It's Simple... DON'T JUDGE !!!

Have you ever noticed, when we judge others too quickly or much worse,
when we label people, we freeze people and we stop moving towards them
? Instead of remaining complex subjects, judging objectifies people
into caricatures and cardboard cut outs. And when disciples of Jesus
stop moving towards people – the Kingdom of God is diminished.

It's interesting… the Scriptures say all kinds of things about
judging. In one place Jesus says, "Don't judge and you yourself will
not be judged. Don't condemn people and you in turn will not be
condemned. Give generously and, 'a good measure, pressed down, shaken
together & running over…' will be given to you in return. Forgive
others and you will be forgiven.

It's like as though judgement & labelling people are so engrained in
everything we do, that the only possible way to undo it is to do it's
opposite.

Jesus goes further. He says if someone hates you, love them - if they
curse you – bless them. If someone abuses you, pray for them. If
anyone hits you on one side of your face, offer them the other side as
well. The list goes on & on until the picture that is formed is one of
overwhelming openness & generosity & movement towards people.

Jesus says, 'If you love only those who love you, how is that
different – even evil men love those who love them'. Jesus says that
in his Kingdom, the thing that defines his disciples is not how they
respond to those who love them but how they respond to those who don't
love them – to those who even despise them.

You know, I used to think that when Jesus said 'Love your enemies' he
was speaking in exaggerated language about extravagantly loving your
neighbour. Yet now I think Jesus is just saying, "Don't judge, don't
label, give & forgive generously – love your enemies !" It's that
straightforward !

That we use our judgement to make decisions for living is natural
however when disciples of Jesus judge and label others, they freeze
people, they stop moving towards people and the Kingdom of God is
diminished.

Actions Speaking Louder Than Words...

It's interesting… the Psalmist says, 'the heavens are declaring the
glory of God. Day after day pours forth speech & night after night
declares knowledge of God's glory… yet there is no speech nor are
there any words'. How can the heavens declare God's glory without
words ? I always used to think the obvious answer to this question was
the grandeur & complexity of the universe gave silent witness to the
glory of God.

However, the Bible says something quite different. In Exodus, we are
given a wonderful picture of Moses in intimate conversation with God.
Moses says, 'Show me you glory' and God agrees. However, God doesn't
take Moses to some high place where he can shown all the wonders of
the universe. Instead we are told God passes before Moses and
proclaims, 'The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to
anger and abounding in love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love
for a thousand generations, forgiving wrong doing & selfishness, yet
by no means clearing the guilty… to the third and fourth generation'.
It's all there. God's crowning glory isn't his creation. God's glory
is his goodness, it his activity on behalf of justice and
righteousness and mercy. The heavens are quietly declaring the glory
of God because actions speak louder words.

The Scriptures go further. They say that fearing God, knowing God is
an action, it is movement. Knowing God is described as walking in all
his ways. It's being stirred to action by the things that matter the
most to God. The prophet Amos says, 'What does the Lord require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your
God.'

I like what Abraham Heschel says. He says that people aren't just
created in the likeness of God, people are created to act in the
likeness of God. When our actions line up with what matters most to
God – he calls that communion. Walking humbly in his ways.

Our actions on behalf of justice, righteous and mercy are the moments
touched by God's glory.

Outwards & downwards !

Baraka...

I remember some of the conversations I used to have with colleagues when I lived overseas. Sometimes they would speak long & passionately about their desire for seeing the Gospel spread like wildfire among Muslim peoples. These were people with Big vision who were focused on engaging in activities that would release church planting movements. Often the image that would be evoked in my mind was of the good news being some kind of unstoppable tsunami. I am uncomfortable with that image.

 

Rick Love* says he doesn't like the term 'mission' because too often it misrepresents the peaceable way of Jesus. He suggests that rather than conquering the world for Jesus, the presence of the gospel among a community of people is one of blessing and transformation. He says the pattern of God's intention for people is imprinted in God's first conversation with Abraham, "Leave your country, your people & your father's household & go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation & I will bless you; I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those you bless you and whoever curses you I will curse; and all people's on earth will be blessed through you " (Gen 12:1-3). In the New Testament the Apostle Paul makes the direct connection between Abraham, blessing & the gospel, "The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: "All nations will be blessed through you" (Gal 3:8).

