“Fear is the polio of the soul. Faith is the life based on unseen realities; it is the word become flesh.” 

Clarence Jordan

As followers of Jesus our prime mission, as both individuals and collectively as Church, should be to allow the Spirit to turn the “Word into flesh.”

Church has become an insulating place where people come to hide from the world when in truth it should be a place where we come together to worship God, get refreshed and fed, pray, break Bread, and THEN get up and go out into the world to do Kingdom work. If we surrendered so deeply and passionately to the Spirit we would find ourselves truly becoming the Word turned to flesh and our very lives and lifestyles would draw people to God.

Preach the Gospel, live compassion, show mercy, serve the poor and marginalized, love the loveless and unlovely – THAT is what Church should be collectively and what followers of Jesus should be individually.

I fear the Church – in both its striving for cultural relevance and in its historical rigidity – is fast becoming the greatest barrier to people growing in love with Jesus.  The very vehicle for the Kingdom of God to be built on earth has become the very stumbling block to that mandate. And I say this as a Catholic deeply in love with and sometimes dismayed by the Church.

We should seek to turn the Word into flesh (and thanks to Rob Bell for the imagery), but I am starting to sense that far too many in leadership are turning the ‘flesh into word’. Some Christian leaders – Catholic and evangelical – are confusing following Jesus with turning the faith into a weapon for a culture war. The truths of God seen through the lens of fear turn only into fundamentalism and spiritual poison creating communities of intolerance and rigidity that leave no room for God’s lavish and messy grace.

I go to both Mass at a small, but sacred space, in a small town 75 miles outside of Washington, DC and I also occasionally attend a modern fellowship affiliated with The Brethren Church, so my eyes and ears are attuned to both sides of the Christian perspective as well as the modern and the historical and sometimes I am sickened by the ‘Ken and Barbie’ approach to faith. I fear that Jesus is indeed being preached but I do not always see the Word being turned into flesh.

Jesus loved the unlovely and the so-called unlovable, but would the people who are truly considered that way by the culture at large even feel at home in either of the churches I attend? Honestly, and surprisingly, they would most likely feel at home in the Catholic Mass (with its thousand plus year old tradition) rather than the hipster evangelical church.

If the addicted, the lonely, the traumatized and the modern-day ‘unclean’ are not ‘flocking’ to us the way they did to Jesus then I fear we are blocking the Spirit and preventing the Word being turned into flesh. For as Clarence Jordan’s translation of the Gospels (The Cotton Patch Gospels) says in his translation of John 1: “for the Word became flesh and came and pitched His tent among us.”

Jesus came to pitch his tent – his very being – among us. God came to us, not the other way around. But sometimes we Jesus followers forget that truth and we have smoke and mirrors and flash in the pan in the hopes that the broken and wounded will come to us. The mandate of the Church is clear: we are the ones who in imitation of Christ go to the world; it is an error of omission if we couch potato our faith, waiting to go, waiting for the call, when the call has already been given.

God, as revealed in Scriptures, is a mission God – One who comes to us and then sends us to those He hungers to draw close. God has been coming to us and sending us since He revealed Himself to Moses, and culminated in Jesus (Emmanuel – God with us).

The Word became flesh and pitched His tent among us so that we, while filled with the Spirit, might become a community where we become the Word (turned) into flesh.

Are we turning the flesh into word…or allowing the Spirit to turn us into the Word into flesh?

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Here is a Link to Pope Benedict’s recent message on living the faith, keeping it simple and joyful. 

Rez Farm, through the Spirit, will ‘flesh out’ God’s love and compassion as a living invitation to follow Jesus and to love people.

Rez Farm will be a place to “cultivate Resurrection” – a place for new beginnings, to give and find healing, to practice all the Works of Mercy.

Rez Farm is a dream of a community and a mountain retreat that is a mixture of a few different influences from people who have inspired us and are changing the world for God’s Kingdom. We will offer hospitality in the spirit of the Catholic Worker Houses of Hospitality & Farms. We will embrace the inclusiveness of the L’Arche Community, and in time will offer retreats in the manner of Dayspring Retreat Center.

Rez Farm will be a safe haven for people to seek and share compassion, service, and healing through living, giving and receiving God’s ‘crazy’ love, messy grace & lavish mercy.

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Rez Farm is here to Cultivate Resurrection!

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A Word on the Name…

“REZ” is short for Resurrection (because through the resurrection of Jesus we can all find resurrection from our past); and for Reservation (as in “the rez”) – a place for the Tribe of Jesus to come find and give Resurrection.

“FARM” because as a noun,“Farm” means a tract of land, usually with a house, barn, silo, etc., on which crops and often livestock are raised for livelihood. But as a VERB, “Farm” means to cultivate (as in land and in our case Resurrection).

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Pray for Rez Farm!  Pray it comes to be as God’s Dream, pray for your part in it, pray with us and come be Tribe with us as God birth’s this Dream…

For more information contact Niles at earthymonk@gmail.com.

I am learning, once again through God’s disturbing grace, only those who have fallen down, can ever truly know what “up” is; only those who have failed miserably can ever truly know what “success” looks like; and only those who are cracked and wounded can ever really know what healing truly is.

And part of this truth involves something I have struggled with for 25 years: God’s will for my life.  I am learning something that I want to share with you: forget about ‘knowing’ God’s will for your life.  Very few people in this world, in the Sacred Scriptures, in the Communion of Saints before (and those that will come after us) have ever received the full blue print plan for their lives…much less even the 5 year plan!  So give it up.

