veneer comes off. We're done stockpiling trust in our world, our stuff - ourselves, ultimately,
Jesus, a man famous for being the most alive, gets to the heart of the reason why we can trust: "Don't you know you are worth more than birds?" Give up the chase for stuff, for experiences for sale, chase Him into his neighborhood, his favorite vacation spot. It happens to be a kingdom of joy, peace, hearts stored up with memories of God breaking in, God coming through, God showing up and overflowing when a relationship, a job, a vacant lot inside, required our soul. "Now I seek cuz my heart's in overflow" is a spontaneous a song I heard today when some people were singing about how dead they used to be 'til Jesus came as a person to them.
They could have been singing about my bird who I thought would die outside the safety of our house. I was the one who, this summer, who lost our treasured cockatiel named Screech. I had been ignoring for a few days his need to get his wings clipped. He flew off my hand onto the neighbor's gable and then her treetops when I was checking on my son playing in the front yard. My kids along with fairly interested neighbors came and babysat under the trees while our freed bird sang breakout songs. I prayed mostly to get the bird back to recoup my reputation as responsible adult with my kids, not something to pull out from plastic, but a treasure, too, nonetheless. This was the second time I ignored the signs of wings popping out and the bird escaped.
I heard the Lord say, "Watch how he flies," in reply. I knew how he flew. Far away from my care and keeping into the very high sycamore across the street. I begged the Lord for several hours, trying to work up some trust. It was a dark night where it seemed my soul was required: if the bird didn't come back, what then? New bird? I think my kids were thinking, New Mommy, for sure.
The bird made a last half circle when I our tree climbing friends poked at him with a wicked rake. Schreech flew. But I got it this time: he flew in half circle, due to uneven, clipped wings. I was able to position my daughter downwind. Mid-circle, mid-flight she snapped up our jailbreaker while the Lord God Creator of creatures needing to be free was saying, "See how he flies . . . see how he flies. . . right into My hands."
God, we pray to trust you to give up our CD's, garages, freezers, vacation homes, our attempts to control the waves of our lives with bright and shiny things. Help us God to desire the Spirit of God more than plastic, wood and metal. You are alive. Help us make you famous because you are real.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
The Imperishability of Love on September 11
Ephesians 6: 4 -24/Psalms 11
Today's New York Times homepage features a question from a journalist: Do we need more September 11 stories?
It depends on your lens. Are you still too close to the tradegy? Are you healing? Have you just entered a journey of understanding the human heart or are you old to it? Closed to it? Done with it ? Down with it?
Pastor Mark ended the summer sermon series on Ephesians mentioning Tychicus, a friend Paul thought worth mentioning. Pastor Mark found his name worth mentioning again 2000 years later for the imperishability of the deeds he did long ago which reflected his Master whose love lives on. Imperishable love of a servant for a Master whose love is imperishable.
How does this work? How do you get love that does not show bruises? How does love live on in me? In you?
Funny how startlingly death of a stranger answers this: I was at Von's. Again. I need a parking spot marker with gold stars. A checker was interviewing with intensity the other checkers: "Did you know her? She was the one over in Oxnard. She transferred. It was so sudden. She's so young." Under flourescent lights where cellophane is pulled tight in refrigerated lockers keeping out any hint of decay on the red peppers, apples, broccoli or cheese, there was an outburst of death. The interviewees didn't seem to know the deceased checker, but the interview seemed to compelled to tell her story. She didn't know her that well.
We of human heart seemed fashioned for telling stories: our own, the ones of others lives that change us, invigorate us, tic us off. Paul found in Tychius a love worth mentioning. This begs the question from Pastor Mark's sermon: how does one love in life-giving outbursts?
David, a violent warrior, a lover, a father, a singer, a poet, a king and a Lover of God teaches us from Psalms 11 about the source of imperishable love on the day of our remembering September 11. When David was sick of running from evil and considering the evilness in the hearts of those in his world, he counted on God. He sings. He counts on singing about God's holiness and knowing where God's presence rests on earth. (v. 4, 5.) He remembers God does not forget the righteous.
David chose singing and worship as a lifestyle. The point was to not rest until he found a dwelling place for the Lord. (See Ps. 132.) Sounds like a man driven. A man driven in hunger for God, a man stirred up with zeal, as the prophet Isaiah put it, to make a parking spot for God. And God remembered David for his imperishable love. As He remembered Cornelius and scared him with a vision. God spoke to Cornelius: Your prayers . . . have come up for a memorial before God. (Acts: 10:2 - 4.)
