seems as straw

St. Thomas Aquinas once told his confessor that he had recently seen something of God that made his meager writings about Him seem as straw. I end Shards Of Eternity with the same words. Thank you for reading. I have other things that are going to be taking up my "blogging time" (ministry, book projects, articles for the local paper and school.) And I have recently seen something that makes all of my writings seem as straw. One glimpse of Him is all it takes. Thank you, anyone who read and shared.

John 21: formerly Simon, forevermore Peter

The one thing I notice about this passage is how very unexpected it is.
It comes after the climax of the Gospel of John.

Jesus has already been crucified and resurrected; He’s already appeared to Mary Magdalene in the garden, He’s already appeared to the disciples in the room they’ve locked themselves in, He’s already appeared to Thomas and Thomas has already put his fingers in the wounds of Christ.

Going by the other gospels, we know that Jesus has already appeared to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. By all accounts, all of the big post-resurrection events had already taken place. But John, who seems to blush every time he refers to himself as ‘the disciple Jesus loved” remembers one early morning when he and some of the other disciples were out fishing and Jesus unexpectedly appeared to them.

The gospel of John is an epic book. When John begins his gospel, I think it says a lot that he doesn’t begin with the baptism of Jesus or the questionable impregnation of Mary. He doesn’t feel any inclination to beat us over the head with mind-numbing genealogies or any kind of nativity scene. He doesn’t begin with people at all, in any human situation. He begins with the Word who is with God and is God, creating everything. He wants us to wrap our minds around the fact that everything, the manger Jesus was born in, the Middle-Eastern region the events of His life took place in, every tree, animal, and person was created by Him. John doesn’t want you to merely think that Jesus is a nice man or a good religious teacher; he wants you to know that Jesus is the One who is, at this very moment holding every molecule in your body together.

And while the other gospels are very helpful when conveying Jesus’ teaching and life-events, the gospel of John is more concerned with WHO the person of Jesus is; everything He does naturally flows out of His identity as God in human flesh. Whereas Matthew, Mark and Luke let us investigate Jesus’ words and deeds for ourselves and come to a realization of who this man is, John begins in sentence one “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” You might wonder where John can go from there, having laid bare the main point of his gospel in sentence one, but amazingly, his gospel continues to build upon mystery and momentum as we find ourselves following Jesus through events in His life none of the other gospel-writers thought enough of to include.

But we can tell through his writings that John is a man who notices things that other people don’t. A patch of conversation here, and a seemingly nonchalant miracle there - John takes what he has seen and heard Jesus say and do, and he paints us an artful picture of who Jesus IS by the careful use of them. John is putting a mosiac together, and each story is an indispensable tile. Only John mentions the wedding at Cana, where Jesus turns water into wine. Only John mentions Jesus’ midnight conversation with Nicodemus, and only John records John 3:16. Only John bothers to tell us about the woman caught in adultery, to whose accusers Jesus replies, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Only John tells us about Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. While the other gospels re-piece bits and snippets of what Jesus said, John lets Jesus go on and on, and we get to eavesdrop on His long conversations with followers, friends, foreigners, fornicators and frumpy religious people. John’s Jesus speaks easily, casually with whomever, whenever about whatever - though most, if not all, of His conversations usually turn back upon Himself; His nature and His life’s mission and His continuous open invitation to for us to come follow.

John writes down the subtleties of Jesus’ life. You can almost hear John shaky voice as he recounts the words of the one that he longs for. If any gospel parchment was tear-stained it would have been John’s. You can hear the bursting of his heart in every story, as the life-giving words of Jesus fly off of the page and engage you and I. John thematically arranges His gospel. There are certain words you find him using over and over: light, darkness, sight, blindness, eternal life, love, bread, water, thirst and truth. He weaves these words and concepts throughout the gospel like a composer will weave familiar themes throughout a symphony. And in this way, John’s gospel reads like a symphony - full of grandeur and magnificence, steadily pushing an imminent climax, which reaches it’s full crest at the end of chapter 20, like a tsunami finally crashes down on a jagged shoreline. The music swells and a voiceover dramatically decrees: “These things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His name.”

And then…Fade To Black, right?
Well…not really.

After the dramatic surge of music, image and speech, the story continues with a sort of epilogue. John 21 opens with an almost comedic air. The disciples are still just hanging around, looking lost. The attitude is, “Great! Now what?” Even after all they have seen and heard, they aren’t sure how the glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth connects with their lives on a personal level.
Of course, Jesus being resurrected pretty much changed everything. They would never quite look at the world the same way ever again. They had witnessed something that, since the dawn of humanity, was notorious for NOT happening. People didn’t just bleed to death and wake up three days later feeling right as rain. They had only seen it happen before in relation to Jesus. Jesus called dead people from their graves. Jesus Himself walked out of His grave unscathed. Yes, He had the wounds to show for it, but now in some strange way, the wounds were badges of honor - not tragic marks of defeat, as they had been when He was dead.

They had seen Jesus, talked with Jesus. They had felt His wounds and they had even eaten with Him since He rose from the dead. They knew it was real, and they had probably spent days or even weeks just looking at each other with bug-eyed astonishment. They probably spent the entire time shaking their heads in bewilderment - sometimes with huge smiles and sidesplitting laughter; other times in somber silence, feeling the weight of it. But now, in John 21, they seem to have come to a point where all of the head-shaking, ear-to-ear grinning, and stupefying astonishment had faded into the empty feeling of not knowing what this had to do with their personal lives. Yes, it was amazing, but now what? They all found themselves on the shore of the sea of Tiberias, maybe after a long day of passionate conversation that went nowhere, trying to figure out what Jesus being alive had to do with the lives they were each to lead. Surely there’s something else now? We can’t just go on living the same old way in the same old world.
Life will never be the same anymore. But what will it be like?

