Following are some musings from reflecting on Mark 9:2-13...
"We heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain...we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.”
So says Peter.
At least that explains a few things.
Can you imagine being Peter or James or John — James and John who were called “Thunderheads” by Jesus and Peter whose name roughly translates to “Bloke with foot firmly wedged in mouth” — and not saying something about this to the rest of the guys when you rejoined them in the valley below?
“Tell the vision to no man.”
And they didn’t. Luke reports that “they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.” They may not have said anything, but I wonder how else this spilled out of them.
I can just hear the three disciples coming down the mountain behind Jesus and quietly asking each other, “So, is my face glowing, just a little bit?” It’s hard to imagine them not dropping some hints. “Bet you can’t guess what we just saw…”
Something. Anything.
Of course, considering the track record of the disciples when it came to drawing sound conclusions from the things Jesus said and did, the three probably could have all but said, “SHEKINAH GLORY! VOICE OF GOD! WE JUST SAW JESUS GLORIFIED ON THE MOUNTAIN — AND HE WAS TALKING WITH MOSES AND ELIJAH!” and they still wouldn’t have picked up on it.
But though they kept silent, the spectacle they witnessed (whatever it meant) no doubt reinforced at least a subconscious feeling that they had a preeminent position among the twelve. That potential feeling of smugness was no doubt fed by the blatant failure of the other disciples who had been “left behind” in the valley below as they had been trying to cast out a demon.
Isn’t it interesting that it’s after all this, on the way back to Capernaum, that the first recorded debate takes place over “who is the greatest”? And not too long after that James and John take the subtle approach of asking Jesus directly for the two greatest seats of honor in the kingdom.
No sooner had Jesus answered this argument by placing a child in their midst, identifying anyone like a child as greatest in the kingdom, than John blurts out, “We saw someone casting out demons in your name and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.”
How deep our propensity towards comparison! Spiritual experiences that should humble us, that should fill us with wonder and awe and reverence, with a lasting “Who am I?” glow on our face, instead leave us pompous and snarky and smug.
Epiphanies that should reinforce our great need for one another, that should remind us of our essential unity, our common ties, lead us instead to a biting and dismissing sectarian smartness as we “measure ourselves by one another and compare ourselves to each other” (see 2 Corinthians 10:12).
It’s a well worn path we still walk quite nicely — with each step only demonstrating our personal need for “transfiguration”; that no matter how firm we imagine our grasp of the Word, we have missed the whole point of his coming and of the revelation on the mountain.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Of Rabbits and Elephants
He stood before me with a question.
Elephant or rabbit?
He asked me if I’d read the book The Rabbit and the Elephant: Why Small is the New Big for Today’s Church by Tony & Felicity Dale, along with George Barna.
I have.
Though it was last year sometime. It’s probably on one my shelves in my office or in the bookstore storage room somewhere. It was a follow-up read to Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman. Both were fun and enlightening reads, as I recall (though I recall more of the Starfish book than I do of the Rabbit book).
So what is your take? he asks as we stand underneath the shadow of a fairly large elephant (in the bookstore of the relatively large church I call home). And thinking back on the book and the challenge posed by the title, thoughts were uncorked…
I am struck by the “and” in the title of the book. As I initially considered “rabbit” and “elephant” I do believe I had exchanged the word “or” for “and.” As if we either advocate the rabbit or the elephant. Organized (especially organized, larger, insitutional) church or organic (especially small, simple, unplanned, unorganized, serendipitous) church.
But it’s not “or” it’s “and.”
How deep run our dualistic propensities! How often our basic outlook in religion, in politics, in theology, in philosophy, in general, is either this or that. Now, surely, many things cannot be mixed: light and darkness, Christ and Belial, country music and my daughters; but, as demonstrated by Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, how often is reality in fact a creative combination of seeming incompatibles; strands of different colors and textures and consistencies are woven together to form one tapestry.
So it is with elephants and rabbits.
