The Day the Revolution Began

N. T. Wright has become probably the most prolific biblical interpreter of the twenty first century. His refocusing the Scriptures back on their Jewish origins and their historical context of exile has been revolutionary to say the least. His earlier work is fast becoming a classic, Surprised by Hope, a game changer in the world of conflicting understandings of a new heaven and new earth and how it relates to the Christian life today. I am only half way through it but now his new work, The Day The Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus Crucifixion (Harper One, 2016) is going to be another challenging work in how we have short changed the meaning of Jesus death and its cosmic implications for today.

Wright decodes the popular notions of "going to heaven" and atonement theologies like "penal substitution" and places the whole biblical narrative in its larger historical context and global story. There have been so many abuses of the Christian story that its very common for people today to refer to God as committing cosmic child abuse when it comes to the sacrifice of God's son on the cross. Too often we have de-biblicized, de-judaized, and even paganized the biblical story to suit our personal current needs. What we actually find in the Bible is not some wrathful God trying to kill someone for a blood sacrifice. What we rather find is a covenant keeping God who takes the full force of sin upon himself..

N. T. Wright doesn't totally reject the popular notions many Christians have been taught about the Bible but he places the biblical story of Jesus in a larger story where its not just about sin but also about idolatry. It's not just about the church but its about God's cosmic kingdom. It's not just about heaven when we die but its about the new heaven and new earth and the story of bringing heaven to earth in the present! N. T. Wright is challenging Christians to go deeper and farther in their understanding of the cross of Christ that transform nothing less than the whole cosmic universe as God is reconciling all things to himself!

Christ Haunted Questions

How does one discover one's true self?
Do I gaze at the world and put Christ on the shelf?
Do I stop at the cross or do I enter in?
The door of love is wide open, do I knock?
Will I die to self or hide love away?
Will God's love flow through me or just be out of reach?
The depths of the cross pierces my heart,
will I hide from its light or live in it?
These questions haunt my soul, what will I do?

The Kenosis of the Cross

In the cross I discover death to myself and receive divine life.
   In the cross I give my poverty and receive Christ's riches
      In the cross I trade my wounds for Christ's wholeness
         In the cross I go from
       darkness to light
     grief to joy
   despair to praise
 emptiness to fullness

The Cross as Divine Participation

I have to admit, most books I read often do not get better as they go but Bradley Jersak's book  A Most Christlike God does exactly that, it gets better as one travels through it.  He speaks powerfully of the synergy of grace and the panentheism of the early church.  Since the fundamentalist-liberal conflict and the debate between atheists and Christian theists, especially over science, I can't help wonder if the panentheism of the early church would be a kind of bridge between science and religion?  God not just saving man but the entire cosmos and universe, even our pets and animals have a place in Christ's redemptive story.

Jersak describes three areas of God's involvement which includes the cosmos, humanity, and incarnation.  God is the God of being for all reality and creation.  God is the wellspring of all reality.  Secondly, God participates in the world through willing partners (p.150).  These redemptive partnerships so that we can enter into God's self emptying love (kenosis).  Thirdly, God participates in the world through incarnation.  God is the lover and we are God's beloved.  God incarnationally is bringing healing and love into a broken world.

The Cross Still Speaks

The bush burns but is not consumed
The bush gives light but no heat
The bush my body on fire by God
The bush the world, God become flesh

Breath and voice all flow as divine speech
Sin and flesh weighed down in rebellion
The prophet's voice utters a word
The whole creation is filled with its sound

The cross still speaks in a world of pain
The cross stills speaks as we hide our shame
The cross still speaks for there is no where else to go
The cross still speaks for all creation dances at its feet

Cross Training

You are the Father's Beloved
The Father's blessing is within your reach
God wants every generation to guard the sacred treasure
The holy dwelling place within our hearts

We have trashed Eden and sacrificed integrity
Exile and loneliness is all around us
Purification must come for consecration
Our adversary the Devil mocks us at every turn

As we discard the rubble of our life
The chief cornerstone builds a cruciform cathedral
The shape of the cross now fills the earth
My body a holy temple for worship

The Logic of War

I am under the shadow of God's wings . . . for those who seek to destroy life, let them die
(Psalm 63:7, 9)

There is a time for war the Bible says.  The Bible says it, does that settle it?  The Bible also says there is a time for hate.  If we are to kill our enemies, should we not hate them?  Does not this make sense and seems to be so logical?  One also finds in the Bible holocausts and holy wars.  Does not war make right what is so wrong in the world?  Isn't war a reminder of how costly peace may be at times?  Are we not to defend our family and country? 

