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Posts Tagged ‘paradox’

Rock, Paper, Mercy

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 27, 2011| 2 Comments »

For mercy to have its full power, it must be a two-way street: that is the God road. Same as forgiveness, whose power can cast a wide swath when it flows freely. I forgive, God forgives me. I show mercy, God shows mercy to me.


James 2:13
. . . because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment!

The truth is that mercy and forgiveness are a type of twins really, aren’t they? In both cases, the person who needs forgiveness (or mercy) doesn’t deserve it. They are guilty. And yet, if I, whether it’s deserved or not, extend mercy and/or forgiveness to this rascal/deadbeat/handicapped heart, God will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant, where you have been faithful in a few things, I will put you in charge of great things.” [my paraphrase of Matthew 25:23]

Those are the significant few things: forgiveness and mercy. And once again, as in so many of my posts, it’s paradox that rears its goofy head again. We are encouraged to do the very last thing we want to do.

There is no guarantee, in fact, less than a guarantee, not even a promise or law or a mandate that my stepping out to forgive the other will mean he/she will forgive me (either for the same situation or another one). The process doesn’t work that way. The exchange is between me and Holy Spirit, not me and thee.

So, when I play “rock, paper, mercy,” it’s always got to be mercy. And it may look from the outside as though I’m losing every contest, God says I’m winning where it counts.

My daughter once asked me how my husband and I have managed to stay together for all these years; we are after all, quite different. And all I can say is that we have practiced two key concepts: acceptance of what is and mercy/forgiveness for what is not.

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Outside the Camp

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 13, 2011| Leave a Comment »

All executions were performed outside the city walls. Anything that was unclean or tainted was destroyed or thrown away there. Jesus broke up a lot of traditions, but the greatest one was starting something holy in an unholy place.

Hebrews 13:12-13
And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore.

Two thousand years ago, the followers of Christ were considered unclean, much like lepers. They were law breakers and rule breakers. They were teaching others that the temple traditions were no longer necessary. They were breaking down societal structures. They all deserved to be cast away and thrown out from the protection of the city gates. This was the mindset of Paul of Tarsus and the crusade of his companions to obliterate the Christ-ians.

Now, some two thousand years, the tables have turned, and the very same believers in that former renegade, Jesus of Nazareth, are the ones who inhabit the “city” and have created their own order and culture of “righteousness.” It seems that anyone who might question or disagree with the current regime is cast outside the camp.

They are a new set of Pharisees who are putting people under microscopes before they are allowed inside.

But I believe Jesus is still outside the city. Jesus is still rubbing shoulders with the prostitutes and homeless, the poor and the outcasts, the disenfranchised and the orphans, the persecuted and the different, the prisoners and the ex-prisoners. The way of Jesus will always be the way of paradox. When we become to comfortable, we may have strayed onto the wide road [Matthew 7:13-14].

I am equally challenged here. I may go outside the “camp” for a visit, but every night I still run home to my comfortable bed and my air conditioning, my habits and my rituals.

I am yet afraid outside my “personal city” walls. I am afraid that I will be lost, that I will be hurt, that I will be shut out.

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Entertain Strangers

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 10, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I wonder if I would be a nicer person if I honestly considered that the person driving that car that just cut me off or the person who insisted on paying with coins in the checkout line or the huge person who just sat in front of me at the movies was an angel?

Hebrews 13:2
Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.

All right, I know that’s far-fetched, but isn’t it unfortunate in our current age that strangers equal danger? All children are told to avoid them; women fear them in parking lots while men suspect nefariousness or come-ons. Most strangers are wearing black hats.

And of course, I understand that “stranger danger” is very real, but have we overdone it? Have we extended this assumption to regular people who might be visiting from out of town or drop by our church one Sunday or just want to help with directions–have we demonized them all?

I don’t know the answer.

We have a family friend who is very quick to speak to strangers. He usually feels led of God and because of that, he has no fear. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and something terrible to happen, bu nothing has endangered him in the last ten or twenty years (both in the U.S. and abroad). On his way to visit us (driving up from Georgia with another friend), they picked up a hitchhiker (as is his custom). They talked at length and as he got closer to our home, he telephoned ahead and said we would have an extra guest.

When I found out it was a young man, generally high on something and recently out of jail, my heart skipped a beat. All I could envision was a complete takeover at knife point. My fears were over the top, but for safety’s sake, I did insist that they all crash in our basement guest room.

The boy was not an angel but he was in need and in the end, the two friends took him all the way to New York and got him connected with Dave Wilkerson’s ministry.

I am embarrassed that I was so afraid. I will never be like my global traveling missionary, but I do think I could be generous with my eyes, my voice, and my mind. I could be more interested in the stranger. I could be kind. I could be willing to help.

Something to think about.

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Holy Seeing

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 6, 2011| 2 Comments »

I have already written about seeing the invisible as well as the Invisible God. Hebrews 12 prescribes another piece of the process: Holiness.

Hebrews 12:14
Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.

I think it’s a little like being color blind. The closer I come to holiness, the more expansive my color wheel, my prism. When my eyes are clouded by 3-D things, problem mentality, and “what about me?” syndrome, I’m putting myself into a black and white world.

The movie Pleasantville, or even the Wizard of Oz, dramatically captured this difference. Colors look more vivid when they are juxtaposed against shades of gray. Don’t get me wrong, artistically, I love black and white, whether its movies or photographs, but I am talking about a different kind of non-color here. I’m referring to a non-holy world that is flat with unrelenting sameness.

To see God through the lens of holiness, we are promised the universe and that is hinted at through the glory. In American Sign Language, the gesture for holiness is a large arch over the head with the fingers fluttering.