Elephants are big and fat and bulky. They eat a lot (300-400 lbs a day – though according to that veritable source of truth known as Wikipedia they only digest about 40% of what they consume). And oh how they poop. They can and do stick their big noses in all kinds of places – their trunk being sensitive enough to pick up a single blade of grass and strong enough to rip branches off a tree. They are highly intelligent – they have the largest brain of any land animal. And they can easily trample wee things below…like rabbits. Big churches can and do share many of these traits.
Rabbits are small. They live in groups. Their hind legs can carve you up when they feel threatened – not to mention those sharp teeth that can take off a knight’s head when they’re provoked. And, of course, they breed like crazy. They have quite the breeding turnaround (as opposed to the 22 month’s gestation period for elephants). Smaller expressions of “church” (small groups from a few people to a relative many) can share these same traits.
At this point rabbit people can smugly point out the superiority of being rabbits, the freedom of unofficial warrens, and the “free love” to breed and multiply as you please (spiritually speaking of course)…while the elephant people, trunks high in the air like a dandified Colonel Hathi, can look down their ample proboscis at these dirty little rabbits who will never accomplish anything, living in their little holes. But God has created both. Or perhaps, better, when it comes to big organized churches and small relatively unorganized ones, people create the social structures connected within each varied expression, but God authors and beautifies the fellowship and life that can be found in either.
And I can attest to the wonderful, creative, symbiotic relationship that can exist between elephant and rabbit. When a large church empowers people to freely “breed” in small gatherings of all shapes and sizes and configurations without trying to determine outcomes, control the diet or regulate the life processes involved, the explosion of life is amazing! Alone, rabbit people can isolate and can bite and kick the stuffing out of each other just as effectively as the stomping of any elephant church. Any elephant church can stomp out the spontaneity and life and breeding happening among the rabbit population underfoot.
What a blessing in this season for me to see the two not just existing side by side (as much as it’s possible for a rabbit to exist beside an elephant), but to see how the one empowers and enlivens the other; to witness God creating a partnership that historically is not all that common. Historically small groups have been subersive to the reigning elephant church in society – and many rabbits relish that role; in recent times some elephant churches have alternately tried to adopt the rabbits and their culture so as to control them or just utilize their energy for their own ends – but ultimately feel just as skittish about them as elephants do with any small creature underfoot. But how beautiful to see, at this moment, elephant and rabbit moving together to the same kingdom rhythms, and to see God in the midst.
Elephants and rabbits. God created them both.
It can be a beautiful thing.
Elephant or rabbit?
He asked me if I’d read the book The Rabbit and the Elephant: Why Small is the New Big for Today’s Church by Tony & Felicity Dale, along with George Barna.
I have.
Though it was last year sometime. It’s probably on one my shelves in my office or in the bookstore storage room somewhere. It was a follow-up read to Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman. Both were fun and enlightening reads, as I recall (though I recall more of the Starfish book than I do of the Rabbit book).
So what is your take? he asks as we stand underneath the shadow of a fairly large elephant (in the bookstore of the relatively large church I call home). And thinking back on the book and the challenge posed by the title, thoughts were uncorked…
I am struck by the “and” in the title of the book. As I initially considered “rabbit” and “elephant” I do believe I had exchanged the word “or” for “and.” As if we either advocate the rabbit or the elephant. Organized (especially organized, larger, insitutional) church or organic (especially small, simple, unplanned, unorganized, serendipitous) church.
But it’s not “or” it’s “and.”
How deep run our dualistic propensities! How often our basic outlook in religion, in politics, in theology, in philosophy, in general, is either this or that. Now, surely, many things cannot be mixed: light and darkness, Christ and Belial, country music and my daughters; but, as demonstrated by Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, how often is reality in fact a creative combination of seeming incompatibles; strands of different colors and textures and consistencies are woven together to form one tapestry.
So it is with elephants and rabbits.
Elephants are big and fat and bulky. They eat a lot (300-400 lbs a day – though according to that veritable source of truth known as Wikipedia they only digest about 40% of what they consume). And oh how they poop. They can and do stick their big noses in all kinds of places – their trunk being sensitive enough to pick up a single blade of grass and strong enough to rip branches off a tree. They are highly intelligent – they have the largest brain of any land animal. And they can easily trample wee things below…like rabbits. Big churches can and do share many of these traits.