Our vacation in Hawaii climax was going to Pear Harbor.  Remember Pear Harbor.  A Japanese man thought Pearl Harbor was funny.  Is war a laughing matter?  What would the Japanese think if an American thought Hiroshima was funny?  The oldest person I ever knew was a nurse at Pearl Harbor.  I asked her if the two thousand and four hundred Americans who died was worth killing fifty thousand Japanese people?  Her response was that fifty thousand Japanese did not even equal two thousand plus Americans.  Another Christian lady told me that if China ever try to bomb our country, we would nuke them off the planet.  Pastors have told me how bombing Japan with not one but two atomic bombs saved lives in the end.

The logic is war saves lives.  We kill in the name of life.  We go to war in the name of peace.  And what about nuclear war that does not discriminate between combatants and non-combatants?  The just war theory says that is not just but somehow the just war theory is used to some how make wars just, even nuclear war.  Two people were talking about the morality of the just war theory and the whole world ending in an apocalyptic ending.  When asked what they were talking about, they responded, "Just war."

Stanley Hauerwas once proposed the idea "Can Christians at least commit to not killing other Christians?"  This sounds like a reasonable proposal until one reads the fine print because it undermines the logic of war.  Every country in the world is full of Christians.  The Catholic bomber who dropped the bombs on Japan also annihilated three Catholic churches and killed Catholic Christians.  Rawandan African Christians committed genocide and ethnic cleansing.  Didn't God also tell Joan of Arc as a French Catholic to fight war against the Spanish Catholics?  Holy war and jihad is in the Bible the story goes.  American exceptionalism is America is the only country righteous or moral enough to use violence and police other countries.  It all sounds so patriotic and logical until terrorists and radical Islam uses the same logic in fighting America.

Didn't God save the world through the violence of the cross?  Isn't God described in the Bible as a divine warrior and doesn't Jesus return as a bloody warrior in the book of Revelation?  War has been preached in American pulpits for two centuries that not only is it our civic and patriotic duty but it is also our Christian duty to fight and serve our country in war time.  Does the gospel of Jesus Christ subvert our war like nature or does our war like nature subvert the gospel?

The logic of war sounds so reasonable and logical until one begins to ask tough questions and put more light on the subject.  All the sudden there are glaring contradictions, deep black holes, and questionable morality and questionable interpretations of scripture.  The danger of war is idolatry.  In the second original planet of the apes movie ended with an apocalyptic civilization that worshipped the bomb.

The cross of Christ challenges all pretensions, loyalties, and every attempt of controlling our own destinies rather than surrendering everything to God, even our destinies.  The war memorial at Pearl Harbor is a tragic reminder of the horrors of war.   Half of those killed on that historic day were on the USS Arizona and could not escape that metal tomb of a ship.  When one stands over their watery grave and reflect, meditate, and contemplate, maybe its time to listen to the dead when it comes to war?

Death Has Lost Its Sting

Death is a defining moment.
     Not an ending but a new beginning.
          Not a disappearance but a new revelation.

Like Adam and Eve we must descend before we can ascend into perfection.
     Like Moses and the burning bush, the fire purifies but does not destroy.
          Like Jonah in the belly of the whale, the whale of death swallows up the human race.

Who can escape death for it is every man's fate.
      Leaving the world of Egypt, we return to the world of Eden.
          At the center of Eden is a tree, the cross.