Of all the disciples on the shore that night, perhaps walking quietly, skipping rocks and speaking in whispers, none of them felt the weight and frustration of it like Simon Peter. Even his name reflected how his life had been completely turned upside down by this rabbi from Nazareth. The name Simon was the name he had been known by most of his life, until recently when Jesus renamed him “Peter,” which means “rock.” He really wasn’t sure why. He hoped it was because Jesus saw Peter as being solid as a rock, but he knew the other disciples joked behind his back that it was because he had the I.Q. of one. There was a time when he felt proud of his nickname. Jesus didn’t call anyone else The Rock. He was special in that regard. Even though he made his share of mistakes around the Master, Jesus never revoked his name. Peter stuck on him. It was a name he almost felt like he had to live up to. In every interaction with Jesus, he would try to act like someone who had it all together would act. With a name like The Rock, he had to. So he came to both love and hate the name Peter. On one hand he was overjoyed that Jesus had singled him out with it, but on the other, he was never quite himself ever again. He could never just be Simon, but he knew he could never quite live up to Peter. And Jesus sure didn’t make it easy.

Matthew 16 is probably the one chapter that encapsulates Simon’s difficulties living up to his Peter identity, although there are quite a few others elsewhere. Perhaps as Simon Peter walked that shoreline, he was remembering this moment when Jesus called all the disciples aside and asked them who people were saying He was. They didn’t know if He was playing a game with them or if He was serious, He must have known. One thing was for certain; He wasn’t asking them if they thought He was a rabbi from Nazareth. He was looking for another answer; this was His roundabout way of telling them that He was, in fact, much more than a rabbi. So the other disciples started naming prophetic ministries that Jesus might be associating Himself with. Jeremiah, John the Baptist or Elijah. The look on Jesus’ face told them that they were nowhere near it.
Simon Peter did some quick deducing. If Jesus wasn’t just a rabbi then He must be of a higher order than rabbinic ministry. Since He obviously wasn’t a priest, it must be the Prophetic ministry. But Jesus wasn’t letting Himself be pigeonholed into the strict role of a prophet either. There was only one other thing He could be, but Simon wasn’t going to say it. It wasn’t until Jesus suddenly looked at Simon Peter and asked him directly that he blurted it out.

“You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!”

Jesus’ expression became jovial. He smiled and nodded His head emphatically. Simon Peter never forgot Jesus’ look; it was Peter’s shining moment. It was the moment he felt most like Peter. He had lived up to his nickname by acing the exam. He was the teacher’s pet.

Jesus looked directly at him and said, “You didn’t think this up on your own, my Father revealed it to you. And you are my Peter - on this Rock I will build my church - and the gates of Hell with not be able to withstand it. I am giving you the keys of God’s kingdom and whatever you decide here on earth should be tied up or cut loose, Heaven will write you a blank check as an endorsement!” Simon Peter remembered grinning like an idiot. Wow. Jesus never said that to anyone else. It was a glorious but fleeting moment. Simon Peter came to a realization that he was somehow the best disciple. He didn’t feel like he was, though. To be honest, he still felt like Simon the Fisherman. Bumpkin. Simpleton. Handy with a net, but not too good at words. And more than a little scared about the role he was stepping into: key-holder of the kingdom! Jesus’ Rock - the Messiah’s wingman! He figured that Jesus believed he was as strong and resolute as he pretended to be, even though inside, his heart was a stormy sea of fear and doubt.

He remembers the moment after Jesus pronounced him key-holder. Jesus turned away and Simon had a moment when he realized it was all too big for him. The fear came over him like a cloud of poisonous gas. He could barely breathe. He became weak. But he only let himself feel the fear for a moment until he said to himself: “Jesus knows what He’s doing. Maybe He really IS the Messiah! Maybe the Father really DID lead me to say that out loud! Maybe I really AM meant to follow Jesus and be his Rock! Maybe I’ll find the strength along the way. Maybe I don’t have to be a religious know-it-all. Maybe God wants someone like me after all. He made me, didn’t He? I’ll just trust Jesus.”

And that felt good, to get that weight off his shoulders. Jesus knew what He was doing, even if Simon Peter didn’t. After all, He’s the rabbi. That gave Peter so much joy, calling the Messiah his rabbi. His rabbi wasn’t just any rabbi - He was THE rabbi of all rabbis! But that someone with so much glory, honor and power would choose the humble role of a rabbi wandering all over Israel with 12 dim-bulb pupils! It made Peter laugh; it was a joke too sweet to ruin by blabbering. And what if it was true?

Of course, Simon Peter’s euphoria didn’t last long. Jesus started saying weird things. He had said weird things before, the disciples were used to it. But now, Jesus was just getting morbid. He kept talking about going to Jerusalem and getting killed by the religious leaders so that He could come back to life 3 days afterward. The disciples kept looking at each other in confusion whenever Jesus would say this. Peter did too, but before long, Peter realized that they were all looking at him. He was, after all, Jesus’ wingman. He should know what Jesus is talking about. Simon Peter began to wonder if maybe Jesus was testing his resoluteness. So Peter spoke up. After all, a guy with a name like Peter needs to step up once in a while and call his rabbi out every once in a while. The rabbi probably wants to be challenged; that’s got to be the only explanation for the strange things Jesus is saying. So finally Peter called Jesus out: “Never, Lord! Not while I’m your Rock! That’ll never happen to you if I’ve got anything to say about it!”

Even after Jesus had died and been risen to life again, Simon Peter remembered His disappointed gaze. It still burned, even as he thought back upon it by the sea of Tiberias. “Satan, get behind me.” That’s what Jesus said. Jesus called him Satan. He even used the name Rock in a joking sense. “You're being like a Rock that's tripping me up right now, Peter.” Jesus must have realized that Simon wasn’t really capable of stepping up and becoming Peter. Maybe from then on, Jesus regretted calling him Peter. Simon Peter remembered the next couple of years and shuddered at all of the boneheaded things he had said. He remembered Jesus rolling His eyes a few times. But there was nothing that compared to the night Jesus was arrested. Up until then Jesus had never revoked the name Peter from Simon. And Simon was constantly trying to fill Peter’s shoes; but never quite doing it. He was a tangled man inside - over-sensitive, and a bundle of raw nerves. He found himself wincing every time he said anything, wondering if Jesus would let it pass or correct him in front of everyone. He started to resent the name Peter. It was too much to carry. But the night that the Temple guard came to arrest Jesus, it was an unbearable weight.

