Being the Presence of Jesus
May 22, 2009
I’ve been reading God in the Alley by Greg Paul. It has really been messing with my heart and head. Early in the book he tells Neil’s Story. Neil has AIDS. Greg, the author of the book tells how he signed up to be a “buddy and gofer” for Neil. Over time the relationship moves from being cold and formal to being warm and genuine. In short, they become friends. Then one morning Greg stops by to visit Neil. As he enters the hot and humid room he discovers Neil “writhing in a soundless panic, half sitting up, his pajama bottoms and the bed sheets wound around his ankles, his spindly arms flailing in a futile effort to free himself, a look of sheer terror on his face. He had soiled himself, and it was everywhere. He was disoriented, uncertain where he was or what was happening to him.”
Once Greg is able to free Neil from the tangled mess, he begins to calm down. Greg then carries Neil to the tub. While Neil soaks Greg proceeds to change the soiled sheets before coming back to dress Neil in clean pajamas and carry him back to his bed. Greg comments, “He seemed almost weightless, just bones shrink-wrapped with grayish skin. His temples were hollow, and his teeth seemed too large for his face.”
As Greg begins to tuck Neils feet into the bed, he notices that one of Neils feet was not completely clean. Greg grabs a wash cloth and begins to wipe that foot. In his own word’s Greg describes what happens next, “As I did so, I was struck by what I can only describe as a powerful revelation, two streams of thought converging, and both seeming to me to be the voice of God. Cradling his foot in my hands, my mind was filed with the image of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper, a towel around his waist, determinedly taking the servant’s role. I had been meditating on the story from John’s gospel just the day before, and now I could almost see Jesus hunched over Peter’s foot, his hair hanging forward and obscuring his face, quietly insisting against Peter’s protestations that those feet, but only the feet, needed to be washed. This moment was what my whole time with Neil had been for! This was what it meant to be the presence of Christ. I had been looking for opportunities to preach, wanting to effect a clear and possibly dramatic conversion. I realized in that moment that my longing for those things was as much or more an indication of my desire to be successful as they were of my passion for Neils’ soul. It became clear that, being Jesus to Neil, while it certainly included praying for him, and announcing the good news to him, was most perfectly summed up by the mundane and even odious task of gently wiping excrement from his foot.”
What’s your reputation?
May 1, 2009
I was poking around on the website for Adullum, an incarnational community that has taken up residency throughout the Denver area, when I was reminded of this amazing quote by Roman Emperor Julian,
Atheism (Christianity) has been specially advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers, and through their care for the burial of the dead. It is a scandal that there is not one single Jew who is a beggar, and that the godless Galileans care not only for their own poor but for ours as well; while those who belong to us look in vain for the help that we should render them.
It appears the early church was known by the way she loved strangers.
She was know in the way she loved and cared for those forgotten and left alone.
She had the reputation for extending love to those who played on the other team.
What is the reputation of the church in America today? If a leader in you city were to write down the first three things that came to mind when they thought about your church, would their list describe Jesus?
Missio Dei 7
April 9, 2009
What does solitude have to do with being missional?
It seems, I am not sure, that many of the missional activities of Christ were preceded by times of solitude. Some seem sandwiched between times of solitude. Before choosing the disciples for their mission of representing his rule in this world we find him alone with God, his Abba. Before engaging in ministries of healing, feeding, teaching about the reign of God, he goes off into some solitary place to reflect and be. Between the last supper and the greatest of the missional acts ever known, dying for us, we see him in solitude, leaving all his life in the hands of the Father.
Being missional happens in the rhythm between activity and a soul nourishing solitude.
This week, a friend of the family I have been directing to Jesus to become his disciple, coming to church with our family, and just starting to read the Bible for the first time in his life, popped these questions in an email: How do I know I have found Jesus, and how do I accept him? One of my daughters had told him about accepting Jesus. Wow, I said to myself? After only a short time, a couple of outings together doing life with me, and without any religious background, this friend knows to ask these questions? How do I good news him without trivializing the experience by the premature saying of a prayer? My tendency, for this is how I was evangelized, was to quote him a few verses from that famous road tract to logically prove he was a sinner, repeat the sinner’s prayer after me, and pronounce him a Christian ready for heaven on the next train.
Instead, I retreated into my closet for a couple of days to ask Jesus how to gospel my friend. And so we did get together, talked at length about the will of God, and debriefed what he was experiencing, turned his questions around: How do you know that Jesus found you, and has accepted you? Answered those questions. He was experiencing the proof and results of these questions by reading Scripture that were getting his attention about his condition in life. I confirmed and affirmed his questions and experience. I encouraged him to continue reading and asking, knocking, and seeking. I also told him about the way I used to do this kind of thing and encouraged him to continue on the never ending path of becoming Christian. We talked about the conversion of Ruth and how it was about adopting a new way of life, God, a community, for life.