It is by that cross we come to live with God in paradise.
     As we carry the cross of Christ, death has lost its sting.
          Death is swallowed up by paradise.


(Inspired from the writings of John Behr Becoming Human)

Re-Imagining Revival

Revival is not just an event that happens but it is simply an awakening to the presence of God already around and in you.  We do not create an atmosphere of revival but we are to position ourselves to listen and feel the steady rhythms of God's Spirit.  We are all carriers of God's sweet presence.  We all are potential carriers of revival.

One person walking in the Spirit can change the world.  It always starts with one that gathers with two or more in prayer.  Revival is always birthed in prayer.  The Eastern Orthodox tradition says, "The prayer of a single righteous person can redeem and preserve the world." 

The problem is we don't believe that because we don't believe in ourselves.  It always comes down to trust.  We don't trust God because we don't trust ourselves.  True knowing only comes from discovering our true self in Christ.  By embracing the cross, our old self dies and a new creature is birthed.  By embracing the cross we can now embrace the world. 

Chasing After Geese

We all have our addictive or obsessive tendencies and problems.  Mine is sloth and trying to hide and escape watching television or movies.  Our additive tendencies isolate us from others and some are certainly more destructive than others.  Addictions are like a migrating disease.  If you try to get rid of one, the addiction will flock to another area of your life. 

Addictions are like geese flying from one area of our life to another turning our inner lakes into cesspools.  The vicious cycle perpetuates itself because addictions and the many hidden ways we try to escape and cope are our little ways we try to control our lives and world.  The problem is we are not supposed to be in control, God is the one who rules and reigns, not us.

Like the old Steve McQueen movie "The Great Escape," what are you trying to escape in life?  The only way to truly escape is thru the cross of Christ.  Notice Jesus was offered a sponge of wine to take away and numb some of the pain and escape the hurt he was feeling.  On the cross, Jesus endured it all.  Jesus first miracle was making wine at a wedding but now at the cross, he  rejected it in his suffering.  I know I would have taken the sponge.  In the cross we learn how to escape all our escapisms.

(Reflections from reading A. J. Swoboda A Glorious Dark)

Do You Believe?

"The cross should bring you to your knees and should bring you to your feet" (quote by Pastor Matthews in the movie Do You Believe?)

Pureflix has stepped up in making better pictures with stronger plots, twists and turns, as well as touching both the heart and the emotions.  God's Not Dead was a huge success so I really did not know what to expect with the new movie Do You Believe?

Here was a cast of characters both young and old that told the stories of twelve people who lives intersected at the cross.  In the middle of the movie, there is this scene where the preacher holds up a little wooden cross which he had put in the seats of everyone at this worship service.  Everyone starts holding up their crosses which looked exactly like the cross that I always carry in my pocket to remind me that I live for Christ and not for self.

So right in the middle of the movie, I hold my cross up as high as I can just like the people were doing in the movie.  I don't know what others thought from that's strange or he must have seen the movie before.  It was an participating moment where I too was committing to take up my cross daily, even if it cost me everything and follow Christ.  The title of the movie is more than a title but its a defining question. 

When it comes to laying down everything for Jesus,
Do you believe? 
Do you believe? 
Do you believe?

Secrets of the Cross

When I breathe in God, I breathe in the atmosphere I was made for.
The world may be deeply disturbed but in Christ I find undisturbed rest.
There is nothing one can do to ad or subtract from each day,
God has given all and all is sent each day by God.

When one sins, don't focus on the fault for that can be worse than the fault itself.
Simply focus on Christ and Him crucified.  Christ will take care of the rest.
You can not strip yourself for in doing so simply makes matter worse.
Allow Christ to clothe you and let His cross mold you.

The cross of Christ is not to be endured but desired.
The deeper the cross intersects with our lives,
the greater our hidden secrets disappear.
We can not bear the cross so its only by the Lord's strength,
we can carry it at all.

The cross is where we experience God in the depths of love.
The cross does the work and will even bring Christ to you.
In our weaknesses and inabilities, our true well spring is only found in Christ.
No matter how great the loss, greater will be the gain of knowing Christ,
intimately and completely in the storm of the cross.