In John 18, we see them coming with torches and swords to arrest Jesus. Simon Peter knows that it’s now or never. If there is ever an opportune moment to come into his name Peter, it was then. So he drew his sword and led the charge against the temple soldiers. Of course, being a fisherman by trade, his skills with a sword were hardly exemplary. He barely managed to lop off the ear of an unarmed servant. Jesus yelled at him to put his sword away, and the sting of the rebuke struck Simon hard. He surrendered to his cowardice and ran for safety. He hid in the olive grove for a while, smacking himself in the face, trying to regain his courage. But what did Jesus expect? Jesus had told him that he would buckle under the weight of what was going to happen. Jesus had told him he wouldn’t live up to his name. Peter told Jesus - I will die with you. Jesus smile sadly and relied curtly, “You’ll deny you ever knew me, not once, but 3 times before morning.” Simon Peter wanted to prove his Master wrong. That’s what drove him to attack the temple guard with a sword. But Jesus shot him down for doing that too! What exactly did Jesus want from him anyway? Why didn’t Jesus ever just spell it out? The stinging tears soon turned to angry tears. What did Jesus think would happen. He’s constantly telling me I am Peter, but He keeps treating me like Simon! He gives me this unattainable name to live up to and then He shoots me down at every turn! If He would have once ever just sat down with me and explained in detail what my job description is…if He would have just made it simple, maybe I could have done it. I can’t read His mind. Maybe He can read mine, but I can’t read His. Then it hit him. His darkest thought as a disciple of Jesus.

He is ashamed of me. He wishes He never chose me. Maybe once He thought I could handle being Peter, but now He knows me for who I really am - Simon the nobody. He probably wanted to dump me along the way, but couldn’t. He was stuck with me, and I let Him down at every turn. Even when I tried to defend Him, I messed the whole thing up. Now He’s going to die. The one who named me Peter is going to die tomorrow. Nobody will ever call me Peter again and mean it. I’m Simon again. I’m Simon forever. I never was Peter anyway.

Still, something still drew him to Jesus. He knew all was lost but he couldn’t stay hidden. It was like that time Jesus was telling everyone to come eat His flesh and drink His blood. It was repulsive, but he couldn’t leave. What if Jesus was talking about something he couldn’t understand? What if Jesus knew what He was doing? I told Jesus that even though what He was saying didn’t make any sense, I knew He knew what He was doing, even if I didn’t. He asked me if I wanted to leave and I said, “To where?! You alone have the words of eternal life?” I felt like I was really Peter then, Jesus seemed happy with me. That night, in the olive grove, as Simon Peter wept bitterly behind the tree, a small ray of hope began to break in his thoughts.

Maybe this is like then. Maybe Jesus knows what He is doing. I’ll follow behind Him to see if anything happens. I won’t get my hopes up too high. But I can’t stay away.

Of course, things soon went from bleak to hopeless. Jesus was condemned to die, and Simon Peter realized that it was time to save his own skin. Every time someone asked him if he had any connection to that crazy rabbi from Galilee, he decided it was too late to keep being Peter. He relapsed into Simon again, and said, “No, I never knew Jesus.” Jesus was right, Simon laughed bitterly to himself, 3 times, exactly. He saw Jesus being carried out of the temple. And Jesus saw him watching Him. Simon Peter had relived that moment countless times since. The look Jesus gave him - it wasn’t angry, not even disappointed. It wasn’t exactly overjoyed either. It was a knowing look. It wasn’t a goodbye look. It wasn’t bitter resignation. It was a “this isn’t over” look. Simon Peter had seen it again and again in his dreams. It always startled him awake.

And now, on the beach of the sea of Tiberias, what is weighing heaviest on Simon Peter is the name Peter. He knows that he’s already shown himself not to be the Rock. He feels more like the Wet Noodle than the Rock. Yes, Jesus is somehow alive, and good for Him! I love that guy. If anyone in this world gets to survive being killed, I’m glad it’s Him. But let’s not kid ourselves. I am a fisherman. I’m not some rabbi’s pupil. It was a good run - I’ve got some great stories for the grandkids. Not everybody has had a chance to walk on water. But the sea is calling and the fish are waiting; it’s not exactly a dream come true, but it’s good enough. Christ is risen and what now? I’m going to do what I know how to do.

So Simon Peter found himself saying to the rest of the disciples, “I’m going fishing.” Maybe they knew what this meant. It’s time to leave the dream behind. Christ will move on to bigger and better things than hanging out with a bunch of uneducated yokels like us. Time to get back to “real life.” There was a time we would have called The Dream our real life, but come on. Who would invite the likes of us to bring in the Kingdom of God on earth? We’re a bunch of nobodies. It was a nice dream while it lasted but now it’s over.

But as they got out on the sea and spent the entire night out fishing, they couldn’t even wrangle one fish out of the water. Simon was cursing under his breath. “Can’t even do what I’m good at anymore. I’m ruined for good.”
Just then as the first sliver of sunlight began to shine over them, a voice came from the shore.
“Children, don’t you have any fish yet?”
“No” they answered back, although Simon Peter added a few words under his breath. The voice from the shore answered back, “Try the right side and see what happens.”

Did Simon Peter smile knowingly? Or did he continue in his aggravated funk and toss the net out thinking, “Jesus told us to do this once…if He were here, we would miraculous catch a boatload, but since He’s moved on, we…” Was Peter snapped out of it by the lagging net bringing in too many fish to count? Whatever happened, Peter was out of the boat and already swimming to the shore to meet his rabbi. The other disciples were left holding the net.