There are ways to live. Ways to pray. Tychicus, David, Cornelius. Warriors of a type: servant, lover, prayer. Jesus Himself hinted violence does get our story told. Consider John the Baptist, he says. "And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force." Matt. 11:11 -13. Jesus has something to say about violence on September 11. Lawlessness creates cold hearts. Imperishable hearts seek a lifestyle of spiritual violence: a commitment to "taking much trouble, as the Warrior-King David says, " to prepare for the House of the Lord." (I Chronicle 22: 14 - 19.)
I am waiting and praying for a continuous, imperishable song, a new song, that is so inviting to Jesus that He will finish His story in us, on earth, jostle worship some, cause collusions of love that counter taking knives to the skies. "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. (I Thes. 4:16.) The dead seem to be those that put the life of Christ ahead of theirs and love above all else.
I think I may have heard the beginnings of the song from the piped in CD's rotating in Von's: "Thank you, thank you, thank you, for the light in your eyes. . ."
Today's New York Times homepage features a question from a journalist: Do we need more September 11 stories?
It depends on your lens. Are you still too close to the tradegy? Are you healing? Have you just entered a journey of understanding the human heart or are you old to it? Closed to it? Done with it ? Down with it?
Pastor Mark ended the summer sermon series on Ephesians mentioning Tychicus, a friend Paul thought worth mentioning. Pastor Mark found his name worth mentioning again 2000 years later for the imperishability of the deeds he did long ago which reflected his Master whose love lives on. Imperishable love of a servant for a Master whose love is imperishable.
How does this work? How do you get love that does not show bruises? How does love live on in me? In you?
Funny how startlingly death of a stranger answers this: I was at Von's. Again. I need a parking spot marker with gold stars. A checker was interviewing with intensity the other checkers: "Did you know her? She was the one over in Oxnard. She transferred. It was so sudden. She's so young." Under flourescent lights where cellophane is pulled tight in refrigerated lockers keeping out any hint of decay on the red peppers, apples, broccoli or cheese, there was an outburst of death. The interviewees didn't seem to know the deceased checker, but the interview seemed to compelled to tell her story. She didn't know her that well.
We of human heart seemed fashioned for telling stories: our own, the ones of others lives that change us, invigorate us, tic us off. Paul found in Tychius a love worth mentioning. This begs the question from Pastor Mark's sermon: how does one love in life-giving outbursts?
David, a violent warrior, a lover, a father, a singer, a poet, a king and a Lover of God teaches us from Psalms 11 about the source of imperishable love on the day of our remembering September 11. When David was sick of running from evil and considering the evilness in the hearts of those in his world, he counted on God. He sings. He counts on singing about God's holiness and knowing where God's presence rests on earth. (v. 4, 5.) He remembers God does not forget the righteous.
David chose singing and worship as a lifestyle. The point was to not rest until he found a dwelling place for the Lord. (See Ps. 132.) Sounds like a man driven. A man driven in hunger for God, a man stirred up with zeal, as the prophet Isaiah put it, to make a parking spot for God. And God remembered David for his imperishable love. As He remembered Cornelius and scared him with a vision. God spoke to Cornelius: Your prayers . . . have come up for a memorial before God. (Acts: 10:2 - 4.)
There are ways to live. Ways to pray. Tychicus, David, Cornelius. Warriors of a type: servant, lover, prayer. Jesus Himself hinted violence does get our story told. Consider John the Baptist, he says. "And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force." Matt. 11:11 -13. Jesus has something to say about violence on September 11. Lawlessness creates cold hearts. Imperishable hearts seek a lifestyle of spiritual violence: a commitment to "taking much trouble, as the Warrior-King David says, " to prepare for the House of the Lord." (I Chronicle 22: 14 - 19.)
I am waiting and praying for a continuous, imperishable song, a new song, that is so inviting to Jesus that He will finish His story in us, on earth, jostle worship some, cause collusions of love that counter taking knives to the skies. "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. (I Thes. 4:16.) The dead seem to be those that put the life of Christ ahead of theirs and love above all else.
I think I may have heard the beginnings of the song from the piped in CD's rotating in Von's: "Thank you, thank you, thank you, for the light in your eyes. . ."
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