Peace That Passeth Understanding

"I am a beggar in the presence of God"

Where does God divine blessing reside?  Some where deep inside of you.  Be still and patient.  If the Lord deprives you of all comfort and even of understanding, do not despair.  God is taking you deeper and the journey is an interior one.  Persevere, trust, hold your peace in Christ.  If you lose the peace of God, ask God to give you what you gave away for nobody takes it unless one gives it.  All I desire is God and His divine pleasure.  The only thing I will is to be willing to do God's will.

Leave everything in God's hands for we are His and everything around us is His.  All things are in His hands and not in yours.  All I know is my illness was necessary for me for without it I would never have seen my own spiritual poverty much less the riches of heaven in Christ in its beauty and glory.  Lose all trust in yourself and completely trust in God.  As soon as you are in a hurry or feel agitated, stop at once!  Pray and surrender it to God.  For in doing so, it will lose it power over your life.

Except everything as if it is the hand of God whether good or bad, pleasure or suffering.  Embrace the cross of Christ, do not run from it or complain about it.  Receive it as if it is a gift from heaven.  Treat everything with equality and let everything else be to you as if it were not.  And when you pray, pray with faith "to call those things which do not exist as though they did" (Romans 4:17 NKJV).  If you don't have peace, ask God for peace and wait upon God for His timing.  Remember, even the heaviest cross must be borne in peace.

The Unbearable Light Weight of God's Glory

"Just as the rising of the sun does not extinguish the stars so the resurrected Son does not extinguish the glorious light of God in earthly bodies"

I can not endure the weight of God's glory (Kabod) but because in Christ, God carries it for me, I can press on.  God's shoulders the heaviness of His Presence and makes it light for those who surrender all to God.  In this I find I am nothing and God is everything.  God wraps our life in divine mystery and holy paradoxes.  Who can know the ways of God but by the Spirit of God.

Jesus is both clothed in mystery and paradox. 
*Jesus is both the suffering wounded Savior and the victorious Risen Lord.
*Jesus is both the peaceful grace of God incarnate and the wild confrontational prophet of God's truth.
*Jesus is both the silent sacrificial lamb of God and the ferocious roaring lion of Judah.
*Jesus words both comfort and give peace as well as confronts and rebukes.
*Jesus is the only perfect man lowly and humble in Spirit as well as bold and courageous in action.

How can we carry the death and life of Jesus in our body so carelessly and comfortably?  I tell you a mystery, God's love is both hidden and revealed.  I am set free by the cross of Christ and I am a slave to the cross of Christ.  The cross is where I feel the depths of my sin and the cross is where I feel the depths of God's love.  All I want to hear is the voice of My Beloved.  I am overwhelmed and overjoyed whether God speaks love to my heart or rebukes and disciplines my soul.  I love his caresses and His rod.

All I see is God's goodness and my sin and weakness.  God's love draws me inward so I can give to others outward.  My poverty of spirit is my treasure and my weakness displays God's strength.  God continues to purify my soul and I feel indescribable peace as well as knowing I am a man of unclean lips.

A Baptism of Snow

"Every dazzling flake of snow reminds me of the beauty and power of God's mercy"

I am in wonder and awe at the heavy snow falling outside my window.  For every drop of residue reminds me of the cleansing power of God's love.  Every white snow flake reminds me that God remembers my sins no more but God still remembers me.  I want to shout praise for every snow flake that falls down from heaven.  I am being refreshed and renewed in a baptism of glistening white.  As the snow glistens in the sun, so does the love of God today shine in my heart.

The snow today is like a sign and wonder from heaven.  A season of white forgiveness.  A season of God's grace and love in abundance.  As the snow piles up and up, so my heart is full of gentle peace.  Calmness is everywhere and God's footprints are everywhere to be seen by those who have eyes of faith to see.  One of the things God is teaching me in this new season is to delight in the cross.  I have always believed in the cross but I have never delighted in it before.  God is filling me with pure love as he kills my sinful flesh.  In the cross of Christ I am being lost in God as God is detaching me from the things of the world and the death of my pride.