Example: God called a man and woman named Abram and Sarai, to pack up everything (their entire lives) and to set out to a strange land!  God did not say to them, “so, here’s your itinerary, here is where you will stop, here is what you will do, here is the specific plan.”  Nope.  And do you really think if Abram knew he was going to have his named changed through trial, error and circumstance, do you really think he would have done it?  OK, Abram, I’m going to finally give you a son in your old age, then I’m going to ask you to murder him.  Right God.  I’ll jump right on that.

Knowing can in certain ways be deadly, because too much knowledge makes us too self-reliant.  And we are called to be God-reliant.

So instead Abram and Sarai listen to God in that moment; they listen to the Lord say, “pack your bags, start walking and trust me, stay close to me so that when the next thing occurs you will be intimate enough with me and trust me enough to hear and do.”

In 2012, most of us would call that absolutely crazy and downright asinine.  But I call it sane.  And so does God.  Because most of my life I’ve had two occurrences: one is the ‘notion’ that I am called to be a servant-healer and two, it is to be amongst those at the edges of life – the poor, downtrodden, the neglected, the invisible.  No blue print (although I do have a Dream planted by God in my heart called Rez Farm).  No road map saying: go here, go there.  Oh yes, I am taking issue with people who say the Bible is a road map…it has some road map-like qualities to it, but it is so much more: it is a love story between God and God’s people; it is not some picture perfect blueprint.  And if it is, then let’s not forget about all the adulterers, sinners, thieves, whores, orphans, weaklings, connivers and murderers that God used to change the course of human history and those same ones God called friend, apple my his eye, his beloved.

I have more often than not fumbled my way into grace and stumbled upon God’s will through the messiness of it all more than I have through having some angelic heavenly revelation.  It’s true.  I have discovered more of God’s will for my life when I’m on the ground after falling headfirst and tending to my bloody knees than I have in some safe place, surrounded by the frozen chosen.

It is precisely in the times of so-called failure, darkness, despair, and even misery that I have been in a place to actually hear God’s voice saying to me “I love you, now come over this way.”  Or “Keep doing what you are doing…I know it hurts, but all growth involves some element of pain.”

So I fumble forward into the grace of God and I fall ‘upward’ into his will and desires for me.  It ain’t always pretty and I am so far from any sense of perfection.  But I am seeking: God’s face, God’s heart, his grace and mercy.  I am asking God for the sense of place and purpose and the strength and openness to receive and give his tender mercies to others.  I am a messy, bumbling fumbling channel for the love of God found in Jesus…but still no “Plan.”

We don’t get “the Plan” in advance, beloved.

In order to “get” it at all, one thing we must do is stay close to Jesus, (so we learn to love and trust him more and so we can actually hear his voice).  Although not necessarily a blueprint, we do however get promises and some loving commands: Jesus is always with us whether or not we see or feel it; we are to take up our cross’; we are to love our neighbors and our enemies; we are to become servants; intimacy come with and through prayer; etc, etc.

It is vital to remember that Jesus never said don’t make mistakes, in truth, trusting him and taking risk for the Kingdom are steps of faith and with faith mountains can me moved and God Dreams can come to fruition.  And forget being perfect in following Jesus.  Oh yes, I know the Scripture that says “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” but the word used for ‘perfect’ is often mistranslated because the word Jesus uses means “mature” rather than to be without error.  So that particular Scripture could be written “be mature as your heavenly Father is mature,” which means don’t be childish, selfish, petty, rude, etc.

So when it comes to knowing God’s specific will and plan for your life: Fugetaboutit!

As the Spanish proverb so says: “the Way is made along the Way.”  So, pack your bags, say a prayer, and start walking…and never forget this truth: as long as you are following Jesus, although you may not know exactly where you are going, you will never be lost.

“Think of God in a very big way. And if you do, that’s too small!

You can’t think of anything more wonderful than this God. And you can’t figure out anything about God without a special grace…God is so marvelously good, there is no word for it. So gentle. So considerate. So kind, so tender – so everything marvelous. That is God. And whatever you say is far less than it is.

As Paul says ‘It hasn’t crossed the imagination of any human being what God has prepared for those who love him.’”

Thomas Keating, at the annual conference of Contemplative Outreach, Snowmass, Colorado, October 2012

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Below is an archived article from one of my FAVORITE Blogs – Internet Monk – about the late Michael Spencer.  Read it…and subscribe to Internet Monk if you are hungry for some Jesus-shaped Spirituality and some camaraderie on your faith Journey.

Archived Faith – great article from Internet Monk

]]> http://earthymonk.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/stepping-stones/ Thu, 15 Nov 2012 19:29:50 +0000 Niles Comer http://earthymonk.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/stepping-stones/ If you are anything like me, your Journey with Jesus goes something like this: a few steps forward, an eternal step backwards…one huge step forward, three tiny steps backwards. At least that’s what experiencing my Achilles Heel feels like as it trips me up on my Journey into God. One moment I am in this deep feeling of connectedness with Jesus and grace saturates me and the world around me…so immersed in God even the emptiness brims over. Then the next moment I’m so steeped in my own ego and pain, screaming and raging all over the place as my past, pain and addictions rear their ugly heads, I can’t even muster a feeble prayer.

Stepping forward, stepping backwards…stepping stones.

And then the anger and self-judgment come rushing in, pouring over the softened stones of God’s grace and then low and behold, I am slipping and sliding all over the place, into a darkness that appears all-consuming.  Sometimes, anger is a gift, but only to those who recognize its potential and potency to drop us to our knees seeking God’s ever-present grace. Anger does indeed destroy, and cause destruction; but not all destruction caused by anger is bad (if I need an example then think of almost every single social and political movement that has occurred in the last century…they started out of anger at apathy and injustice).

