Writings on the Wall

jasen - 7

mr shilling - 5

rockets 105, 76ers 84.

saweet!! mr shilling and i headed to the game for ‘guys night out’ and we had some killer seats. it was a great time had by all. and the rockets CRUSHED the sixers…cant wait til yao gets back - we will be a force to be reckoned with!

i am reading in galatians this morning and came upon this verse that struck me this morning. Galatians 3:14

He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

he redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham (that we are blessed to BE a blessing) might come to the gentiles. this is crazy talk in some circles, right? i mean - i am redeemed so i can go to heaven, right? well this verse seems to argue something different. we are redeeemed for the sake of the world - we are redeemed so that we can be a blessing to all.  we are changed and made whole because God is in the process of making everything whole - and we get to be part of that process…unbelievable…

right now it is mr shilling 2, jasen 3.

we shall see how the week ends up.

to conclude the tuesday morning rob dove into discussing/explaining shalom. shalom is often translated ‘peace’ , but more accurately should be wholeness, or as radiohead says - everything in its right place. we headed to the beginning of the story - Gen 1 - and looked at how our story began. rob thinks there are four aspects of shalom - paralleling with the creation poem at the beginning of our story. they are:

wholeness
1. with God
2. with others
3. with self
4. with creation

we see that throughout the Bible, God is wanting to restore these aspects with us - restore shalom in us a people, in creation, within us, and with God. God wants to reclaim the whole thing - everything - and invites us to partner with him. in Exodus 25 - God says build me a temple so i can dwell with my people, John 1 - the word became flesh, Jesus comes down to the people, Acts 2 and Matt 28 - be my people in this world, Rev 21 & 22 - the dwelling of God is with man. rob talked about how this could argue that the story is God wanting to take up residence with his people. the kinds of life Jesus teaches us to live in the kind of life where God can take up residence here.

God help me to live this kind of life - to choose to live in harmony with you - to choose heaven now - and be a partner with you in restoring shalom in all aspects of my life.

you’re welcome.

click here.

we are in the aiport in grand rapids (free wifi, nice!) and heading back to houston. it has been an amazing time with amanda. we have had a great time hanging with becky, thor, meri, gore and shannon - and rob has been putting me back together. so so great. this morning we woke up to a fresh snow fall. wow…there is nothing like being deep in the woods, watching and listening to fresh snow fall…

tomorrow mr shilling is coming to town - we cant wait!! it will be a blast!

time to board. shalom.

so after a great night of rest, we were back at it at 9am this morning. and the topic… salvation, heaven, hell, etc… oh yeah. so so great. here we go….

we began the morning by asking the question “how do you get saved?” we began to scour the scriptures for a couple of hours on how this happens. here are a couple of glimpses:

is it something you say?
Luke 7 - roman soldier understands authority and has faith
Luke 18 - God have mercy on me, a sinner
Luke 23 - the revolutionary at the cross, God remember me in paradise

is it something you have to be?
John 3 - born again
Luke 20:35 - must be considered worthy

is it something you do?
Matt 6:14 - forgiveness
Matt 7:21 - do the will of my Father
Matt 10:22 - stand firm
Luke 7:36 - pouring perfume on Jesus and washing his feet with her tears (she doesnt say anything, her conversion comes from her actions of love)
Luke 15:18 - son’s confession

is it something someone else does?
Matt 9 - paralyzed man gets healed because of his friends belief
Mark 2 - man lowered down through the roof and the paralyzed man is saved

is it believing?
Luke 4:34 - even demons know who Jesus is and believe he is what he says he is (are they saved)
James 2:19 - demons belief again

so if you ask this question about salvation and you only have the Bible as your source - then you would have tons of answers. people come to Jesus in all sorts of ways. it was crazy to scour the scriptures and see all these different ways people are ’saved’. it presents a very holistic view of salvation - that Jesus died for all. beautiful.

after a small break we dove back in to some thoughts on heaven and hell. we looked at four passages where the language that is used is ‘in this age, and the age to come’. (see Matt 12:32, Matt 13:39, Matt 13:49, and Matt 24:3). in jewish thought there was no idea of forever. it would be arrogant for me to think that i have forever figured out. only God knows that. all i can know is in this age and the age to come. the jewish words for ‘the age to come’ is known as olam haba - also translated eternal life (Luke 18:30). this olam haba is also known as harmony with God. so when we see these passages asking ‘how do i attain eternal life / olam haba?’ the real question is ‘how do i attain harmony with God?’ eternal life is a quailty of life. heaven here, now. eternal life - harmony with God, now.

man - trying to understand this is heavy and needs to be worked out. but as i think about this - it begins to make more sense - i dont believe in some escapist theology where one day i’ll fly away - i believe we are to be about bring heaven here on earth. i want to live in a way so that heaven comes crashing into earth. God help me to live this way.