That was a lot to think about and we left it there, after prayer of thanksgiving, and for God to continue to draw him unto himself. I am in constant contact with this friend and our relationship allows for ease of back and forth with questions.
The funny thing is: I kept thinking during our discussion that I got to seal this deal by asking him to pray the sinner’s prayer. What use is my EE training if I don’t do it the prescribed way? Finally the other way prevailed. My wife who was listening in with our grandson, thought it was a most natural way of doing things like this. I can hardly wait for him to ask about baptism. Then I’ll have to go into solitude again and see what Jesus would say to him. Meanwhile, we will do a few things together, invite him to our house at every opportunity, etc…
Being missional is a way of life, part of the rhythm of life, that is lived between solitude and “gospeling” others. Until it becomes that, it remains shallow.
What do you think?
What Is Biblical Hospitality?
October 30, 2008
“We always treat guests as angels — just in case.”
– Brother Jeremiah
“Hospitality begins at the gate, in the doorway, on the bridges between public and private space. Finding and creating threshold places is important for contemporary expressions of hospitality.”
– Christine D. Pohl
“If there is room in the heart, there is room in the house.”
– Danish Proverb
“If you have a hospitable disposition, you own the entire treasure chest of hospitality, even if you possess only a single coin. But if you are a hater of humanity and a hater of strangers, even if you are vested with every material possession, the house for you is cramped by the presence of guests.”
— Chrysostom
“Fear is a thief. It will steal our peace of mind and that’s a lot to lose. But it also hijacks relationships, keeping us sealed up in our plastic world with a fragile sense of security. Being a people who fear the stranger, we have drained the life juices out of hospitality. The hospitality we explore here is not the same kind you will learn about from Martha Stewart. Benedictine hospitality is not about sipping tea and making bland talk with people who live next door or work with you. Hospitality is a lively, courageous, and convivial way of living that challenges our compulsion either to turn away or to turn inward and disconnect ourselves from others.”
– Homan and Pratt in Radical Hospitality
Radical Hospitality
October 23, 2008
Hospitality, rather than being something you achieve, is something you enter. It is an adventure that takes you where you never dreamed of going. It is not something you do, as much as it is someone you become. You try and you fail. You try again. You make room for one person at a time, you give one chance at a time, and each of these choices of the heart stretches your ability to receive others. This is how we grow more hospitable — by welcoming one person when the opportunity is given to you.
– Radical Hospitality: Benedict’s Way of Love by Daniel Homan and Lonni Collins Pratt
(In light of Luke 15:1-10)
Our God, we ask that we too would be accused of being a friend to sinners. May the seats around our table always be filled with sinners! Shape us into a hospitable people—a welcoming people who are always willing to leave the ninety-nine for the one.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen
– Closing Prayer, Thursday Morning, October 23rd, The Missio Dei Breviary
More Making Room
October 9, 2008
Hospitality is not optional for Christians, nor is it limited to those who are specially gifted for it. It is, instead, a necessary practice in the community of faith. . . . Several aspects of early Christian life combined to make hospitality central to Christian practice.
First, shared meals were a significant setting for struggling with cultural boundaries in the early church, especially in working through the incorporation of Gentiles into the early communities. At meals together, tensions surfaced between rich and poor believers; meals provided the context for instructions on equal recognition and respect. Hospitality practices in the Christian community were to portray a clear message — that of equality, transformed relations, and a common life.
Second, the gospel initially spread through the ministry of believers who traveled widely and depended on the hospitality of others. Hospitality to those first missionaries and the reception of their message were very closely connected. . . . Hospitality was the practice within which early Christians met the needs of traveling missionaries and leaders, religious exiles, and the local poor.
Third, the early church regularly met for worship in the households of believers. In such a location, hospitality was a natural and necessary practice. It helped foster family-like ties among believers and provided a setting in which to shape and to reinforce a new identity.
For the early church, then, hospitality both participated in and anticipated God’s hospitality. Christians offered hospitality in grateful response to God’s generosity and as an expression of welcome to Christ “who for your sake was a stranger.” For them, hospitality was connected to the promises of God and to the presence of Christ. It condensed attention to spiritual, social, and physical dimensions of life into one potent practice which was fitting conduct within the household of God.
- Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition by Christine D. Pohl
Making Room
October 2, 2008
A vital aspect of living missionally involves embracing biblical hospitality. Over the next several Thursdays (because Thursdays are for focusing on the “Participation in the Missio Dei ” aspect of the Missional Order) I want to share those resources that have challenged my understanding of hospitality. The first being the excellent book “Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Chrsitian Tradition” by Christine D. Pohl:
“Hospitality should be understood as a way of life rather than as a task or strategy. It is easy to slip into viewing hospitality as a strategy for reaching migrants and refugees, or for that matter, for reaching postmodern youth or homeless people. But such an approach misunderstands the basic orientation of hospitality. Hospitality is not a means to an end; it is a way of life infused by the gospel.”
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