It is times like this I need to remind myself that emotions are not right or wrong, they are just REAL. Emotions are like the Caboose on the train called Faith: they do not run the train but they are a necessary part of it. If I live my life of faith and grace led by my emotions, well, that is a recipe for utter disaster and insanity. My emotions over my utter humanness and my seemingly perpetual screwing up become a god, an idol that replaces Jesus and his grace.

But these emotions of anger and self-judgment are also incredible opportunities for increased Awareness. And awareness is painful, my friends. There is much peril in reality and our increased awareness is beneficial two-fold: it smashes illusions and delusions and opens us up to God’s grace in ever-deepening ways.The old song says “breaking up is hard to do” but I re-coin that as “WAKING up is hard to do.”

Waking up to reality can be a painful thing. Seeing things, people and situtations for as they are not as we want them to be is a butt-ugly process. But thanks be to God that where pain abounds, God’s grace abounds all the more. Or as I am fond of saying, “where Niles abounds God’s grace abounds all the more.”

Stepping Stones…three steps forwards and one step backwards, one giant leap forward, four small steps backwards. In moments like this I feel like a habit held together by flesh and grace only.

Every time I think I am further along my Journey than I really am, invariably some angel (fallen or otherwise) comes along and distracts me just enough for me to run headlong into a wall.

And as I sit, dazed and confused on the floor, I hear the tender voice of Jesus saying to me (to you) ever so softly: “It is not the falling down that is the ‘sin’, my child; it is in NOT getting back up. Now let Me dust off your knees and off we go!

Where pain abounds, God’s healing abounds all the more.  Where darkness abounds, God’s light abounds all the more.  Where fear abounds, God’s hope and Presence abound all the more.

Remember: with God, nothing is impossible.  NOTHING!  Without God, even the possible and mundane can become impossible.  For the Sacred Scriptures say that “greater is He (Jesus) that is in me than he who is in the world (the evil one).

So with God all that is impossible becomes God saying I’m Possible.

God is saying to us: “I am the God of possibilities, potential, promise; I am the God of budding hope, the would-be miracle.  I am the God of the Unlikely.  I am the God of whispers turned into symphonies, whimpers turned into roars, tears turned into the flowers of Joy.”

“I AM” says God, therefore all else can be…when the Great I Am says it will be, or it could be or it should be, then trust we are starting from the place of God’s Being, which is Pure Truth, and not from our own place, the little finite.

But, and this is a big but: we must first “take up the cross” and follow Jesus.  I am not saying that we are going to create the life we’ve always dreamed of; far from it.  What I am saying is this: God is calling us out of comfort zones into a life of complete and absolute surrender to Him and the cross, in order to fashion a world we can only dream about – a world where peace reigns over conflict; healing over brokenness, “enough”ness over poverty.

Not a sermon, just a reminder.

Pray often and even more so.  Pray for the people you love, and pray for the people you don’t love.

Don’t build a big church.  Because if we do, then we will need to protect it and use up time, taxes, and treasure to maintain it.  Instead of a building try Being Church – and rather than building a new building, start making charity and justice for the poor a personal, close-up thing and not a ‘program’ in the church.

Share the Good News.  For what Jesus did is indeed Good and truly Newsworthy.

Visit the sick, the locked up and the shut in.

Give relief to those who are suffering around you.

Sit with the dying…just be with them as they transition into the next part of life.

Comfort the broken, the bruised and the bereaved.

Be generous and lavish with those in need and do so with your time, your talents, your money, and your stuff.  Share your house with someone in need like a teenager in a bad situation or a young girl who is deciding to carry her child to term, share your car, your tools, your garage, your apartment, your books, etc.

Be reckless in giving and receiving Abba’s grace and graciousness.

Practice hospitality and be hospitable (for that is where the word hospital came from).

Love your neighbor…and yes, I do mean the one right next door, as well as the one down the street, across the country and across the world.

Live your life as a fully alive, aware human being.  Practice being real and transparent then watch people see Jesus in and through your unique personality.  No stuffed shirts, smug piousness or the need to be superior over people. And love sinners, all of them, not just the ones you feel most comfortable around.  Befriend sinners and people of other faiths, and don’t do it just for evangelism sake.  Jesus loved all people truly, madly and deeply, even the ones that walked away from, betrayed and killed him.  He had no other motive but too love people into the Kingdom, so put down your Four Spiritual Laws, your tracts and your Bibles and start being real and around people (you’ll be amazed at how much Abba’s love will flow from you).

Practice Common Grace (whether you are Calvinist or Catholic).  For all people are made in the image of God and God sustains everyone regardless of their faith or lack thereof (see Matthew 5:45 and James 1:17)

Practice common graciousness as well; don’t be a bully, mean-spirited, or smug.  Just because we know the Truth does NOT mean we are always right.  Only Jesus is Lord and only he will judge on the last day, so save the judging for him and him alone.

Here’s one for you: Jesus is profane. His ‘Papa’ is profane as well. Let explain before the stones start flying: Jesus is profane in that he was “outside of the temple” for the majority of his time on planet earth. All one has to do is a quick scan of the Gospels to see this to be true: the majority of the stories and ministry took place outside the temple.

In truth, most of what Jesus did was profane, or unholy, according to the religious people of his day. He touched lepers and we have no record that he followed purification laws after touching them (rendering him ‘unclean’). He spoke with and hung out with woman and he had female followers. He forgave a prostitute caught in the act. He spoke with a Samaritan woman not only ‘profaning’ himself by speaking to her but adding insult to injury, she was from a despised mixed race. And then there is the parable of the Prodigal Son, the one most used to speak to Abba’s love and forgiveness. Well, the story was offensive to Jews – asking for your inheritance before your father died! And then upon getting it (profane) and then spending it on sex, drugs, and rock and roll; then having to take a job as a pig feeder! Do you know what pigs were to Hebrews of his day: filthy, dirty untouchable animals! But Jesus threw that into the story for dramatic effect…just to be profane.

