Wipe Y’er Feet

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"Wipe y'er feet!" It is a command which anyone who has been a child or had a child knows well. Why? Well, because there is a lot of stuff in the world that we step in every day. It is not really a part of us but we have this sense that it could be if we track it into our homes and live with it. Those of us who are avid Chaco wearers might understand this better than most. After a long hard day in your sandals - with your feet doing what feet do best - you just need to wash your feet before you do anything else. Our feet are the things which constantly come in contact with the world, picking up everything we step in. You have to wipe y'er feet.

Jesus told his disciples that they should shake the dust off their feet when they left a town or village which rejected the good news concerning the Kingdom of God. It was a way of saying that they did not want to carry anything from such a place with them into the Kingdom of God.

 For me, this is reminiscent of the Israelites flight from Egypt. They were told not to bring any of the leaven of that place and that life with them into the promised land. This is why they ate unleavened bread at the Passover meal. Leaven was seen to be a contamination which could follow them from that old life into the new one they were beginning.

Of course, we know the story. They brought a lot of things out of Egypt which they should have left behind. I won't go into them here but if you would like to see the short list go check out Deuteronomy.

Leaven is and was a powerful thing. Did you know that it was only relatively recently that humanity discovered what leaven, yeast, actually was? In biblical times it was a mystical thing. The Egyptians thought it was a gift of the gods. They didn't realize that tiny creatures were falling into their dough at night and making it rise.

 Ancient people did know, however, that you could take a piece of yesterday's dough and leaven a whole batch of today's. This is why Moses was so careful to have the people remove any leavening from their homes before they left Egypt. Even today, a devout Jewish woman will thoroughly clean and dust her home - removing even the smallest crumb - lest the old leaven follow them forward.

When Jesus tells his disciples to beware the leaven of the Pharisees he is building on this imagery. He is not, however, talking about bread. If you remember, the disciples already made that mistake. He is speaking of the ideas or "ways" of the Pharisees. It was their way of seeing the world and thus, their way of living in it that Jesus was so adamant to leave behind.

When he warns his disciples to beware the leaven of the Pharisees he is concerned that they will track it into the Kingdom. Bringing forward what you are trying to leave behind is a horrible shame.

And, you know, this is a concern that Jesus voices over and over again in his preaching ministry. To carry the old ways forward was, as he says, tantamount to setting your hand to the plow and looking back at where you have been instead of where you are going. A person like that, he says, is not fit for the Kingdom.

There was nothing to do but make sure their feet were clean.
Kneeling at the feet of Peter, he tells him that unless he washes his feet he will not be able to enter the Kingdom. Peter, of course, does not know when to leave well enough alone. Afraid that he will be left out of the kingdom, he requests that Jesus wash all of him - head to toe.

Jesus responds with a statement which had always been a little puzzling to me. He tells Peter that someone who has bathed is already clean but only needs to wash their feet. Peter had seen the truth. He had been washed in the words and teachings of Jesus as the travelled together. We also know that Peter had gotten Jesus' identity right, calling him messiah when all others thought he was just more of the same old thing.

The new leaven was taking hold in Peter's life and the lives of the other disciples. It was now, as they prepared to enter into the first days of the kingdom, that they needed to wipe their feet. If Jesus had been concerned that they would carry the dust of an unrepentant village with them, how much more concerned must he have been about the dust of a world which would kill messiah? The very things which would lead to this event, selfishness, hatred, fear, faithlessness – these were the very things he did not want them tracking into his household he called the kingdom.

We all have things which we would be better off leaving behind, dusty feet as it were. It is that destructive leaven which we are called to leave behind for it only takes a little of yesterday's leaven to infect all today's bread. As you step forward from this point into the Kingdom, make sure you wipe y'er feet.


  

Review of Under the Overpass by Mike Yankoski

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I was hesitant when I began this book, fearing that it would simply be another rant. I was pleasantly surprised. It is a heart felt work stemming from a heart felt quest. I think what I find particularly endearing is the way in which the author honestly and openly shares the story. It would be easy for someone in his situation to be overly pious in a "holier than thou" sort of way. Instead, he is quite open about his own failings during his weeks on the street.
I like the way he admits his naiveté at the beginning as well as his frustrations with the very people whose lives he was sharing. In the end you know that he and his compatriot could take off that life in the same way that they would shed themselves of their street rags. The story, however, is something which they can never shed. Nor will you, the reader be able to leave it behind. I recommend this book and look forward to using it in the future with young adults.