And this is the mood of John 21.
The Light of the World cups his hands and blows into the charcoal, igniting a fire for them to cook up some fish for breakfast. After everything that has happened, the gospel ends with a lighthearted cookout between the rabbi and his students. Because the world is never going to be the same because of them. They are about to turn the planet upside down with the right side up message of Jesus Christ. I think Jesus still has to show them that The Risen Christ is the kind of guy you can have an easy breakfast with. That we are not Kingdom people because of any saving formula or atonement theory - but because we have a Master who cares for us, personally. The Word who was made flesh and dwells among us is a one-on-one kind of person. Are we like the disciples were earlier that night, wondering how we fit into the grand scheme of things? We can’t interact with atonement theories and faith-formulas; our entrance to the Kingdom is a person-to-person relationship with its king. Perhaps they spoke of such weighty things that morning, and maybe not. Maybe they just talked about the sort of things that friends talk about. Maybe they just enjoyed the cooking and let the silence do the talking. Maybe they listening to the singing birds and the wind blowing through the leaves.

During this early morning BBQ, Jesus pulled Simon Peter aside.
“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? Do you love me with a love that risks everything?”
The Greek word Jesus uses for “love” is agape. It means “self-sacrificial.”
Simon hears Jesus calling him by his original name. That probably hurts, but maybe he is relieved that he doesn’t have to live up to being Peter anymore. Even so, he can’t bring himself to say yes. He knows his own heart too well.
“Yes, Lord,” he says, “You know I like you.”
The word Peter uses for “love” is phileo, “friend-love.” “I love you like a friend.” Or “I like you” is our modern sense of what he says. Some biblical scholars say these love words are interchangeable, and there’s no point in reading too much into them. But to the plain eye, agape and phileo, all-or-nothing love and friendly love couldn’t be further apart.
Jesus says to Peter, “Feed My lambs.”
“Simon, son of John,” Jesus says again, “Do you agape me?”
“Yes, Lord, You know how much I like you.”
“Take good care of My sheep then.”
Then Jesus switches the love-words.
“Simon, son of John, do you REALLY phileo Me?”
(Do you even like Me as a friend?)
YES LORD! Simon Peter bursts into tears.
“Yes, You know I do. I can’t bring myself to say how much I love you after how I’ve denied You. If you are asking me for an all-or-nothing love, I know I don’t have it in me. But You are my friend, and I know I can say that. Thank You for meeting me on the level I am at. I like you a lot. I really do like You. Can I say that I love You, though? Dare I say it again after I let You down?
Peter was hurt, but maybe he understood it thusly.

Jesus: “Feed My sheep. I tell you the truth. When you were younger, you dressed yourself and went where you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”
Translation: “You will love me someday. You’ll get there. And it will be real this time. You won’t be operating out of a false identity or an insecure compulsion to propagate yourself as some immovable Rock. You will BE the Rock, because you love Me, not because you are anything without Me. Dig deep. Do you really WANT to be anything without Me? THAT is why you are Peter, not because you are superhuman, but because you are all-too-human. But your heart is Mine and I Am the stone that the builders rejected that is now the Cornerstone (1st Peter 2) and because of Me, you are a Living Stone in the house that God is building. You are Peter because I am your Rabbi. You are the branch and I Am the vine. Eat My flesh and Drink My blood if you want to live. I Am the Bread of Heaven, eat up. I Am that I Am. You are because I Am. And I call you Peter.”

Jesus didn’t say all this, but somehow He did. And Simon Peter heard it. Did he finally embrace that new name of his that was both a blessing to follow after and a curse to drag around with him? Will we ever embrace the new name that is waiting for each of us? (Revelation 2:17)

We are not defined by the name we enter this world with, but the name we chase out of it.
We are not defined by the identity; the raw materials we forge a living from, but the eternal One Who gives us our hoped-for and believed-in identity.
We are not defined by the reality we bring in with us, but the Reality that calls to us from beyond everything that appears important, but is in reality UNREAL.
We do not define ourselves, we are defined by the One who calls us out, to follow, and He doesn't name us any of the shabby names we name ourselves with, He names us BELOVED.
Can we...DARE WE embrace this God-given identity?

the time-melting flute: echoes of an original sound

Way back awhile ago, a couple of friends and I were up in the Painted Desert. We had spent the day down in the portion of the desert you could hike into, and in that erosion-formed stained-rock moonscape we spoke of many things that such a place can draw out of you; fears, hopes, past experiences, future dreams, etc. We could sense the fullness of the silence down there and words had become windows, unlocking the untold; reforming over-thought conclusions. So went the sojourning down there where the quiet is like glass and the splattering of words seems almost profane. Coming back up as the sky began to threaten rain, and as the drizzle came down on us in the cool desert breeze, we sought shelter in the curio shop and café. My friend John treated my other friend Norm and I to Indian fry bread tacos quite generously, and we talked long into the afternoon, seeking the fingerprints of God in each other’s lives and more often then not finding them where we least expected to. As the winter rain poured buckets outside, the native flute music flurried in the background, and we were high on the fumes of unexpected providence. As we finally finished up and ambled out to the gift shop, I knew that the day should be commemorated with a little something, so I bought an ocotillo flute for about 8 dollars. It’s a flat, round disc-ish instrument, played in ancient south America, and it has an ancient sound to it, as if the very reverberations I make are somehow as ancient as those they made then. My ocotillo flute is my time machine. The sound I make now is the very sound they made then. Whenever I start feeling enslaved to my watch, my ocotillo flute is the perfect antidote. Even though the music I make is unaccomplished, I take comfort in knowing theirs was too. This shouldn’t surprise me, as the air is ancient, and the clay it is made from is equally ancient. It may be newly-crafted, but the wet dirt it is made from began when the world did. In all actuality, the particles I am made from are also ancient, just rearranged. The water and clay that I was formed from have always been here, as long as there has been a “here.” And the very breath I breathe into it goes back as far as God’s breath of life into Adam. It was passed on to me through the breath of my mother and her mother before her. So when I breathe my ancient breath of ancient air into the ancient clay, out comes a sound equally ancient. I like to think the music it produces has something to do with the music of Creation itself, when the sons of God sang for joy at the dawn of space, matter and time. Could this tone be the tone that began it all? Will it begin everything again?

wrestling the book: impressions of Job

Eugene Peterson, in a recent book, writes that “writing about the Christian life is like trying to paint a picture of a bird in flight.” He goes on to point out that our modern focus on precision (static definitions and informative explanations) is for the most part, out of key with the tune of the song God has been singing throughout human history.

