Return of the Mustard Seeds

So. Here is a poorly taken picture of the mustard seeds that were planted at the Sanctuary service entitled "Trees." What started out as this has become what you see above. The seeds have actually bloomed, tiny yellow flowers appearing at the ends of each "stalk." I noticed a couple of days ago, though you can't see them in this picture, that the plants have begun producing pods filled with--you guessed it!--more seeds. I've not done anything but water them and put them in the sun. That's it. Without any assistance from me the seeds have begun producing seeds.

The seeds are producing more seeds, which if harvested and planted would produce...more seeds, etc., etc., etc.

As I said in the first post, do I need to make the obvious lesson connections for you?

shalom, matt

Memorial Day

3,813. This is the number of servicemen and women who have been killed in the "war on terror."

Politics aside, we honor the sacrifice of these men and women, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters and their families.

Thank you.

Let us also remember the untold thousands of Iraqi nationals who have silently fallen, unknown but to their families.

shalom, matt

Sinners and Carpenters

We are supposed to be witnesses to the fact that God in Christ has taken away the sins of the whole world. But by insisting on the moral irreproachability of even minor functionaries within the witnessing community, we are effectively saying that we cannot have in our midst any recognizable representatives of the sinfulness that is so obviously God's cup of tea. Which is manifest nonsense, of course, because one of the things all Christians are supposed to do ad nauseam is tell God what miserable sinners they are. Quite frankly, it makes the church look a bit like a carpenter who, while he claims to be the best woodworker in town, tells you that unfortunately he can't repair your house because he's allergic to wood. __From The Astonished Heart by Robert Farrar Capon__

How to Get Creamed

There is nothing intrinsically contrary to the church's mission, of course, in the suggestion that an upright life might be a good thing for Christians to attempt. But when that suggestion reaches the point at which it becomes a test of membership in the church, it comes smack up against he radical peculiarity of the Gospel: Jesus was not a teacher of ethics. The Sermon on the Mount, for instance, is not a string of sensible lessons in morality: it's a paradoxical presentation, in the form of ethical advice, of recipes for getting yourself creamed. And the radical Gospel of grace and forgiveness that is the church's deepest message isn't ethics, either. It's an outrageously unethical offer not to count anybody's sins at all, because the Lamb of God simply stopped counting when he drew everybody to himself on the cross. At its root, therefore, the Gospel is immoral, not moral: it lets scoundrels in free for nothing. __From The Astonished Heart by Robert Farrar Capon__

Bible Fight

From Comedy Central's website. Fight with bible characters. Fun times.

shalom, matt

From the World of Auto Sales

So I start selling on Saturday. Do I feel prepared? Not so much. Do I think I can do it? I don't know. Do I have a choice? Not really. Is it possible that God could help out greatly in this situation? Absolutely. Do I believe He can and will? Yep.

Here's the thing about starting a new career, something I've probably mentioned before, but is worth repeating: I've had to find faith again, a rabid, radical, desperate trust in an invisible God that I'm hoping will help me sell cars so I can feed my family. I'm learning to trust God in the smaller details of life, details I've not really bothered mentioning to Him before.

I can't explain it, but something deep down in me knows that God is going to help me in a job that I know nothing about. Maybe part this knowledge lies in the fact that I'm in a career that I know nothing about and can't just fudge my way through (or not nearly as much). In my life as a youth minister, I was using my gifts and abilities so the job required less God involvement to make it happen. Not so the case here. I have not the foggiest of how to sell anything. I've spent my adult career life trying to avoid using selling tactics; now I'm dependent upon them. I have to depend on Him. There is no other alternative.

Is there ever really another alternative?

shalom, matt

Worth Checking Out...

This is a very cool photo list of beautiful churches throughout the world. I found it on Marko's blog.

shalom, matt

More From Chesterton

Again, I know that quotes without qualifying explanations of the context can be a bit misleading, or worse, dangerous and misunderstood. But sometimes they can stand alone as nothing more than themselves and give us food for thought. With that non-qualifying qualifier I give you more from Orthodoxy.

Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but...free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also.... It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand.

shalom, matt

Things That I Like (and You Should, Too)

The smell of rain right at the beginning of the shower.
Freshly mowed grass, followed by a good rain storm.
The smell of Weed-n-Feed sitting in bags in my garage.
Watching a storm approach.
Taking a shower for no apparent reason other than it seemed like a good idea.
Waking up to my son grinning at me from 6 inches away.
That first drink of Gatorade after you come inside from mowing the lawn in 90 degree heat.
That first blast of air conditioning after coming inside from mowing the lawn in 90 degree heat.
That first morning stretch, where every muscle unkinks itself after being curled up fetal for 8 hours.
The moment of relaxation after you hop into bed, adjust the pillow, pull the covers up and stop moving.
Cadbury eggs.
Minor league baseball games on $1 hot dog night.
Laughing until you feel like your guts are going to fall out.
Books.
The first listen to a new c.d.
Figuring out something about God that you didn't know before.
Realizing that you've only scratched the surface of knowing anything about God.
Realizing that even though you know something about God you suddenly understand him less...and you are okay with that.
Finally getting to go pee after having waited so long that you feel like your eyes are swimming.
Another chance.
Another, another chance.
Infinite chances (see also, grace)
Jesus.
The Way of Jesus.
My son being funny even when he doesn't realize he is being funny.
My wife.
My wife when she is really tired and so goofy that I'm sure she's been abducted and replaced with a look-a-like.
Pizza Rolls.
Krispy Kreme, hot off the line.
Conversations that go forever and cover so many topics that you can't even remember where you started.
That deep conversation that you've been wanting to have with someone, and it just sort of happens.
Rebirth.
Redemption.
Reconciliation.
Resurrection.

What would you add to this list?

shalom, matt

Random Chesterton

Here a few great snippets from G.K. Chesterton's masterpiece Orthodoxy. You can expect some more of him in the next week or so. Quotes suck without any context and are hard to understand. But it's late and I don't feel like giving you any context, so deal with it and enjoy anyway. If nothing else it'll give your brain some exercise.

To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain.
_____

We need...the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure.
_____

It is the happy man who does the useless things; the sick man is not strong enough to be idle.
_____

How much happier would you be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could smash your small cosmos, scattering the stars like spangles, and leave you in the open, free like other men to look up as well as down!
_____

Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else.


shalom, matt

Intolerance

Stephen Colbert is a genius. If you wanted further proof of his genius, here it is.

shalom, matt

Birthing Something

Anne Lamott writes in her book Traveling Mercies about a conversation with a man who worked for the Dalai Lama, Buddhism's main guru, sort of like the Pope (but not really like him at all). She comments on the fact that sometimes a lot of bad things seem to happen at once, nothing can go right, and we are left wondering, Why? He said that Buddhists believe that when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born--and this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.

Jesus said, "Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it can produce no fruit" ( he was talking about his own death, but I think there is a wider principle involved concerning how the universe works).

Sometimes in order for something to be born, something marvelous, beautiful, luminous and perhaps even transcendent sometimes crap has to die. Without a death their can be no resurrection, no rebirth. Any mother will tell you that you don't get an 8 pound fetus out of your uterus simply by wishing and clicking your stirrup bound heels together. It involves pain. Lots of pain. But through that pain, through our pain, through all the times when the world seems like it is caving in around us and on top of us, something is born more perfectly than it might have been, and, had we not been distracted we might have interfered with it.

Take my current situation (and, by extension, your current situation): Do you think I can even begin to understand the larger picture of why I was asked to resign (all of the given reasons aside)? I felt as if we were on the cusp of something big, something revolutionary, something extraordinary. Now the rug has been pulled out from underneath us and we are left asking, Why? Why did it happen? Why am I stuck selling cars, when my calling is ministry? Why do you have to learn to love and trust a new youth minister? Could it be that something is trying to get born and God is distracting all of us from it so that He can bring it perfectly into the world without our interference? We have done our part to conceive the "thing" and now God is going to bring it to life. Maybe, to bring Jesus' words back into it, something needs to die in order for something else greater, grander, more beautiful to be born.

Could it be?

shalom, matt

Repent America (and Why They Need to Shut Up)

I know, I know. You think that a group called repent America couldn't be all bad. I mean, after all, they are calling America to repent of its sins, crimes, felonies, misdemeanors, and that time it stole an entire continent from Britain. And, sure, America could probably use a little bit of humility when you get right down to it.

But I'm not sure that this is the way to inspire a nation to turn from wrong doing. It is the way to tick off a country and further divide it from the message of Christ (the real one, not the one that this group claims).

WARNING! THESE PICTURES ARE GRAPHIC!




Please take note of the fact that all of these people are smiling while holding grotesque and unnecessary pictures of dead, aborted babies. I'm sure it converted many, many people to the pro-life movement, right? How about the kingdom? Probably not.

The caption under this picture just above read, "Linda ministers to an angry woman near Independence Hall." Yes, she looks like she is thoroughly enjoying Linda's message of hope, reconciliation and free grace. Oh, maybe that wasn't the message. My bad. Go, Linda, go!


