Shadows and Dust

The paltriness of our lives is largely due to our fascination with the trinkets and trophies of the unreal world that is passing away. Sex, drugs, booze, the pursuit of money, pleasure and power, even a little religion, suppress the awareness of present risenness. Religion dabbling, worldly prestige, or temporary unconsciousness cannot conceal the terrifying absence of meaning in the church and in society, nor can fanaticism, cynicism, or indifference.

-Brennan Manning, from Abba's Child

In an interview with Mel Gibson concerning the release of his Passion of the Christ movie, he was asked about his faith, about that which compelled him to make such a movie.

He recalled his ascent to worldwide fame by saying that he'd been to the pinnacle of all the secular world could offer him - he had attained all he'd ever wanted in this life. His wealth, his fame, any addiction that he could conceive - nothing that he'd desired was withheld to him. Anything he had ever wanted, he could get, he could try, he could attain. "And," he said to conclude, "it's not enough."

It wasn't for me money or fame. It was perfection, and meeting everyone's expectations-so-high. I prided myself on my impeccable performance in everything I did. Those things I couldn't do perfectly, I avoided. Those who would dare to see through my façade, I stayed far away from. Until at the end of years of this, I crashed. What I had most wanted I could have if I worked hard enough. But it was all illusion. I remember in the dark of my bedroom one night declaring the same, "it's not enough."

I have forgotten this, though, in the busyness of my days and the striving to do "good works". I've forgotten the reason for the hope I have. It might be only, "because it's not enough," and nothing more. But the desperation for the Enough is fuel to drive us passionately on the journey. Integrity Worship's book Desperate for You says, "Desperate people are passionate people... Desperation can drive us almost as much as it can drive us crazy. It's a fine, fine line. But probably the most worthwhile one we ever walk. If you've ever had that ceaseless ache in the center of your heart, you know the depths of the word desperate. Desperate people ache for fulfillment. And they'll go to any lengths to get it."

As people who have had a taste of that Enough, be it ever so slight, we long, desperately to eat our fill. We are called "believers" not as much because of the creeds we profess and wear like garments as because of the panting inside us that propels us in a desperate search for the One we know we must be made for. And all this talk of feasts and bread and wine and water - we somehow connect with that. It is familiar to us because we have become intimately familiar with our ache that keeps us walking. And we wonder if it's not given to us as a gift, a treasure - or a compass, even.

Because now the words, "Come to me if you are thirsty" make sense. They reverberate in our hearts like an echo down an empty well.

Brennan Manning continues,

Whatever the addiction--be it a smothering relationship, a dysfunctional dependence, or mere laziness--our capacity to be affected by Christ is numbed. Sloth is our refusal to go on the inward journey, a paralysis that results from choosing to protect ourselves from passion. When we are not profoundly affected by the treasure in our grasp, apathy and mediocrity are inevitable. If passion is not to degenerate into nostalgia or sentimentality, it must be renewed at its source.

We will largely be unconvincing and unconvinced disciples until we come to the end of ourselves and realize even with exasperation that there's not enough wealth or fame or attainable perfection in this life to satisfy us. The best moments are fleeting. In this life, all good things do come to an end. That will take us to either the lowest places of despair, or the deepest places of desperation. As C.S. Lewis explains in Mere Christianity, "Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exist. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in my self a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

Because, and here's the hope - it's I think as simple and humble as this - we will one day have it. All. It's still not going to be in the money or fame or booze or that one perfect relationship we are trying to hold onto or sex or performance or that beautiful bag of potato chips or that mission trip to Mexico. Those are just shadows. It will be in Him. All of it.