Friends Like These...

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Pilate was a politically savvy person. He knew how the game was played. He knew who to please and whom to support. It had served him well. After all, here he was the governor of a Roman territory. Granted, it was not as choice an appointment as others. Still, it was his. If he could maintain his friendship with Caesar he might get a better placement somewhere else.


Friendship was, of course, what it was all about. Friendship with the right people could take your far while friendship with the wrong people could – well, let’s just say it could cost you everything.

It was a matter of one hand washing the other. Your value as a friend was tied to what you could do for someone else and who you knew. The closer someone was to power and authority the more useful they were as a friend. It paid to get friendly with those in power. They were the ones who could keep you from getting killed.

That is why this pitiful man called Jesus unnerved him so. It was like he had no idea how the game was played. Even worse, it was as if he didn’t care. It was almost like he had his own rules. For this Jesus it was as if the power and authority which Pilate wielded meant nothing. If he realized the favor that Pilate could do for him maybe then he would change his tune.

Now the priests, those were men Pilate could understand. He didn’t necessarily like them, but he understood them. They knew how the game was played, always balancing their need for friendship with Rome with their desire for position and power. Of course, as a people the Jews had mastered this early on. Playing both sides against each other, they had drawn Rome into a larger conflict with their other enemies.

Under their great high priest, Jonathan, the Jewish people had sent an embassy to Rome, winning the title “Friend”. Since then, they had milked it for whatever benefit they could.

This Jesus though, who were his friends; definitely no one in power? What little Pilate had seen of him had nearly convinced him that Jesus was of no real threat to the power of Caesar in that region. He may have called himself king but king of what; a helpless rabble of losers, lepers, whores, tax collectors, widows, orphans and blind men? You can’t field much of an army with the deaf and lame. What was there to gain from friendship with people like these? It was like he was the one doing all of the giving.

Pilate tried reasoning with him. If only he would just play the game Pilate would extend his friendship to him and give him a pardon. Of course, once Jesus was his client he would owe him. It might be convenient to have somebody like this be in your debt. After all, if he had the priests this riled up…

But he would not play the game! Or, at least, not the way Pilate expected. When he offered him the protection of his authority Jesus threw it back on him saying that he didn’t have any power over him except for that which had come to him from above. Who was he talking about, Caesar? Did he know someone in the Senate? Surely he couldn’t mean that superstition the Jews called their god? He didn’t even have a statue!

It was as if Jesus was claiming to have more authority than Pilate. At least, it seemed as if he was tolerating Pilate out of deference to this “higher power” he spoke of. It was as if the whole world had changed and the way things had always worked was passing away. Was he losing his mind?

No, this man he saw before him was nobody with friends who mattered. That could be shown by the way that the real power brokers had set him up. He was just another frustrated religious freak who had come in from the wilderness full of dreams, visions and talk of a kingdom to come. He was sure that the flogging had cured him and his followers of that.

But those priests, they wouldn’t let it go and they knew right where to hit Pilate. Once again, they challenged his friendship with Caesar. Friendship with power is a tenuous thing at best but for someone like Pilate it could be even more fragile. To tell him that he was no friend of Caesar was to strike at the very bread and butter of his existence. At best it might mean the inconvenience of a review. At worst, well, it was best not to think about that. Then there was the added nuisance of knowing that those priests might come out looking better in Caesar’s eyes than Pilate would.

Oh well, there was nothing to do but get rid of this inconvenience called Jesus and protect his friendship with Caesar. After all, isn’t that what it is all about?

Fire Extinguishers: Things We do that Put Out Our Fire, Part III

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Fire is a living thing. We have spoken about how it must be fed. It must also breathe. Place a candle in a jar, seal the lid and you will see the flame expire. So too, the fire of God which burns within us must be renewed daily from the breath of God.




“Breathe on me breath of God, fill me with life anew, that I may love what thou dost love and do what thou wouldst do.” Yeah, I know the language is pretty dated, as should be the case for an old hymn. The theology is pretty solid though. It is a great old hymn using a great old image for God’s presence. Like fire and bread, breath – or air – is one way that we have tried to describe what our experience has been like. We say that humanity was created when God breathed into Adams nostrils creating a living soul. The Hebrews call the spirit of God “ruach” and the Greeks called it “pneumatos”. Like the bread of heaven that feeds our fire, the breath of God keeps it from suffocating.