The caption underneath this one reads, "Robert speaks with a child of the devil." Excuse me? I thought that God created everyone from conception, that he knit us together, breathed his own breath and Spirit into us. Oh, wait, everyone except for this guy and probably anyone else who doesn't buy into the "gospel" that these people preach.

And here is what Repent America had to say about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, you know, the hurricane that destroyed a historic, beautiful city, and, oh yeah, left tens of thousands homeless and displaced, people who were simply trying to survive for another day.

"Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city," stated Repent America director Michael Marcavage. "From 'Girls Gone Wild' to 'Southern Decadence,' New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. From the devastation may a city full of righteousness emerge," he continued

Lovely, isn't it? Makes you warm and fuzzy all over to know that everyone in the world lumps you and me in with that group as well, doesn't it? Gives me goosebumps. Or are those hives?

Jesus said that the world would know us by how we love. John wrote in his 1st epistle that if we claim to love God yet hate our brother, we are liars. Someone explain to me where the love is in these pictures, and please don't forget that the method of communicating the message cannot differ from the message itself. A message of love and forgiveness cannot be preached through confrontational, in-your-face, Bible thumping, crusading for a political position or a fundamentalist agenda that has little if anything to do with the kingdom of God.

I'm sure that most of us can agree that there has to be a better way of communicating the love of God through our speech and our methods (are we even supposed to have methods?). But my question is, What are you doing to change the perception of the world towards Christians? What am I doing to change that perception?

shalom, matt

Grace (or Some Definitions Thereof)

From Traveling Mercies:

...meant [grace] as the force that infuses our lives and keeps letting us off the hook. It is unearned love--the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It's the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best and most charming charm have failed you. Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.

shalom, matt

On Child Rearing

I'd like to wax eloquent (or at least moderately intelligible) for a moment about being the parent of a 4 year old. So here, in the most eloquent, verbose manner I know is how I feel about my parenting ability:

I suck.

Let me state at the forefront that I desperately love my son, Elijah. I honest-to-God, hand-to-heart can't imagine my life without him in it, nor can I remember what my life was like before him, although I do recall not cleaning up urine off my bathroom floor, wall, and rug nearly as often as I do now. He is treasure buried for a thousand years, in the deepest fathoms of the ocean, newly discovered and brought into the surface light. He is a daily Everest adventure that even Sir Edmund Hillary and that Nepalese guy that climbed with him wouldn't have the Charlie Browns to undertake. He has enormous, dark, black holes for eyes that suck you in and crush you in their gravity and depth. There is an entire uncharted universe behind them, another dimension populated by himself and God alone. He's a gorgeous child, not in a this-is-my-beautiful-kid-and-I-say-this-because-I'm-his-parent sort of way, but empirically, objectively, a fact mentioned by random strangers, day care workers and Walmart greeters. Elijah's comedic timing and wit make Eddie Murphy look like a moronic, dimwitted hack, which he just might be (see Daddy Day Care for evidence).

I miss him when he isn't around, but at the same time I'm relieved sometimes when he is gone. He is trying and difficult; bullheaded like his father, yet sweet and kind and generous like his mother; joyful and overflowing with cups and cups of life. He pushes my nuclear buttons until I'm ready to sell him on eBay; he crawls into my lap to watch Spongebob Squarepants and I would not want him (or myself) to be anywhere else in those moments. I hate myself for saying the things I've said to him, for the times when I've spanked him simply to make myself feel better and release my anger. My heart dies a little when I know that I've punished him more than was necessary, or, worse, unnecessarily. Sometimes I've punished him simply for acting like a, well, like a 4 year old.

Yet.

Yet, I don't know of any kid who is more forgiving than he is, automatically and without thought.

"I'm sorry, buddy, for yelling at you like I did. Daddy, didn't mean it."

"That's okay, Daddy."

"You know Daddy loves you very much."

"I know. I love you, too."

Grace. It's just grace. Plain. Untarnished. Unspoiled and unspoilable.

I'm learning how to be a dad, by tiny, tiny increments. One of these days I might actually learn how to control my temper, to not be so demanding of him. Perhaps I'll allow him to be a kid, to be patient with his kid-ness and all of the little things that drive me batty and make me want to consume large amounts of alcohol in an effort to forget I'm a father. Perhaps I'll never get it right, but only get it not-too-wrong more often than not. Maybe "getting it right" is relative and there is no measuring stick to know if you have "it" right. I only hope that in my fumbling attempts to get it not-too-wrong that I don't jack him up too bad in the process. Even if I do I can count on the fact that, for now at least, there is a 4 year old who understands what grace and forgiveness are all about.