I have had far too many experiences with modern day Jesus followers who have absolutely no earthly idea just how offensive Jesus was when he walked the earth. He did not come on a white horse, as a fierce warrior-king messiah ready to liberate his people from the Roman Occupation. He did not come with pomp and circumstance, no Facebook or Twitter account, no multi-media slide show, and no promotion of his latest book. He came from Nazareth (which was no Jerusalem or Rome), was unmarried throughout his life (not normal if you in fact were normal), was born of a poor teenage virgin (hello!) and after three years all the popularity contests ended with him dying on a cross with all the ‘groupies’ mocking him on a cross (the modern-day electric chair).

Jesus of Nazareth came and preached good news to the poor, chose 12 ragamuffin men to spend time with him so they could “get” the Message and then in turn go out and change the world. One of them betrayed him, even unto death; the one who was told that he was the Rock upon which the Church would be built denied him three times just hours after proclaiming loyalty unto death and the rest of them scattered at the Messiah’s greatest hour of need.

Jesus was Profane and yet in modern day, so many Jesus followers are more worried about cultural relevance than righteousness, true righteousness which has to do with “being in right relation to” another (God, the human family and the earth). Jesus was outside the temple: he went to the people; he went to the ones who were the most despised, the most rejected, the poorest of the poor, the dirtiest of the dirty, the most broken among us.

Jesus did not send out flashy tweets or flyers about our grand church programs that the ‘sinners’ and unchurched should come to. Messiah went to the people but modern day Jesus followers have fallen into passivity – a “just build it and they will come” mentality. We have ‘built’ our modern day Temples expecting the hurting and broken to run to us, when in truth the very people Jesus is calling us to take Abba’s love to run like hell to get away from most of us. Heck, I know I rarely feel at home around other believers, smug in the rightness of their ways, hanging in the holy huddle surrounded by the frozen chosen.

Ask yourself: would some toothless hillbilly, active drug addict, or a prostitute dressed for a night of work be welcomed into our fellowship? If the answer is no, then we have no concept of “profane Love.”  It used to be that it was a big deal to have a tattooed person in your church, and 26 years ago when I got my first of my 20 plus tattoos, I got all sorts of looks and quotes from Leviticus. But now we are a Hip Generation, filled with shaved heads, piercings and tats. So, if freaks like me can be welcomed then can we trust the Spirit to open our hearts and fellowships to the truly broken, the fringe of society, and those at the margins?

And Jesus was not at all about programs. Trust me, if Jesus had been about ‘programs,’ I promise you I would have studied his ‘program’ in business school as the “Great Failure.” But the ‘profane’ity’ of Jesus was disturbing to the status quo of his day and today his followers should be just as disturbing. Alas, I fear we are more disturbing for our arrogance and judgment than for our bold love of the hard-core sinners. And it is sad and breaks my heart because Abba’s love poured out into us should give us such trust in him, that we would not care about the looks, stares, and gossip that would surely follow us if we were to love with that kind of love (a love Jesus said would show the world we were his).

My hunger, my desire, my prayer is that we start becoming as profane as Jesus, we will never be relevant or any help to the bodies and souls of a world where over 1 Billion people live off less than $2 per day, where 1 in 7 Americans live in food insecurity, and where homelessness is rising and wounded warriors commit suicide at a rate of 1 per day.

My heart tells me Jesus followers are in need of revival: one where an ever-deepening experience of Abba’s love leads us to forgiveness and reconciliation (within the Church) and then to lives living his profane love away from our temples, out in the world.

We need Abba’ profane love, a love that forgives murderers, adulterers, drug addicts, alcoholics, wife beaters, bully’s, and even embraces in love the LGBT community. We need Abba’s love poured out into our hearts to forgive our own brothers and sisters for the pompous asinine smugness we show towards each other: that Love that breaks the bondage of our ‘rudeness of rightness’ and brings us to our knees in gratitude, in mercy, in compassion and in justice to each other and to the broken and forgotten.

I am learning and I feel we all need to learn that we cannot keep what we do not own and we cannot give away that which we do not have. Personally, I know I need a deeper experience of Abba’s all-encompassing love. I need to taste and see Abba’s love, goodness, and forgiveness or else I am a shipwreck on rough waters.

Am I profane? Are you profane?

If not, then let us pray that God’s profane love and the profane’ity of Jesus fills and moves us out of our temples into a life of complete surrender.

“Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more…and there is nothing we can do to make God love us less.  God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possibly love.”  Philip Yancy – What’s So Amazing About Grace?

I am not a theologian.  I am not a learned man.  And what I am writing here is merely a conversation I have been having with Abba.  It may offend.  It may be poor theology.  But as far as I am concerned theology more often than not gets in between me and God rather than lead me to him.

Over the last two years I have seen, heard and experienced God’s tremendous grace about as much as I have experienced the asinine lack of grace shown by many people who cite the title Christian.

So God’s grace has been on my mind a great deal lately, for reasons both personal and public.  And more importantly what has been on my mind is how ‘we’ – Christians and churches – define it as well as how religion defines and how God reveals it.  I am sure there are some who will disagree with the words that follow, even those I love and who love me, but I am OK with that.  I am, if truth be told, a God-work-in-progress and far from perfect and will never be perfected in this body.  And since I know and believe the only thing perfect in this world is God’s grace, I’ll leave this blog and judgment to God and God alone.

There is much talk about grace – real grace and cheap grace.  I’ve heard the term ‘cheap grace’ tossed around quite a bit and it is usually done so in the context of people praying the ‘Sinner’s Prayer’ and continuing on in the sin they were desperately found in.  I have also heard used in the context of those ‘accepting’ God’s grace and then abusing it by living as willy-nilly as they please.