"O blessed Cross,
I surrender myself to the crucifixion of self. 
Every snowflake that drops from heaven is a sign of your love and mercy.
May each snowflake represent the great drops of blood of Jesus that washes away our sins.
May each snowflake be in the shape of the cross that delivers our soul from death.
May each snowflake that falls be like a baptism if ice and fire, of the coldness of this world
and the fire of God's great love."

How Can I Sing Psalm 137?

"By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and we wept . . . How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? . . . Happy is the one who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock"
(Psalm 137:1, 4, 9)

I love the Psalms.  They have shaped my life in Christ more than any other scriptures.  I meditate on them every day.  They are written in my heart.  God continually shows me new things every time I read them.  I have to confess, Psalm 137 is one of the most difficult texts in the Bible.  I often breeze by this Psalm losing both the emotion and the context of what God may be trying to show me.

Nobody wants too much light shed on their life at one time.  Nobody wants to expose all the wounds and pain that is deep inside one's hearts and soul.  But God is teaching me to quit avoiding, hiding, and trying to go around the hard places in life.  I must embrace my pain and the deep places that hurt the most.  I must allow God access to the inner deepest corners of my heart and soul if I am ever going to experience complete healing.  If I am ever going to quit waking up screaming in the night and find peace and rest in my dreams.  I am going to have to revisit and go to places within me that my body and emotions try to fight every step of the way.  But go I must!

What I see in Psalm 137 is Jesus praying this Psalm.  All I see anymore is Christ in the Psalms.  Jesus who left the comforts of heaven and came to this foreign land earth.  Jesus who takes all the pain and agony and sins of the whole world onto his shoulders.  Jesus who shows a higher way towards evil and forgives and loves human enemies but we will still find untold inner enemies within our own souls.  We should not wish ill on anyone although we certainly can pray for justice.  But the unseen enemies of the spirit world are harder to see and resist.  They torment us and tempt us and try to destroy us at every turn.

We can pray against the spiritual forces of evil and the darkness of the enemy which should be annihilated and destroyed.  Praying against the enemies of our souls of despair, darkness, depression, and fear should be utterly vanquished by the One Jesus who battled every one of these demons of darkness on the cross.  Maybe by avoiding the cross and what Jesus has done is why too many of these enemies persist and plaque us to this day?  Until the cross of Christ pierces every dark corner of our inner being, we will never experience the freedom God wants for us if we keep avoiding the cross.  The cross is our surest spiritual weapon and pathway to find victory over the dark places of our soul.  The cross is our pathway to freedom!

When we remember our past, our deepest wounds, Christ knows our suffering and pain.    God knows the cries of our hearts.  Let us be ever mindful as we read this Psalm of another description of Christ in the book of Isaiah,

"Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
He was bruised for our iniquities;
the chastisement for our peace upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all."
(53:4-6)

Does God want me happy?

"This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased" (Matthew 3:17)

Some people think God does not want them happy so they avoid God's demands at all cost.  Other people are so consumed with happiness that it seems like they can never find it for true lasting happiness is only found in Christ!.  The Psalmist knew this truth when he says, "Bless is the man" or happy is the man who runs after God and not after the world (Psalm 1). 

What I am discovering is the more I give myself to God, the more God gives Himself to me.  The more I divest myself of the things of this world, the greater my joy, peace, and happiness I posses.  What God is teaching me in the school of suffering is I am to love God in all things equally.  I am to love God in poverty and riches, temptation or without temptation, suffering or no suffering.  One of the things God is teaching me is the spiritual discipline of detachment.

Detachment is where we let go of the things of the world and stop trying to be in control.  Detachment is where we learn that the more we give up, the more free we become.  The more we suffer, the more we can bear under pressure.  When our only concern is God, we have little concern for the things of the world.  There is a new way of living in God's simplicity, purity, and higher calling where we don't just survive or exist but enter into the fruitful abundant life that God in Christ Jesus offers to each and everyone of us.  When I am following Jesus and only Jesus, I find that nothing bothers me because I am engulfed in God's peace and presence.

