The View from the West Mesa

Do you remember your resolutions for 2019? For those who do, how did you do with them? Here's one for 2020 you might consider. It's simple, but can be hard, complicated, and frustrating. I suppose any attempt to modify our behaviors or ourselves can be those things. This one though you don't have to set time apart for, it doesn't create another bill, and doesn't require sweating or giving up ice cream. This year, become love. You might start off by figuring out what love might do in this moment or for someone. Ask yourself, "what would a loving me do..." in the next five minutes, or for the person next to me, or in anticipation of some event. You might write a reminder at the top of your calendar or journal, or set a reminder in your phone just to prod you to ask yourself that question at sometime during the day. You might, but you don't have to, start your day by anticipating when and where that day you can be love. Conversely, at the end of the day, ...

Good morning and Merry Christmas to each and all of you. 2000-ish years ago, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob decided that the time had come to join us again on this planet He had made for us. This time, rather than hovering over the waters, He overshadowed a young girl. This time, rather than appearing in a Temple made of stone, He appeared within a human temple so that He could not just live with us, but be one of us. This time, He came as a child to portend the kind of life He would live among us. This time, we would see God as the image we are made and called to be. This time, in showing us God, He would show us, us. This coming we know was promised. Promised as grace to relieve, to redeem, to reconcile. This child is Messiah, the Promised and Anointed One who in living among us would show us the way. The way of God, the way to God, the way in God. The Life in God that He offered and offers today. He offers the way to become a child, the incarnated God 's very image and lik...

Ever since the prophecy of enmity between the serpent and the descendants of Adam, we have been looking for peace. Not just between the serpent and humans, but God and humans too. More so, the story of Cain gives us the prediction of enmity between humans themselves. Cain kills his brother and then God has to mark Cain so others wouldn’t kill him. The whole life-with-God-in-the-Garden idea pretty much spiraled out of control pretty quickly.  Humankind finds itself at odds with God, the Devil, the animals, and each other. Even the earth has to be worked harder to give up her bounty. Perhaps more surprising is that even between religions, Christian denominations, and within congregations, there is often a severe lack of peace. Not much peace to be found it seems. God has tried to woo us back and in so doing re-set the entire creation, but with every offer and promise of God, we manage to eventually reject it, insisting that we know better, that we need to look out for Number 1, and g...

As I am here in a warm and dry house, listening to the sounds of kids and grandkids somewhere downstairs, and enjoying the aroma of cooking food, I am reminded that we are blessed with family first, and then sufficient wealth and situation to enjoy this day with each other. We often take these times and these opportunities for granted - as another year, another day, another meal like those that have gone before and for which we plan for next year. And so it goes. It is too easy to move from day to day and year to year. And yet we know the years don't just move into later years. This year, our extended family and many of our friends will mark this day with remembered loss - with empty space in hearts and homes where loved ones were just last year - maybe even just last month. I would attempt to list those we will be without but I would undoubtedly miss one or two who wouldn't come to mind. And that is the point of this day - to not forget the lives, the loves, the blessings we h...

One hundred and one years ago, the ceasefire which would eventually lead to the treaty to end World War I, went into effect. When I was a boy, we went to church with a World War I veteran. Mr. Melton was old, had occluded eyes, but moved around pretty well for an ancient. He would tell us the story of that day, November 11, 1918, when, just before 11:00 am, the soldier next to him was shot in the head. There are recordings on the ‘net that reveal an eerie silence when the guns fell silent – at least for a time. In some sectors, the guns fired until nightfall. Eventually, the treaty of Versailles would be signed and its effect ultimately would be to bring a young German corporal to the fore of Europe’s politics and result in the Second World War.    Today has gone through a number of incarnations. Originally intended to mark the ceasefire following World War I, the day in America was called Armistice Day to celebrate both the great horror we had survived but also an o...

It is in some tough times sufficient to be obedient. But to be obedient isn't the point even though we can find examples and stories of people being and being lauded for their obedience. Rather than obedience for obedience's sake, the idea is faithfulness. Faithfulness we can imagine as a prolonged - even life long orientation or alignment. Faithfulness then arises from one's own values, one's own appreciation for life and goodness. The primary objective then is to join with Go d, to first accept and then to nurture his life, his values, and his desires as your own. As we begin, obedience in the moment is necessary as we grapple with accepting a new orientation toward virtue and letting go or realigning our practices of defensiveness, of distancing, of being superior. This change can be hard - it is hard - for us. Often it can seem that unquestioning obedience is the point and this can frustrate and dissuade us from our pursuit of virtue. But underlying this ...

Dallas Willard defines life something like this: the ability to interact with, respond to, and affect its surroundings. His somewhat surprising example is that of a cabbage. He observes that the cabbage interacts and responds to the soil, water, sunlight, etc., and grows. A dead cabbage he observes doesn’t do any of that. Similarly, human life is defined by those characteristics as well. When humans interact with, respond to, and affect their environment, we can say they are alive. When we lose those abilities, we are dead. Higher forms of life, especially humans have other abilities in addition to the basic ones of a cabbage. We can think, discern, trade off options, and have the ability to set our will in a direction over our entire lives – including our spiritual lives. What are those things that nurture our spiritual lives like soil, water, and sunlight do for the cabbage? Through history there have been a number of ideas, extending from personal isolation in desolate places t...