I may not know much, but what I do know is this: there is nothing cheap about grace regardless of what we do or do not do with it.  Saying that I have the power to ‘cheapen’ grace equates my power with the power of the cross.  That is my problem with the phrase ‘cheap grace’ for it, once again like much of evangelical spirituality, moves the focus on to me and not where it should be: on God.

Saying I have the power to cheapen grace in fact cheapens grace more than any sin I could commit by omission or commission for it places me and my so-called power above that of the cross.  Philip Yancy is right in saying that an infinite God cannot love me more or less because to do so would be to take away from God’s absolute divinity and perfection.  The only thing that can “make” God love me more or less is merely my perception of that love.  I may perceive through sin, pain, the past, shame, depression or addiction that God loves me more or less (and this based on my actions and not God’s) but God cannot love more or less, God can only love as an infinite and eternal God can: perpetually and perfectly.  And so I believe it is with grace.

I cannot earn more of God’s grace or lessen it.  God’s grace is not like a Frequent Flyer Program: I can’t earn miles and if unused I do not lose them.  My choices in life can open me up to deeper experiences of God’s love and grace and they can close me off from receiving his love and grace.  But God’s grace and love are still ever-faithful.

Experiencing the radical nature of God’s grace leads to a deeper experience of his love for us.  Grace is grace.  Whether I accept it freely and live in it freely are choices that Abba has given to me and you.  Grace cannot be forced for then it becomes religion – a set of rigid rules and hoops to dance through in order to experience God and grace.

So I am musing here: What cheapens grace more living in the freedom of grace or living in fear of that freedom?  Is grace cheapened by living in the wide freedom of God’s grace?  Or is grace cheapened when we fear that freedom, enacting rules and regulations (man-made benchmarks rivaled only by the Book of Leviticus) dangling grace like a carrot on a stick?

What I think cheapens grace is the agenda some Christians preach and subtly manipulate us with saying that to truly know Jesus we must jump through certain hoops.  Only when we are free to love God, and freed by God’s love, can we begin to even start fathoming the nature of grace that flows from Jesus.  It seems like five minutes after someone experiences God’s grace, we start to hanging rules on them like weights around the ankles and this when people already feel as if they are drowning.

I know there are people out  there who are going to take issue with me, and my response to them is the foundation of this writing: if we do love God then why can’t we actually totally trust God to change whatever it is about me that is ‘wrong’ or broken?  In my 25 years of following Jesus, I have evolved, fallen, walked way, run to him and run away from him, but one consistent experience I have had is that well-intentioned folks play Holy Spirit far too often.  And the last time I checked there is only One Holy Spirit: And it is not me and it is not you.  Of course we can are often are the conduits for the Spirit’s truth, but when we think we have “cornered the market on spiritual truth” or knowing God’s will, we are on precarious footing, and the truth is often lost even in the best of intentions.

I get the sense that there is an ever deepening awakening occurring within the realms of Christendom and within people’s hearts: a hunger to truly experience the freedom that Abba’s love (and only Abba’s love) can bring…freeing us from the throngs of shame, addiction, depression, control, fear, and the false illusions called security and religion.  The opposite of faith is not doubt, it is smug certainty.  For all throughout the Scriptures we have stories of ordinary, broken people called by God who sometimes doubted, ran away from, denied God or fell away.  But God still continued to call them and use them…and that is Grace.

I am not a pastor, nor a shepherd I am just a follower…of Jesus; and the message here for me is let go of the baggage, for if my hands are ‘full’ holding all this rigid baggage preventing me from living free in Abba’s love through the power of the cross, then all I have left is the baggage and no room for Abba’s grace.

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Question: when you first heard about Jesus was the message more about not going to Hell than about how much He loved you?

Thanks be to God, my answer is the latter.  I am grateful to Tony Campolo, who presented Jesus in such a way that it was 80 percent about His love, 15 percent about His Lordship and serving the poor and a measly 5 percent mention of Hell.  So, I was a fortunate one who came to first know and love Jesus through a message of love, hope and forgiveness.  Thanks Tony!

What about anybody else?  I know way too many people who have given their life to Jesus more out of fear (of going to hell) than out of being blown away by God’s crazy love for them and the extent to which God went to open the gates of heaven.

Those who present Jesus as Savior in order to not go to hell are merely preaching “fire insurance” and not “making disciples.”  Preaching Hell points more “to our weaknesses and fears than to God’s intentions” (Wayne Jacobsen).  Focusing more on hell is a not what Jesus did; He presented parable after parable focusing more on love than hell.  Yes, He did speak of hell but love and mercy were the core of His message and the core of His presentation of Abba’s love for us.

When Jesus is presented out of fear, we corrupt God’s true intention established from the foundation of the world: a desire for unbroken and unbridled intimacy based on love and trust, not fear (Wayne again).

Now I am not saying there is no hell, but that is not my focus here, I will leave that to the hundreds of fundamentalist out there to preach hate and fear over love and mercy.  Jesus said that he did not come into the world to judge for the world was already judged and this due to sin (See John 3).  But true love – God’s true love – always gives us choices, for divine love does not manipulate or coerce (like so many pastors and religious folks I see and hear today).  No, true love gives us choices and some choices do indeed have painful consequences both here and in the hereafter.  But other choices have pleasant benefits, both here and in the hereafter.

So do we love God out of fear or love? 

Do we love God out of a fear of hell and punishment and inconsistent love?  Or do we love God out of gratitude and desire for His infinite Love?  Yes, I can hear it now, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but the word for fear there has to do with reverence and awe.  It is not fear like an abused child fears getting the crap smacked out of him by his drunken father.