there was so much more. and there is so much more - but now i am kaput. tired. i will post more later as i dialogue and work this out with fear and trembling. also, some thoughts from our breakout session as well. hope this helps.

peace be with you…

so we just got back from the evening session and it was great. mars hill’s band did a worship set of funk tunes and old hymns. they brought the funk. ha! i was curious to see how the mix was going to sound with the stage in the middle and various speakers pointing outwards - and it wasnt that great from where we were. but knowing rob and his thoughts about the gathering spot - probably doesnt seem to bother them too much. all that to say - the band was very talented and i was glad to sing tonight. very cool.

rob’s talk was on creativity tonight and i found it very inspiring. he began with jacob’s dream in genesis 28 and how after this dream he awakes and says “surely the LORD was in this place and i was not aware of it.” this whole concept of awakening - jacob awakening from his literal sleep but also awakening from a spiritual sleep and how we need to be awakened to that God is always at work in his world. every conversation we have - God is at work amidst it some how - and how we should ask to be awakened to it. so so great…i guess some have called this awakening exercies one’s “sacramental imagination” - seeing God in all things.

from here we moved on to exploring art and creativity. we dove into some different catagories that rob came up with that helped shaped the discussion. the first was the art of tension. the example was from luke 15 - how Jesus creates this amazing tension at the end of the story of the prodigal son. how it isnt this perfect hollywood ending - that Jesus leaves the story unresolved. as we create we can do a great disservice to others when we try and ‘fix’ everything - how everything has the cliche, happy ending.  life isnt like that. life isnt always easy - there is always tension and unresolved issues and we should be ok with that. and the beautiful thing about this story is that at the end of this story, Jesus invites us to find ourselves in the story. are we the father, or the older son, or younger son - or can be these characters at different times in our journey? Jesus creates a story with lots of open spaces and doesnt explain everything away. the story begins the discussion and we should learn from this. it was great to talk about the freedom of tension and leaving things unresolved. so freeing. and so true.

then we dove into the art of elimination. how we can clutter up everything and we need to be in the process of eliminating all the fluff and weaning what we are trying to communicate down to what it is at its very core. a questions we should ask is ‘how much can we say in the fewest words possible?’ try to say the most powerful idea in the fewest words possible. this is very helpful for me as i think about writing songs. great great stuff.

some of the other categories we dove into were ‘turning the edit button off’, ‘expulsion’ , ‘risk’, and ’space’. i really identified with the art of space. rob shared this amazing quote from buechner. he was talking about how he was trying to force writing a novel then came to this realization that he needed to:

…let the empty place inside of me open up…

wow. God, teach me how to fight for these times of creative space and to let the empty places inside of me open up. show me these empty places and use them for your kingdom.

again - a great night. God is putting me back together through rob’s words. i cant wait for tomorrow…

so yes it has been an amazing day. and we’ve only heard rob once. ha! we headed over to mars hill for the morning session and dove right in. no music, one opening prayer and we were off. i was hoping to hear the band here…hopefully tonight or tomorrow…anyways…

the first session rob spoke about the whole idea of the Eucharist - where the word comes from and how we embody the Eucharist as pastors/leaders in the church. the Eucharist is Christ’s body broken and blood poured out for us. he was helping us understand that when we feel that deep ache in our bones after preaching, etc it is because we are imitating Christ in our body being broken and blood being poured out. you hear people talk all the time about being ‘fed’ at church - and rob was saying that the feeding comes from something - namely us - we are giving off what we have to the people and they are receiving this.

rob said that he thinks the church only functions when people let their bodies be broken and the blood poured out. paul talks about this in corinthians with the dying and living language - and this starts to make more sense when we read it through the eucharist lense. maybe in 1 cor 11 - the passage we typically read for communion -’everytime to eat the bread and drink this cup’ is more along the lines of being poured out and broken - maybe the ‘do THIS in remembrance of me’ isnt just the literal bread and wine - but it is our embodiment of the eucharist - being like Christ in emptying ourselves.

make sense? hopefully - just trying to communicate some info for the brothas not here hanging with us…

we dove also into this whole idea of church being blessed to be a blessing. here is a great quote from this morning:

the church is the only organization that exists for the benefit of its NON-members

so great!! and also a question he posed was - if your church was taken away from your community/city/etc. who would protest? (a heavy thought none the less)

so we must ask ourselves - ‘how can the church be a eucharist?’ how can we love. period. how can we pour out ourselves to help mend everything back together? and the power of the eucharist is in its weakness (1 cor 9:19ff). it is about the path of descent. dying to our ego. so that we value humanity over perfection. we must reject the cult of cool. and this must be in our own context. we cant commodify the eucharist. it is not a product to be sold. we must dive into this mystery for these people, in this place, at this time - in our context.

so those are some thoughts from the morning session… looking forward for what’s to come!