Maybe I'll even learn a little something about it myself.

shalom, matt

For Gorillas

I read a quote today that I absolutely love.

The law of the American jungle: Remain calm, share your bananas.

That's quality.

We live in crazy times, dangerous times, confusing times. We live under the tyranny, fear and Big Brother watch of the Bush Administration. We need each other to make it through. We need to remain calm, not flip out, not go into hibernation, dig ourselves little hovels in the sides of mountains, or stockpile food and water in a panic. We need each other. We need to share our bananas with one another. The banana of community, of shared life, of "lean on me when you're not strong," of I need you/you need me/we need each other to make it through. I see no way to make it through life when you do it on your own. "It is not good for humanity to be alone."

So, remain calm, and share your bananas.

shalom, matt

Thoughts on Careers and My 5 Year Plan

So, now that I'm no longer a professional (and I use that term very, very loosely) student minister I thought I'd share some thoughts about my pending career change into a field that I have absolutely no knowledge of at all: car sales.

Let me digress here for a moment and let you know that having searched for jobs over the last month I can assure you, without hesitation, that I am qualified for absolutely nothing except entry level work. What with the nearly useless-outside-of-the-church Bible College degree that I have, I quickly discovered that not too many places are looking for a displaced, nomad-esque ex-minister.

Back to the thought at hand, namely, car sales, and my ignorance there of. The potential for fairly ridiculous income is good, and the field of auto sales can be rather lucrative (keep in mind that I've been a minister for the last nine years, so "lucrative" to me is paltry to, say, anyone that isn't a minister or Taco Bell employee. Now, I'm to the point in my life where I'm not concerned with making piles o' cash. I would like to be able to give to different missions that my wife and I believe in furiously. I wouldn't mind having cable T.V. either. Or the ability to put my kid through college, which should cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 million a semester by the time he is 18. But, honestly, I'm okay with driving a 1992 Saturn, sans roof liner, and with an engine that sounds like a go-cart. I am rather terrified at the prospect of having to learn a new job, in a field I'm completely unfamiliar with, in an environment where everyone isn't always friendly and can be downright hateful to you (oh wait...that sounds a lot like working in a church actually). Learning a new job, being the "new guy," as anyone who has done it can tell you, sucks. You don't know anything, anyone, and everyone knows this. You feel like a tool going through all the training, learning the ropes, making endless mistakes simply because you can't keep it all straight. Couple that with customers who may not be very understanding of the fact that you are as new as a freshly born fetus or a toddler learning to let go of the table and you have a recipe for a peptic ulcer.

On the upside of things, I've haven't working in a "secular" environment since my high school days at Bob Evans cleaning tables, washing dishes or flipping flapjacks for five hours (actually, I flipped them for eight hours, but I wanted to make use of the literary device known as alliteration here and "five" made it work better than eight). When you work in a safe church environment your own personal discipleship can stagnate and become like a hibernating bear in the midst of an endless winter, never having a chance to wake and stretch its muscles and ligaments. You are so busy making sure everyone else is awakened from slumber that your faith becomes cob-web-y and narcoleptic. Mixing it up with people who think vastly different about things than I do will give me the opportunity to live the life of the kingdom--instead of just yammering on about it endlessly for the sake of others.

They asked me in my second-interview with them at the dealership if I had a five year plan.

Right. I'm lucky if I have a 5 day plan, much less long term planning. I was honest with them though and simply said that I have no idea what I'll be doing in 5 years. If being a car dealer works out, and I can be a volunteer youth worker somewhere, then I'm all for that and I see no reason to give up on a job that I'm good at. But if down the road the right opportunity comes along for a ministry, which is and always will be my first love and passion, then I could do that again as well. I'm not much into long range planning like that because it tempts us to stop listening to direction and leading that the Spirit might bring our way. That's why I'm not much into long range planning in a ministry setting either, especially in a ministry setting, I should add. Long range planning communicates to God that we don't need direction anymore, at least for the next X number of years. After that, YHVH, we'll get back to you for more direction. It's like God isn't going to involve himself in the church for the rest of that time now that He has it set in the right direction. I hate mission/vision statements for that very reason. Besides being useless and meaningless to everyone that isn't in a leadership position, they only serve to close our hearts and minds off to new and different (and sometimes better) ideas that might be revolutionary and life-altering.

At any rate, let me shamelessly promote myself and let you know that if you need a car, or know someone who does, come see me down in Bloomington and I'll be happy to serve you.

shalom, matt