We already have an image of God that is completely opposite of the above mentioned father: that image was presented by Jesus, first and foremost in the name He told us to call God, Abba.  In Aramaic (the spoken language of Jesus) literally means “Papa.”  And Jesus continually shows us just Who this ‘Papa’ is – extravagant in love, abundant in mercy, full of compassion, quick to forgive and heal, slow to anger.  And when Jesus reveals what makes Abba angry, it was always at those who would block God’s mercy and love, shackling it to age-old, man-made laws and not to Abba’s original intent.

Never once did Jesus approach people with “turn or burn” – quite the opposite.  Jesus approached people with the message “the Kingdom of God has come near you” and the life He was inviting us to was not a religious life of “do’s” and “don’ts,” it was an invitation to real life in the Kingdom, a life of being loved by Abba and in loving Abba freely…real like Velveteen Rabbit real!

So do we love God out of fear or love? 

One thing I have noticed about modern-day Christianity: it is focused more on us than on God.  And what I mean is when we talk about God, it is usually in the context of “my” relationship with God; what am “I” doing for God; how am “I” responding to God; do “I” have a relationship with God.  We’ve got it all backwards – the focus should be on God.  Jeez…we could not even desire a relationship with God if God did not first put that desire within us.  It is called prevenient grace, namely that even the very hunger for God within us was caused first by God.

So, it could revolutionize our faith if we truly started understanding that it is not we who desire intimacy with God; it is Abba Who desires intimacy with us first.  We are the responders, not the initiators.  We are the ones being pursued by Abba’s tender love and mercy.  We are the receivers before we are the givers.  And that my friends is what grace is all about: our free-willed response to a God Who hungers and pines for us; a God Who went to lengths we can barely fathom to draw us back to Himself!

 So do we love God out of fear or love? 

Be honest.  Do we love God out of fear or out of love?  For if we love God out of fear, then it is not love for “perfect love cast out fear.”  If we love God out of fear, that is bondage.  If we love God out of a response to His great love – out of our deep and personal experience of this Divine Love – then we find true freedom.  Jesus said you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.  What is more freeing than to live in the constant, ever-faithful love of a Father to whom none can compare?

I understand that the use of the word ‘Father’ for some is a huge stumbling block and barrier to receiving God’s love.  For some, like me, were beaten, abused, neglected and abandoned by our fathers.  So why in the heck would I want an Almighty Father like that?  Who in their right mind would ever submit to a Divine Tyrant?  I wouldn’t.

My father was a good man…when he was sober.  But drunk he would be mean, distant, cold and aloof.  I have many memories of riding in the car with my dad, drunk as a skunk, begging him to please slow down or pull over, while he swerved all over the road.  I feared death would come literally around the next corner.

My dad was also famous for taking me, his 10 year old son, to the movies, buying the tickets and telling me to go in and “find us some good seats.”  Only he would go back out to his car and either drink himself into a sleeping stupor or even worse, he would leave, go to the nearest liquor store, and drink himself to sleep there, and I would end up having to walk home.  One time, I remember going to see “Grease” and dad never showed up and I ended up starting to walk home along Interstate 81 (in Roanoke, VA), but God was looking out for me then, when my neighbor saw me and picked up and gave me a ride home.  I also remember her giving my dad a good tongue-lashing for abandoning his son like that.

So, trust me when I say calling God “Father” has, in and of itself, been a healing journey for this 44 year old man.  And right now, I ‘know’ that it is Abba Who is tugging at me to undertake the healing of Father because some of the old junk is rising to the surface; and you know what they about poop…it floats.  So, Abba wants to go deeper, reveal more of Himself to me, the Real Abba, as He is, not as my wounds tell me He is.  And I am excited by what He will reveal even as I am resistant and hesitant.

So do we love God out of fear or love? 

As someone who has worked in public health campaigns around HIV prevention and substance abuse, I have learned one thing that relates to our walk with God: fear is a short-term behavior modifier.  In the short run, we can use fear to ‘modify’ our behaviors, like when we are under duress and pray those prayers, “God, just get me out of this and I promise I’ll go to some far off country as a missionary, or some other promise made in fear.

The same is true of God with regard to fear; if we only ‘fear’ God we will never know the freeing power of His love and never know how that should be our motivation.  Fear motivates in the short-term, but only love – Abba’s true eternal love – can transform us (and our behaviors) leading us away from sinfulness into deeper holiness and wholeness.

I said it previously that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” but it is only the beginning, not the end (Thanks to Wayne again).  The end of wisdom is love.  True wisdom lies in knowing God’s love for us is immutable (unchanging) and that truth – God’s passionate love for you and me – is what transforms and leads to obedience.   For obedience can indeed occur without love, but when we love, we desire obedience, out of love, not fear.  So are we obeying God out of fear or love?

God’s love is not like our love for we are motivated mostly out of selfishness (even in our best intentions), but God is motivated out of selflessness.  When Jesus died on the cross it was out of love and selflessness.  Far too often, when we speak about the cross, we speak of it terms of God’s justice (or God’s demands for justice).  But the cross was more an act of Love than an act of justice!

And when we look to the cross and see just how deep Abba’s love is for us, it should make our fear disappear.  For in God’s love, our fear is swallowed up.  For “[there] is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love.  We love because [God] first loved us.  And “…perfect love [God’s perfect love] cast out fear.”

As Wayne Jacobsen challenges in his grand work, He Love Me, I suggest spending some time prayerfully reading 1 John 4:7-21.  Let me ‘selectively’ pull out some of the verses from 1 John so we can see them together to try and create a more powerful impact of Abba’s love:

Dear friends…love comes from God.   This is how God showed his love among us… This is love: not that we loved God, but that [God] loved us…Dear friends, since God so loved us….  And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.  God is love.  There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.  We love because [God] first loved us.

