The View from the West Mesa

The gospel, Matthew tells us is at least in part that Jesus came to save his people from their sins. In most Evangelical circles this is the case and it is interpreted as a legal or juridical saving. Essentially, people have sins and the payment for those sins is Jesus's coming and eventual death. Pretty short-sighted if you ask me. The context of verse 21 is the promise and directives to Joseph about what God is up to, and Joseph's responsibilities in that working. For some reason, we miss the connection between this statement and the prophecy on which it is based. That prophecy, according to Matthew, does not use the name Jesus, but Immanuel. The implication is that Jesus will save his people from their sins by being God With Us. God has decided it was time to live with his people, and in so doing restore (save) them to full communion with himself. Being saved from sins has a number of connotations including the strictly juridical one. While it is true that we are "save

Merton never disappoints. Here's an excerpt from "Love and Living," a collection of individual writings collected after his death in 1968: "Life consists in learning to live on one's own, spontaneous, freewheeling; to do this one must recognize what is one's own—be familiar and at home with oneself. This means basically learning who one is, and learning what one has to offer to the contemporary world, and then learning how to make that offering valid." This short passage is pregnant with meaning and spiritual insight (would we expect anything less?). Let's start with the last few words: "…make that offering valid." The offering of ourselves, of our lives is our calling. We offer ourselves to assist the re-creation of Creation; the reconciling of Man to God. The validity of our offering is measured in how closely we mirror the work of God; to what extent our motivations are based on knowing who we are rather than a slavish obedience to p

The preacher this morning read a Facebook post from Anne Rice in which she says that she's quitting Christianity. Not God, not Jesus, just the troublesome, overly structured, overly restrictive, and often bigoted institution called Christianity. Well Anne, welcome to the club. In another Facebook post, Anne says she doesn't want to be anti-[fill in your favorite political hot potato] and apparently she thinks that at least some form of Christianity requires that she be anti-something. And she's right. Some otherwise fine Baptists apparently have no trouble telling the world that "God hates fags," and some Catholics don't think Protestants have a prayer. We could go on. In my little denomination we have folks who are against any number of things and expect the rest of us to go along with them. The problem is that from my perspective, they're out to lunch. Whether it's what women can do in church, or what sorts of music can be used in worship, or what so

This past Saturday morning was spent at the Children's Home in Albuquerque. The summer clean up was in preparation for the two week nigh annual open house and barbeque at the home. This day there were about sixty people from a local congregation helping weed, move rock, and generally spruce up the entire campus. Great folks all, and I'm sure they were a bit sore come Sunday morning. One of the people who came to help was a boy of about seven years who helped clear some of the larger weeds from a fallow section of the campus. As we worked on removing Russian Thistles, he said that tomorrow is church. Having sixty of his fellow church goers on campus, in turn assisting a Christian organization accomplish tasks too large for the staff to do by themselves, I observed that he was in church right now. Understandably, his retort was "where's the church building?" As I was readying a short instruction on "church" and community, someone yelled that it was time fo

Barbara Brown Taylor remembers that explanation when she asked early in life why the Christians on campus kept saying they loved her. This is her reaction as recorded in An Altar in the World , "This may sound small, but I decided that was not enough for me. I did not want to be loved in general. I wanted to be loved in particular, as I was convinced God loved." I think most people feel the same way. We want folks to love me , for me , not because some third party loves everybody. The problem is that all too often we behave as though we're doing something because God does it, or because God wants us to do it. That seems to me to miss the point of being Christian. We are called to be transformed into the likeness of God and that means that our behavior - our loving others - becomes more and more what we do because we love them. Eventually, our faith, our way of living is supposed to be ours in the fullest sense. Taylor follows up immediately with this, "Plus, I am

While reading the Prologue to Walter Kaufmann's translation of Buber's I and Thou , I stumbled across this interesting little gem: "…Hebrew prophecy wasn't meant to be fulfilled." As one of his examples, he uses Jonah's story. While there are clearly prophecy's which are meant to be fulfilled, it is just as true that many prophecies of doom include an "unless clause." God provides an out because He doesn't want to follow through with the promise of doom. The grace and patience of God, as Paul tells us, are intended to give us time to come to our senses. The care of God for his creation prompts Him to warn us time and again to return to Him. This is key, as Kaufmann points out. God is more interested in people who want to follow Him than in any particular ritual or religious practice. It isn't always critical to get the details "right," but wanting to follow God is critical – even if we do so imperfectly. So, give yourself and o

This post is in reply to a comment on a previous post. It's too long to fit a comment box, so I have made it it's own post. There are a couple observations that I would make concerning Psalm 51 and Dale's writing. The first is that Dale is correct when he emphasizes that God is faithful. If Jesus promised that He and the Father would abide with and in the believer, then we believe they do - but it isn't two people, it is God through His Spirit that lives in you. Dale is also correct that we might take having the Spirit for granted. True, but this simply makes our point that we have the Spirit. We do have examples of God seemingly abandoning various peoples. Revelation warns of congregations' lamp posts being removed, and Israel was apparently without God on a number of occasions. These eventualities though are the result of peoples' actions first - not God's. Israel lost focus of who she was made to be, and lost her character. So too with the congregations i