Breathing, like eating, is not just something you do once. Yet, it seems that we hold our breath as if the air around us is in limited supply. For many, of us it is not a matter of access to the supply that suffocates us, we smother ourselves by not exhaling.


Now, I know this seems like an odd image but give me a moment. I think that we as Christians all too often miss the point of our existence as vessels of the fire of God. When it comes to the breath of God our job is not to be storage. Rather, we should think of ourselves are transport vessels carrying fresh air into the staleness of the world. Rescue breathing, if you would, for a world that is breathlessly waiting for some hopeful, good news. Our failure is a failure to exhale. If we smother, we smother ourselves. Unfortunately, we allow other to smother as well.


So, how do we exhale? Well, you remember that I said we are rescue breathers. Our duty is to take what we have been given and share it with the rest of the world. The problem is, once again, that we do not believe there is enough to go around so we do not share at all.


Revisiting the feeding of the multitudes, we see the crowds gathered on the hillside and say, “Lord there will never be enough to feed all of these people!” His eternal response is simply to ask that we bring him what we have. Bringing our limited supply to him, we quickly realize that with his blessing there is enough for all.


We have to get away from seeing God’s presence as some sort of limited commodity which we must hold onto like grim death lest our fire die. By mercifully exhaling this breath of God into the nostrils of other dying souls, we open our own fire to that breath a new every day.


There are many ways we can exhale. We exhale when we feed the hungry. We exhale by caring for the widow and the orphan. We exhale by visiting and caring for the sick. We exhale by showing hospitality to the stranger and the alien in our midst. We exhale by clothing the naked. In all of these things and more we exhale when we rescue the lost by sharing this Good News Christ has given us; this good news we call the Kingdom of God. In short, we exhale by showing to others the same grace and love which we ourselves have received.


It is nothing new or novel to say that this is an expectation God has for us. Jesus insists that those who would claim a share in his kingdom do these things to others as if it were being done to Jesus himself. James, revisiting the teaching of his big brother, tells us that if we say we have faith but do not do these things - do not love – it is as if we have no faith at all.


For John Wesley the sanctification of the individual meant that the love of God and neighbor was to be shed abroad in one’s heart. The result was the production of “works meet for repentance” This was Wesley’s way of saying that you should exhale after each breath of grace.


These works of mercy are not the things which make us holy. Rather, they are the natural result of God’s holiness with in us, fanning the flames of his spirit. They are the pleasure of breathing deeply in God’s presence, allowing us to love as God would love and do as God would do. Enjoy a deep exhale after each fresh new breath of grace.

Fire Extinguishers: Things We do that Put Out Our Fire, Part II

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When Jesus was followed by a large crowd looking for bread in the wilderness, he told them that if they knew who it was they were following and what he had to offer, they would not be satisfied with mere bread. They would, instead, want the true bread, the bread that has come down from heaven. (John 6:25-35, NRSV)



Bread, like fire, is a biblical image for God’s presence. Specifically, it shows how we rely on God for our sustenance. Like the Israelites who ate manna in the wilderness and the multitudes who enjoyed the multiplied loaves, we too enjoy the benefit of the bread of life prepared for us a grace and a mercy. If we starve the flame out in our lives it is of our own doing.


There are means by which we receive this graciously given bread. As with a fire on the hearth, our fire must be renewed afresh daily. We find, as did the Israelites, that it is not a matter of hoarding enough for several days. When we neglect our daily bread the fire starves and dies out.


One way we starve our fire of its daily bread is failure to pray, specifically, failing to listen when we pray. Taking Jesus as our example, we should look for daily opportunities to have times when we can have prayer. This prayer should not be one sided either. A large part of your prayer time should be set aside for listening.


Think of it as entering into a conversation. If one person does all of the talking it ceases to be a dialogue. And, of course, please do not stress out about hearing an audible voice. As you practice prayer more carefully and regularly, you will find that God often speaks in inexplicable silence as his spirit testifies with your own for conviction or assurance.


Importantly, you must realize that prayer is not just a private endeavor. John Wesley says that prayer can be done either “secretly” or “in the great congregation”. It is in shared prayer that we often find ourselves fed in unique ways. Whether it be ritual or extemporaneous, the shared prayers of the people are a powerful way to stoke the fire.


Along the same lines we also starve the flame by neglecting our private and public study of scripture. This searching of the scripture includes the reading, hearing and thoughtful pondering upon scripture. Be it a personal bible devotion, group study or corporate worship, we must keep our hearts fully provisioned with scripture.


