Monday is for Morons: 10-31-2011

Jesus was just beaten to a bloody and disgusting mess. He was being called names and maligned. After the long nails went through his hands and he was stapled down to the cross. They, without concern of smoothness or being ginger, flopped the cross upright in the hole in the ground. The joking and final flop of the cross into the hole further ripped skin and stretched tendons. There Jesus hung. A picture of poverty portrayed, paradoxically to save.

Then the guy next to him and an 'ahah!' moment. Maybe he saw Jesus earlier in his life; as he was walking around the city heard of Jesus' claims, saw a miracle or two. Or maybe he had never met him before but,picking up on the jeers, discerned who Jesus was. Regardless, here he is suffocating along side the Son of God. 'Jesus,' he whispers out between breaths 'remember me in paradise.' Can you believe it?! I mean this guy was feeling sorry for himself, for at his 'death bed' he realized what an idiot he had been his whole life. I mean people steal because they don't work, right? Sure, live your whole life like you want then at the end whine like a baby and seek repentance, what a moron!

But wait. The disfigured face of Jesus clearly claws out a sentence, 'Today, you will be with me in paradise.' WHAT!?!

The truth of it all is that Jesus' mercy and grace and love and compassion and patience are far greater, far more shocking and scandalous than we could ever have imagined. It does not take a life-time of good deeds and bible reading to enter to bliss of Christ's presence forever. It takes the realization that all your friends already know, you're a rotten to the core sinner. But Heaven is stock full of rotten apples like you! What's one more? There is no sin too large that God, like Gallagher, won't obliterate to bits! Smashing it to that it covers the earth as they life at the sin's triviality.

You have a sack full for God to smash? That's okay, he has both the time and the power for it. 'But these are some really big ones!' you reply. He has it covered, he'll just bring out a bigger hammer. Hurry, find your forgiveness in Jesus' work, go now, before you feel so guilty again that you think he could never forgive you.

Tried Hands

Monday is for Morons: 10-24-2011

Sometimes Mondays can feel like an unhappy awakening from an otherwise fanciful life that you were living. I'm willing to say that the guy who invented sliced bread did so on the weekend, woke up on Monday and was still bummed. And sometimes it seems it would be more pleasant to listen to an entire album of nails on the chalkboard then to roll out of bed. This is life . . . but not all of it, thank God.

There is a verse in the Bible's Old Testament, the book of Psalms, which was often the only reason my work chair stayed occupied: 'Those who sow in tears will reap with shouts of joy!' Think of that in an agrarian culture; if you did not sow the seed for your crops at the appropriate time, come harvest season you'd be looking at the ground going 'crap,' because nothing has come for you and your family to eat or sell. So a point here, the one which was helpful to me, is that your labor today is somehow helpful to you or will be. It is maybe part of a stepping stone in your career or maybe your life; maybe it is as simple as being productive and useful; for most it is a means to place food on the table, heat in the house and toilet paper on the roll.

Today may be the worst day in the world, but keep hope. For the Christian there is hope. Work is not JUST work. And sadness will not remain forever. Remember the Gospel of Jesus. He did not come to make you a perfect being with no flaws while on earth. He came to save you because you, because all of us, are a bunch of idiots who very frequently forget that God is god and we are not god. 'I have sinned!' you say. I have too. all of us have. Now let us together remember that Jesus, if we believe in him, what he did, if we entrust ourselves to him (lots of words here but it is not hard) we are forgiven forever. And that is a long time.

Monday is for Morons

What makes you a Christian--if you claim to be one? Is it all the good or admirable things you have done . . . or thought about doing? Mmmmm, no. Maybe it is your sincerity in whatever you do end up doing. That's kind of dumb--sorry. Ugh, maybe you are a Christian because you were baptized, or you say your prayers; OH! You are a Christian because your parents are, and they still go to church sometimes. You DO have that tattoo that could be interpreted as spiritual, and Christianity is spiritual.

Okay. That is weak. Let's see . . .


Maybe you are pretty good. You read your bible a lot. You pray not only for yourself but for other people. You even (watch out now) GIVE MONEY TO THE CHURCH!