It all began when we started thinking of the universe as a well-oiled machine, created by a master-mechanic; the divine clockmaker. The universe exists to fulfill a specific function; housing humans. Humans are also little machines (I’ve heard the body referred to as the most glorious machine ever conceived of) which exist, also, to merely fulfill a function. Our terminology has changed with time: now we can allude to “computer programs” to scratch out the same meaning. God is the master-programmer, and we are all parts of the interwoven code. No matter which words we decide to wrap around this sentiment, the end result has brought the church universal into a very dry and dull place. We’ve systemized God. We’ve offered our culture a portrait of Him that is about as passionate as the automated voice you have to listen to when you call your credit card company. God is CEO of the universe. We are all His executives. God is basically like Donald Trump, only with better hair. Tough-talking, no-nonsense, always down-to-business. I have even heard the Bible referred to as “Life’s Instruction Manual.” We’ve made “being saved” about as awe-inspiring as putting together a vacuum cleaner (with about as many steps.) We are thoroughly wedged into the culture we grew up in, and we are reading our own culture into what God has revealed about Himself through His Word to us. And we are droning on and on, boring the world to death with our 2-dimensional cardboard cut-out Creator. Our prevalent vision of the Christian life is nothing like a bird in flight. It’s more like a dead butterfly, pinned down to the dissecting board in junior high science class.

The Bible is crammed to the hilt with poetry, mystery, engaging narratives, metaphors, parables, and a summons to adventure. We’ve managed to turn it into a pyramid scheme. Now the whole Christian life feels more like a bunch of religious hoops to jump through rather than an adventure to live into. It makes me think of the book of Job, nestled snugly in the heart of the Old Testament. The book of Job is a blistering piece of ancient epic poetry. If you were to take it as literature alone, there is nothing that compares with it. Most of the old epics rely on gory battles and political intrigue to keep the story moving. Not Job. Job is 42 chapters of (get this) 5 guys sitting around talking about what God is like. The basic plot is that Job is a good man; honest, decent, all-around saintly. The Accuser (Satan) challenges God to let some bad things happen to Job, because Job’s love for God is only based on good things happening to him. If things got difficult, Satan argues, Job would drop God like a bad habit. God says, “You’re wrong.” Satan says, “You wanna bet?” God says, “Yeah, OK.” So Satan is given permission to mess with Job but not kill him. So almost instantaneously Job loses his children, his wealth and his health all in one day. Satan gives Job boils all over his body as an added flourish. If all of this is making you think of how unfair this whole turn of events is, you are in the majority. The following 37 chapters are about Job cursing his life and complaining about how unfair God is being. Job’s pious friends tell Job to basically stop his whiney yammering. God is being very fair, Job is just being a heel. They argue back and forth about what God is like and not like. They finagle over the divine character. God has torn their religious system to shreds. God is behaving very unpredictably today; can the universe endure it? They had a preconceived notion of God that will not let them deal with the obvious. They would rather stick with their notion of God rather than seek God Himself.

Job is a hard book to come to terms with. Why would God use Job like a pawn? The idea of God’s throne room being turned into a casino where human souls are gambled on seems inflammatory. Even as we get this peek into what’s going on with Job’s life, it doesn’t make understanding it any easier. I can sympathize with both Job and Job’s friends. Job is beyond livid; he is bitterly shaking his fist at God. He is frustrated that there is no mediator (or umpire) between him and God. There is nowhere he can file a formal complaint. God has no suggestion box. It is more than frustration; it is despair. Job’s friends are also livid and frustrated - but with Job. He is making their belief in a cardboard God very difficult. He is not allowing them to get away with their religious clichés. What is happening to Job doesn’t make any sense, so they take it out on Job for letting himself get poor and sick. If he only loved God more…had more faith, God would be good to him. Job tells them to quit blowing hot air; God is being unjust and they know it. Before long, things get heated, things are said that no one takes kindly to, and it becomes a screaming match. Each participant starts talking about how bone-headed the other person is being. Each speaker claims to have a monopoly on understanding God.

The Book of Job is the elephant in the room when it comes to Bible study. We work around it or gloss over it, because we are unnerved by it. But it’s there, demanding that we face up to it. There have been all kinds of attempts to explain it away; Job had a hidden sin God was punishing, Job stayed faithful to the end so God rewarded him, etc. But a direct reading of the text does away with both explanations (and Ezekiel 14 declares Job a righteous man; righteous enough to save an evil nation from punishment all by himself.) To explain God’s behavior we begin to fall all over ourselves to come to His defense, but in the process, we only end up doing what Job’s friends were doing; throwing all of our easy answers and religious clichés at the wall to see if anything sticks. None of it does. The Book of Job turns the text back on the reader. How will the reader react, like Job or Job’s friends? It is impossible not to interact with this book. There are no disinterested observers of the story of Job; you are either blowing the whistle on God with Job, or making apologies for Him like Job’s friends. Of course, this is intended. In the ancient world, you learned by getting involved; by wrestling with the mysteries of God (like Jacob did at Jabbok.) Today we don’t teach; we impart facts to be memorized. We don’t get involved in what we learn; we observe it impartially from a safe distance. In this way, Job is a microcosm of Scripture as a whole. God’s Word is interactive; it’s supposed to splatter all over you when you read it. You don’t study it like a dead butterfly, it is the bird in flight we are trying to paint. It isn’t a manual or a handbook; it is The Great Story we can enter into. Like Job we can honestly say, “I don’t understand God, I don’t always get along with God, but I will not turn Him into a cliché to make myself feel more comfortable when dealing with Him. I’m going to be real and let Him be real and go from there.”