In 1 John 4:7-21, the word “love” is used 27 times!  27 times in 14 verses!  Do you think John the Beloved was trying to make a point of something…say maybe God’s Love?!?  John just keeps stating over and over again about God’s love for us and in us and what happens when God’s love ‘takes over.’

So, what I gather John is saying (as he is simply reflecting what Jesus said), we are merely responding to God’s love.  As  I stated previously, we can’t even love God unless God had first loved us.  And just how much did/does God love us?  Just look at the cross!  The cross is the greatest sign of God’s love for us, in that God did not spare anything (or Anyone) to show us just how much He loves us.  God’s spared absolutely no expense to open the door for us to be loved by Him and for His love to flow freely and limitlessly into, and out of, our hearts and lives.

I am astounded at how I can read 1 John 4 and St. John’s entire Gospel and yet I still don’t “get” it.  I still have a hard time believing in Father’s deep and abiding love.

I still wonder.   I am still so human that I doubt regularly that Abba loves me so much and  that Abba loves you all so much; and everyone.  I am as thick as a board sometimes.  But Abba…well, Abba is patient, kind, and understanding.  He knows I am but a speck of dust in the Universe (a lovable speck of dust according to Him).  Abba knows what each of us need to grow in trust and in His love.  Abba knows the dark spaces that block His love – the wounds, the doubts, the legalism, the fear of the freedom that comes with such unconditional Love.  Abba knows.

I have been a follower of Jesus for over 25 years and I sense I am starting all over again; a little child taking his first steps, ever hesitant and pondering if my ‘Daddy’ will be there to catch me when I undoubtedly stumble and fall.

But Abba knows what I need healed regarding my hearts’ timidity in believing and receiving His love.  Abba knows I struggle daily to live in quiet trust of His love regardless of the external circumstances.  It can be easy to receive Abba’s love when the paychecks are coming in regularly, and the housing is secure and there are no life threatening illnesses.  But I am not in that place.  I have none of those things right now (and in truth my life could change drastically for the worse over the next few months barring a miracle) and yet, Abba has put in my heart a desire to learn from Him, to have Him teach me that even in the darkest of moments, the epiphany of His divine love can break through, freeing me internally even as my external world is tethered to the consequences of my sinful nature, and to the nagging old theology I still live by (the “He-loves-me-He-loves-me-not” theology as Wayne Jacobsen so aptly says).

Abba knows I am prone to run from Him at precisely the moment I should be nestling with Him, resting in His ever-faithful eternal love.  And still Abba persists, His relentless tenderness and love always there, closer to me than even my own breath.

So, do we ‘love’ Abba out of fear?  Or do we love Abba because He first loved us from the foundation of the world?

I hold the hammer that nails Jesus to the cross. 

I do.

Every person I have hurt, used, abused, manipulated, and ‘murdered’ in my head, heart, or actions – all of them are reminders that I re-crucify Jesus every time I sin.  Every time I neglect the poor, every time I walk away from an opportunity to see and share Jesus, every time I neglect the poor one “within” I crucify Jesus all over again.

I hold the hammer…

And yet as I slam the mallet down as hard as I can upon the spike, smashing it into the wrist of Love, I see His face look over at me, and covered in spit, filth and blood…and I see Him tell me “I love you…I love you this much,” His arms stretched so wide they seem as if they could rip from His Body.  “Come Home, my son, come back to Me…come back to Mercy!”

And in disgust, I hit the nail harder.

If I just hit it hard enough, I think the ‘thwacking’ sound of metal into flesh will drown out my guilt, my shame, my sin.  I am human and I can not take such Love so easily.  I sometimes try and crucify that which I Love and is Loving to me.

But still that Face…He keeps looking over at me telling me no matter how hard I slam down on the spike, no matter how hard I try to lift the Tree, no matter how far away I run, that He will still welcome me into Paradise.  His love is that insane, that Crazy that He would forgive me both in spite of myself and because of His self.

For in His tender eyes, all bloodied over and bruised, He tells me I am still made in the Image of His Father, in the Image of Love.

But still, I hold the hammer that nailed Love to the Cross.

And He bled forgiveness, mercy and love…

I am learning ever so slowly, through reading Scripture and through life’s lessons, that Grace is messy.

We try and portray it as a “suit and tie, Sunday best, bonnet and all kind of thing.” But it is not. Grace is so much more, so much so that when we even try to define it…all we can do is close our mouths in humility, drop to our knees and point to the Cross.

Sometimes I used to just stare at the crucifix at Sacred Heart Church and weep. The crucifix is such a humbling example of grace: the cross and on it the most loving man in the world intentionally choosing to suffer one of the most agonizing ways to die for you and for me…for people who mock, laugh, spit, disdain, and dismiss him and his life. For in truth, Grace (like Life) is messy, disturbing and comforting.

Grace is the sex industry worker (modern day for ‘prostitute’) caught literally in the act and led away to be stoned and Jesus creating space, kneeling down on the ground, writing something, pausing with mercy, waiting…then speaking the loudest truth of all in calmness: let whomever is without sin be the one to cast the first stone. Nothing neat about that scenario; in fact, it’s kind of weird all the way around, especially the crazy grace given from Jesus to the woman caught.

What Jesus did, in and of itself was radical in so many ways: it was counter-cultural, blasphemous, renegade and illegal (in order: men did not talk to prostitutes unless doing business with them behind closed doors, only God could forgive sins, and stopping the stoning of a ‘criminal’ was interfering in the “legal” process). Messy, messy, messy…and nothing but divine grace. Jesus constantly embodied God’s love in ways that we cannot accept; messy ways, so messy in fact that we feel the need to add to it, water it down, or try and infer a different meaning into it.