Finally, when we fail to avail ourselves of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper – the taking of the bread and cup – we cut ourselves off from a unique experience of the grace of God, further starving our fire.


There are many reasons why people fail to take communion. Some are too busy. Some are afraid that it will become too familiar. In other words, they think it will become a common thing. I once had a person tell me that it was wrong to offer communion more often than once a month. They said it was not the United Methodist way.


Most often, however, people abstain from the sacrament because they feel they are unprepared or, even worse, unworthy. If you are a person who avoids the table for this reason I want you to consider this.


The communion has very little to do with your holiness and everything to do with God’s.


As a means of grace, the act of communion is a devotion we have been called upon to practice in remembrance of Christ so that we might remember him. In doing so, we have him present with us. Once again, it is this presence of God that sanctifies us and not anything we can do for ourselves. Indeed, if our salvation was a matter of God waiting for us to prepare ourselves all of humanity would still be waiting on the day of the Lord.


For someone like Wesley and the other Methodists, the sacrament of communion was the chief way in which believers feed the fire of the Holy Spirit in their lives. In fact, he called for constant communion, asserting that the believer should avail herself of the sacrament as often as possible. There was no maximum number of times an individual could take it. Even today, the United Methodist Book of Discipline mandates that it be served no fewer than five times a year. There is no maximum.


We, as a people, value this meal for in it we are reminded that God invites us to his table in spite of our failings. We gather around it in hope that his presence will redeem us, teaching us true holiness. Therefore, all who gather around this table are saintly sinners seeking the fire of a Holy God.

Fire Extinguishers: Things We do that Put Out Our Fire - Part I

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Fire has always been a metaphor for the experience of the Christian life. When speaking of his work in evangelism John Wesley said, “I set myself on fire and people come to watch me burn.” Christianity has been using this imagery since its birth.


In fact, it is on the birthday of the church, we call it Pentecost, that we most frequently use the image of fire. The Gospel writer Luke tells us in the book of Acts that on the day of Pentecost, when the church received the gift of the Holy Spirit, tongues of flame danced upon their heads. Thus vital Christian life in the Spirit became connected with the image of fire and we have used it ever since.

Fire is a good image because it evokes so many things. Fire can be positive or negative. Everyone loves to have a fire in their house but not in their house. Fire is equated with hearth and home. It can also be an image for consumption and destruction. Biblically speaking, fire (when used to refer to the presence of God) is often understood as a horribly wonderful thing, purifying as it consumes.

In our lives as Christians it is no different. That very presence of God in us purifies as it consumes while simultaneously drawing others as moths are drawn to a flame. Our job, as Wesley put it, is to burn so that others may watch and see the glory of Christ.

The thing about fire, however, is that for all of its power it does have its limitations. A fire can, after all, die and no one has ever been warmed by a dead fire.

In general, fire needs two things to live. First of all, it needs fuel. Because its job is to consume, fire has the nasty habit of using up its available resources. If you do not feed a fire it will starve and go out.

The second thing a fire needs is air – an oxidizer of some sort – because fire is the visible sign of a complex and destructive chemical process in which one thing is broken apart into its basic components while others a turned into something new.

This is why you can blow a candle out. Now, I know that this seems counterintuitive, but when you suddenly blow a candle out you are separating the fuel from the air around it. When an oil rig explodes they actually “blow” them out by using a large quantity of high explosives. Leave this one for the experts folks. You don’t want to try it out on your next birthday cake.

This is why fire extinguishers work. They separate the fire from its fuel or air, starving it out of existence or suffocating it to death. This is why firefighters spray water on a fire, your grandma keeps a box of baking soda near the stove and your grandpa kept a bucket of sand in the garage – they are all effective fire extinguishers. And of course, there are all of those people you know as wet blankets. And if you are a wet blanket yourself, well, there is a reason you never get invited to parties.

Now, I know that you are incredibly thankful for this little trip in the world of Mister Wizard and the magic of fire. My point is this. When it comes to the spiritual fire we have been given, there are many “extinguishers” we need to watch out for. Just like the real ones they tend to work by either starving or suffocating. In the next couple of messages we will take them up based on how they work. First, we will look at the ones that starve. Then, we will look at the ones that suffocate.

On Being Where You Are

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There is a strange phenomenon you experience as a parent. For example, within about two days or so after my sons had received a healthy dose of Christmas presents they began thinking about the gifts they wanted for their birthday. Quite literally surrounded by enough toys to choke a horse (granted, I am not sure how many toys this would take) my sons were focused on some obscure future instead of enjoying the present they had been given.