Incidentally, when God finally shows up riding in a tornado at the end of the book of Job, He takes Job’s side. He basically affirms that Job was honest about what he was experiencing, even when it took him outside of his system, but Job’s friends were a bunch of phonies from beginning to end. Job refused to accept the contrived niceties other people were telling him about God and sought God himself. God’s basic response to Job is that even if God told Job why things are the way they are, Job wouldn’t understand it. The important thing is that I am here, God says.

Sometimes we get to a point in our Christian lives when we feel like we are wearing clothes that are three-sizes too small. Our previous conceptions of God don’t keep us sedated like they used to. If the universe is a machine, it’s a very inefficient machine - which suggests either it is severely malfunctioning, or not a machine at all. Our lives aren’t supposed to be mechanical either. God understands when we don’t understand. I believe He gave us the book of Job to constantly push us out of our comfort zones and realize that we don’t quite have God in a jar with holes punched in the lid yet. God is not tame. But He is good. Like Mr. Beaver says of Aslan, “Of course he isn’t safe, but he’s good.” Of course, in Job 9, when Job feels the weight of having no mediator between God and man, he is prophetically anticipating Jesus, who is just that. In John 1, we are told that no one has ever seen the Father in all of human history but Jesus, who is One with the Father’s heart. If today you are bogged down with an inadequate vision of the Father’s heart for you, go to Jesus. There is a beautiful secret Jesus knows concerning how much the Father longs for you, and He will reveal it to anyone who asks. God is no longer distant. Job’s vision of God, thankfully, is not the last word. The first and last Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and if we listen to the song He is singing, we can join in; adding our own variation and harmony. Sometimes the rhythm gets a little hard to follow, but with the mediator conducting the orchestra, we will find our way through the discordant places, and discover the music that much sweeter when we hear it again.

I can hear one possible response to all this; that it’s very nice to talk about Jesus coming to save the day and make everything better, but if you watch the news and read the paper, things aren’t getting better. There are still brutal wars, famine, disease and mass starvation afflicting the majority of the globe. Again, Jesus says He is with us always; He doesn’t give us easy answers or slick explanations that trivialize the suffering in our own lives and in the world in general; but He does give us hope as we struggle through these things. He is tangibly with us, and His presence calls us out to a place beyond the cramped quarters of cliché-ridden religiosity.

time was when we, afterward, began again

It was their cavalier way of noticing the new drapes that astounded me. Our midwife and the lead nurse, between pushing fits, would comment on the most mundane things; reminding me that they were just here doing their job while I was here simultaneously experiencing a miracle. You never imagine just how messy birth can be when you think about it beforehand, but the subtle pungent aroma and the tearing of skin shatter all illusions. The blood leaking forth and the guttural moans lay to rest any naïve fancying that the baby might slip out in a flood of antiseptic corn oil wide-eyed and giggly. In truth, there is the funky stench of bloody sludge and the excruciating pain. Not that I experienced any of it beyond my wife squeezing my hand like a pair of vice-grips before I had the chance to wrangle my ring off, but in her eyes I saw a sting sharper and more severe than any I’ve experienced. And it takes so long. The baby was crowning for about ten minutes before the final birth-giving heave. I propped myself up against the bedside lazy-boy recliner stealing tokes off my wife’s oxygen mask. “Push through the pain,” they kept telling her, but again and again her eyes told the story of a frightened girl pushing up against a brick wall heaped with hurt. I tried to say things that might impart courage but more than likely came off weak and whimpery. “Come on, push. It’s almost here. You can do it. Just a little longer and she’ll be here!” I had no idea what I was saying. Most of the lines I was using were lifted straight from TV and movies. I had absolutely no experience helping anybody get through birth pains, and my quivering voice probably wouldn’t have snowed over very many seasoned birth-givers, but with my wife being as green as I was, I can only hope she found a little comfort in my ridiculous words. Or at least in my bewildered presence. Or most likely in my deformed claw of a hand being mutilated beyond recognition in bearing the shared momentum of each contraction.

How do you tell someone who has a human head coming out of their nether-regions “It’s O.K.”? How do you tell a woman who is about to squeeze a watermelon through, essentially, a hole roughly the size of garden hose tip that you are there for her? What does she care? Being there for an actual birth had me thinking a lot about the “birth from above” that Jesus describes in John 3. Why do we assume that the second birth is anything less mysterious, painful or befuddling? One thing I’ve noticed in my years as a believer is that we tend to think we’ve got the new birth on tap. Raise your hand during a church service and we’ll toss it out at you, like we would toss you a free T-shirt. It has been reduced to something that God has to do when you fulfill your obligation by reciting some trite little prayer with the pastor. Take 30 seconds out of your life, pray the magic words, and reap the eternal benefits. No tears, no sweat, no desperation, no blood; just new life. Just Niagara Falls in a bottle. Yet being there that early morning, witnessing a real birth made me wonder about all this. Is there a process one must go through - some painful journey or something - that triggers the new birth, or is it really just as easy as repeating a prayer?

I believe that you’ve got about as much choice in being reborn as you had in being born the first time. It is something God curses you with. Or so it seems at the time. Before my second birth from above was probably the most desolate time of my life. I was being obliterated piece by piece and it was slow and it was excruciating. But when it had run it’s course, I was finally humble, crazy and frantic enough to cry out to the Savior. Now I see that season of sorrow and devastation as the greatest gift God ever gave me; though at the time, if you asked me anything about God, I probably would have cursed Him. Kind of like how the woman giving birth cusses out her husband when he’s trying to say nice things that won’t make her angry.

Birth is a funny thing. It can’t happen without something being there that wasn’t there before. There’s no getting around that part of it. A heartbeat emerges that wasn’t there before. A face with a name. Something must suddenly appear in our midst. Jesus said in John 3 that we who receive the new birth are like the wind, because we don’t know where it comes from or where it’s going. It’s mysterious. And the new birth is mysterious too. Only the new birth from above must follow a death. So in order for the new birth to take place; someone’s got to die. That person is you; if you are one of those who are born again.