But of course, the real challenge is entering the holy place. I’d say there is a type of nakedness this is a prerequisite for entry, not just the shedding of our outer layer of clothing, but also the skin of expectations and labels and the outer muscles of self-determination. We started walking away from the holy place the first time we said, “No, I want to do it myself.”

I cannot touch the holy because it’s not here in this world.

Holiness is wholeness (completeness, synchronization, transparency); it’s the paradox of loving those who should not be loved, living from inside out, choosing peace over violence, forgiving the unforgivable, mirroring Jesus, and echoing the Holy Spirit.

Wholeness is also brokenness. What is broken? the hard heart, the frozen spirit, the rigid memory, the fear of death.

Holy seeing is not for the faint-hearted. It takes courage and imagination to see what we do not recognize, to see and not identify, to see and embrace.

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Endured Hardship

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , on July 3, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Nope. Not interested in enduring hardship. Sorry. Feels too much like self-flagellation. Suffer! Suffer! It’s good for you! I don’t want it. But doesn’t hardship come with life as much as joy? It is the human story.

Hebrews 12:7
Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father?

Perhaps it’s the coupling of the word “discipline” with hardship that sticks in my craw. I want to roll my eyes and say, “don’t do me any favors.”

I suppose, then, whether I like it or not, I need to examine my knee jerk reaction to discipline. I always think of discipline in terms of mistakes and wrongdoing. I get disciplined because I screwed up. Yuck.

But there is an aspect of discipline that I rarely consider and that’s regimen or training. My son recently finished Navy boot camp and he pretty much hated it. The constant demand for detail, for accuracy, for precision, and of course, long hours and hard work, were more than he thought he could handle. But he made it. He completed the challenge and once it was done, he knew he was better for it. It was rigorous and unpleasant at times, but he learned many lessons from the process.

There is a type of training that comes with becoming truly human. Not the human that is self-absorbed and striving for personal achievement and power, but the human who discovers the paradox of living like Christ. That human is different. And those hardships have to do with letting go.

These are the true hardships and once those are endured, the other perceived hardships like sickness, death of loved ones, broken relationships, loss of jobs, hunger, whatever . . . they are more easily lived through.

How can I keep this in my mind today? Discipline.

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Seeing the Invisible

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 23, 2011| 1 Comment »

Paradox or miracle? How can anyone see the invisible? I looked it up: not perceptible by the eye. But of course, we’re not talking about the eyes, are we? It’s about “seeing” differently — probably the key to everything.

Hebrews 11:27
By faith he [Moses] left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible.

This kind of seeing is somewhere between the understanding that comes with “oh, I see!” to envisioning what is unknown. It takes both imagination and understanding to embrace the faith of a true Messiah, to relate with God, to engage outside the 3-D matrix in which we tend to live mindlessly.

In Hebrews 11, the author is reviewing a long litany of men (mostly) and women who stood out in history as people of faith. A short “typifying” moment or two is written about each one. For Moses, it meant going upstream (like most people of faith), but the costs were huge. Think about it: Moses lived in the household of one of the most powerful men of the known world. And long before Moses’s “burning bush” epiphany, he walked away from Pharaoh’s house to follow what he saw in the Invisible.

I wouldn’t say he used the best way of “walking away.” He operated as so many young people do when they are caught by the wonder of a sovereign God. They are bulls in a china shop, causing residual damage as they plow through their world to get through the door. For Moses, it was killing a man; for a friend of mine, it was becoming a missionary, determined to live by faith financially, along with a wife and three young children who were not in step with him: the family broke.

To see, feel, hear, smell or taste the invisible is mind-altering. I have had such glimpses, only a few, and they were exhilarating. It was easier when I was younger. But now, no matter how close I get to the invisible, my 3-D responsibilities pull me back. My feet are quite entrenched in the pragmatic. I am like an amusement ride that swings back and forth, my equilibrium challenged continually.

I believe we are called to engage in a harmony of both of these worlds: the visible and the invisible. Like the energy that flows within the body, there is energy that flows between us and others, us and things, us and nature. This is Holy Spirit teaching working within but also without.

Balance me out today Lord. Keep me mindful of your presence. Open my eyes to see the invisible.

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Idolatry Obstructs Resurrections

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Becoming is a series of resurrections. In order to optimize the resurrections of the heart, soul & mind, there must be deaths–crucifixions, to be specific. But a number of hindrances to the deaths as well as the awakenings play out in my life. Categorically, the biggest obstacle is idolatry.

Colossians 3:3-5
For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.

This type of idolatry is not just worshiping a statue or foreign god, it’s putting Self up on a pedestal. The earthly nature illustrated in this verse (immorality, impurity, sex, evil desire and greed), is all about self-pleasure and choices made without concern or care for the other. Idolatry is another way of acting out extreme narcissism.

To crucify or “kill” these tendencies, desires, and controlling habits, I must first be willing. Jesus gave us the way to the cross. It didn’t seem very fair at the time. And it was a painful process, a breaking down of everything. His body was stripped of all protections. He was laid bare both physically and mentally.

Can I lay bare my own ego that wants to defy the Spirit and doesn’t want to understand or trust the paradox of faith in a Christ? Sexual behaviors and addictive pursuits are not the only features of an earthly nature. I have other consuming thoughts like ambition, notoriety, fame, power, wealth, and control. These too must be crucified before they can become the seed that dies and transforms into a thriving plant or tree. [John 12:24]

This remains unknown territory. I must willingly walk my personal “Via Dolorosa” and encourage my ego to let go of the survival skills I have developed over the years out of pain and fear and abandonment. They push people away. They block the free flowing release of the Spirit within. And what’s on the other side of crucifying the old ways? The old idolatries? I don’t really know. I only have a promise and a faith in the One within.

But I do know this: until that earthly nature loses its grip on my life, I’ll never know the truth of a truly resurrected life. They cannot live together.

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