Rabbits are small. They live in groups. Their hind legs can carve you up when they feel threatened – not to mention those sharp teeth that can take off a knight’s head when they’re provoked. And, of course, they breed like crazy. They have quite the breeding turnaround (as opposed to the 22 month’s gestation period for elephants). Smaller expressions of “church” (small groups from a few people to a relative many) can share these same traits.
At this point rabbit people can smugly point out the superiority of being rabbits, the freedom of unofficial warrens, and the “free love” to breed and multiply as you please (spiritually speaking of course)…while the elephant people, trunks high in the air like a dandified Colonel Hathi, can look down their ample proboscis at these dirty little rabbits who will never accomplish anything, living in their little holes. But God has created both. Or perhaps, better, when it comes to big organized churches and small relatively unorganized ones, people create the social structures connected within each varied expression, but God authors and beautifies the fellowship and life that can be found in either.
And I can attest to the wonderful, creative, symbiotic relationship that can exist between elephant and rabbit. When a large church empowers people to freely “breed” in small gatherings of all shapes and sizes and configurations without trying to determine outcomes, control the diet or regulate the life processes involved, the explosion of life is amazing! Alone, rabbit people can isolate and can bite and kick the stuffing out of each other just as effectively as the stomping of any elephant church. Any elephant church can stomp out the spontaneity and life and breeding happening among the rabbit population underfoot.
What a blessing in this season for me to see the two not just existing side by side (as much as it’s possible for a rabbit to exist beside an elephant), but to see how the one empowers and enlivens the other; to witness God creating a partnership that historically is not all that common. Historically small groups have been subersive to the reigning elephant church in society – and many rabbits relish that role; in recent times some elephant churches have alternately tried to adopt the rabbits and their culture so as to control them or just utilize their energy for their own ends – but ultimately feel just as skittish about them as elephants do with any small creature underfoot. But how beautiful to see, at this moment, elephant and rabbit moving together to the same kingdom rhythms, and to see God in the midst.
Elephants and rabbits. God created them both.
It can be a beautiful thing.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Thy words were found and I ate them
Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart. Jeremiah 15:16
I took a five day fast.
A five day fast from books.
It was quite the achievement on my part, if I may say so. Getting away with my love on her birthday weekend, and not taking along a single book. Not one. (Only took me 30 years to learn that.)Three days, two nights. 46 hours, 33 minutes and 27 seconds. Actually, I have no idea the exact breakdown. Just call it 48 hours or so. And upon our return we immediately joined a Superbowl gathering hosted by one of the small groups we belong to (the fabulous FNG).
Still no books. No words. No reading.
Home late, early morning rising to prep for an endoscopy and sigmoidoscopy (my 32 year annual act of penance for my many, many sins).
Still no reading.
My love dropped me off early for the procedure. I had packed three books (typical overkill in this department for me) but ended up having to check in at another door on the far side of the hospital. By the time I got there and checked in, I had barely the time to sit down before they came for me. Back across the campus we walked to a waiting room. No sooner had I sat down (again) than they came for me. “No time to lose,” was the word. Shuttled down the hall to an exam room where I changed into that special hospital garb so many of us know and cherish. The place was packed, time was short, my physician would be there in the next thirty minutes, so all was in high gear as they regathered my info along with needed initials and signatures, stuck me for an IV (thankfully just once), strapped an oxygen hose around my face, and then rejoiced that all was done and ready when the doctor walked in.
No reading. No words on printed page. Only ceiling tiles and a large clock ticking the wordless moments away. Sedation administered. Dim memories of intense gagging followed by slightly more lucid images of my wife helping me get dressed, of me being wheeled out to the car, talk of snow (surely that couldn’t have been right!), of pulling in the drive way at home and insisting I could walk unaided.
And I slept.