Of course, they come by it naturally. It is an entirely human thing to do and this brings me to my point. As Christians, I think we neglect the joy of the Kingdom we have been given by focusing on an experience of heaven we have yet to see. Our hymns are full of the imagery. You have heard the songs: “When we all get to heaven”, “I’ll Fly Away”. These are songs which place the focus of the Christian life on something that happens at the end rather than on how we live today.

I do not even believe that Jesus meant going to heaven to be our focus. His earth shattering news was that the Kingdom of God, or Heaven if you wish, was breaking in and people could live in it now. His was a message of impending grace which was in the process of becoming. In his mind, the point of a faithful life is not so much about getting to heaven as it is about having heaven define how you live your life now. To put off the reward of a Christian life until death is to miss the point of Jesus’ promise entirely.

The point of Jesus’ good news of the Kingdom is that we can have the joy of God’s presence now, living with us and within us. This is, after all, the point of the beatitudes. They point to a whole new way of living and being that is defined by God’s living presence. The outcome of that presence is an inheritance in the here and now. The vision of the beatitudes is of a people going forth in glory rather than waiting around in an upper room somewhere.

Now, I hear you saying, “But it says that you will store up treasures in heaven.” Yes. That is the outcome of how we live our lives in the kingdom today. The notion still remains that we have been given a life to live now and the way we live that life, amazingly enough, greatly impacts what goes on in heaven. We are in a sense living out on earth the holiness that is in heaven, sanctifying creation by being present in it as God is present in us. It is God’s presence in this world – his Holy Spirit with us – which is the true treasure store of heaven. It is amazing to me that we can ignore that fact in search of some greater reward.

Jesus spent a considerable amount of time explaining this to his followers. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like…” was a common way for him to start a lesson. In one instance the Kingdom was like a pearl for which you would sell all other jewels. Again, it was like a hidden treasure which would make you buy the whole field in which it lay. The Kingdom was, in short, the great inheritance for which the faithful had waited. It was, as Jesus said, here and now, and still is. The Kingdom of God is a treasure he was willing to die for and it is one we should be willing to live for.

And yet, we sit around in the midst of the Kingdom waiting for something else, something new, something better, as if the thing God has given us just is not special enough. We are like children who can focus on nothing else than what Santa forgot to bring us.

We fail to enjoy the present day that Christ has won for us. With our eyes fixed on heaven we neglect the Kingdom that God has entrusted to our care. We look to the horizon for the next thing. The funny thing about the forgiveness is that you never seem to reach it. I fear that a person who walks only to the horizon may stumble past the very thing they were looking for.

The key is learning how to be present in the world that Christ has won for us. We need to focus on being where we are. In the Empire Strikes Back the character of Luke Skywalker wants nothing but to be a Jedi. The problem is that he cannot seem to stay put long enough to work on being one. It is a failing that his master Yoda points out to him. “This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. What he was doing. …You are reckless.”

It would seem that we Christians can be a lot like young Luke, wanting all of the honor and glory without any of the investment. We have a very difficult time focusing on the becoming part of Christianity and wish to jump straight to the being. That is “being” Christian in the sense of some instantaneous beatification.

You remember that I said the beatitudes are about living out your life here in the Kingdom according to the rules of heaven? Well, let us consider what the term beatitude means. To beatify something is to make it holy or blessed. For instance, our brothers and sisters in the Roman Catholic Church are pondering the question of beatification for Pope John Paul II. This means that he is up for promotion to sainthood. In the process of beatification the church seeks evidence from the life of the individual that he or she possessed an unusual degree of holiness. It is not the Roman Catholic Church’s pronouncement that makes the saint holy; rather, it is a confirmation of the individual’s sanctification by the community. Their understanding is that holiness is something experienced and lived out in this life.

Once again, the beatitudes are interested in the ongoing work of holiness with in our lives. They represent the way in which God is working to sanctify us in each and every moment of our lives. He does not wait until the last moment to make us like his son; He chooses to work on it every day. Therefore, we must be alert to the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit as it instructs us in those seemingly mundane details of daily life in the Kingdom. We must be constantly watching for the moments in which we can practice peacemaking, humility, and all of those other holy practices.

We have been promised eternal life in the Kingdom of God. It would be a shame to spend all of that time looking for something better. So, instead of locking in on that horizon let us begin today living on earth as it is in heaven.