 

The presence of the gospel among people is like a little yeast in the dough. It is subversive & revolutionary bringing fundamental change but its arrival is often subtle & below the radar… mostly birthed in weakness. It is also like a radiating tiger balm bringing healing and reconciliation, justice and generosity ...deeply satisfying and purposeful living.

 

The presence of the gospel is creative and industrious movement among communities of people responding to the blessing of the kingdom of God.

 

Rick Love says, "So no more talk of conquering… those who follow Jesus are commissioned to bless".

 

Outwards & Downwards,

 

Glenn

 

*Rick Love is the International Director for Frontiers, a missional movement focused on blessing Muslims.

'Baraka' is the Arabic word for blessing.

The Edge that Belongs in the Middle II...

Communion is the sacrament that takes us to the deep heart of the
gospel. Communion says that when you engage in the simple concrete
actions of eating bread & drinking from a cup you reached an edge, a
boundary. You have entered the threshold of a sacred space - a place
of holy paradox.

The beauty of the torn edge. It is that boundary place that is formed
between living and suffering. Communion takes us to that place, to the
Cross on a hill on the edge of Jerusalem, where Jesus was broken for
you & for me.

It is the torn edge where brokenness & spilled blood becomes the balm
of healing, where Jesus' unspeakable pain & abandonment enables
wholeness & intimacy, where God gloried through the death of Jesus
brings light and transformation to peoples' profound selfishness,
where death & resurrection becomes the pathway to birthing something
new.

Communion is the safe place where we can allow ourselves to be
pierced, to be penetrated, to be held and to be humbled, to bow our
heads and find we are accepted in the presence of Almighty God.
Communion the edge that belongs in the middle.

The Edge that Belongs in the Middle...

The other day I was walking along the beach. It was one of those warm
afternoons that beckon people from their workplaces & homes - out onto
the sand.

There is something profoundly soothing about the repeated action of
waves breaking onto the sand. There is that momentary stillness where
the water reaches its edge before it is pulled back into the sea.
Always, that edge is shifting - never quite the same. There is
tremendous energy in waves breaking onto the shore & constant change -
where one moment your step can be etched precisely into the beach and
the next moment erased by a sudden gush of water.

I find exquisite unpredictability about this edge place where waves
meet sand. I was walking along with my two sons when the retreating
water revealed it's treasure - a rather large crab. I thought it was
dead so I picked it up to show my boys. All of a sudden the crab was
trying to scramble from my grasp. It scared the 'fregeebas' out of me,
while the boys roared laughing in delight.

Why is it that so many people are energised by this kind of place ?
Why is it that when I look in the Real Estate window the most
expensive houses are always those closest to the beach ?

I wonder if people are drawn to the beach on warm winter days because
there is freshness and newness in such a place, because people can
re-center and recreate themselves away from the busyness of the
everyday. Mostly edges form borders & boundaries - marking out where
one thing finishes & another begins. However, for people who inhabit &
dwell in close proximity to these places, they can become the heart -
the edge that belongs in the middle.

Word Smithy...

A Rabbi had a guest staying with him who heard him speak one Sabbath. Said the guest to Rabbi Baruch, “Rabbi, you speak so beautifully.” Said the Rabbi in reply, “I should rather be mute than to speak beautifully !”

I am one who would speak beautifully. I want to be one who ‘in the afterglow of a religious insight’ is a wordsmith inspired to pen words of profound wisdom. My problem is too often my words of passionate, precise intensity are not always matched by action.
 
Movement in response to spiritual insight is not beautiful words - lilting as they are longing, playful or subtle. Abraham Heschel says our response to the afterglow of spiritual insight is to “see a way to gather up our scattered lives to unite what lies in strife… a way that is good for all men as it is for me.” The litmus test of moments touched by the finger of God is the concrete expression of actions accessible to everyman.
 
If words accompany meaningful action, shouldn’t they be spoken clearly & plainly, out of the long silence that accompanies profound humility ?
 
Authenticity, humility, transparency - a life lived consciously; sometimes well and focused, sometimes scattered. Life is too short to speak beautiful words only. I want to speak out of my experience of concrete action – conscious, focused, deliberate action for which I am profoundly accountable. Imagine simple accessible words of true power connected directly to my very movement. I tremble at the thought of speaking such words.
 
I want to experience the dilemma of Jeremiah, ‘For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach & a derision all day long. If I say, “I will not mention him or speak any more in his name” then within me there is something like a burning fire shut in my bones. I am weary with holding it in and I cannot’.
 