When I became a Christian and started trusting Jesus I knew next to nothing. I knew what the bible was and could misquote you some funny sounding bible verses--'eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow will be like today or far better!'--I liked that one. I did not know big confusing sounding words like theology, soteriology, ecclesiology, blah blah blah. While these big words are helpful, they did not save me.

Somewhere along the line of life after my salvation I began understanding some more things in the bible. I read some thick books. I started learning those big words. As this happened a terrible and stupid OTHER thing happened as well: I started believing that other people were not REAL Christians until they knew the things I knew. Can you believe it!? I just tried to disqualify my own salvation. What a goof I was. Thankfully God softly back-handed me in the face and allowed me to see how silly I was thinking about things.

You need not be some scholar sporting a sweater vest and a mean beard. You do not even need to know one verse in the bible by memory! You do not need to have all your stuff together. You do not need to clean up your act. You do not need to do anything really.

Jesus says he came to save people who knew well that they needed saving. They knew they were SOL without someone helping them. Don't put your hope of salvation in your actions or thoughts or a scale--I did not do too much bad stuff. Put your hope in Jesus again. He is probably the only one who truly and completely and with empathy knows all you're going through and still loves you fully.

Imagination and Revelation

Here at Living in a Larger Universe, from time to time, we like to observe and think using the reasoning and logic and observation God has given us.

Clive Staples Lewis, (yes, someone named their son that, I too would just use the letters and not spell it out) was a fascinating mind. He wrote books of profound impact about God and man, about nature and miracles, love and pain; but to me what is exemplary was his ability to write about all those things and package it in a children's book; and not just a crummy and confusing children's book but perhaps the most popular of its kind in modern history.

I have heard it said that the real examination a pastor should have to go through in order to become a preacher and minister in a church is to explain the Gospel of Jesus and the larger story of the bible in a way that a five-year-old could grasp it. I often am applauding the scientist or the philosopher or the theologian who I am sure is brilliant . . . if I could only understand the words he is using. But those who can swim in the depths of complexity and difficulty but come back and clearly and concisely explain what they just experienced, that is someone special.

God gave all of us the ability to imagine. Each person has the gift to think outside the laws of nature, and inside the broader scope of reason--here I am thinking of the Professor's argument for what the word 'logical' means in the book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

There are some Christians who fear the unsure and preposterous. It makes no sense for someone like this to understand, for example, the book of Revelation as a book mainly describing history past. The book was written for people who were about to die for what they believed, I'm not so sure where John--the author of Revelation--would have been going in encouraging these death-row saints by telling them things that mattered not to them.

Imagination helps us to see. For something to be IMpossible that thing or idea must have absolute zero chance of ever occurring at any time in any place anywhere . . . ever! Imagination says, what if. What if this happened; what if things were this way. god has given us the ability to step into a world that is different but plausible compared to ours.

The book of Hebrews states that 'faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not yet seen.' Faith is not imaginative as in fictional or untrue or implausible or even impossible; no, faith is imagining what WILL be. Imagination come true according to the Christian bible, this is how the Christian hopes.

A Poem: 08-14.2011

Why do I stand,
stay?
Why not with whims
blow away?
Dissolved resolve
scattered like dust.
The rust grows,
pushing,
tilting,
slipping,
making many messes for maids to mull;
sucked away before inspected,
invested gators,
twisting traitors.
Teeth of a warm
menacing my skin.
The ache of a brake
deeper presses in.
Statistics gauge the revolt
accounting casually the casualties
like lifeless hope:
‘One here, one there . . .
No, he is gone.
Move along.’
Pale as pastels,
chalk another for reason
without conclusion,
logical confusion.
Desperate streams
sharing the razor road
rending the accident
a hypothetical code.
‘Ride out to see,
yes with only me,
what we could be!’
Potential diseased,
frightened to displease.
Plead with the wall,
willing its fall
to draw the curtain
full.
Hide the stage,
feel the sage
sure as steel.
‘Score, score and four.’
The star has ceased,
felt like a crease.
In time, when time
gives up.
The steps were kept
as we stood,
one beside the next,
existing.

Was Jesus Serious?

