If no body...

If no body listened. I would still speak. I would still speak because of the One who is still speaking. If not body read, I would still write. I would write because the words I read changed me into a writer. If no one sang along, I would still sing, because I heard the song that convinced me that, "Yes, Jesus loves me." That is enough reason to fill my lungs and explode unto good, clean air the perfume of my notes. If no one came forward, I would still preach. The greater Preacher is still preaching. Who knows, I might still come forward again. If no one said, "aha!", I would still teach. The great teacher is still teaching. If no one accepted the rumors I spread about the death and failure of sin and death through the deeply conniving work of my Lord, I would still whisper against and backbite sin itself. After all, I found the rumors to be true and sin is no longer cool. However, it is true that "Yes, Jesus loves me." That is all the reason I need.

Giving: Short theology for a friend.

Hosea 2:8-9
"And did she know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, and the oil, and how lavished on her silver and gold, which they used Baal? Therefore I will take back my grain inits time, and wine in its season, and I will take away my wool and my flax which were to cover her nakedness."

Takor,

First, I confess my deep curiosity of what it means to be a Christian when it comes to money. I have almost visceral reactions to friends and family quantifying their actions by money, and I think less of myself when I do it. Also, with recent looks at Christ and work by Amy Sherman and others, I am curious seeing how God has been relating to our concept of money. I confess that I ended up on this subject, because I struggle with tithing, I needed a word on it I guess.

On to it.

In those two verses, God is in the midst of promising to punish Judah for its sins. Here God is especially angry at their physical worship of other gods because those gods require things, that God gave his beloved people, as payment for their services. It as if they story of the gift of the Maji ends the wife using her hair brushes to buy and sleep with a male prostitute on Christmas day while her (watchless) husband watches in sorrow and pain.
Takor every time you hear a pastor quote "Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, 'How have we robbed you? In your tithes and contributions." Micah 3:8, you are hearing the middle of the love story. This story of God redeeming his sickly and dying creation is the story in the midst of which tithes and offering occur. The story always begins with God approaching us in walking through the garden, in a burning bush, in a cloud of smoke in the temple, in the person of Christ, and in the coming Christ. The story always ends in the presence of God.

As you watch the tithes and offering, know that you will never know the whole of what a person gives to God. God requires in return for His love and gifts is steadfast love & knowledge of God (Hosea 6:6), to do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8). This is what God requires of us.

Tithes and offering fall under a subset of God's desire for justice. This subset is specifically the justice of taking care of those whose labor is to preach the gospel. In Matthew 10:10, Jesus says "for the laborer deserves his food." In context he speaks of those, in 10:7, who go proclaiming, "the kingdom of heaven is at hand." They are to be fed according to their doing that labor. They have a right to that.

Paul sums up that particular cry for justice in 1 Corinthians 9. If one should not muzzle an ox as it works on grain, so one should not make a pastor go hungry who has broken open God's word for God's people. Make no mistake, the offering plate is for the pastor's pocket. If he has labored to proclaim the good news, we as Christians are to feed him accordingly, it is his/her right to receive that.

God requires broken and contrite hearts (Psalm 51:17), steadfast love and knowledge of God (Hosea 6), and to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. (Micah 3). All of those things will never quite make into accountants ledger. A subset of that justice is to care for those who labor to proclaim that the kingdom of God is at hand. We are indebted to his or her needs.

It gives me a little more comfort to know why I might dance to the offering plate on any given Sunday. It gives me great comfort to know what God requires of me. I hope it encourages as you might be called to be a steward over dismal numbers at times. Those numbers were never meant to be a mark of our faith or our faithfulness. They can be proof that we are willing to do justice to the vulnerable in our community.

Amara Chima

Valentine's Day

To love someone is to believe in the goodness of God, even you don't know him. That faith is less a head-knowledge thought and more an act of bodily throwing yourself from a cliff, feeling almost certain that everything will be alright.

Sometimes it is.

On many a Valentine's Day, I find myself unwilling to believe in God. I assent to the truth of him, but the faith that makes a lane to a cliff-lip, I just don't have.

Something I wish for.

Just the same.