Life is too short to speak beautiful words… only.

Resurrection Deconstruction...

Death, extinction, expiration… equilibrium ?
 
What’s the difference between peace & death ? Is it merely the absence of life ? Jesus’ death speaks of the violence of men, of life beaten out of his body… of a body breaking & screaming out to its last breath about the imbalance & the dis-equilibrium of a world that breaks too many people.
 
I have never understood this idea of celebrating the death of Jesus.
 
 Surely this is THE Dark Mark on the very broad horizon of the actions of men… and the women weep again - as well they should for men - and the death of their compassion – the death of sensitivity. “What manner of action is this… that men would extinguish hope, something new given from the aching heart of God ?”

That men would seek to undo the purposes of God… to destroy righteousness  & justice and drown mercy in their deep arrogance that flows as a never ending steam is dissonance & more of the same.
 
Oh the anger & the rage of the Center when it is defied and disturbed, when it is made to feel irrelevant. The violence of the Center when it is shown to be hollow & without substance – diminished & lacking in pity.
 
That the Crucifixion of Jesus could be the path of intensified living, life fulfilled in humility with men sensitive & wholly attending - is Holy irony. It is truly the awful presence of God in proximity to Babel.
 
The birth of something truly new often means allowing something held too tightly, to be truly extinguished, to die in dust & ashes and then to rise up reborn as the phoenix.  
 
This is the concrete action, the light of life we call Resurrection.

Dirty Fingers...

John 8:1-11... a woman caught in adultery… it is the portable passage. This narrative has also been placed after Jn 7:36 & found at the end of the John’s Gospel. In other writings, it even jumps over into the 21st chapter of Luke’s Gospel. I love that this passage is so movable – a liminal narrative – a safe place for all those who are weak & guilty. It is the narrative that exists in-between; the marginal story of Jesus standing up in defence of the marginal one without a defence.
 
The context for this tale is Jesus at a Center - teaching people in the Temple. This is God’s place but it is a dangerous place ! The story is old & too familiar – a group of men bring a woman caught in another man’s bed before Jesus… ‘Where is the man ?’ A woman caught in a concrete act – shamed – nakedness beyond nakedness. Shame and a double bind. The real motive is to catch out Jesus, the defender of outcasts, the marginal, & the unrighteous ones.
 
The narrative turns on a question ! ‘What will Jesus do in the face of an ethical principal set on behalf of the many & his ethical responsibility in the face of this particular other ?’
 
The tale unfolds & Jesus is bending down, writing with his finger in the dirt… the image of a pondering judge that invokes the writing of the 10 commandments. Keep paying attention as we step between – the creative movement sideways – on behalf of compassion, mercy & justice. Jesus never says this woman isn’t guilty. He posits no clever theological formula, nor calls down any miraculous intervention. Instead, he gives permission… “You may throw the stone if you are without sin…”. The question is answered. And once again, this moment of undeserved mercy is bounded by an image of justice – of Jesus bending & writing in the dirt… the sins of each of the woman’s accusers.
 
How much easier it is to gather around the sins of another to relieve our own inner strife.
 
Yet beyond dispassionate judgement, beyond the structured institutionalism of the Law applied by men is grace – the step sideways, the opportunity to begin again. The humility we need is the truth that we are all bound together in unholy community by our sinful acts. Jesus doesn’t freeze or define people by the litany of their selfish actions. I love it that in its usual place in John 8, in the very next passage Jesus says, “You judge by human standards, I judge no one… Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (Jn 8:12-15).
 
The light of life accompanying the concrete action of following Jesus.

The Guardian

The other evening I was watching ‘The Guardian’ – the new Kevin Kostner and Ashton Kutcher movie. I was reminded that to be plunged into an angry sea is to be immersed in life beyond my control – to be treading water in a world that doesn’t think a moment on my comfort or safety. To be effective in such a place is about self-care & preparation – a learning that leverages presence and possibility out of otherwise annihilating conditions. There is an intuition at work here, a determined purpose of fixed focus & particular choices. There will always be the other others but out here I attend to those in close proximity. Always my own safety is paramount – my health and effectiveness depend upon it.
 
An angry sea is a reminder of the fragility of life, of my nakedness – my exposure in the world. There is a destructive randomness & violence about this planet – a tremendous power that puts men in their place. For those who dare to dwell here - legends attach themselves like molluscs – accretions of men being more – intensifying their presence.
 