I was able to attend a thrilling college football game a few years ago. The home team was down all game long. It was now the fourth quarter and the home team was still down by four points with only 3 minutes left. The home team had the ball. They were driving down the field. The suspense was building. The whole stadium was willing a win. The quarterback dropped back and in an instant released the ball. Into the receivers hands the ball fell and into the end zone went the receiver. Touchdown. For a brief moment there was so much unhindered emotion that sound itself disappeared. Everyone had their mouth open; veins were bulging; I had not an atom of oxygen remaining in my body, but no noise. The sound was so loud that for that moment our ears could not handle it. Everyone in the stadium immediately went hoarse. The whole game we were waiting for this!

Could you imagine in this moment that I turned and looked at my friend next to me, one who I know breathes this same team, who lives and dies by the success of this home team, could you imagine if I saw my friend with both arms extended with thumbs pointing down booing the success of his team? Confusing? Shocking? Angering?

In Jesus’ parable of two brothers found in the Gospel of Luke, the 15th chapter, verses 11-32, the young, foolish, sinful, bad, rebellious brother was considered dead; literally gone and done with were the thoughts regarding this young man. As it ends up he is alive and comes home and as any loving father would do, once he found out his boy was alive and well the father kissed him, accepted him back in to the family, made it clear that he loved his son by throwing an over lavish and expensive party. Jesus says that this is the kind of rejoicing that goes on in heaven when a sinner comes home—when one realizes he is never going to make it, that he needs God and the grace and comfort his love brings. The stadium is erupting with joy. The cheering so loud you cannot hear. Everyone is cheering. Everyone one, except . . .

The religious elite in Jesus’ day were not happy with how gracious Jesus was portraying God to be. ‘Of course we are only saved by God’s mercy alone’ they would say—and believe!—‘but you must also be good.’ They are the fan booing when the whole Kingdom of God is beside themselves in happiness. They are booing because they are not satisfied. They think that if God’s grace is for the prostitute, the drunk, the homeless guy who doesn’t take showers, the one who killed another, the single mom, the . . . ugh . . . ordinary; if God’s grace is for THEM than it is not special, they think.

God’s grace is shocking. God chooses to love those who are the social outcasts, the failures in life. He is not just for the rich, not just the blue collared but the bottom of the barrels. Not only does God love those but he loves those who already had their moment of realization, who already spent their first chance . . . and the 17 that came after. He keeps loving them. God’s love is for all. You cannot win it. You cannot outgrow it. You cannot earn it. You cannot lose it. You cannot expand it. You cannot detract it.

The Pharisees did not like what Jesus was saying about the Father’s mercy because they suddenly realized that they had absolutely nothing to do with it. They saw their hierarchy was a farce. They saw that in God’s eyes a king was just the same as a poor, homeless Jew who was called a bastard his whole life. They were booing God.

Monday is for Morons

I have forgotten the Gospel again. I have forgotten that I do not have to sin anymore. I have forgotten that Jesus was forgotten so that I could be remembered by the Father.

Maybe you found yourself this weekend in places where sin seemed to be all you knew. Friend, Jesus died for you.

Did your football team blow it so you blew up at everyone? Were you the one who had the opportunity to forgive someone else but instead you chose to make them feel as bad as they made you feel? Did you say something that you feel unraveled everything you tried to teach your own, little, impressionable kids? Did you lose hope this week? Were you the one who knew you were going to sin, had time to not sin, yet continued on ignoring the EXIT sign? Maybe you said to yourself, 'I just do not care enough.' Maybe you said, 'I don't think God exists anymore.' . . .

Maybe you cheated on your spouse. Maybe you cheated on your taxes. Maybe you killed someone in your heart; maybe you killed someone and are going to be in prison the rest of your life. You looked at porn again. You got that abortion this week. You told your best friend she could 'go to Hell' then sounded happy and laughed the very next minute on the phone.

Friend, Jesus knows. Jesus knows and that is precisely why he died. Jesus did not die for the 'polite' social sins; Jesus did not die for certain kinds of sin; Jesus died to experience God's wrath on your behalf for each and every individual sin you will ever commit from lying to lynching. You cannot outrun God's grace, it is a tsunami, a treaty of kindness, a promise that will not be annulled or void, it is your shadow.

Mondays typically suck. I typically forget how present and persistent the Gospel is. I typically emphasize sorrow and not Jesus' success. Well Jesus died for our doubts too.

He tells us all our sins our forgiven . . . yup, even that one he has fully placed on his tab and paid for already.