Life is a journey

While preparing for a course in spirituality, I was reminded of Walter Brueggemann’s description of the various experiences of spiritual pilgrimage:  1) Orientation, 2) Disorientation, and 3) Reorientation.

We begin our journey with some basic idea of where we are headed.  In my spiritual journey that began in childhood.  Learning the Bible stories in a Christian environment, I was oriented toward Christ as the “pioneer and perfecter of [my] faith (Hebrews 12:2).”  My journey was not a straight path as I sometimes ventured off the proven trail from time to time, but I did not stray too far until my late teens.  By that time I began to chafe at the disconnect between the faith of my childhood and my maturing intellect.  I began to question many things I had been taught, eventually casting aside the particularity of Christian spirituality. 

I became disoriented.  I chose no particular spirituality whatsoever.  I dabbled in atheism, but tend to think of myself during that time as agnostic.  I simply wasn’t sure whether there was a God, and for a while I didn’t care.  I had no plan, no direction, and no perception of divine purpose.  That seemed okay for a while, but I eventually grew despondent and morose from my lack of resolve.  I think it is a basic human need to find meaning, and I had none.  I was disoriented.

In my 20’s, I became reoriented through the simple hospitality of people who welcomed me and my wife into a new community.  They were Christians and their loving welcome led me to relook at the spiritual path I had once been on.  And, armed with a new spiritual hunger, I began to read once again those Bible stories of my childhood faith, but with a new capacity to read below the surface, to find that these stories were dealing with the deeper questions of meaning – these stories were leading me to consider what makes life really worth living.  And I became reoriented, and my path in life became clearer.

Since then I have had many periods of disorientation, and have needed to be reoriented time and again.  I see the same pattern in Jesus’ life.  As Reuben Job puts it, “Jesus knew intensely personal communion with God . . . But he was not immune to struggle, disappointment, or the sting of rejection from friend and foe alike (Companions in Christ, Upper Room Books, 2006, p. 19).”  We cannot possibly comprehend the depth of abandonment that Jesus felt at Gethsemane or Golgotha. 

But in Jesus we see someone in whom we can identify regarding our own periods of disorientation, and discover that such times do not have to define our lives.  The resurrection is a witness that the ultimate meaning of our lives is not controlled by the darkness but by light, not by despair but by hope, not by death but by life.

We have all experienced the disillusionment of broken promises, disappointment in people, and discouragement at not being able to obtain our goals.  Perhaps we have despaired of the path we’re on when our ideal vision is not matched by the reality of our experience.  Such periods of disorientation may actually prove helpful, as we then discover something about ourselves and of God.  Sometimes we discover what God is NOT, and that may move us toward a more mature understanding of who God IS.  And in doing so, we gain greater clarity on who we are.  And we are reoriented toward that life which is really worth living.

I pray you are on the path that leads to life.  My path involves carrying a cross.  It’s not easy.  Sometimes it weighs heavy.  But it feels truer with each step I have taken.  I hope you will join me.

  

A Matter of Life or Death

One of the main reasons I write this blog is because I want to talk about Jesus to the world.  Most of my work – as teacher, pastor, preacher – is aimed at people who already know Jesus, love Jesus, and want to follow Jesus (if though, sometimes, slowly and reluctantly). 

But out there in internet land are billions of people for whom Jesus is . . . well, I don’t know what you’re all thinking about out there when you do think of Jesus.  So many, I suspect, have a rather casual acquaintance with Jesus – someone to admire, someone whose example is noteworthy – but you are not ready to make the claim that Christians do – Lord, Savior, Christ, Son of God?

I was right there with you for several years of my life.  In my early 20’s I had become a respectful agnostic.  I had grown up the son of missionaries, with a Methodist preacher father, and while I was certainly influenced by the example of Jesus, I had turned my back on all the God-talk of my parents, and cast the church aside for sure.  How could any thinking person believe all that stuff?  I had read Bertrand Russell, and convinced myself I was too sophisticated for religion.

Hah!  Looking back I shake my head at how naïve I was.  Some of history’s greatest minds were unreservedly Christian.  Why?  Not because they came rationally to a conclusion that could be proven, but because they somehow encountered the living God.  I believe that happened to me.  Not in a burning bush, or struck-by-lightning-kind-of-way, but in a growing awareness that there was an authenticity to the life of Jesus – an integrity of word and deed that was unmatched in human history – and I sensed that his presence was still with me, with us, in some indefinable way.  And more importantly, I wanted that same sense of authenticity in my own life, so I made the decision to follow Jesus.  It was not a decision based on reason, but a hunch.