A few years ago I gave my wife as a birthday gift a jar of dirt. I know, I know, romantic guy I am. I had inscribed on the side of the jar the words "Shadows and Dust." We both knew well what it meant. It is a line taken from the movie Gladiator. Proximo, the trainer who originally purchased Maximus and trained him as a gladiator, had himself once been a gladiator. He had stood in the arena and had heard the audience cheering him on. He had participated in glory as a gladiator, and after he had been freed by Marcus Aurelius, he was haunted by it. "Shadows and dust" became a phrase he used to help him remember the reality of both illusions (shadows) and death itself (dust). Proximo, having tasted of the former glory of Rome, defied the Pratorians who had come to capture Maximus. He was killed at their hands. Moments before they entered the room, his face is set toward the sun and you can hear him whisper, "shadows and dust."

There will come a time when all things will be well, and all manner of things well. We will know God. We will know God fully. We will know and be known. And we will be home. Lewis finishes his though, "I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same."

This life that we speak of is our heart's deepest and most passionate desire and the source of its most poignant ache. George MacDonald writes, "The thing that can mourn can mourn only from lack; it cannot mourn because of being, but because of not enough being. We are vessels of life, not yet full of the wine of life; where the wine does not reach, there the clay cracks, and aches, and is distressed..." It is also the most unattainable except by pure, undistilled Grace. Grace that this God who apparently wants us far more than even we could even want Him has lavished upon us. In other words, we get it, we get life. That, my friends, is indeed Good News.

"...Life must be assisted, upheld, comforted, every part, with life. Life is the law, the food, the necessity of life. Life is everything." -George MacDonald

All-Consuming

It’s a busy season. Family to visit. Gifts to exchange. Shopping to do. I’m struck by the way so much of our culture has been able to recognize the deep need in the human soul and sell it, promising the life we’ve always wanted if we just purchase this pair of tennis shoes, or that leather coat, or this necklace for our wives or that extended DVD set.

It can happen with even the most important things. “The church, you see” explains Paul, “is not peripheral to the world.” Oh really? It hardly seems so when you watch television or visit the nearest mall. I wonder if Paul would have thought differently if he’d had a Macy’s or Sears in his hometown. This is, afterall, what Christmas seems to be about. Even many Christians I know seem to be caught up in the consumerism and commercialism of the season. But Paul is unapologetic in the finality of his statement. “The world is peripheral to the church” (Ephesians 1, The Message). The church, meaning the body of Jesus on earth where all the action is, where the life of Jesus happens.

There was a fascinating study done at UCLA where some mice were given injections of speed to see how long it would take them to run themselves to death. Control mice that weren't injected were placed with them. You know what happened? The control mice ran themselves to death just as quickly as the others. It's the nature of the world to run around purposeless, distracted, desperate to fill in the missing pieces with shopping, sex, empty conversation, complication in relationships, and the like.

And so, DeAnn and I have begun pulling back, resisting, refusing to allow ourselves to be taken out and ours hearts to be completely overwhelmed with the "needs" around us – the shopping lists, the family visits, the frantic pace, the buzzing and whirling and crowding. We are withdrawing to the center, turning our gaze to the One who came for us, and starting to remember.

John Eldredge recently wrote a fantastic reminder to the deeper and truer reason behind Advent season. It is so that we may remember and anticipate. “Not only is it an opportunity to reflect – for several weeks – on the fact that God came, it is also an opportunity to lift our eyes towards his return. He will come again.”¹

Together we are seeking out the stories that remind us of God coming through for us, and for His promise that He will come again to set all things aright. We are to love Him. We are to be consumed with Jesus and with His kingdom, with His presence and with His promises. We are to see Him, to set our eyes on Him, as a babe born in a manger, as the Son who came to take our place and ransom us, as a Warrior, as a Friend, as the image of the Father, as our one true love. As Dallas Willard has said, “The key, then, to loving God is to see Jesus, to hold him before the mind with as much fullness and clarity as possible. It is to adore him.”