The world of technology, of structure on the edge of chaos allows men to get unnaturally close to raw nature. Yet to enter the angry sea, the fisher of men takes an old fashioned jump – a leap of faith beyond comfort & safety – the possibility of death increasing exponentially – extinction – irrelevance – a step beyond rationality, a dunking in the death zone.
 
Ours is a fragmented humanity, broken by circumstance, traumatised by incident, marked by particular choices. The chance of redemption is life for those past the point of no return. To save the ones you can and to let the others go is the choice of one who would be a Guardian.

Dangerous Saying...

Sometimes, I see the world as one standing on a grassy hill among ancient manicured burial mounds. The sun is high overhead & a breeze lightly caresses my face. In those moments, I stand content & sure as the stream meandering through lush green fields of ancient battle below me. There is continuity in it, that speaks as surely as the flow of river waters, glinting all the way to the sea.  
 
Yet what if a lone red doorway suddenly breaks in on my peripheral ?  What if in my boundless curiosity I walk over, turn the handle and step through it ?
 
‘You may open any door in the garden but this one... if you open this particular door, you will surely die !’

In that moment of dawning knowledge, I see the world as one standing on the same grassy hill. The sun is still overhead & the breeze lightly bracing my face. Again I am lulled into contentment… until I am not ! I am anxious. I have a jarring sense of discontinuity. I scan those green fields of suffering & the fallen then out on the edge of perception I see it. It is the river. It has changed its course. Now it rushes back to meet me.
 
Facing such eruption, instinctively I turn towards the safety of home. But I stop ! Through the door, in my home, within my hearing… unbidden - a deafening roar is rushing to meet me. I see that in that once sure place, far off on the edge of the boundless, the mountains are skipping like rams, the ancient hill is trembling and the glinting river has burst its banks. A battle again rages in an overflowing torrent that reaches up to the neck !  
 
Behind me, a surge of words thunders… “Do not walk in the way of this people or believe in what they call a good outcome. Do not fear what they fear or be in dread. See it is the Name of the Lord coming from far away, his nostrils burning, thick clouds arising, his lips boiling with rage… His tongue is like a devouring fire & his breath – his breath is like an overwhelming stream reaching up to the neck”.
 
I stand as one between two blast furnaces – betwixt & between and waiting. Waiting till the Truly Other comes & breaks open the Empire of the Same.

The Tension of a De-centered Self !

There is a tension in being one centered in a Biblical worldview. It is the tension that exists between the self and the Messianic action. The Messianic action. What is a messianic action ? For the individual disciple of Jesus it is summed up in Mark 8:34, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves…” I love what Karl Barth has to say about movement away from self. He says, “To follow Jesus means to go beyond oneself in a specific action & attitude & therefore to turn one’s back upon oneself – to leave oneself behind”. Barth argues that this movement “can never be a question of a routine continuation or repetition of our customary practise… it always involves the decision of a new day”. The Messianic action says that disciples are shaped & formed by continuous concrete actions that deny the self in their move towards the other.
 
Sometimes I am overwhelmed, even frozen by the reality of reality. There is an exquisite complexity to it that threatens annihilation in the mere contemplation of it. Yet the call of Jesus is call to move, to step & to step and to step again. Repeatedly in the Gospels Jesus’ teaching is a call & a command not to grow comfortable & content & static in our own petty kingdoms but to be sensitive to those who inhabit the margins and to be ‘Jesus’ in those places.
 
This movement away from the self - means we are like pilgrim people freed from the attachment & pursuit of possessions, we are freed from the pursuit of social status & the absolute of family ties. It means we are like wanderers who embrace the path of weakness, resisting the use of force even towards our enemies. Ours is a call to a simple yet purposeful piety filled with integrity – almost transparent and definitely low key in its practice.
 
I was reading a Christmas story to the kids before Christmas. It was the story of a comet that journeys from a way out there in deep space. It is difficult voyage past stars and the gravitational pull of the planets. Eventually the comet passes near the earth where it becomes a sign that guides the wise men to the place where the babe, Jesus has been born. It occurred to me that this orientation & sensitivity towards the edges is profoundly present even in the beginning of the Gospel narrative. This is an attentiveness, a sensitivity born of those familiar with the Messianic action.
 
Yet I have a question, “Why does it take outsiders, marginal people like the wise men & the shepherds to identify who is the babe born in Bethlehem ?