There is the tearing of flesh and the brutal heaves. The agonizing and the pain you must push through. There is the fear that something will go horribly wrong; that the baby will get twisted in the birth canal or the umbilical cord will be wrapped around her neck. The vulnerability is the scariest part, especially when the pushing is over with and you hold in your trembling hands a writhing pink creature, frighteningly beautiful. I held her in my arms that morning and wept at the lovely terrible mystery of it all. In her face I saw my own face. In her vulnerability, I had to face my own vulnerability. I think I saw for a moment that I was once like her and she will someday be like me. And we are equally helpless in the face of what we are and what we are not. It is your own mortality; your own helplessness, your own vulnerability you see anew when you hold your newborn child. I saw her receiving her first shots flaccid in the nurse’s arms. I saw her receive what was good for her passively. I learned from her the crucial lesson that only her kind can teach me. Dependence. I am helpless in the arms of the Great Physician. I am in dire need of His expertise. I would aspire to someday attain her level of maturity, but I know I’m still a long way off.

She is my sage. She grabs me by the nose with a look of sheer wonder on her brand new ancient face. At first she didn’t really acknowledge my existence. I was just the hands that clothed her, fed her and changed her diapers. She probably wasn’t even aware another being was doing all that. It probably just seemed like the way things were. You get moved, you get fed, you sleep and you just end up places. But recently, she began to discover me. I remember what it was like at first. I would say something goofy to her and she would smile her embarrassed little girl smile. Her toothless tongue-flipping smile. Then her eyes got huge and she proceeded to stare at me and make sounds like she was trying to say something. I would have given anything to know what she was trying to say. Maybe she was trying to tell me the meaning of all things. She probably still knows it; time hasn’t swallowed her yet like it’s swallowed me.

All I know is that it must be like that for God when we suddenly become aware of Him in our lives and we pour ourselves out to Him. Except He can understand our garbled speech. We enter the way of Christ by repenting, turning from our former selves and the superficial lives we’ve up to then lived out. We fall to our knees and say YES. We “make the decision” for Christ. We seem to think that our asking Him to come is what made Him suddenly come. We don’t realize that He’s been there all along taking care of us the whole time. Just suddenly, we see Him laughing or crying or singing or whatever He’s doing when we first catch that life-altering glimpse. Your spiritual eyes get very big. There is a face which is The Face. All traces of beauty, all hints of wonder, all sacred places; these are all just scattered fragments of The Face hovering over us as we helplessly kick and squirm. When we suddenly see Him, we laugh or we cry or we look for the nearest table to hide under. But we see. We realize. We know. And suddenly our lives resplendent with random occurrences become part of the great orchestrated cosmic dance. All because one obscure man in Galilee 2000 years ago got nailed to a torturous instrument and prayed forgiveness over those who killed Him. The sky darkened and the Earth shook. Then somehow, the blur became sharp. The discordant noise became a voice. The haze became a face. And we somehow get reborn along the way.

time was when it was just me in the water

On the day I was baptized, it was hot and muggy. The mosquitoes were out in large numbers making a general nuisance of themselves, and I was driving around in Pinetop’s country club going in circles. The directions I got were pretty vague, and I was beginning to wonder if I was going to get baptized at all. I had told a friend earlier in the day (mostly in jest) that they needed to have someone standing by with a liberal dosage of pool chemicals when I get immersed. The blackness of my heart would more than likely clog up the drain and pollute the water. He laughed, and I was only half joking.

I was actually expecting something very dramatic to happen. I couldn’t imagine just getting dunked and come up having gone down with Christ and dying underwater there with Him and breathe the hot summer night air with no sudden transformation apparent in me. I couldn’t imagine just getting wet and that being the whole experience. I was ready for something mystical; a bright light and a voice. A waking dream in which I see the third heaven in all of it’s indescribable luminescence. A dovelike apparition. A tongue of fire. A seraphim with a hot lump of coal in its tongs telling me to take and eat. Anything but an ordinary pool on an ordinary day. Anything but an ordinary voice saying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Anything but the feel of water suddenly on my face and the dull sting of chlorine in my eyes. Anything but what actually happened.

As it transpired, I finally found the place at exactly the last possible moment. The church worship band was doing an outdoor acoustic set and the humid evening was radiant with music. Even the praise songs that I usually found to be annoying and badly written evoked a glory greater than any I could force myself to think up. Or did I merely sit there nodding my head to the rhythm wondering why I didn’t feel anything unusual? More likely.

Would I have felt more validated if, when the pastor called me and the two other people down into the pool, I had felt an electrical tingling enter my spirit as my foot touched the water? Perhaps as I made my confession before the assembled believers, if I would have felt something lift from me. If I would have felt anything but the chill of the sunless air hitting my wet shivering frame, would it have altered anything significantly? I had built up the moment in my mind for so long, I was expected something more than the ordinary event that happened with little to no fanfare. I was expecting one of those moments you tell everyone about later, shaking your head smiling, knowing you’re giving everyone goose-bumps. But my baptism wasn’t a goose-bump inducing moment. I didn’t hear any audible voice, except the one I was supposed to, asking me if I renounced the lies of Satan and embraced the truth of Christ. I didn’t see anything other than the pool water and on looking faces as I answered with a weak and quivering yes. I didn’t feel anything but the sting of cold water as I went under. I knew that biblically, I was dieing to self in that brief submergence, and that something very significant and mysterious was happening. I just expected to feel it happening, and I didn’t.

It’s interesting the way we expect miracles to happen. The unbeliever says that if God will do anything; knock over this cup of water, then he or she will believe. What slips under the radar is the miracle of life itself and the wonder of being human. The brain I have in my head that I think thoughts with, when turned upon itself, is like pointing a mirror at another mirror. It gets lost in infinite mystery when pondering the ability to ponder. I would consider hearing an audible voice when there’s no one around a miraculous occurrence, and there are many instances in the Bible where such events take place. Yet my mind thinking a rational thought is equally miraculous, since the best explanation that we can think up on our own for the emergence of lucid consciousness is molecular mutation. So the shared phenomena is dismissed as ordinary and dubbed nothing special. In reality, it’s nothing short of miraculous. I tend to see each morning as I awaken as a miraculous event. Unfortunately, its willingness to reoccur wears me down; and my amazement-gland can only produce so much awe in a repetitive 24 hour period.