We are among those He came for, and for whom He will again return. He came to make Himself known “to the humbled, to the fringes of the population, heralded by goats, by sheep, and by astrologers from the east.”²

May we remember. May we awaken to the deep and unbelievably great news that we have been invited into a Great Tale, “a Story that begins, “Once upon a time” and ends “And they lived happily ever after…”²

¹John’s letter can be found here.
² This comes from "Emmanuel, God with Us"

Setting the Stage: Jesus' Pursuit, Part 2

Continued from The Question: Jesus' Pursuit, Part 1

John the Baptist has already been proclaiming some pretty wild stuff out there in the wilderness, wild words to match well his wild clothes and choice of food. John’s a wild man, and a passionate one. He is known as John the Baptist because he has been baptizing folks to get them ready for the coming Messiah. And some people are starting to believe that there will really be a Messiah coming. A lot of expectation is raised, and a lot of anticipation. What will this Messiah be like? What will he do?

Those who are coming by frequently to the Jordan where John is preaching were known now as his disciples, or more simply, his students. They were listening intently to what John had to say. Why? I mean, why would anyone particularly want to hang around this wild man who was dressed in camel skin and ate locusts for dinner? What was he saying to them that drew their interest, anyway?

To answer that, let me back up a bit to tell you about John’s father. His name was Zechariah. This guy was a priest who had been chosen to go on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the temple of the Lord to burn incense. This was a very rare opportunity for a priest, and Zechariah was no doubt scared out of his mind as much as he was excited.

One of the first things we learn about Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth is that they had no children. They wanted them, but Elizabeth was barren, so their hope of having any sons or daughters was waning fast, and the chances were slim.

Now, even as a priest, it was a very rare thing to get to go into the temple of the Lord. Very few priests were ever able to do so. And Zechariah was the guy chosen to go in. Now, to do so it meant that he would have a rope tied to his ankle just in case he did something wrong and he’d die in there as a result of God’s holiness and the others would need to drag him out. So this was a pretty heavy and serious matter. What made it even weightier was what Zechariah encountered in there.

To be continued...

The Best for Now

You have saved the best till now.
-John 2:10, italics mine

The final project from singer/songwriter Rich Mullin’s prolific career, The Jesus Record, came about because he felt compelled to spend time thinking on the life and words of Jesus. Though there is much to think of in this journey with God, and much he did think of – grief and sorrow, battle, friendship, growing up and growing old and even growing young – this one thing he felt compelled and drawn to: Jesus’ life and His initiation and invitation and ransom through it.

I find that really instructive, and so that’s what I, too, and compelled to do. It was another saint who said that we should “fix our eyes on Jesus.”

So, here’s what I am seeing recently. When I look at people around Jesus, those who interacted with him in the gospels, I see basically two types: those who eventually fell in love with him and gave their lives to following him, and those whose hatred toward him and the kingdom he came to announce became murderous. There was hardly any middle ground. In fact, Jesus himself said as much – “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters” (Matthew 12:30).

Out of the four main socio-religious groups of the time – the Essenes, the Herodians and their friends the Saduccees, the Zealots, and finally the Pharisees – Jesus didn’t fit in. He couldn’t be categorized and so he wasn’t so easily dismissed. It’s interesting to note that those who hated Jesus were those whose fury came from their inability to own him, who couldn’t use him for their own agenda. Rich’s words are true here, that “the world can’t stand what it can’t own and it can’t own you ‘cause you did not have a home.”

Jesus came, of course, to bring his kingdom to us, to announce it so that we may be invited in. To open up for us a new way, a new reality, a new world order. His kingdom opens up for us the possibility of a new heart and with it a new and intimate relationship with ourselves, with each other, and, of course first with God. In Jesus, God stooped down to look us in the eyes and say, “I want you to be mine now. Join me. Become my friend.” [Incidentally, the Hebrew for “unfailing love” in Psalm 6:4 (“…O Lord… save me because of your unfailing love”) denotes befriending.] A better picture is God lifting us up to where He is, to a "high and holy place" - Isaiah 57:15. It is a new order outside of ourselves but coming from within, from hearts full of life (Proverbs 4:23).