I only partially understood what following Jesus meant back then.  I know better now.  To follow Jesus is not without its pain (the cross is a vivid reminder of what following Jesus means).  But to follow Jesus is also a joy that the world cannot give or take away (the resurrection can be understood as a metaphor for that joy).

Some of you out there think that Christians are only concerned about heaven and hell.  So sad that you have perceived the gospel through the words of too many radio and TV preachers who are but caricatures of the real thing.  Heaven and hell act as symbols for life and death.  The gospel invites us to live, as Jesus says, “abundantly.” (John 10:10)

I am convinced that all of us are either living or dying.  We make decisions every day that are either life-giving or life-taking.  Sometimes by the choices we make the life we are taking is someone else’s.  Sometimes the life we are taking is our own (you know who you are).

But there are those who regularly, consistently, make life-giving decisions.  You speak words that encourage and affirm.  You take actions that enhance the lives of others, sometimes at sacrifice to yourself, and yet it seems a small price to pay.  Such actions prove the paradox of Jesus’ teaching that it is in giving our lives that we find life, as St. Francis of Assisi prayed, “it is in giving that we receive.”  And once in a while there are those words and deeds are in such harmony with each other that we are all ennobled by their example --- we see LIFE in them.

This is what God seeks to give us in Jesus – life to the full.  Life without guilt (forgiveness of sins).  Life without worry (trust).  Life with purpose (sacrifice for others).  Life full of joy (blessing and abundance).

Each Sunday I preach to a congregation.  Each Sunday I believe that what I have to say matters.  Indeed, it is a matter of life and death.  We are all, each one of us, either living or dying.  Jesus came that we may have life.  Why would you NOT choose to follow him?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Belief as Relationship

          Belief is at least one of the buzzwords of the day.  Even non-religious entities want us to believe in them.  We are encouraged to “believe” in the car we drive, or to “believe” in the store where we buy clothes.  Actually, we often get the message that it doesn’t really matter what we believe in as long as we believe in something.

          No wonder people are confused.  Over 90 % of people in the U.S. say they believe in God, but most of those don’t want to be pinned down to any particular religious tradition.  Maybe you’re one of those free spirits. I offer to you the encouragement that belief does, indeed, matter.  And that belief in something “pinned down,” matters even more. 

          As someone once said, “If we don’t believe in something then we’ll fall for anything.”  So, belief in something particular, something “pinned down,” may matter a great deal.  In Christian tradition there are two ways of talking about belief.  One of these is belief as a body of doctrine.  We find this notion in the short letter of Jude, chapter one, verse three:  “Beloved, while eagerly preparing to write to you about the salvation we share, I find it necessary to write and appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.”

          “The faith . . . once . . . entrusted to the saints,” is a statement about belief as a list of principles to be acknowledged and accepted.  This sort of doctrinal belief is important as a teaching tool in the history of Christianity but it is not, in my opinion, the key way of expressing Christian belief.

          In the Gospel of John, Jesus is constantly exhorting his followers to believe in him, not because of the signs he performs, but because of who he is.  Jesus emphasizes this point in seven different “I am,” sayings:  I am the bread of life, I am the gate, I am the good shepherd . . .

          Belief, as Jesus speaks about it, is not about a body of doctrine to acknowledge, but a relationship to be trusted.  Belief, then, becomes something personal – a living, breathing sense of community with another, rather than head-knowledge to be dissected, explained, and instructed.

          This sense of belief is what makes Christianity unique.  Christian “faith” is not ultimately a system of rules to follow, or a body of doctrine to give assent to, but a relationship to be embraced and lived.  As Jesus says in John, chapter ten, verse ten, “I came that they may have life and have it to the full.” 

          If your life seems to be missing something, I doubt that you need more rules to follow, or more principles to give assent to.  I suspect you just need a relationship that will give your life meaning.  Jesus can do that for you in a way the world cannot.  Jesus can do that for you in a way that even Christian doctrine cannot.  The relationship is what matters.  And it is a relationship you can trust.