Dear Chris

Dear Chris,

When I said, "choose a profession." I meant "choose a mission field." The gospel, you know and know well. Who you tell and how well you tell this gospel is now the issue. Choose well. Your profession is where you will preach. Your profession is how you will teach. It is how you will love this earth. 
Choosing a profession you can do well is your means to teaching and preaching well. This good news is news about our new world, our planet, our reality. If we have this news, if we know nature better, then our relation with this earth should be better than those who don't. Note, I said relationship and not performance. In light of this gospel, we love our profession. We do not depend on our relationship with our work for our identity and worth. Rather, we freely love what we do. Out of the gracious largess of God we live supported by his generosity we freely love our profession. With love, we do good work.  By good work, I mean well-informed, well-meant, and well executed effort. This work, done freely, and given freely without demands for fame or fortune will create a question. For this same work is almost always done with increasing demands for reward, (Rewards, in and of themselves, become less rewarding. 
That, in turn, inspires a search for greater satisfaction either through more of the same  rewards or through novel ones.) Your good work given without regard to lust of the flesh, 
lust of the eyes, and pride of live illustrates this gospel. Each whole-hearted illustration, each day is a powerful-compelling source of goodness. A goodness that causes the needy to seek 
its source. Men and women will agree they need your work. Some will be convinced that 
they need the gospel that guides your work. This persuasion is a work of the Holy Spirit. He will use the profession you choose and the gospel you know.

Sincerely, A

The Bus

 I was in luck. I saw a bus headed my way. I crossed the street and approached the door. When I looked in I saw the bus driver point, not even looking back at me, around the corner. I went around the corner at a slow jog, when I saw all the people waiting in line. I slowed down to a walk. I would be there when she got there.

After waiting for the man in the wheel chair and his helper to enter the bus, we all entered the bus. She refused to let us pay the fare. I didn’t know why though. I stood as far back as I could go and took my first ride in a long time. I was going from Silver Spring to Washington DC for the annual book festival. I can't live without books and I wanted to know is something from Achebe was there. However, I saw far more valuable things on the ride than after it.

A young woman, baby in a carrier in front of her entered the bus. As she entered we all looked for where she would sit. Somewhere upfront, we suspected. We all identified the same young man sitting in a seat close to the door. He was the only one with no grey hair. He only looked down as the woman and baby passed him by. The old man beside him turned and stared at him. Despite the anger in his eyes, he said nothing. We all stared at him.

Before she passed the middle of the bus, a young woman got up. Saying, “You don’t have to stand. You can sit here.” I can still see her 5’4 frame, black skin, and an island’s lilt.

I blinked. I had just seen justice.

We continued to ride. I had a long way to go and was happy when I found a seat. About three stops later. An older woman entered the bus, cane on her arm as she balanced herself and paid the fair and I saw the young man get up. He walked to the front of the bus and said, “Here. You can sit down.” There was another young African-American who had felt the weight of our stares and anger. He got up several times during my ride to tell another, “You can sit here.”

I blinked. I had just seen repentance.

These are beautiful pictures that intend to keep. Forever. On my blog.

2 Corinthians 7:11

Closing the Loop

This loop begins in Genesis 3:15 NIV: "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head and you will strike his heel." So it begins, the search for the one who would crush the head of the serpent, Satan. Who is searching? Everyone, especially the Woman, was looking for that off-spring who would be the deliverer. There were shadows of that deliverer. We saw can see it now in the stories of Isaac, Moses, Samson, Samuel, and so many others. They were men who born to deliver their people from oppression, to crush the head of their oppressors. Yet, none could crush the head of Satan; none could satisfy our need to regain the immortality we lost.

None accept Jesus.

I found it odd when he addresses his mother as "woman" in John 2. Now, I think he speaks for every "son" whose parents have looked to him to be their savior from shame, futility, and the grave. She calls him to save a marrying man and his family from shame in saying, "They have no more wine." Luke 2:3 NIV. He responds "Woman why do you involve me?" "My hour is not yet come." (Luke 2:4). Yet he responds, he saves the bridegroom and his family from shame in the ensuing verses, 5 - 11.

He speaks for every son and daughter who could not save their parents from death, futility, and shame. Perhaps, they could not save because it was not time for THE Savior. Perhaps they could not save because they were not THE Savior. Perhaps both were true.