While all of this is baffling and more than a little shocking in its implications, perhaps the most scandalous notion of all was the kingdom’s availability and presence. All good Jews in Jesus’ day knew something about a kingdom coming. This language wasn’t unfamiliar to Jesus’ hearers. For centuries, prophets have been describing and foretelling this kingdom. Many of the prophets before Jesus spoke on behalf of the poor and oppressed, the rejected and outcast. With prophetic tradition, Jesus spoke of the inward sincerity of the heart and authenticity – again, nothing too unfamiliar (though mostly forgotten) to his hearers. And, of course, just like the prophets before him, Jesus spoke of the coming judgment – that evil would be exposed and named for what it was. Finally, Jesus emphasized the coming of a new order of things, a time in which “in that reality, the poor and rejected will be embraced and valued and brought back to the community. In that new era, what will count is what is in the heart – not merely what is projected, pretended, or professed. In that new realm, evil in all its forms will be exposed, named, and dealt with. In that new kingdom, justice, integrity, and peace will overcome” (Brian McLaren, “The Secret Message of Jesus,” p. 23).

Most of the Jews should have known this much already, but only in the sense that it was far out in the distant future. That’s why for many – Nicodemus perhaps being one of them – Jesus’ arrival (and with him, the kingdom) was such a shock. It exposed their unbelief. When John the Baptist announced, “Repent!” (Matthew 3:2), not much of a raucous was raised. But he finished his pronouncement with, “for the kingdom of heaven is near.” What a fool he must have sounded like! Who would really expect the kingdom to be at hand, really? That came as a contradiction to what everyone thought and expected. No one expected the kingdom of God to happen now. “It could only happen then,” writes Brian McLaren, “after the Romans were ejected or eliminated, which in turn couldn’t happen (for the Zealots) until later, after the Jews were militarily mobilized and led by a great military liberator (or messiah), which couldn’t happen (for the Pharisees) until later, after the prostitutes and drunks and other undesirables were either reformed or otherwise eliminated. Put together, these conditions were so hard to imagine actually occurring anytime soon that they were considered (by the comfortably adjusted Herodians and their similarly comfortable friends, the Saduccees) completely improbable, no, practically impossible. The Kingdom of God? Maybe in some distant someday. At hand, here and now? No way!”

Yet it was just a few days later when Jesus strolled right in front of John and John yelled out, “This is the one I meant…!” The kingdom of God, indeed, is near – standing right before him. Standing right before us.

We get to live on this side of that amazing invasion by the King into enemy territory to bring about this new kingdom. And yet, we often do with it the very same thing those contemporaries of Jesus did. The kingdom of God can only happen then, after… fill in the blank. I go to college. Get married. Buy a home. Have children. Accomplish something big in my career. Get more money. Find a community. Be healed or feel better. Beat depression. The list goes on.

We miss Jesus in our midst because of this, and in the process miss everything that he won for us by the kingdom come – his reign and rule, living in the freedom and fullness of a new heart, offering love and invitation and truth to others. Essentially, we are not really living at all unless, and until, we live in and out of the kingdom of God now here, established in and from us by the King and by our Intimate One.

Father God, it’s true. I have bought into the lie that I have to wait until things change or get better before I can really live in the kingdom. I have squandered the most startling and amazing gift ever given that is fully mine to have, fought for and won for me by Jesus – life, life to the full and free and all that it implies: heart intimacy with you and with others, full expression of your character, glory and honor to you, and the beauty and dire need of your kingdom being established here throughout my own home and community. I have missed it. Why… and how in the world…? Forgive me, Lord. Jesus, come again in the fullness of your Spirit and establish me again into your kingdom as a citizen of it and may your kingdom in turn be established here, in, through, and from my heart, my household, and my domain. I give all of myself back to you: body, heart, soul, mind, spirit, strength. I am yours. Reign here. Move here. Speak here. Bring your presence and blessing here. Open my eyes and ears. You have saved the best for now, indeed. I am taken. I love you. I love you. Amen.