God is speaking and saying, "I don't want your acts and deeds, I want you and your love."  Are you ready to be enrolled into the school of God's Holy Fire?  I want to become totally empty so that Jesus can fill me with only Himself.  There is such freedom, joy, simplicity, and happiness of the Spirit led life.  God is stripping me bare naked and many of us don't like to be so exposed and vulnerable but unless this happens, happiness will be more an idea to pursue than a lifestyle which is lived.

God is taking me back to be a spiritual child again.  God is leading me into the deep waters of His Holy Spirit.  This used to be a place I feared but now it's the river of life I want to exist and live in.  God is giving me such a carefree freedom, such a happy contentment that I can not really even fully describe it.  I'm happy like a young child who makes his first best friend.  I am happy like a school boy on his way to his first day at school.  I am happy like a star-struck teen on his first date.  I am happy like a father who first sees his newborn child.

What is the secret of happiness?  A heart full of Jesus.  What is the secret to everything?  To love everything with God's love in you.  Where do we find the love of God?  The only place is the cross of Christ.  If there is anything worthwhile in life, anything worth sacrificing everything for, anything that comes with great difficulty and wonderful blessings it is the pathway of the cross of Christ.  This is the pathway to happiness! 

Mondays With My Old Pastor

"SERVING GOD IMPLIES ENTERING A BATTLE, AND IT IS WISE TO REMEMBER THAT IN A BATTLE THERE ARE NO SOLDIERS WITHOUT WOUNDS"  -  Jose Luis Navajo

Battles can wound us and leave us crippled.  I am reminded how fragile life can be from a friend who because of self-inflicted wounds cost him his job as a leader in the church and another friend who was so battled scarred, not from the enemy, but from the leaders he served with that he just threw in the towel and quit.

I just started reading Jose Luis Navajo wonderful book, "Mondays with my Old Pastor (Thomas Nelson, 2012).  It is about a pastor almost fifty who is going through ministerial burnout and constant tiredness.  He knows there is something terribly wrong but he hides from the people who know him best.  Finally he takes his wife's advice and he see his old retried Pastor on Mondays.

If anyone is serving in a church and facing the three headed dragon of discouragement, frustration, and disillusionment, here is a book to read.  The book is centrally about how the cross of Christ can bring healing and restoration to tired and lonely souls.  Life doesn't start at almost fifty but it does start at Calvary.  It is only looking at the cross that we can really see and discover how valuable we really are to God!

Taste and See that the Lord is Good

"THE GOSPEL IS NOT A TRUTH AMONG OTHER TRUTHS.  RATHER, IT SETS A QUESTION-MARK AGAINST ALL TRUTHS"  -  Karl Barth

The cross of Christ questions all my answers.  It shakes me from my comfortable lifestyle.  It offends my sensibilities and challenges my need to be right.  We think we are in charge but it only takes a small crises out of our control to show we are only fooling ourselves.

The cross of Christ disturbs our shallowness and comforts our brokeness.  The whole Christian life is one of death, burial, and resurrection.  Death to selfishness and burial of our respectability and resurrection of God's power in our weaknesses. 

What shall I say of the woman who was given a death sentence this month by the medical community only to run face long into the Lion of Judah who healed her of her disease. 

What shall I say of my friend who told me this week his marriage was over and all I could do was point him to the cross and tell him, "If his marriage is saved, it will only be through brokeness, humility, vulnerability, and God's healing love."

What shall I say of those who are locked up in prison who Today have discovered a freedom in Christ that gives them hope for tommorow.  One woman during the communion celebration interupted the service so that she could confess her sins and give her life to Christ.  Seven others like her followed suit and said they wanted to follow Christ in baptism and experience a resurrected life for God.

I am amazed and dumbfounded.  What more can I say?