Nancy Ortberg is speaking on leadership on Thursday morning at Orange 2010 and has made a statement that I paraphrase here: "If we want people to move from poor to great, we have to be OK with them going through the messy steps between poor and great." Good observation but it isn't limited to leadership. It is just as valid within the Christian life. Too many of us suffer from the idea – even if it isn't directly stated – that we have to "be the best we can be" all the time or God leaves us. Some believe that if we "grieve the Holy Spirit," the Spirit leaves us and so we perceive our salvation and position with God as something that ebbs and flows if not comes and goes as we fail and then perform for the Creator. Of course this is not the case as a bit of reflection will reveal. Paul urges us to "be transformed; to become like God." The use of "become" implies – no, demands – a process. A process then implies that we, even thoug

I am becoming increasingly convinced that Christendom's main problem is our penchant to separate church from life. We have allowed to develop a church separate from life and this is not the idea given in Scripture. The church, rightly understood is not institutional in Scripture but refers to the community of believers – who live lives characterized by the Spirit. Christians assemble for encouragement and worship, but the community is understood to exist at all times. As a result we have created rules for church life that do not reflect or only vaguely reflect the actual lives of church members. I recently had a hallway conversation in which those involved all grew up in congregations that didn't observe Easter, but in which everyone in the pews did observe it. We all received new clothes, the women wore new hats, and church on Easter morning looked like a fashion show. While "the church" couldn't observe Easter – everyone in church did. This duality between the c

The Shepherds' Sending this week was Matthew 21.12-16, the first half of which reads like this: And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer,' but you make it a den of robbers." These two statements, "My house will be a house of prayer," and "you have made My house a den of thieves," did not simply stand on their own to those first hearers. Rather, when they heard them, there were two texts that flooded their minds. Taking the second first, it comes from Jeremiah 7: "Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, 'We ar

Many of us Christians, as many of us humans, seem to think that our time in history is THE time in history. Whatever may have gone before may be useful for learning, but wasn't quite as important as the time in which we live. It may well be interesting to dream of the future but it does not exist and it will be us that create it. This attitude is understandable since we are living now, not living in the past and can't live in the future. This view is unfortunate because living as though our time is the only time that matters tends to separate ourselves from our own histories and separates ourselves from actively participating with people who will come after us. Such thinking adds to an ego-centric and essentially hedonistic life style. This is a dangerous view for Christians not because we know a God that will punish us in the future, but because it separates us from the greater plan of God in which we are both beneficiaries and active participants. Participants though in a di

Those of us who are Christians are familiar with the idea of being saved, but I remain unconvinced that we really understand what salvation means. To fully grasp the idea of salvation we need to look at what God is doing from God's point of view rather than ours. While that may seem a daunting, even impossible task, doing so will help us understand what God means when He refers to saving a people, or offering salvation to us. We often hear of those who have "come to Jesus," and we often encourage others to "accept Jesus as their savior." Neither of those are wrong as much as they are incomplete at least in the way we routinely practice them. These two phrases are often used interchangeably with "being saved" so that our salvation becomes a single point in time event seemingly divorced from anything that may follow it. We find ourselves referring to people who have been saved but who have not learned (or who are not learning) to live as saved people. S

Isaiah 58 is a reading for Lent. Buried in this chapter is a discussion of a favorite Lenten practice – fasting. The discussion describes the fasting God expects, and it makes our timid and small efforts at fasting appear pitiful in comparison. Lent isn't so much about fasting – at least the way we usually practice fasting during this season, but is more about self-denial and reflection. Many of us give up something relatively easy to give up during Lent and think this satisfies the perceived obligation, but this sort of fasting isn't the fasting expected by God. Verse 5 describes the kind of fasting, or penitence that we normally consider appropriate during both Lent and at other fasting times. This verse reads: "Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?" (ESV) That sounds like what we often consider fasting and penitence – self denial, and the practice of

With the waning of Mardi Gras, the Lenten season begins. Lent leads up to Holy Week and the triumphant resurrection of the Lamb of God. This period of self-denial isn't about not eating meat or giving up chocolate or even fasting. The idea behind Lent is to participate in the suffering of Christ, remembering that it is our sinfulness and tendency toward self-fulfillment that required His death, and continue to vividly demonstrate the need for that death. The purpose of this season is not to trumpet what I have given up for this period of weeks as though meeting this seasonal obligation is somehow meritorious. It isn't. What may gain some benefit for the observers of Lent is the personal identification with our Savior and our guilt. This remembering of guilt is not for self-flagellation, but to help us remember our debt to, and toward the end of Lent, our participation in the Life of God despite our sinful tendencies. Throughout history, spiritual directors have highlighted the

Epiphany is observed in the Western Christian tradition on the 6 th of January. It marks, generally, another "coming" or revealing of Jesus in the world. For this reason it is often called "Little Christmas." Epiphany as a revealing includes aspects of three events in the life of Jesus. The first is the arrival of the Magi to honor Him. This is the closest of the three to a Christmas relationship for the observance and is likely the reason its other name is Little Christmas and a small gift exchange is often observed on this day. A critical aspect of this day is that in visiting the Babe, the Christ was manifested to Gentiles. This day then marks the fact that Jesus came to the entire world and not just Israel. The second theme in Epiphany is the marriage at Cana, specifically but not limited to Jesus' first miracle. As his first miracle, the changing of water to wine revealed Jesus' power in the world. As such, it serves as another manifestation of Jesus t