I mean let’s face it: the disciples were sometimes a bunch of asinine dunces who spoke before they thought, acted with little regard to the consequences, and who sometimes were as thick as oaks, blind to the truth that they were handpicked, loved and in the perpetual presence of the awaited Messiah. And yet, Jesus loved them deeply and dearly. That is messy grace. And here is another thing to ponder: Jesus constantly allowed His followers to be in situations where they were bound to fail, and therefore would be in need of God’s grace.

Jesus is beautifully messy and so is His grace. But we are too often so concerned about what it will look like; the lofty glances at those who are different, those who don’t look like us, don’t vote like us, don’t think like us, don’t pray like us (fill in the blank). We want grace to be neat and clean. But it isn’t! It is messy. Grace is forgiveness to dope fiends and sloppy drunks. Grace is mercy in the face of undeserved mercy. Grace is a prisoner being forgiven and healed. Grace is finding hope in a drug den, kneeling over a toilet after a night of partying. Grace is sloppy, greasy, and gooey.

Grace is a bloodied, dirty so-called Messiah dangling from a cross (for our salvation), an apparent failure with every one of His followers abandoning Him except for a young one named John, His Mother, and a prostitute named Mary.  There is nothing clean and tidy about that!

Messy grace is the Gospel story where Jesus knelt down and mixed his spit with dirt and put the mud in the man’s eyes to heal him. Yuck. Or in the Prodigal Son, where Jesus talks about the good Jewish boy who whores his wares away and finally ends up getting part-time work cleaning and feeding PIGS! Just what every Jewish mother hopes will happen to her son…

Grace is apparent failure, a small flame of hope in the bleakest darkness. Grace is hope in the face of utter despair. Grace is the Creator of the Universe coming to and caring intimately for us messy human beings with all our foibles and frailties.

Grace is messy indeed.

Grace is the Father running out after us, all muddy and filthy from the pig trough and the brokenness of our lives…running out and falling down on His knees, holding onto us tightly, weeping for joy that we have finally come Home.

“Blessed are the cracked and broken, for it is they who let in the Light.”

Friar Puck the Irascible

I have learned many things in my 44 years of living, but here is something I am learning over and over again (especially during the last few months): everyone (and I do mean everyone!) is broken whether they acknowledge it or not. There are no perfect people in the world. And with the exchanges I have had over the last few weeks with Christians and people who say they care I have learned again: all of us are broken and imperfect.

In fact, I’ve learned that those who project a greater sense of accomplishment, or an “I’ve already arrived” mentality (especially among followers of Jesus), are the ones who are the farthest away from the very perfection of which they speak.

Who wants to be “perfect?” Honestly, I don’t for the myth and illusion of perfection is a weight that no one can bear. The truth is Jesus came for the sick and screwed up anyway. People like me…

For it is only through the cracks and the brokenness of life that the profound mystery of God’s grace can enter and heal us. For in our myth of perfection and achievements, we lose the truth that we are broken and we need to feel that we are already perfect and whole. When this happens we become “sealed shut” and the elements of God’s grace have no opening with which to enter our hearts.

For grace enters the heart through a wound.

We are a broken and imperfect people. And praise God for that! For in our cracked and broken natures, God’s power is perfected (2 Cor. 12:9). Even St. Paul said we should “boast” about our weaknesses for in them we experience God like we never would have expected.

Yes, Jesus did say, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” But the word perfect there does not mean without flaw, error or blemish. It means to be “mature, complete, and healthy.”

So we, who are broken, are called to a God Who enters us through the very brokenness we try and hide or deny. It is the lovely mystery of God: that the Holy One enters the unholy. Or put another way, the God of Wholeness desires to love and enter His Un-wholly (broken) creation and to do so tenderly and in perfect Love.

God loves the broken and cracked among us. Alleluia, Alleluia!

I have said it before and will say it again; God does indeed have a preferential option for the poor, the oppressed and ALL who are broken, not because they are better or more loved, but precisely because they (we, I, you) are more vulnerable – and God has a special concern for the most vulnerable in this world because they are less protected and have less resources.

God loves all equally and perfectly, but those that are the most broken, and those who cry out in their brokenness, are the ones who are the most open to God’s amazing and disturbing grace. We who are broken know that we need the relentless tenderness of Jesus. Those who find themselves to be whole have no need of grace or forgiveness or healing…or even God for that matter.

In truth, without God’s grace and love, I am just another conniving, arrogant addict ‘jonesing’ for a high or drink. But with the love of Jesus poured out into my heart and soul, I am whole, not perfect, but whole (and holy). For as the Sacred Scriptures says, “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me [and the] life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me (Gal.2:20).”

“The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart.”

Dorothy Day

The Calling is not difficult to find, but few ever do.
The Word is very near but found only in Silence.
The Way to life is to die upon a Cross carried daily.
The One I seek seeks me more.
He is found not in a grave but Risen,
in the faces of the poor,
in distressing disguises.
I came to be found, and now found I must lose myself.
I came to seek the face of the Comforter that I may
comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.
I seek solace from the storm that I may rage against the winds of apathy.
I find no peace until the ego (the one that says “I am God
and in no need of Him Who is Love”) is shattered.
I came as one lost to the lost,
as one poor to the poor,
as one confused to the wise.
I am nothing unless I am at peace with Him
Who is the Prince of Peace.
I am forgotten.
I am lonely.
I am wounded, lame and whole.
I am a beggar at a banquet feast.

I am…only because I am one with the Nazarene!