I was raised–and still live–in a part of the world where things like cowboy hats, cowboy boots, and pickup trucks are commonplace. Of course, not everyone here has or uses these things every day, but even for those who don’t, they would probably see all three on a daily basis. Naturally, I grew up thinking the hats, boots, and trucks were normal everywhere–even if they were used less often in other places.
That was my assumption until I went to college in another state. As far as I can remember, there were a few others on campus who had trucks, but if my hat and boots had feelings, they would’ve told me it was as if they’d been sent into exile. My basketball coach was from New Jersey, and I can still hear him asking me, “People really wear that stuff down there?”
After living other places for a little more than a decade, I have been very glad to be back in the land of the hats, boots, and trucks. Recently, though, I’ve been delighted to find myself going to school once again with others who aren’t familiar with these Texas customs. I am studying spiritual direction with a group of classmates from all over–not just the country, but the world. In the course of the typical “What’s something unusual about you?” personal introductions with my classmates, I mentioned that I’ll likely be the only one in the group who wears cowboy boots on a daily basis.
I like having that fact about myself in my pocket in those situations so that I don’t have to think any harder about what to say, but I’m realizing that the farther someone’s geography or culture are from my own, the more likely it is that they would form inaccurate ideas about me from my attachment of the word “cowboy” to my boots. So, I realized the need to explain something that everyone desperately needs to know: there are different kinds of cowboys.
Read MorePastors have moments of utter exasperation with some church members sometimes. The power-plays, the self-centeredness, grown men and women acting like selfish toddlers who simply won’t understand why they can’t have everything their own way. Plenty of church members get exasperated with such fellow members too. So much infighting and bickering over who’s in charge, over which factions get the power. Very little discussion of mission, of how to reach others with the Good News of God’s love and kingdom coming in and through Christ and, supposedly, his church.
I’ve had to confront church folk at times. This isn’t because I enjoy such confrontations—I don’t…at all. But for one, I am ordained to the ministry of Word, Sacrament, Service, and Order. That Order part means that it is my job to humbly order the life of Christ’s church, which includes confronting and correcting such power grabs and factions. And two, these people have no idea what they’re dealing with. It’s for their own good that they must be kept from their attempts to control and/or divide the church. This is Christ’s church—the Body of which the Son of God is the Head (Col. 1:18). We’re talking, to borrow from Ghostbusters, “real wrath of God type stuff.” And so, to borrow from Anchorman, it’s kind of a big deal.
So it was in the midst of such grabbing and dividing and general harrumphing that I fled to the Lord in prayer. I hung my head and said aloud, maybe as much to myself as to Jesus, “Don’t they realize you’re the Head?!”
Almost immediately and very unexpectedly, I felt Jesus reply, “Yes, I am the Head. And they are the Body. My Body has many scars.”
Read MoreI know I’m not alone in needing to drop a little weight. Not only will it make me healthier, but it’ll make me feel better and enjoy my life more. Voices in various media make all kinds of promises for easy ways to drop this weight. But in my core (which needs the most exercise) I know the answer: walking…with Jesus. See, the weight I’m talking about dropping is not excess fat and flab. This weight comes from fear and judgment and all that is bound up with them. And yes, the culture offers all kinds of quick fixes. And yes, I’m finding that Jesus offers the only “program” that truly takes the weight off.
I suppose what I really want from Jesus is to be free from fear, to walk in the freedom that can only come from an assured faith that he is walking with me. This faith in the constant presence of the Master (which, after all, he promised in Mt. 28) is a peace and a pace, a joyful stride through day-by-day life that comes from knowing that there is no obstacle I will meet that he can’t overcome, no question I will ask that he can’t answer, no path I will encounter that leads to better destinations, no master more deserving of my submission and allegiance.
Read MoreIn a comment to my last post on Courage to Run, Daniel ask me to share about when I started running and why. I plan to do that in this post. But I also took his question to mean more than simply the physical aspects of the answer: it happened on this day, at this time, etc. In my posts, I’ve been talking about the spiritual aspect of running, how it fulfills our potentiality, how it helps us realize our essential being, our ontological essence. So it seems to me that the question is fundamentally not about when I physically started running and why, but about when there was a change in my ‘self,’ in how I understood my nature, in how my world became reoriented. In other words, when did I become a runner? When was the shift made? When did I move from simply running—from being someone who runs—to being a runner?
I’ve written about this before. Part of this post is a reworking of some of that earlier writing. That earlier writing captures the act in process, as it was happening. I’ve added a little biographical information to sort of set the stage. I have also added some after-thoughts about what I was thinking at the time to help flesh things out, but essentially the ideas are the same. When did I become a runner?
I have been active for most of my life. In High School I was a rock climber. I spent many hours in the Colorado Mountains climbing to the top of rocks, and when I wasn’t climbing I was thinking about climbing. After that I got into racing bicycles. This is perhaps the start of my emphasis on obtaining maximum fitness. I ended up racing for many years, both road bikes and Mountain bikes, and I still love to ride. At that time I also dipped, a bit, into the world of running just for fun. I did some 10k around Colorado Springs, a 10 miler in the Garden of The God’s, and even the Pikes Peak Marathon (just the ascent). But all during that time I still considered myself a bike racer. Running was just something I did to help my fitness and for fun. I really wasn’t a runner.
Read MoreWe usually think–with good reason based on our experience–that the thing that separates us from God is our sin. Without question, it has that effect. But if St. Paul’s statement is true that “where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness,” part of what that means is that our separation from God, and our sin, are both significantly different than we think. As we recently described, grace is bigger than we think–it's accessible in abundance, long before we know anything about it, and it is available every day of our lives, to every single human being.
Because of that, I think James Bryan Smith hits the nail on the head when he says, "It is not my sin that moves me away from God, it is my refusal of grace, both for myself and for others."*
The practical difference this can make in our lives is monumental. If identifying and avoiding sin is our focus, and if we are dedicated people, then we may become obsessed with trying to figure out the right place to drawn the lines about what is sin and what isn't–so that we can be sure about what things belong on the “don’t” list (both in our own lives and–Lord, have mercy–in the lives of those around us).
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