Turns out they had administered three doses of sedation and yet another substance on top of that to finally get the scope down my throat (it was the semi-truck version of the scope, able to look sideways as well as straight ahead – I don’t even like to think about what they used for the other end; I just hope it was at least a different scope). “He’ll be alright after he sleeps for a day…well, yeah, after a day,” says the nurse.
Wiped out. Surfaced to some basil tomato soup, tried to watch a movie (reading out of the question). I realized my mind was making up its own scenes for the film. Too weird. Out again for hours. Dinner. An attempt at watching an episode of Law and Order and there was no order to it at all. Out again until 2AM. I get up, shower, think, “My books!” But the shower doesn’t remove the foggy film from my brain. Back to sleep. Tuesday morning. Get up in time to go to work. I feel my brain crashing – how long, O Lord, how long!? I head back home. Sleep three hours. Lunch. Feeling more lucid, but daughter to shuttle, some work to attempt. Home in time for group. Sleep through it.
No books. No reading. Five days. Felt like five months.
This morning I wake and glory hallelujah the fog has lifted. I see clear. I shower, and I sit. Greek Bible. 2 Corinthians. Paul’s emotionally-laden, passionately-filled, Spirit-unctioned words pour into me as the very nectar of heaven. Each word a flood of delight. The poetic rhythms of the Greek, the flow of his mind, his very bowels, opening wide (thankfully no scope required), inviting mine to return the gesture – and receiving it. For an hour and a half I read through the entire book. I’m trying to remember when the Word was so delicious, so precious.
Thy words were found, and I did eat them.
I’ve analyzed and diagrammed and inductively broken down and reassembled 2 Corinthians more times than I can count, and always found blessing in that. But oh the pure, untainted, virgin delight of those wonderful 90 minutes I found in simply eating those words. Rolling them over and around my tongue, ingesting line after line, hearing the beating of Paul’s heart, in its rhythms feeling His.
And thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart.
Perhaps it just takes a few days of chosen and/or enforced word fasting to fully appreciate the feasting on those words, to be blessed anew with what it feels like to have your soul nourished and filled to overflowing through what He speaks. I could have gone to a scholar’s conference that weekend, but chose to fast from words and feast on and with my love. And rather than being sated with the offerings of others’ feasting, I found, quite unexpectantly, at the end of my fast, one of the most memorable, personal feasts of all.
Lord, let your words be found again…
I took a five day fast.
A five day fast from books.
It was quite the achievement on my part, if I may say so. Getting away with my love on her birthday weekend, and not taking along a single book. Not one. (Only took me 30 years to learn that.)Three days, two nights. 46 hours, 33 minutes and 27 seconds. Actually, I have no idea the exact breakdown. Just call it 48 hours or so. And upon our return we immediately joined a Superbowl gathering hosted by one of the small groups we belong to (the fabulous FNG).
Still no books. No words. No reading.
Home late, early morning rising to prep for an endoscopy and sigmoidoscopy (my 32 year annual act of penance for my many, many sins).
Still no reading.
My love dropped me off early for the procedure. I had packed three books (typical overkill in this department for me) but ended up having to check in at another door on the far side of the hospital. By the time I got there and checked in, I had barely the time to sit down before they came for me. Back across the campus we walked to a waiting room. No sooner had I sat down (again) than they came for me. “No time to lose,” was the word. Shuttled down the hall to an exam room where I changed into that special hospital garb so many of us know and cherish. The place was packed, time was short, my physician would be there in the next thirty minutes, so all was in high gear as they regathered my info along with needed initials and signatures, stuck me for an IV (thankfully just once), strapped an oxygen hose around my face, and then rejoiced that all was done and ready when the doctor walked in.
No reading. No words on printed page. Only ceiling tiles and a large clock ticking the wordless moments away. Sedation administered. Dim memories of intense gagging followed by slightly more lucid images of my wife helping me get dressed, of me being wheeled out to the car, talk of snow (surely that couldn’t have been right!), of pulling in the drive way at home and insisting I could walk unaided.
And I slept.