What does God want? This is a question that has caused consternation among the faithful for a very long time, even it seems among Jesus’s disciples. We have heard the story of the two disciples who wanted to be Number 2 and Number 3, next in line behind Jesus in the kingdom of God. Jesus on that occasion disabused them of their mistaken ideas about first, who gets to come first before the rest of the disciples and second, that the kingdom is somehow about power, position, and privilege. No, we’ve read the divine comments about the first shall be last and the last first, about how in the group of disciples, the leaders won’t “lord it over” other disciples like the Gentile leaders do, and even that the Son of Man has come to serve, not be served. It takes a while it seems for us humans to get the idea that the kingdom of God isn’t about me. We’ve changed the question a bit over time, or maybe added variations on the theme, “what is this all about?” Over the millennia disciples have...

This week, we’re going to start with two quotes from Dallas Willard, both from his The Spirit of the Disciplines. Here they are: One specific errant concept has done inestimable harm to the church and God’s purposes with us—and that is the concept that has restricted the Christian idea of salvation to mere forgiveness of sins. …It becomes understandable why the simple and wholly adequate word for salvation in the New Testament is “life.” “I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly…” Forgiveness has been the center point of much of Christianity since Jesus was here. More than once we read of the need for sacrifices for forgiveness, and we are told that Jesus preached a gospel of repentance for forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness of sin has been a constant of Man’s relationship with God. Getting rid of our sins, “as far as the east is from the west,” has held the attention of many believers over the years. We have used multiple rites and rit...

This will be the first of a series of posts looking at Dallas Willard's The Spirit of the Disciplines.  The subtitle of the book is Understanding How God Changes Lives  and it is this that tells us what the book is actually about. Written in 1988, the book emerges from among the seeming coming of age of spiritual formation movements that wanted to tell disciples that if they would just do this or that spiritual behavior, they could progress closer to God. The result was a lot of people doing a lot of stuff and spending a lot of money on "spiritual formation" and not really getting much out of it. Willard understood that there was a "deep longing among Christians and non-Christians alike for the personal purity and power to live as our hearts tell us we should." Even so, much as Willow Creek will eventually learn, a lot of churchiness and discipline use make for short term excitement but finally fizzles out, Willard observed that "faith today is treated as...

" A nd just as  it is appointed for man to die once, and  after that comes judgment,   so Christ, having been offered once  to bear the sins of  many, will appear  a second time,  not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly  waiting for him."  Hebrews 9.27-28, ESV The writer of Hebrews introduces the idea of judgment in the context of new covenants or a change in the law. Having done so, he tells his hearers that Christ's return will not be to "deal with sin." This he can say because Jesus has already dealt with sin - there is nothing more anyone can do about it. So judgment isn't about dealing with sin.  If that's true, what is Christ's coming about? Well, it and judgment are about his coming to "save those who are eagerly waiting for him." This coming isn't for you to be quizzed about all the bad stuff you've done, or an opportunity to explain why Jesus should let you into Heaven. If you love Jesus, if you are ...

It's been eighteen years and the world has changed, in some aspects completely. We have it seems, been actively entangled in the aftermath of that day as a country and even a world ever since. And we will remain in its grip for the foreseeable future; likely for the rest of my life. I wonder if those whose loved ones - whose reasons for living, it must have seemed to some - were incinerated in an instant, whose bodies were obliterated immediately after falling mo re than ninety floors, or who were found mangled in, under, and around the rubble, or in a field - I wonder if they watch the news today? Do they view their newsfeeds? Are the memories still too hard, too raw, too immediate? Does today bring soul-piercing memories not just to their minds, but to their bodies? Do the incredulity, the shock, the panic, the numbness flood back today? Does the confusion return, do their hearts weigh a million pounds, do their guts turn i nside out like they did on that day?...

So, what was the Sin? We are often told - exclusively it seems - that that first sin which ushered in the Fall and necessitated the coming of the Christ was the eating of the fruit - indeed apparently, just touching it. But is this true? You see, the story presents us with two people, living with God in the Garden - in bliss apparently. The name of the fruit they cannot have is the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The serpent says if they eat it, they will become like God and God says that they will die on the day they eat it. But they haven't eaten it yet. They don't know "good and evil." So we have a conundrum - how could they have sinned if they didn't know morally right from wrong - how could they have known that it was "evil" to eat it? They couldn't, so why is it that they are punished for having eaten it? They weren't. The consequences inherent in an action are not punishments meted out to you. They simply are. So what were those...

The resurrection of Jesus confused just about everybody. The women who came first to the tomb were perplexed, the apostles and the rest of the disciples thought their story was made up, and these two are pondering just what could have happened in Jerusalem over the past three days. They're on their way home and Jesus meets up with them and teaches them just what they should have understood from Scripture about him and about the last three days. It gets late in the day and the y invite Jesus to eat with them, which he does. When he (why he's taking charge here, we aren't told) breaks the bread, their eyes are opened and they recognize him. Now, "breaking bread" is understood in a number of faith communities to be an allusion to the Lord's Supper, communion, or the Eucharist and this is a shadow of that. When Jesus ate the Passover with the disciples, he explained the imagery - what the elements had represented from the beginning of that feast and what t...

Maundy Thursday is perhaps most popularly known as the day that Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper and washed the feet of his disciples. Sometimes we remember that it is also the night of his betrayal and arrest in the garden. Less often do we associate the day with what occurs between those last two. After the meal, Jesus takes his disciples to the garden where at least three of his closest friends nap on and off. Jesus though prays. We don't have a record of all that he prayed waiting for his arrest. We do know that even as he has emptied himself to set the example of feet washing, here he does two things - he says two things. The first is that he would not have to drink this cup - of crucifixion, of mocking, of torture. Having emptied himself, he would rather not empty himself further in this way. And yet the second thing he says is instructive for us and tells us why Paul can tell us that Jesus is the Second Adam. This second is that while he would rather not go through ...