Some of the most everyday things can be so miraculous, if you catch them before we bottle and sell them. Take music, for instance. What is it? Why do we react to it the way we do? If you think about it, music is merely the rearranging of common sounds. A twang here, a hollow pounding there. Melody and rhythm intertwine and miraculously, we are pried out of ourselves and swept away into something miraculous. But what have we done with this miracle? Watered it down, sold it in inoffensive increments. We have made something very sacred into something very boring.

Likewise, my clouded spirit, bogged down in modern tedium, failed to see what was truly miraculous about my baptism. It wasn’t any displaced head giving prophecies or burning bush blazing from the deep end, the real miracle was me in the water, answering preposterous questions so earnestly. Five years previous, I would have mocked anyone saying the things I said on that day. I would have thought them small-minded and not just a tad superstitious. But what is miraculous, to me, is what brought me from that to this, however long it took. The miracle of that day was that I went underwater one person and came up someone else. Maybe the real miracle is that I believe that is exactly what happened, when externally there was nothing about that late afternoon that would solidify such an assertion. Belief is a miracle in a world that seems bent on snuffing it out. As many theories as we can think up to downplay the miracle of existence, the caterpillar’s uncouth transformation into a wildly colorful thing of beauty serves to confound us all. And perhaps some loser like me standing in a swimming pool looking for new life isn’t such a ridiculous sight, comparatively speaking.

time was when: Holy Moment and a sense of Story

There is an untitled book of interwoven short stories that I’ve been working on for a while, and will continue to work on probably until I’m about 70. They are what I keep returning to when I’ve got nothing else to work on (which means “rarely”) but there is something about them and their festering interconnectedness that keeps me returning to them to add and subtract and reconfigure things every now and again. In one sense, they are comedy and there are many passages that I forget about and when I reread, they make me laugh out loud (Yes, I am that lame). There are other passages I’ve engrafted a portion of my sadness into; they also resound potently and send me reeling. Then there are passages like the one I just dug out, where I wrote it and forgot it and today reread it, and I can’t believe it was me that put form and locality to its airy nothingness (to quote loosely the Bard.) In it, I am in a barren wasteland, wandering the ruins of ancient (and made-up) civilizations. I study the inscriptions and drawings on temple walls and try to re-piece the story of their cultures and what happened to them; why they weren’t there still. In the following passage, I’m sleeping amid the ruins and inebriated by the story the temple walls tell me. This is what went through my mind as I spent the cold windy night in that fictional world:

I spent the night between these two structures. The clear sky overhead exposed itself to me and I could see the stories that the star-clusters were telling. The way they were scattered among each other and the sequence in which they were arranged have been painstakingly reflected here in the pages of this handy volume. But, it was that night, in the lonely company of those abandoned temples, that I first realized that my story was intermingled with the stories the stars told. I could no longer wriggle my way back into the story I was telling. I had already crossed over beyond anything of my own imagining. I had merged with them and they began to haunt me. I could no longer remember where my story ended and where their stories began. The howling winds whipping against the sun-beaten skin of my face kept me awake throughout the entire night. The only thing I could think about was that I was given the gift of a story telling itself through the events I’d encountered along the way and the life I chose to live; the happenings in themselves did not make me who I was. They simply coerced my pearl-like hidden heart out of it’s hiding place and thrust it out into this jagged thorny place to fend for itself in reality. I will forever thank The Storyteller for this. My hidden self was lost in it’s own imaginings until, suddenly an entrance was granted into the larger story. My own imagined story withered and died. I now live in the actual story that tells itself through the winds and valleys around us; and the stars above us. We are as intermingled as they are - and no man has his own story which exists in and of itself. The story being told through me is in no way separate from the story telling itself through you. We are mere threads interwoven into a tapestry too mysterious to comprehend. We are thirsty for glimpses of what it might look like, but none of us could handle seeing too much of it. I might want to dive into the ocean to see for myself what is churning in its depths, but I would be abandoning the vantage point entrusted to me. I can only tell you what I see from where I am and trust you will do the same. Only then can The Great Story be told - if every one of us do this. But for now I return to my own, after a sleepless night of shivering in the winds and hearing the tales told by stars. I decided to return to the ocean.

The sense of story is what does it to me. To see my life, not as an unconnected blob of random happenings, but as a Tale being told by One who has a vested interest in my individual plotline. I can bring back to life holy moments and relive them by retelling them; and sometimes in the retelling I can hear ethereal whispers from beyond time; illuminating their connectedness to other moments, other lives and other stories. I can’t see from back far enough to know just how interwoven they actually are to the rest of The Story, but I can long for the day when I can.

The power of the story itself really hit me full force last week, during a small group session. The question we were focusing on was what it means to follow Jesus Christ. I related an experience from early on in my Christian journey; one particular dark night when the weight of my inability to live up to any religious expectations was especially crushing me. I remember praying my guts out - weeping, face-down, crying out from my depths. Suddenly, it was as if the frequency of my heart shifted and I felt the Awesome Presence. He was gentle. He told me that His original disciples weren’t exactly A-students themselves and that I fit right in with His merry band of screw-ups and laughingstocks. It was the pure Acceptance I felt from Him that stays with me. I glimpsed just how beautiful the Story He is telling truly is. I realized that I hadn’t accepted Him as much as He had accepted me. And as I relayed this experience to the small group, I felt it happening within me all over again. I choked up and could hardly get my words out. I didn’t understand why this was; I’d thought about the experience before without so much as my eyes getting misty or anything. But there was something in the telling of the holy moment that brought it back to me (or me to it). Moral of the story: be careful with Holy Moments - they never quite go away, do they?