Turns out they had administered three doses of sedation and yet another substance on top of that to finally get the scope down my throat (it was the semi-truck version of the scope, able to look sideways as well as straight ahead – I don’t even like to think about what they used for the other end; I just hope it was at least a different scope). “He’ll be alright after he sleeps for a day…well, yeah, after a day,” says the nurse.
Wiped out. Surfaced to some basil tomato soup, tried to watch a movie (reading out of the question). I realized my mind was making up its own scenes for the film. Too weird. Out again for hours. Dinner. An attempt at watching an episode of Law and Order and there was no order to it at all. Out again until 2AM. I get up, shower, think, “My books!” But the shower doesn’t remove the foggy film from my brain. Back to sleep. Tuesday morning. Get up in time to go to work. I feel my brain crashing – how long, O Lord, how long!? I head back home. Sleep three hours. Lunch. Feeling more lucid, but daughter to shuttle, some work to attempt. Home in time for group. Sleep through it.
No books. No reading. Five days. Felt like five months.
This morning I wake and glory hallelujah the fog has lifted. I see clear. I shower, and I sit. Greek Bible. 2 Corinthians. Paul’s emotionally-laden, passionately-filled, Spirit-unctioned words pour into me as the very nectar of heaven. Each word a flood of delight. The poetic rhythms of the Greek, the flow of his mind, his very bowels, opening wide (thankfully no scope required), inviting mine to return the gesture – and receiving it. For an hour and a half I read through the entire book. I’m trying to remember when the Word was so delicious, so precious.
Thy words were found, and I did eat them.
I’ve analyzed and diagrammed and inductively broken down and reassembled 2 Corinthians more times than I can count, and always found blessing in that. But oh the pure, untainted, virgin delight of those wonderful 90 minutes I found in simply eating those words. Rolling them over and around my tongue, ingesting line after line, hearing the beating of Paul’s heart, in its rhythms feeling His.
And thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart.
Perhaps it just takes a few days of chosen and/or enforced word fasting to fully appreciate the feasting on those words, to be blessed anew with what it feels like to have your soul nourished and filled to overflowing through what He speaks. I could have gone to a scholar’s conference that weekend, but chose to fast from words and feast on and with my love. And rather than being sated with the offerings of others’ feasting, I found, quite unexpectantly, at the end of my fast, one of the most memorable, personal feasts of all.
Lord, let your words be found again…
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Do you see anything?
The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. Psalm 146:8
And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” And he looked up and said, “I see men, but they look like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. And he sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village.” Mark 8:22-26
It’s not just another healing.
This rather odd healing encounter of Jesus and the blind man serves as a significant bridge between “Act 1” of Mark (the early Galilean ministry of Jesus) and “Act 2” (preparing the disciples for the final journey to Jerusalem). On one side it connects with what we have just read, starting with the healing of the deaf/mute man in Mark 7:31-37 and the increasingly apparent dull and dimwittedness of the disciples and on the other side with a “first touch” of spiritual perception in Peter’s confession in 8:27-30. But no sooner has Peter confessed “You are the Christ” than it becomes clear that when it comes to Jesus and his mission and the kingdom of God, he still only “sees men, but they look like trees, walking.”
He needs another touch.
“Why does Jesus have to touch the blind man’s eyes twice? Why the ‘partial’ healing?” We might ask the bigger question about our own spiritual eyes and vision.
The fact is, generally speaking, when it comes to our spiritual perception, to our “getting it,” one touch won’t do. It takes the repeated touch of Jesus on “the eyes of our heart” to remove the distortions that accumulate all too easily as we continue to “look through a glass, darkly.”
Perhaps that’s why Paul continues to pray over the Ephesian believers “that the eyes of your heart might be enlightened” — and that’s after spending two full years among them. We’re just as much in need of his repeated touch as was the blind man — and the twelve.
It takes a repeated touch. And evidently it takes Jesus’ spit, too.