In addressing her as "woman." I think he is identifying her with the first person to referred as "woman" because it was her first name: Eve. I think he is beginning to close the loop.

On the cross, he does close the loop. The search for the "offspring" of Genesis 2:15 is over. Parents no longer have to look at their children, searching for and sometimes seeing a deliverer. The only deliver a man or woman needs was on that cross delivering them. He delivered them as he closed the loop. He says to his mother, ""Woman, here is your son," and to the disciple, "Here is your mother."" (John 19: 26-27).

Now each son and daughter is just that, a son or a daughter, none them have to be a deliverer. Each mother and father are just that, a mother and a father not victims and slaves needing to be rescued. They already have been rescued, by and through their union with Christ.

The search is over. The loop is closed.

John 20:15, the risen Jesus says, "Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?" He then makes the same shift Adam did in the garden. (He went from calling his wife "woman," to naming her, Eve (Genesis 3:20).) He calls her "Mary." She turns to him, recognizing him, and cries out "Rabboni!" She has found him: her teacher, her lord, her friend, and now her Savior.

Our search is over. We have a Savior and no longer need to search for another. His name is Jesus and that is wonderful.

About Ferguson Missouri

Wrote this September 1 2014...

“I love you. I promise I always will.”

I have not thought it all the way through and I struggle with the social implications of the gospel. The gospel always has and always will have social implications. It will always have an impact wherever questions of ethics and justice are central. It will because, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” ~ C. West. The gospel at its heart declares what God, in his love, has already done for us.  He promises us freedom. “Your seed will crush his head.” (Genesis 3:15) We heard when Jesus proclaims that God’s kingdom has broken in to the one of this world (Mark 1:15). We look forward to experiencing it when God’s hour of judgment of separating good from evil, of setting things right, has come (Revelation 14:6).

The last one is especially poignant in the face of Darren Wilson’s impending trial. If the love of Jesus has saved us from sin and if God promises to one day judge all and perfectly, knowing that God’s love has made these things certain, what should we then do? What should we then pursue? Do we pursue justice in our courts as part of the way we live out being dearly beloved children? Do we pursue a shift in policing as a way of showing the love of Christ to the African-American community in Ferguson and throughout the US of A?

Of course.

I cannot believe that that is all we are to do. As believers in this gospel, I believe that we more than pursue justice according to the law. I believe that we are called to shape the law and its enforcement to prefigure God’s own effective, loving, merciful, and terrible justice. On that day, God will judge all the people. Will we do any less? Can we as Christians listen to only the stories we want to hear and judge from there? Or will we listen to officers who are called to work longer hours, with less pay and benefits, with less support as well as the many men and women who are abused by their anger, brutality, disrespect of law and policy? This process of discernment in the context of law enforcement is deeply needed and will not be quickly done. I believe the church should settle in for the long haul of overhauling the police force. I believe the church should be the place where society is called to hold to the full-story truth.

Judgment done with discernment and love is hard to deny. Discernment made Stephen’s defense undeniable in Acts 7. His love made his death unforgettable in Acts 8. While, the contrasting lack of the same two things condemns that council for as long as the chapters of Acts are read. Let us bear the strain of learning to discern good from evil in America’s police force. All the while remembering, justice on earth is not our end goal.

God himself is our end goal. We were created by, through, and for him alone. Our end goal in pursuing justice in Ferguson is to obey his word, to dwell in his love, to be like him in our love, to point others to him in all that we do. We don’t cry out for justice so that this world might be just, it will always have some injustice somewhere. We cry out for justice in the hopes that another might glimpse his justice. We listen to both sides and the heart of every story so that others might see the character of Jesus. We march with protesters and converse with aldermen so that others might see the hands and feet of Jesus. We write blogs, video blogs, twitter, facebook, google+, vimeo, link-in, and stumble upon that others might read the words, see with the eyes, and hear the voice of Jesus. He is the only life we have to give. In him is the only life we want to live. He is the only sure hope for perfect justice and comfort that we can offer. 

Post Script:

This post starts with the beautifully sung words of Steffany Gretzinger. I was listening to track eight of her album, “The Undoing” on Relevant Magazine’s “The Drop” as I wrote this. The track is about God’s covenant love and is titled “Promise I Always Will.”