What is this with Jesus and his spit? With the deaf/mute man Jesus spat (on the ground? into his hand?) and then touched the man’s tongue (and of course he also thrust his fingers into the man’s ears — it would probably go viral on YouTube). Now in this case Mark says that Jesus spat into his eyes and then touched them (rubbing it in?). Then there’s the case of the man born blind in John 9. There Jesus spits into the dirt and makes his own little mud pile which he then applies to the blind man’s eyes (thankfully then telling him to go wash his eyes).
Jesus and his spit.
There may be many who try to emulate Paul by sending healing hankies in the mail, but curiously they’re aren't any (at least that I’m aware of) that send out vials of spit. Or that have spitting services. The Church of the Holy Spittle. But as head-scratching as this all can be, there’s something wonderfully wild and off-putting about it. The kingdom of God is wonderfully wild and off-putting and unconventional and uncategorizable and uncontainable and unpredictable and undefinable. It defies pat formulations and neat explanations. Now it’s a word, then it’s a wordless touch; now it’s spit in the eyes, then it’s mud; now it’s instantaneous, then it’s in stages; now it’s “I will come and heal him,” then it’s “I won’t come now”; now it’s healing, then it’s suffering; now it’s release from prison, then it’s death.
And in the midst of all these seemingly random and arbitrary rhythms Jesus still leans close and asks us:
“Do you see anything?”
And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” And he looked up and said, “I see men, but they look like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. And he sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village.” Mark 8:22-26
It’s not just another healing.
This rather odd healing encounter of Jesus and the blind man serves as a significant bridge between “Act 1” of Mark (the early Galilean ministry of Jesus) and “Act 2” (preparing the disciples for the final journey to Jerusalem). On one side it connects with what we have just read, starting with the healing of the deaf/mute man in Mark 7:31-37 and the increasingly apparent dull and dimwittedness of the disciples and on the other side with a “first touch” of spiritual perception in Peter’s confession in 8:27-30. But no sooner has Peter confessed “You are the Christ” than it becomes clear that when it comes to Jesus and his mission and the kingdom of God, he still only “sees men, but they look like trees, walking.”
He needs another touch.
“Why does Jesus have to touch the blind man’s eyes twice? Why the ‘partial’ healing?” We might ask the bigger question about our own spiritual eyes and vision.
The fact is, generally speaking, when it comes to our spiritual perception, to our “getting it,” one touch won’t do. It takes the repeated touch of Jesus on “the eyes of our heart” to remove the distortions that accumulate all too easily as we continue to “look through a glass, darkly.”
Perhaps that’s why Paul continues to pray over the Ephesian believers “that the eyes of your heart might be enlightened” — and that’s after spending two full years among them. We’re just as much in need of his repeated touch as was the blind man — and the twelve.
It takes a repeated touch. And evidently it takes Jesus’ spit, too.
What is this with Jesus and his spit? With the deaf/mute man Jesus spat (on the ground? into his hand?) and then touched the man’s tongue (and of course he also thrust his fingers into the man’s ears — it would probably go viral on YouTube). Now in this case Mark says that Jesus spat into his eyes and then touched them (rubbing it in?). Then there’s the case of the man born blind in John 9. There Jesus spits into the dirt and makes his own little mud pile which he then applies to the blind man’s eyes (thankfully then telling him to go wash his eyes).
Jesus and his spit.
There may be many who try to emulate Paul by sending healing hankies in the mail, but curiously they’re aren't any (at least that I’m aware of) that send out vials of spit. Or that have spitting services. The Church of the Holy Spittle. But as head-scratching as this all can be, there’s something wonderfully wild and off-putting about it. The kingdom of God is wonderfully wild and off-putting and unconventional and uncategorizable and uncontainable and unpredictable and undefinable. It defies pat formulations and neat explanations. Now it’s a word, then it’s a wordless touch; now it’s spit in the eyes, then it’s mud; now it’s instantaneous, then it’s in stages; now it’s “I will come and heal him,” then it’s “I won’t come now”; now it’s healing, then it’s suffering; now it’s release from prison, then it’s death.
And in the midst of all these seemingly random and arbitrary rhythms Jesus still leans close and asks us:
“Do you see anything?”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)